Helping your kids cope with stress

We talk a lot about how to deal with stress ourselves, but what about our kids? Back to school can be a stressful time. Students have to get used to a drastic change in routine. From getting up early every morning to doing homework at night, it can be hard for your kids to adjust.

It’s natural for them to feel a little stressed during this time. But in order to make sure this stress doesn’t affect their daily life, you can do a few small things to keep them relaxed.

Talk to them

This one is pretty obvious: Talk to your kids. Ask them how their day was. If something happened that made them upset, talk it through with them. This will help them see things from a different perspective, which is a lot harder for kids to do than for adults.

Whether it’s over dinner or on the drive home from school, a short conversation with your kids about what’s going on in their life will make a big difference in their stress levels. They will know they have your support, helping them deal with whatever stress they have.

Keep them organized

Depending on how old your kids are, they might not be the best at keeping themselves organized. This is where you come in. Make a schedule of their activities every week and keep it somewhere they can see it, like on the fridge. This will allow them to plan ahead and know what’s coming up.

Teach them how to keep their school supplies and homework organized in a way that they can easily find what they are looking for. They will carry these organization skills with them into later life, you just have to show them where to start.

Give them a break

While we like to think that kids have it easy and don’t have any stress, we could not be more wrong. Everyone, at every stage of life, has stress. What triggers this stress changes as we get older, but how we react to it doesn’t.

Let your kids relax every now and then. They need a break from school, sports and extracurricular activities. Let them play in the back yard or ride their bikes. A hot tub is a great place for your kids to unwind. Provided you monitor their time in the water, a soak in the hot tub can have the same effect on your kids that it does on you.

So as you send your kids back to school, make sure they can handle the change in routine by monitoring their stress levels.

What are your tips for helping your kids deal with stress?