Talk About Stress

 

Hands up who is tired of the extra stress caused by Covid?  We had more than enough stress to deal with before but then along came Covid and taught us that firstly, we didn’t have a clue how stressful life could be and secondly, we were actually more capable than we gave ourselves credit for.  But I digress, this is old news.  Here is the real question.

Do you know how your children are?  I mean, how they really are?

Life at the moment is as tight as a trip wire and it simply takes one small movement in the wrong direction to create a huge explosion.

And while we’re trying to negotiate this minefield whilst keeping our own sanity as intact as is humanly possible it’s easy to forget about the young folk in our worlds.  They usually just follow along. They’ll be okay.

Wrong!

Our children are encountering stress as horrid as any adult can encounter and the difference is that they aren’t built to cope – they haven’t had life teach them, over time, how to deal with it.  Yes, I hear you, we aren’t built to cope with stress either. But we have had a little experience with this thing called life and we’ve been tossed about more than enough to know, at the very least, when to step back and take a breath before diving back in.

Kids don’t have this luxury.  They haven’t had the chance to deal with various stresses on a sliding scale that have enabled them to know how to arrange their faces. And yet here they are thrown into the deep end of a pandemic where, not only are the waves full of stresses that they’ve never encountered before but their parents, similarly semi-drowning alongside them, appear to be leaving them to handle this all on their own, apparently oblivious to the fact that their children are even IN the water.

And before you glibly throw the “social media is to blame” notion out there let me remind you that life as we know it is very different to life as it was when social media was to blame for young people’s difficulties.  And, quite frankly, if your child is swimming along in unchartered waters with a million questions and you aren’t swimming alongside them, who the hell are they meant to connect with anyway?

Communication is key.  I fully believe in that.  And I can proudly state that communication is key from personal experience.  But if you try and strike up a deep, meaningful conversation with your child or teenager out of the blue, they’re going to run a mile.  I have very strong views on keeping conversation channels open on every level but that is a different discussion for a different day.

But if you take nothing else from my ramblings in this blog please take this advice: your child does not need any extra unnecessary stress or pressure placed on them right now!! (Read that again.)

To put this into perspective, let me tell you a story about a child I know of. I’m going to change the details slightly to help protect this little person’s identity. We’ll call him John and his older sister Mary.  John and his sister are both top students who have, very deservedly, earned bursaries at their private school.  These bursaries cover every aspect of the school including fees, uniforms, taxi-fare (transport to and from the school), books, extramural equipment etc.

John makes sure that he works very hard to keep his top student status so that his parents don’t have to worry about paying any of these massive expenses related to his education.  The problem is that John has started taking some strain. Covid scares him, school has been so disruptive for the past year or so and he isn’t too comfortable with online schooling.

One day he felt particularly overwhelmed and asked his parents if he could please stay at home for one day just to catch his breath. His parents were horrified.  This was unheard of.  They’d never had anything of this nature when they were growing up.  So John wasn’t allowed to stay at home for that day.

But John just kept on working hard and making sure he kept his top student status.  The problem is that John also has slightly different religious views to his parents but because there is are no open communication channels between himself and his parents he could never, ever mention it or ask his parents pertinent questions relating to this.  He didn’t even feel like he could talk to his sister, Mary about this.  John had some very interesting views and opinions about life in general but only his closest friends were privy to these gems.

So John just kept on working hard and making sure he kept his top student status.  A few weeks ago, John and his classmates were in a conversation relating to something random and, as often happened, the boys in the class were teasing each other and laughing at their classmates, getting entertainment at their classmates’ expense.  The problem was, this particular day, John wasn’t feeling like being teased.  He was stressed about the upcoming exams, he didn’t feel confident within himself and suddenly and surprisingly the ribbing he was getting was too much.  He crumpled in a flood of tears and had to suffer the humiliation of being laughed at for crying in class before the teacher realised that something serious was happening and intervened.

To cut a long story short: John’s parents were called to the school and further investigation showed that John had, in fact, had a mini emotional breakdown.  He’s getting regular counselling now and the suggestion has been made that perhaps it’s the school that’s causing his angst, in which event he will be taken out of mainstream school and complete, at the very least, this year online.  What guilt this child must be feeling!!  And all of this could have been prevented if the communication channels with his parents had been open enough that he could discuss life with them and if they understood more about the stress our children are exposed to, to allow him the odd “duvet day” off to gather his thoughts.

But this goes further: John doesn’t have a massive friend base but he has a handful of good friends who really enjoy his company.  Those friends are now suffering despairing doubts of whether they could have done something to prevent John’s breakdown, if their behaviour or lack of behaviour could have contributed to his stress, if they shouldn’t have spotted some warning signs.

In other words, the fact that John’s parents didn’t keep open lines of communication with their son not only is their son in a difficult emotional place but there are a small handful of children who have now added to their stress by worrying about their friend and wondering if they let him down.  A sad and unnecessary ripple effect.

So I ask you again: do you know how your children are?  I mean, how they really are?

Can they tell you, without judgment, about what’s going on in their lives?  Can they honestly tell you?  Without being judged?

Perhaps not, perhaps it’s something you want to work on.  But until then please don’t put unnecessary extra stress on your children.  Watch their behaviour and if they tell you they’re tired, respect that and let them rest.

Stay safe and well. x