“You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” - Christopher Robin
This thing called stress
In smaller doses, stress is designed to assist people to complete the task at hand and also to help people avert hurt, suffering or pain. It is designed to assist, yet in the modern world we live in, humankind has made every waking hour of our daily lives a stressful one when surely, life was not meant to be that way at all. The extra stress and the hormones it creates wreaks havoc on our bodies. On a young, pristine body of a child, it can do so much worse. Many are surprised to know that many of the techniques applied to adults to alleviate stress, can likewise be applied to children and adolescents of all ages who also experience stress for themselves.
The terrible thing with stress is that it can actualise in so many different shapes, forms and sizes and show up often at the most inopportune times. At a time you think things are going so well, you could so easily encounter an unforseen time of bad or worsening life situations. Stress will inevitably arise and whether intended or otherwise, will dovetail into your blood stream and start wreaking it’s havoc, whether you need it or not. It’s not necessarily a design fault, for the stress was designed to help us to survive. However, unless it can be controlled fast, it will start to take its toll on your body.
If you or your kids are having issues with stress in your lives, the following tips and tricks may serve you well to either get rid of it or reduce it significantly enough so as to prevent or reduce the toll, before it can take hold.
Give Aromatherapy a chance
Give aromatherapy a go - the scents and vapours from many candles and essential oils, such as Jasmine, Lavender, Rose, Eucalyptus, Geranium, Ylang Ylang, thyme and tea tree to name a few, can assist in achieving a greater level of relaxation. Keeping in your pocket a small pouch or satchel with those oil scents can assist if you take a whiff at a time you begin to feel your stress levels welling up. Introducing a regimen or system where you have scented oils throughout your daily life such as in your pocket, office and home can go a long way to ensuring your environments is always stress free and by extension, you also are mostly in a state of calm.
In our home we have a cold steamer going in my sons room in the winter – not only to help with coughs and colds but to fill his room and clothes with pleasant calm inducing scents. We will even give him a hanky or tissues scented with Eucalyptus for his pockets at school. A Vicks or Olbas sniffer with Camphor, Menthol and or Peppermint will also fulfil this role while your child is at school.
Visualisation
Another worthwhile thing to do with your child and their stress is to encourage them to take time out to visualise being calm in their minds. Many a study has demonstrated that visualising greatly reduces stress and anxiety while improving one’s ability to relax. Good examples of visualising calm for a child might be a feather floating down to the grass below or a placid glass like lake that's still, calm and barely a ripple upon it. My son likes the imagery of a patch of grass to lie down on overlooking a beautiful waterfall and rainbow emanating from its fine misty spray in the sunlight. He has also imagined himself on one of our favourite beaches, or in a warm bubble bath with toys when feeling stressed. Such visualisation and strongly suggested imagery will not only take the child’s mind off the stress at hand but will also be highly enjoyable for them too – especially if you throw in your natural flair for storytelling – a character or two and a pot of gold or hidden treasure also into the mix.
Mantra, Mantra, Mantra!
We also find useful for dealing with stress in our day to day lives is to create a family mantra that is repeated whenever we are feeling the pinch of stress, anxiousness or overwhelming feelings. A great mantra can be a very good tool to support positive thoughts, feelings and affirmations to rid any self-doubt which your child or you may have of themselves. We like to use the words ‘Peace and smiles is within my reach’. My son seems to relate to others like ‘I will be home in my own bed soon, playing with my cuddly toys’. Whatever works for you and your child is fine – this is a personal and individualised thing and its got to mean something to the person who is stressed. Mantras are ones very own. Sometimes another’s works, but sometimes your own is much better. If unsure of what works for you, get some ideas from the web.
Hanging out with positive people
To help your child to avoid many of the stresses and trials of life, they can be counselled to spend more time with family (including their nearest and dearest) and friends with more positive views on life. Leaning to spend time in the company of positive kids will see them being in a far better mood more often themselves, as opposed to spending time with cynics, kids that are always doubting, down or negative about their surrounds. If they can learn to be with those with positive outlooks, it will in turn help to keep their focus away from the negativity which more often than not leads to worry in a kids daily life. While we can teach a child to sympathise and empathise with others whose situations aren’t always ideal or conjucive to our own good moods, we and our kids should not be caught up in the vicious cycle that negativity and dream killing thoughts of others so often creates.
Meditation
A great tip to consider is for your child to take up meditation. Voluminous studies have been undertaken regarding the benefits and effectiveness meditation has on stress, so informing yourself and partaking in it, is a definitely a worthwhile pursuit to help melt away yours and your child’s anxieties. Merely allotting the time to calm ones mind can help enormously to reduce the burdens of stress we encounter in our daily lives. Visualisation (already mentioned above) is not the same as meditation but just one tool of meditation. When the focus of your meditations is an image, that meditation becomes visualisation. They work very well together. Meditation styles and techniques are numerous and vary vastly.
My wife and I are proponents of Anapana meditation. Why Anapana meditation? In my view, kids of all ages can easily be taught it because they seem to naturally relate to its technique. Anapana meditation is a style of mediation which concentrates on the mental purification process and how that is attained via a further processes of self-observation. Kids are naturally super observant, so the perfect time to train them is when they are in an open and receptive state which for a child is ….now!!! Anapana style is but a very first step in the greater Vipassana meditation practice, but suitable to kids of all ages with little effort or in depth study. It involves your breathing and the observations of the ups and downs of inhaling and exhaling. Learning this and MORE helps your child to concentrate their mind to keep calm, understand themselves and the how the mind can be used in a better more productive way. A child can quite easily and willingly without even realising how they can develop their inner strength to help them select the most appropriate actions more intuitively in their daily lives as opposed to choosing the wrong ones when not in the company of their parents or guardians. Anapana meditation provides our son with many of the tools to help better equip him when face childhood anxieties, pressures and fears.
New Hobby?
If you’ve been wanting to do something for years, yet haven’t, now might be the team if you are feeling stressed out. Finding a new hobby or rediscovering an old hobby is proven to distract you enough to force your body to relax. Whether it’s woodworking, app or game designing, rock climbing, gardening, surfing, painting, sculpting or learning a new language, a hobby can sometimes be just the trick required to help a child get their perspective back in life. My son has taken up piano and is designing fun computer games on a free online program called Stencyl. Kids should have a time out at least 2-3 times a week for their extra-curricular hobbies.
A Trip Away
Kids don’t need the most amazing destinations on Earth. They often just enjoy the simple things - a change of scenery and a swimming pool does it in our case. A long weekend getaway can be all it takes to bring a child back into full focus and get life back in perspective. We try to take the littlen away a few times a year. We often do it on the cheap and if we can’t get away, we explore and visit our local surroundings in such a way that it can feel like a getaway.
Enjoying and living in the moment
Another tip that can assist with a childs stress levels is to teach them not to sweat on the small things and definitely not to stress too much with things that are yet to transpire. Being obsessive about things in the future is what kids are best at and feeding that will keep them perpetually on tender hooks. Kids must learn that they only need to cross bridges when they come to it and not before. They and us as parents need to let them live their childhoods in the moment and they shouldn’t feel as if they are doing something wrong by living life to it’s fullest and enjoying life every waking moment. Stress and anxiety is everywhere with kids. They are not yet smart or wise enough to understand the birds eye view or have the benefit of decades of hindsight.
Conclusion
Stress tends to manifest when we and our kids least expect it and often when when we are also anticipating it. Life is funny in that respect; stress will just appear, no matter what we say, think or do.
Kids can learn to grab hold of life and fight those feelings of stress, uncertainty and anxiety. Their lot is not written in stone as yet. Sure, it isn’t always easy for them (and us to witness it) but with the right techniques, and tips (some mentioned here today) and with fair attempts at application, kids will lead a richer, fuller and more rewarding lives going forward. We can't solve everything, but surely can help make it easier.
Wishing you and your nearest and dearest nothing but the best,
@Booky
Copyright: Images by StockUnlimited