By Trevor Dumbleton

Modern teens get stressed on a regular basis. Some of this teen stress is caused by the changes that are occurring in their bodies - reaching puberty can be stressful for many a teen. But our modern lifestyle and education system can also be big causes of teen stress.

Our school system is a big contributor to teen stress. There’s the everyday stress of how friends and classmates perceive us. It doesn’t matter to the average teen that everyone who they think is judging them is almost certainly going through the same struggle themselves. At this age, it can often be a case of “everyone else is against me”, which can be one of the major causes of teen stress in itself.

Then you can add in the pressure of seemingly constant exams and tests. Parents contribute to the stress here by expecting their teen offspring to always perform well in class so that they can get to college and eventually get a high paying job. SATS scores are always being compared and, of course, there is the extra pressure incurred if the scores aren’t high enough to get through the next level of education. Is it any wonder that our modern education system is high up there amongst the causes of teen stress?

So what can be done to help relieve the causes of teen stress? First and foremost is helping your teenager to realize that it’s not just them. If we’re not careful, our teenage years can be quite isolated. Modern teens can easily retreat to their rooms and surround themselves with loud music, computer games and other distractions. You need to help your teen to relax once in a while. Exercise can help and playing a regular sport is an advantage. But for the athletically challenged, there are other ways. These can involve simple mind exercises that relieve the tension that has built up and manifested as teen stress.

Don’t ignore external signs of stress either. The treatment of acne can help reduce teen stress. Acne is a normal teen phenomenon but translates into a big cause of teen stress for many in the age group. After all, who wants to be branded as spotty by their school friends?

Whichever way you choose to deal with the causes of teen stress, make sure that your teen has someone they can talk to when the pressure builds up. Often just listening while they talk out a problem will be enough to help them de-stress.

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 8th, 2007 at 1:00 am and is filed under Stress Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.