This is another article in my series about stress and anxiety. In this article, I would like to address what we as parents, teachers, and leaders can do to help with our children’s stress.
Disclaimer
Let me start by saying that I am talking about everyday problems and stressors. I am talking about peer issues, homework load, chores, personal accountability for actions, and other situations that children need to know how to handle and deal with. I am not talking about extreme or emergency events. I am not addressing abuse or exploitation. Those that cannot help themselves need rescuing!
We are all responsible to be advocates for the children in our culture to protect and report abuse.
Rescuing and Rescue Begging
Many of us have developed unhealthy strategies in this modern culture of supervision: helicopter parenting, hypersensitivity to bullying, and happiness expectations are just some examples. The supervision of our youth is a good thing. I’m sure we have all had our own Lord of the Flies experience. It is good that there is accountability and guidance, but it can go wrong when it becomes our habit to rescue or enable, instead of ensuring accountability. When we remove consequences from a child’s actions we enable them to continue in the behavior that caused the problem. Protecting our children from harm or danger is good but protecting them from stress is counterproductive. Offering support and guidance through challenging and difficult times will promote growth and trust. But when we attempt to intervene in young people’s lives by solving their problems and removing obstacles and blocking consequences, this only perpetuates the cycle of anxiety, fear of failure and leaves them with poor coping skills problem-solving abilities, or self-initiative. Many times I have seen kids asking for help, and instead, an adult ends up doing it for them. Eventually, these kids ask for help expecting someone to handle things for them. Children can learn bad lessons from this. One example is if they focus on the stress and call attention to it, that eventually, someone will rescue them. I call this ‘rescue begging’. This can become magnified if children learn how affective self-harm is at getting this kind of rescue. Not eating, not sleeping, talking about how stressed they are, crying, breakdowns, and then the extreme of cutting themselves all can be legitimate warning signs that something is very wrong in your child’s life. But it can also be “begging for rescue” in a situation they can and need to handle themselves. Some can get to a state where they seek rescue instead of solutions. I am not suggesting we ignore warning signs. All these signs require action on our part but I am saying let’s be careful not to immediately swoop in and remove what we see as the immediate cause of the issue. It can be much more important to help rather than rescue. Imagine a 12-year-old in 2 feet of water panicking about drowning. Instead of rushing to them and pulling them out, what we really need to do is tell them to stand up.
The Struggle is Real – and Necessary
After providing guidance, letting children figure things out allows them to apply what they have learned and internalized solutions. The problem often is that it is easier to rescue than to stand by and see our kids in pain and struggle. But if they do not struggle how will they learn to deal and cope. Show them how to get out, deal with, cope, or confront the situations they are in and the stressors they are experiencing. If you remove them from the struggle or remove the elements that are causing the issue then all you are teaching them is that you can fix it and struggle is unnecessary, or even worse wrong. We need to empower them to take care of themselves and that struggle is normal and good. In addition, we shouldn’t reinforce the idea that they should seek a way out of struggle and always seek the easy way. We also don’t want to swing to the other extreme and expect them to endure struggle without our help. Requiring accountability or expecting problem-solving without the tools or support to work it out for themselves is a recipe for reactionary problem-solving. That’s how fistfights or bullying and unhealthy coping mechanism are developed. Again adolescents need almost constant guidance, encouragement, reminders, help, and reassurance but as much as possible we need to allow them to use all these influences to deal with struggles and problems themselves. They don’t need us to do it for them.
Struggle adds value to the lesson. Things that are worth obtaining are worth the struggle to obtain them. Struggle builds character. “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.” (Jas 1:2–5).
As parents, teachers, and ministers we fail those in our charge if we do not teach coping mechanisms and give our children tools to deal with struggle and the stress of problems. But the key is that as we teach we should also expect and require them to solve their own problems with that teaching. And we need to be ok with letting them struggle and even fail sometimes. I will say it again: Anyone we are ministering to needs encouragement, patience, guidance, and yes sometimes help but what they don’t need is for us to do it for them.
Obviously I am not talking about babies! Or children facing adult issues or being negatively affected by adults! We are all responsible to be advocates for the children in our culture to protect and report abuse.
Teach
Teaching someone what a hammer is and how it works and telling them all the safety rules is all well and good. But you know they are not going to be a good carpenter until they get to use it. The more our kids get to use the tools we are teaching them the more they will trust the tools, their own abilities to use them and more importantly, their teachers. They learn to have faith in instruction itself. We as good teachers should always be pointing them toward God and godly principles. Teaching them not just lessons but how to learn beyond what we can teach them. God is the source of all wisdom. Our goal is not for them to follow us but follow Him.
Age-appropriate Leadership
Our ministry and administration to children as teachers and parents should reflect the child’s age and development level. Children need trainers and training. Practice with them. Talk through not only the situations they are currently in but potential situations. Adolescents need coaches. They still need practice and drills and a lot of play calling but they really need to run the plays themselves. And the coaches need to stay off the field unless there is an emergency. Late teens and young adults need advisors that will give advice and instruction and guide by influence. This relationship should be established in trust by this time. Adults need mentors that will give advice when asked but whose main job is to lead by example and to be available.
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