PTA Parent - December 2009 |
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Study: Kids' Stress Higher Than Parents Realize School pressure and family finances have stressed out young people to a greater degree than parents believe, according to results from a new national survey released by the American Psychological Association (APA). Nicola Freeman of TheOnlineMom.com looks at the survey and shares insights into how parents can identify increased stress levels in their kids. By Nicola Freeman of TheOnlineMom.com
Kids are more stressed out this year– and many parents are missing or ignoring the signs. That appears to be the conclusion of the American Psychology Association's annual Stress in America survey, which for the first time included children. Not surprisingly, stress levels are up across the board this year. Seventy-five per cent of adults reported moderate to high levels of stress in the month prior to the survey, with moms generally reporting higher stress levels than dads. Financial concerns top the list, with money, the economy and housing costs all cited as significant causes of stress. As families across America face challenging times, the survey suggests that stress and worry are having more of an impact on young people than parents believe. Nearly half (45 percent) of teens ages 13-17 said they worried more this year, but only 28 percent of parents believed that their teen's stress levels had increased. There is also a significant disconnect between what parents believe causes stress in children and what children themselves consider worrisome. Children were two times more likely to say they worried about their family's financial difficulties than their parents perceived. This gap between children's actual stress levels and parents' perceptions extended to many other areas, including relationships with other family members, school worries, and concerns about getting into a good school or getting a job. Katherine Nordal, a clinical psychologist at the APA, suggests that parents need to start by coming clean with their kids about their own worries. "Younger children tend to blame themselves for problems," she says. "If the kid doesn't know what's going on, they're likely to assume a worst-case scenario or make a problem bigger than it is." Parents also need to make time to find out what is troubling their kids. Here, technology takes part of the blame. "When a parent is plugged into a BlackBerry, cell phone, video game or television, they're not going to have enough time with their kids for issues like that to come up," says Nordal. In fact, 85 percent of the kids surveyed said they weren't comfortable talking with Mom or Dad, often because their parents were too busy. What is the Best Way for Your Child to Learn? Parenting magazine identifies ways to tap into kids' unique ways of processing information to help encourage better learning and improve grades in school. (The "Read More" link will take you to Parenting.com.) PTA Briefs
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