Gloss How-To: Help Your Kids Manage Stress

You’re busy paying bills, taking care of the house and keeping up with your work while your child is outside riding their scooter. When you’re up to your eyeballs in stress, it’s hard to remember that your kids deal with stress too. Now that the long lazy days of summer are at an end, it’s even more important to pay attention to your child’s stress level. Here are some easy ways to help your kids manage stress:

- Sleep. According to the National Sleep Foundation, preschoolers need 11-13 hours of sleep and school age children need about 10-11 hours. Help your kids get to sleep on time by having a calming bedtime routine. Try reading books together after your child takes a bath. The calming activities can help prepare them for sleep. Teenagers also need to get proper rest but — since their natural body clocks want them to be night owls and schools want them to be early birds — it can be difficult. Talk to your teenager about why sleep is important. Make a cut off time for stimulating activities such as using the computer, texting and playing video games and ask your teenager to try more relaxing activities before bedtime.

- Don’t overschedule. Your kids may want to play soccer, take dance and sing in the school show choir, but you know that is too much for them to handle. Limit extracurricular activities to what you know your child can handle. Kids need plenty of free time, too.

- Be active. Between the hours spent behind a desk at school and time spent doing homework, the last thing kids need is to sit behind a video game system. Make sure your kids get at least an hour of activity each day. If it doesn’t interfere with their sleep schedule, start getting up a little early and going for a morning bike ride with your child. Walk to and from school with them. Encourage outdoor play by kicking a soccer ball in the backyard or playing a game of catch.

- Don’t involve your child with your stress. While kids might need to about family difficulties to some degree, make sure you share family problems on an age appropriate level. If you’re having money problems and extras like going to the movies on Friday night need to be cut out of the budget, there’s no need to go into detail about the problems. Just tell your child what they need to know and assure them that everything is fine. Kids have enough stress to deal with — they don’t need to absorb ours, too.

- Forge friendships. Social problems such as bullying can be one of the biggest stresses for kids. You can proactively help your child by helping him forge strong friendships. Invite kids over to your house to play one-on-one with your child. Encourage your child to join a club or team for their extracurricular activity. And be sure to talk to your child about how things are going at school so you can help her come up with solutions for any friendship-based problems.

Family Education has a list of the top 10 sources of stress for kids.