Student Wellbeing

Teaching your child to cope

To adults, childhood and teenage years can seem like a carefree time in comparison to the realities of adulthood. But kids still experience stress. Earlier this month all of the Senior School students completed a Wellbeing Survey designed by our Wellbeing Team. We had a total of 537 student responses. Such a survey provides the opportunity to check our current school climate and areas of concern, identify areas for potential growth and develop a big picture view of the wellbeing of our students. Stress was named as the number one concern by our student body, closely followed by anxiety. Things like school and a student’s social life can sometimes create pressures that can feel overwhelming for kids, leading to higher levels of stress and anxiety.

Stress is part of everyday life and coping is how we deal with stress. Coping skills are what we think and what we do to help us get through difficult situations. Coping skills can be taught, and with depression rates on the rise among young people, learning them is more important than ever. While there is no right or wrong way to cope, there are helpful and unhelpful ways to deal with the stresses of everyday life. These include:

At home:

Listen and talk to your child. Help them to identify their concerns or worries and acknowledge how they are feeling.
Comfort your child. There may be times when your child does not want to talk and just having a parent nearby engaging in a shared activity or giving them a cuddle is helpful.
Demonstrate and model ways that you cope with situations.
Prepare your child for changes and talk positively about any upcoming changes occurring in their life.
Encourage help-seeking by teaching your child when to ask for help.
Problem-solve the situation with your child through a step-by-step process.
Encourage your child by talking positively about their attempts to cope.

At school:

Relationships and belonging are the most important factors that can help students cope with adversity. The importance of positive student-teacher relationships can never be underestimated and is certainly a focus area for the Wellbeing Team.
Talking through problems with a trusted adult. Young children, even pre-schoolers, can start to learn coping skills by talking about situations they encountered and how they coped and other ways they may cope in future.
Targeted programs and resources in Tutor. Teaching young adolescents coping skills is vitally important. Touch points of particular concern are the transition years of starting and finishing high school.
Explicit teaching of time management and organisation skills becomes increasingly important as students get older.

Hopefully some of these tips may be useful for you and your child/children. As we near the end of Term 3, I wish you all a restful and calm break!

Mrs Emma Bylsma

Head of Student Wellbeing