More than adults?
Children & Adolescents suffer from stress as much as adults, sometimes even more since they often have no control over circumstances. The number of suicides are rising alarmingly.
Generally, anything that may cause children fear and anxiety can cause stress. This can include being away from home, starting a new school or moving to a new location. It can also result from being separated from parents or worry surrounding school, getting along with others, bodily changes or the future.
What a scary world!
As adults we need to understand how much society changed in the last 20 years. Children today are constantly bombarded with information of a negative kind; today's world is a very scary place.
Children and adolescents have a work-place: school. Just as stress-management is becoming a natural part of many adult work-places, it should be part of the curriculum in school, to educate, inform and train children to better handle their future.
Society can not afford to wait for the cost of future debility. Measures need to be taken at once.
What can be done?
In Sweden peer-massage/stress-management has become part of the curriculum in pre-school and primary school. The program is called ”massage against violence”. I have done extensive work to bring stress-management to secondary level, when the demands and pressures rise drastically. The results are immensely gratifying to me as a coach, the adolescents for recapturing their sense of ”self”, parents because of less worry and schools because of better results.
On Secondary level stress takes on a whole new meaning for the students and stress-management is more about information and ”tools” to handle stress, such as: Self-definition, Goal-setting, Problem-solving, Organisation. Through lectures and practical exercises, the students gradually learn to handle their everyday-situation with an ever-increasing workload.
Reference:
“My name is Fleur, I work in the European school and am in contact with children every day. I see them having fun, being tired – and overloaded with work and stress in all situations. One day I heard about a stress manager who works with children, and as I think it’s very interesting to try new and innovative things I invited her into my class where we are 28 wonderful and colourful pupils.We had 3 sessions during 2 weeks; one where we worked only with breathing and a sort of meditation. The other ones we worked with massage, giving and receiving, respecting each other, boundaries, listening to what our body tells us.It has been very giving! I have been using it as a way to calm the children down in situations where they were getting stressed, before tests, before new situations – I have had a great deal of positive feedback from the children! If you are ready to try something new, this could be it!
Fleur Jakobsen, Primary Danish section, European School of Luxembourg
More than adults?
Children & Adolescents suffer from stress as much as adults, sometimes even more since they often have no control over circumstances. The number of suicides are rising alarmingly.
Generally, anything that may cause children fear and anxiety can cause stress. This can include being away from home, starting a new school or moving to a new location. It can also result from being separated from parents or worry surrounding school, getting along with others, bodily changes or the future.
What a scary world!
As adults we need to understand how much society changed in the last 20 years. Children today are constantly bombarded with information of a negative kind; today's world is a very scary place.
Children and adolescents have a work-place: school. Just as stress-management is becoming a natural part of many adult work-places, it should be part of the curriculum in school, to educate, inform and train children to better handle their future.
Society can not afford to wait for the cost of future debility. Measures need to be taken at once.
What can be done?
In Sweden peer-massage/stress-management has become part of the curriculum in pre-school and primary school. The program is called ”massage against violence”. I have done extensive work to bring stress-management to secondary level, when the demands and pressures rise drastically. The results are immensely gratifying to me as a coach, the adolescents for recapturing their sense of ”self”, parents because of less worry and schools because of better results.
On Secondary level stress takes on a whole new meaning for the students and stress-management is more about information and ”tools” to handle stress, such as: Self-definition, Goal-setting, Problem-solving, Organisation. Through lectures and practical exercises, the students gradually learn to handle their everyday-situation with an ever-increasing workload.
Reference:
“My name is Fleur, I work in the European school and am in contact with children every day. I see them having fun, being tired – and overloaded with work and stress in all situations. One day I heard about a stress manager who works with children, and as I think it’s very interesting to try new and innovative things I invited her into my class where we are 28 wonderful and colourful pupils.We had 3 sessions during 2 weeks; one where we worked only with breathing and a sort of meditation. The other ones we worked with massage, giving and receiving, respecting each other, boundaries, listening to what our body tells us.It has been very giving! I have been using it as a way to calm the children down in situations where they were getting stressed, before tests, before new situations – I have had a great deal of positive feedback from the children! If you are ready to try something new, this could be it!
Fleur Jakobsen, Primary Danish section, European School of Luxembourg