Contribution of Parents Towards Stress Free Education of Students

Imagine you are working from home and your boss has already lining up many tasks to be completed by the end of the day. Along with that you have a few conference calls lined up followed by a client call. Are you feeling the increase in the palpitation of your heart beat, you might also feel the increased stress of accomplishing all these task that look difficult to achieve.

Now let’s use the similar situation for your kids wherein they need to study from home, complete assignments, battle COVID-19 stress, stay with no outdoor activities! Are you able to picture the level of anxiety and stress that your children are going through during coronavirus outbreak?

Also Read – Parent Tips to Help Kids Fight Lockdown Stress

In this article we will discuss the academic pressure on high school students and how parents can help them deal with it.

Following are the ways parents can save their kids from academic pressure:

• Task prioritization
• Helping them stay organized
• Motivating them for a healthy lifestyle
• Counselling kids through conversations
• Being their unconditional support

But before we jump to these, let’s understand it if COVID19 has not entered the world!

Utilizing the analogy that we discussed at the begining, place your own high school kids in your everyday normal life situation, you rush to office, your kids run to their high school; you struggle to complete task, their struggle is called assignments; you take team and client calls, your kids are into extra circular activities and also rushing to private tuition.

I hope now you can picture the anxiety and stress a normal kid goes through with no time to procrastinate. Do you know academic pressure is the biggest cause of stress in student’s life!

Let’s get started with the ways parents can adopt to relieve school students from academic pressure –

How Parents can Save Kids from Academic Pressure

Task prioritization

• With an urge be good at everything, children take up a lot of activities. These activities bond them to attend classes besides school, thereby keeping them busy whole day and creating additional stress.
• In such cases, parents can help their kids prioritize the activities, as which activity to keep and which to skip. Help them choose activities relating to scholarships and those that might help them achieve their academic and hobby goals. That being said, you should never neglect the passion and interest of your kids and help them draw a plan to nurture them in a suitable way.
• Extra curricular activities should work as stress buster for the kid not as stress adder. So parents can help kids prioritizing the tasks, which in turn will help them set realistic and achievable student goals.

Helping them stay organized

• Help your children learn high discipline standards, by assisting them in creating a day-to-day schedule. Taking the current situation in account, the morning slot is dedicated to online school, the afternoon session can be used for completing assignments. An evening slot might be for self-study, games, and relaxation. You can help your children draw a scheduler that includes fixed time for different activities.
• You can also set some basic rules in your home, which will help children learn the techniques of accomplishing a task.

Motivating them for a Healthy Lifestyle

• Explain your kids how important exercise is to the high school students. Tell them the benefits of exercising. Even Research has indicated that regular exercises can help stimulate and change brain chemistry thereby reducing stress.
• Parents needs be undertake the role of education or health counselor to help their kids. Impart them the knowledge on benefits of exercising and eating healthy. This will not only make them aware of the benefits of healthy lifestyle but also help them understand the role of a parent.
• As parents, you give time to your family during or after lockdown is lifted. One day from the week for you family, where everyone can share how their week went and discuss the problems they are facing. This will help keep you and your kids stress free. Don’t believe me! try it on your own.

Counselling kids through conversations

• Communication is the soul of any relationship relationship. As parents, you need to enter into healthy and open conversations with your children. Let them put up questions freely, healthy argument and get answers.
• If you are not a friend to your children and you question them in their stress days, it will prove futile. When we are under stress, our brain blocks the ability to think.
• So, I would suggest you to handle the situation tactfully, by not being too judgmental but by being their counselor-cum-friend. Kids in their teenage are often rebellious. To counter attack this nature, parents should act like a diplomat.

Being their unconditional support

• Be the unconditional support of your kids, even when they fail at a task. The words of motivation from parents in darkest of situations keeps kids away from depression and stress.
• Parents should keep their kids motivated all the time. Just be polite and talk about their problems and not run into a conclusion on your own.

Takeaway

Now that you know the key to dealing with your kids and their academic stress. High school is one phase where students face a lot of academic pressure and need their parents by their side as a support. Also, children who are counseled by parents at the right time in the correct way never fall victim of academic stress. When parents are friends, kids are capable to fight back any stress that come in their academic life and beyond.

I hope this will help you build a better parent-child relationship! What you do to help your kids handle academic stress?