Your child’s senior year of high school will be their busiest yet. Not only will they be managing applications, and completing their high school exams, but they’ll also be developing and socializing as young adults. There’s a lot going on, which can lead to a lot of stress and anxiety for teens.
As a parent, it’s your responsibility to help keep them on track with school, but you also need to be there to support them during the tough times and help them unwind. Here are some of the ways you can help them find the balance, helping them get to graduation and beyond.
Your new college student probably returned home for the holidays with some unexpected baggage: the freshman 15. It’s a common fact that many freshmen can gain weight due to various factors—poor diet, sedentary lifestyle and stress eating.
However, as your student begins the new semester at college in 2023, it’s time to take a step back and rethink a new approach to fitness. They may or may not be concerned about their health but it’s a good idea to encourage them to pursue a healthy lifestyle.
For many parents, online learning is a blessing as it gives their teens a chance to keep their academic work on track when stuck at home. However, experts also agree that online learning can impact a teen’s mental health by increasing stress and heightened anxiety about keeping up to date with school work. So, is your teen resorting to online studies? Encourage them to adopt the following self-care habits to keep them healthy mentally and physically.
One of the biggest obstacles when starting your freshman year of college is figuring out how to manage a healthy balance between your academics and social life– but don’t forget that practicing self-care is a key piece to that balance. Making yourself a priority during the hustle and bustle of your first year of college will help you create and maintain healthy habits for the rest of your schooling to come.
Imagine being on an airplane, you get your luggage stowed, you buckle up and the video in front of you starts to play informing you of all the safety measures to take in the event of an emergency. One of the biggest tips they stress is when the oxygen masks come down, always put yours on before helping the person next to you. You cannot help someone if you cannot get air yourself! This goes for life, and even freshman year. If you do not make time to take care of yourself, everything else will start to fail too. But you know the best part of that? It is easier than it sounds!
Here are a few self-care tips for you as you take on this new journey!
Healthy habits are the best way to take care of your body. After all, our body is a gigantic system with so many different processes, each of them working in harmony to create a strong and healthy body. However, when one of these systems or processes is interrupted, it can slow everything down to a crawl. This is not where you want to be, hence why it’s important to take a holistic approach to health and also why it’s important to educate your children on this.
So what can you do to encourage your child to take a full body approach to their health? Here are a couple of suggestions.
You might think that it’s going to be easy to stay healthy in college. However, it’s possible that this won’t be the case. There are a lot of health problems that college students will commonly face throughout their time in higher education. It’s important to be aware of these problems and guarantee that they do not negatively impact your college career.
Headaches
You might find that you struggle with headaches in college. Believe it or not, this is quite common and there are numerous reasons why this might be the case. First, it’s important that you don’t rule out that these might be tension headaches brought on by stress. Tension headaches can usually be felt on the sides of the head. Some people claim that they feel like there is an elastic band tightening around your head. We’ll talk about stress a little further down but adding some time to relax and unwind into your busy college schedule is often not a bad idea at all.
Headaches may also be caused by eyestrain. This will be the case if you are finding it difficult to read the board or even read your notes. You may also have this issue if you are spending too long staring at a computer screen and that’s often a major part of college. It’s common for everything to be typed up, even the notes in a lecture. If you think that you are suffering from eye strain, then it might be worth visiting an optician to see if you have a problem with low vision. You could be short or long-sighted.
Something to watch out for is sudden severe headaches that you aren’t used to and which makes it difficult to concentrate or even function. On rare occasions this may be a sign of something more serious and it does need to be checked out.
Stress
As mentioned, it’s possible that the headaches that you are experiencing are a sign of stress. But stress can have numerous impacts on your body. It can leave you with chronic pain as your body manifests stress into something it can tackle head-on. It can cause you to feel emotionally and physically drained long before the end of the day. It might also cause you to feel completely overwhelmed and unable to complete your college tasks.
Stress is why it’s important to ensure that your time at college isn’t just all work and no play. Essentially, you do need to make sure that you have a healthy balance. You need to work to guarantee that you are not becoming overladen with issues and that can be a problem if you are not careful. You might even want to speak to a therapist on a regular basis. Some people assume that therapy is only for those with serious mental health issues. However, that’s just not true. Therapy can be beneficial for everyone and ensure that you are mental health is being taken care of.
Depression
When considering the issue of mental health, it’s important that you don’t overlook the problem of depression. Depression is far more common than most people realize in college. It’s possible that you develop depression because you feel as though you are not able to stay on top of the heavy workload. Alternatively, you might find that depression creeps in because you are struggling to keep up with what can be a heavy workload.
For instance, hell week often causes students to break down. If you don’t know hell week is often a planned part of the college schedule. It is one or two weeks that include numerous exams and essay dates all clustered together. Survive it and you pass through one of the most difficult parts of the college year. Unfortunately, a lot of people do end up dropping out during this time.
To understand depression you need to be aware of the common signs. Depression is described as a deep sadness that lasts for an extended period. This could be several days, weeks or months. You may find that you struggle to find the energy or motivation to do anything. Even getting out of bed or getting something to eat can be difficult when you are in a deep state of depression.
Insomnia
Alternatively, you may find that you are struggling to get a good night of sleep. It’s possible that you are constantly up through the night unable to get the rest that you desperately require to function effectively in your college classes. If that’s the case, then it’s important that you don’t take this lightly. You should instead make sure that you are looking for the root cause of this issue. Again, it’s possible that this is going to be stressful. A lot of people will have trouble sleeping if they are overwhelmed by thoughts swirling around their heads.
Alternatively, you might find that insomnia has been caused by your schedule being thrown off course. During the time of the coronavirus pandemic, a lot of people are struggling to get a good night of sleep. Experts have suggested this is due to the fact that people are not following their typical schedule. This is why it’s important to make sure that you do have a schedule in college and stick to it as much as possible. That schedule should guarantee that you are staying quite active throughout the day. In doing so, you can guarantee that you do not find yourself filled with energy by the time your head hits the pillow.
Weight Gain
Finally, it’s quite common for your diet to take a hit when you enter college. Suddenly, you find yourself living on fast food or ready meals that are easy to prepare. If you do this, you could notice negative changes to your mental and physical health. Yes, a poor diet has been linked to everything from weight gain to depression. That’s why you need to make sure that you are getting a balanced diet and ensuring that you are getting the vitamins you need. If you are struggling here, natural supplements could be the answer.
Stress in colleges exceeds other learning institutions due to the excessive expectations from the society and the parents. There are however, some several factors that when considered and applied, can effectively reduce this effect on the students on a large scale. It is expected that you will put to use these five essential time management factors to reduce your levels college student stress.
Avoid Peer Pressure
The fact that you are in college means that you get to have an uncontrolled freedom to act as you like. This can be, if utilized properly, a great asset for you, or the reason for your downfall. You should be able to be self-driven, and able to determine the limits of your interactions.
Have your own focused goals and priorities and follow them diligently. Prioritizing your goals rather than over indulging with your peers may come across as selfish but this is one of the greatest ways to reduce stress in college. It is okay to say No sometimes.
Sleep is Essential
Depriving yourself of sleep is never a good idea. This is an indication that you have been failing to manage your time effectively. You have almost certainly been a victim or witnessed someone falling asleep in class due to lack of enough sleep. This can be because of excessive partying or you trying desperately to catch up on class work. However, you will find yourself wasting a lot of time trying to nap during the day, as you could have been doing something more beneficial during that time if you had gotten enough sleep during the night.
Procrastination is the Thief of Time
Procrastination is a major contributing factor to the high levels of stress in colleges. Students in the first weeks of school, tend to occupy themselves with other activities not related to their studies. This builds up a workload that will be cumbersome to deal with as the semester ends and students often use services that do my essay for them as shortcuts to their own work. Do today what you plan on doing tomorrow to reduce your level of stress in the end.
Truancy directly relates to more stress
Absenteeism is one of the major causes of stress in college students. Missing classes might seem like a fun idea at the time but only results in you having to look for more time to play catch up with your peers as the semester ends. This is mostly seen when you will be running up and down in an attempt to seek out your class lecturers to explain more on topics that you missed. Truancy also leads to borrowing of notes at the last minute takes up more of your time, as you are not familiar with your peer’s handwriting or shortened notes.
Take Control of your Time
Be a diligent master of your own time. Avoid shifting blame to unnecessary parties such as your teachers dishing out too much work that messes up with your time to study. To avoid stress in school, learn how to prioritize your tasks effectively with the time that you already have and avoid blaming others on your mismanagement of time.
Studying is hungry work, but choosing the wrong foods to satisfy this hunger can actually decrease your energy levels and sabotage your healthy diet. Chips, cookies and other snacks consisting of simple carbohydrates provide bursts of energy, but this energy quickly dissipates, so you experience crashes. Instead of binging on junk food, eat healthy, balanced, smart snacks, like the five suggested below, to ease your cravings, fuel your brain, and keep both your diet and your education on track.
Apple Slices or Celery and Peanut Butter
Apple slices or celery sticks paired with one to two tablespoons of peanut butter provide a good mix of carbohydrates, fat, and protein to keep you full and alert while you pursue your education. Celery sticks are lower in calories and sugar than apple slices, so if you need to munch constantly, these are the smarter choice. If, however, you are feeling sluggish and sleepy, opt for apple slices. They will give your blood sugar more of a boost.
When choosing a peanut butter, select a natural brand without added sugar or hydrogenated oils. Eating brands that have added sugars, like corn syrup or table sugar, may give you a sugar rush, but the energy boost will not last. Because the sugars in these peanut butters are simple sugars, your body processes them rapidly. This means a crash will quickly follow the initial sugar rush.
Absenteeism is one of the major causes of stress in college students. Missing classes might seem like a fun idea at the time but only results in you having to look for more time to play catch up with your peers as the semester ends. This is mostly seen when you will be running up and down in an attempt to seek out your class lecturers to explain more on topics that you missed. Truancy also leads to borrowing of notes at the last minute takes up more of your time, as you are not familiar with your peer’s handwriting or shortened notes.
Take Control of your Time