Coping With Stress | By: Committee for Children There are many sources of stress in life: Taking care of siblings, dealing with peer pressure, finding food and shelter, doing homework, dealing with family problems, dressing in style, passing tests, getting into college, finding a place to live… Whether we are old or young, male or female, live in the city or a small town, come from affluence or poverty, we are all faced with stress on a regular basis. Coping with stress is an evolving skill that requires a lot of time, effort, practice and discipline to master. It can be difficult to do even in adulthood. Stress is something that people are faced with regularly, and being able to effectively manage it is important for one's health and happiness. Being able to handle stress is a form of self-management, which is one of the 5 core social and emotional learning competencies. Self-management involves persisting in overcoming difficulties, regulating impulses and expressing emotions appropriately, which are all aspects of dealing with stress. Stress management also has connections to student learning. For example, in a study of 8th graders, self-management was found to be more closely linked to student achievement than IQ (Duckworth & Seligman, 2005). Linda Lantieri, who has many years of experience with social-emotional learning, also shared information about how stress can affect learning in an interview with Edutopia: http://www.edutopia.org/linda-lantieri-how-to-relaxation. She says, “When a child doesn't have strategies to decrease anxiety, there is less attention available to grasp new ideas, think creatively, solve problems, and make good decisions.” The Emotion Management Units in the 7th and 8th grade Second Step curriculum specifically teach students how to cope with stress. Although the elementary curriculum does not contain a general lesson on stress management, it does provide children with a variety of skills for managing specific situations that could become stressful if not handled effectively, such as dealing with peer pressure, handling accusations and handling making mistakes. It also focuses on managing anxiety, which is often associated with stress. Aside from teaching skills directly through a curriculum, here are some additional ideas for helping students cope with stress: · Give students a quiet place to think when needed (see above link for more information about this idea). · Encourage students to start a stress journal, where they can express their feelings and write about their stressors and how they deal with them. · Spend time talking with students about healthy and unhealthy ways of dealing with stress. · Encourage students to think about positive things in their lives when they feel stressed. · Keep a variety of stress balls on hand for students to squish when they feel tension. · Teach students techniques such as visualization and muscle relaxation. · Listen to them when they need to talk. What other resources and ideas do you have for helping others cope with stress?