By Margaret Altman L.C.S.W.
Parents and teachers can now take heart and use simple behavioral strategies to improve their youngster’s emotional and physical well-being for life.
A study recently completed and published in a leading medical journal, proved that teens who are trained to do only two brief meditation exercises a day had lower blood pressure, and improved academic and athletic performance.
Childhood and adolescence can be stressful for parents and their kids. We already know that there is vast remodeling going on in the youngster’s brain and body, along with critical changes in sensitivity, information processing and emotional reactivity to situations. Added to this, we have a culture that impacts children in many powerful ways and influences the development of key mental abilities.
Stress is an inevitable part of growing up in our society and research has demonstrated that constant stress is very destructive to the brain, the immune system and health in general. Teens and pre-teens, although they may seem to avoid parental and other adult intervention and guidance, are receptive to simple behavioral techniques that reduce stress and help them achieve emotional balance. The benefit of these techniques is that the emotional balance that they learn to achieve has lasting positive effects upon their blood pressure, their ability to focus, to make healthy decisions and to persist in difficult activities.
The ability to get into and to maintain a balanced state or a workable comfort zone is one of the key abilities that lead to emotional intelligence. Teaching self-soothing strategies to youngsters, according to the recent study, involves not only giving kids the information but also getting involved in the behavioral exercise and demonstrating how it’s done.
Many parents give a lot of information to their kids. When adults engage in the actual practice and performance of this information, it makes a huge difference in how youngsters receive and use the important data. In the recent research, teachers actively demonstrated a meditation exercise with teens for only 15 minutes during the day. Teens were asked to do an additional 15 minutes at home. The results were astounding in terms of lowered blood pressure, improved school work and sports performance.
Parents may ask what else they can do to help their busy youngsters to get into workable comfort zones. There are actually many simple cognitive and behavioral exercises that parents can do with children. The following are a few suggestions from the new book, “Develop Your Teen’s Emotional Intelligence — Four Key Abilities All Teens Can Learn to Successfully Cope with Real Life Challenges.”
Show your youngsters how to change their views of situations that appear to be threatening and stressful. Ask the question: “Is this a life-or-death situation?” The answer to this important question often puts the situation into perspective and gives the youngster time to think before making decisions.
Demonstrate to your children how to focus in on their rate of breathing and pulse rate as indicators of how stressed they are. Show them how to take their pulse and count breaths for a brief time — both when they are excited and relaxed. This will teach them to pay attention to their inner states so that they know when to do simple behavioral exercises to get into a comfort zone.
Ask your youngsters what triggers them to become stressed and how they cope with it. Kids often have developed strategies that can be used as the basis of good relaxation exercises. Parents can become engaged in these strategies and help their kids stay in comfort zones for longer periods of time. (The author welcomes questions and comments from readers. She her office in Sherman Oaks (818) 788-7580 or by e-mail at).
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 13, 2004. Read the original PDF.