Empower students to manage stress, enhance mental well-being | Opinion

“Positive thinking tends to breed positive results, and being around positive people is the simplest and most effective method of ensuring a positive attitude,” said Lakshmi Mahadevan, a Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service specialist in mental health and well-being in the agency’s Family and Community Health unit. “Parents, teachers and caregivers have the greatest influence on a young person’s mindset and attitude, so it is important they model positivity as they try to motivate students.”

CREATING A POSITIVE OUTLOOK

This motivation can come in several forms — from sharing encouraging and optimistic quotes by famous people to using positive reinforcement, showing them how to keep negative thoughts at bay and encouraging them to appreciate their uniqueness.  

“It’s vital that you show your student that optimism helps create happiness and positivity powers success,” Mahadevan said.

She said parents can help students reduce stress and frustration by ensuring they are organized and helping create a distraction-free zone where they can focus on schoolwork.   

Additional tips she offered to help students develop a more positive mindset include:

• Openly discuss your own setbacks and how you turned them into growth opportunities.

• Encourage them to learn from failures and remind them failure is a natural part of learning.

• Focus on how effort and persistence contribute to long-term personal growth.

• Support the pursuit of activities they are particularly passionate about.

• Foster open communication by creating a safe space to express their feelings and by listening actively and offering nonjudgmental support.

• Introduce them to simple self-care techniques like deep breathing to help manage stress.

• Help them name and categorize their emotions so they can articulate their feelings more precisely.

BE MINDFUL OF STUDENTS’ FEELINGS

Children are often hesitant or shy to talk with parents or other adults about their concerns, such as feeling nervous about starting a new school and worrying about how others perceive them and how they are faring socially and academically.

“Talk with your child about their feelings regarding the return to school and find ways to be supportive about their concerns,” Mahadevan said. “Since COVID, many students still feel behind academically or aren’t learning on par with what they did before.”

Because of this, it’s a good idea to check in every few days about their homework and see if they need additional help, she said. And be sure to check their emotional well-being by asking them about stress or overwhelming feelings.

It is important to be patient, calm and compassionate when trying to get young people to express their feelings, Mahadevan said.

“It usually takes a while for young people to open up and share more deeply about ther emotions and mental health-related concerns,” she said. “If your child senses you are impatient or upset, they will be less likely to share their feelings and concerns in the future.”

ADDRESSING NEGATIVE THOUGHTS

Miquela Smith, AgriLife Extension health program specialist in the agency’s Disaster Assessment and Recovery unit in Lubbock, said feeling anger, frustration and sadness is normal and healthy.

A student’s fear of failure, change, socialization or other challenges can sometimes manifest outwardly as cynicism, anger or frustration. By understanding the root issues of students’ experiences, Smith said adults can help them cope. 

“Encouraging students to express their feelings as an exercise of acceptance and processing can be helpful,” Smith said. “Accepting and processing emotions as we experience them is key to preventing rumination and festering thoughts in the long run. Focus on helping students respond, rather than react, to negative emotions.”

She said helping students practice mindfulness will allow them to step back when frustrated or overwhelmed and help them determine the most productive way to respond. By doing this, students can improve their behavior by choosing to replace pessimism with optimism.

ENCOURAGING SELF-ACCEPTANCE AND RESILIENCE

As a parent, teacher or caregiver, your influence can make a huge difference in a student’s level of self-confidence. Mahadevan said believing in children can help them learn confidence and self-acceptance.

“Make your students aware of their own unique strengths and weaknesses and encourage them to recognize their accomplishments,” she said. “This way, they can start developing the ability to think more positively, develop their self-esteem and find comfort in their own identity.”

She suggested another approach to help students is to engage them in self-reflection.

“Ask them to think about and identify specific instances when they exhibited resilience in their daily school life. This can help students recognize their strengths and reinforce positive behaviors.”

Mahadevan said some ways to get students to actively engage in self-awareness and self-reflection include asking them to:

• Consider any recent challenges and ask what strategies they used to overcome them.                

• Reflect on any recent moments of frustration and what they did to remain calm or motivated.

• Think about a time when they felt like giving up and ask what motivated them to persist.

• Identify something they tried despite being unsure about the possible results and ask how it turned out.

• Ponder something they recently learned about themselves that could help them be more resilient in the future.            

• Visualize how positive self-talk or encouragement helped them when facing a challenge.

HOWDY HEALTH IS A HELPFUL RESOURCE

AgriLife Extension’s Family and Community Health unit helps Texans better their lives through science-based educational programs designed to improve the overall health and wellness of individuals, families and communities.

The agency’s Howdy Health site provides access to science-based mental health education that reduces risk, shows how to build emotional resilience and provides insights on how to develop supportive environments for better mental health.

Additionally, AgriLife Extension has a youth program called Mindful SELF, a six-week series that can be implemented both in and out of classrooms to help middle school-aged students develop socially and emotionally. Contact your local AgriLife Extension agent to ask about this program.