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Caring for Your Hurting Teen / Fostering Wellness and Growth — No Comments
24
Mar 25

Top 12 Coping Skills for Teens

/copingSkills.jpg“Explore new hobbies such as woodworking, painting, or jewelry making.”

Teens going through a tough depression or similar illness need ways to cope. Here are 12 of the top coping skills:

  1. Do a puzzle together.
  2. Watch an old television series while you play a simple card game. My daughter and I worked our way through Columbo, Murder She Wrote, and The Office.
  3. Go for a car ride with your teen in the passenger seat, listening to their favorite music; no talking. This can really soothe a teen in pain.
  4. If it’s been a bad day, suggest that they go to bed early. This almost always works.
  5. If shopping for clothes is too strenuous for them, do some Internet shopping. Having packages coming may give them something to look forward to.
  6. Go for a twenty-minute walk together.
  7. Bake something easy together.
  8. Suggest that they start or resume music lessons.
  9. Buy magazines that interest them.. Short articles require less energy than do books.
  10. See if they will go to a movie with a friend. It requires less conversation than other activities and is therefore less of a strain.
  11. Explore new hobbies such as woodworking or jewelry making. Browse through a crafts store to see what interests your teen.
  12. Adopt a pet through the humane society, preferably one already trained so that you don’t have the added stress of housebreaking.

You may be disappointed to discover that your teen has lost interest in an activity or sport they previously loved. It’s possible that they don’t have the level of concentration to pursue it right now. Their skill level may be so low compared to the way it was before the illness that they don’t have the heart to keep it up right now. Although you may be tempted to keep your teen involved so that they don’t lose ground, resist the urge. I know there’s the risk that they won’t return to it, but there is an equally good chance that they will find something new to master. Changing interests is a natural part of teen life anyway, so encourage them to try new things.

Caring for Your Hurting Teen / Fostering Wellness and Growth / Troubling Issues — Comments Off on Can You Over-Reward Teens?
19
Mar 25

Can You Over-Reward Teens?

Teenager“You may come to question whether teen rewards are reinforcing helpless behavior.”

From the time they are little, we reward our kids for good behavior, hoping that the behavior will eventually become natural. If you have a teen with emotional problems, you may be inclined to reward him for things like getting out of bed in the morning. Over time, you might wonder if your other children, who are low-maintenance in comparison, are getting shortchanged. You may even come to question whether teen rewards are reinforcing helpless behavior.

I experienced this recently when my daughter had a bout of depression and was missing school. My husband offered her a gift card that he had been awarded (for good performance at work!) if she did not miss school for an entire week. She missed part of one class due to genuine illness. That led me to extend the offer for an additional week. But that week didn’t work out so well either. It was at that point that I began to feel like my husband and I had set a trap for ourselves.

We wanted to give her the gift card. But she really had not earned it. I don’t believe in changing rules, so I wasn’t about to start. But I came to ask myself if maybe we over-rewarded her. That is, were we subtly reinforcing her to subconsciously maintain “problems” so that they could then be solved by us?

Then a friend clued me in. She said to stop setting up rewards for good behavior. Encourage her to do what she should and when a good stretch of time has passed with her doing the right things, mention it and then take her out for lunch or give her a small gift. It will come as a surprise, but she will still know she earned it, and that, ultimately, she was doing the right thing for herself, not us.

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