Emotional Wellbeing has a huge impact on your teen’s resilience, confidence and decision making skills.
Listen to today’s episode or read the post below to learn about my top 4 tips on what you as a parent need to focus on in terms of your teen’s emotional wellbeing.
Welcome to the second post of this 8-part series on holistic wellbeing for teens.
This series is on what you as a parent should be paying attention to when it comes down to the holistic wellbeing of your teen or preteen.
This post is about Emotional Wellbeing.
Emotional wellbeing is our ability to manage our emotions.
Why is managing emotions important for your teens?
Because emotions impact their thoughts, thinking skills and their decision making.
They impact their physiological state, their physical health. And they also impact their relationships and social skills.
When you help your kids develop emotional intelligence, you enhance their
* Self awareness
* Self-regulation
* Ability to respond to life instead of react
* Resilience
* Confidence
* Relationships
* Decision making and problem solving skills
All of the above can make a significant difference in your teen’s life not just now, but also later as adults.
Let me provide a little context around teens and emotions.
Typically, teens are still developing the prefrontal cortex part of the brain (the part of the brain which governs reason and logic). Another part of the brain, the limbic part, appears to play a stronger role.
The limbic system is the part involved in our emotional responses, especially when it comes to behaviours we need for survival: feeding, reproduction and caring for our young, and fight or flight responses.
What does this mean for teens? They can be emotional and impulsive. They’re more likely to act on emotions rather than rational thinking.
Another thing you need to be aware of is that one’s emotional state is greatly impacted by their hormones. There is a part of the brain, the hypothalamus system which is responsible for keeping your body in a stable state or internal balance. It controls the production of hormones.
Teens are going through a phase where their hormones are changing. It’s a normal phase of adolescence and sexual maturity, fluctuations in oestrogen, progesterone, and testosterone—the sex hormones. These fluctuating hormones not only affect their body, but also their emotions, their moods, and behaviours.
You as a parent need to let them know that all these changes are normal, that emotions are normal, that it’s normal to have both positive and negative emotions.
Problems related to emotional wellbeing happen when your teen is stuck in either of these 4 states:
1. They’re unaware of their emotions; they have no clue what’s going on.
2. They’re not mindful; they’re too distracted during their day, they have many things going on, so they don’t pause and check in on how they’re feeling.
3. They’re aware of their emotions, but they’re unable to label what they’re feeling and communicate it to others in a healthy way.
4. They’re aware of their emotions, they are expressing them in some way, they’re talking about them, but they’re still unable to bring themselves back to balance, to a neutral state. Two main examples of emotions that fall into this category are anxiety and grief.
Considering each of the states above, here are my top tips on what you as a parent need to focus on in terms of your teen’s emotional wellbeing:
Tip 1 – When your teen is unaware of their emotions:
The solution is education.
Talk with them about the topic of emotions. Don’t assume that they already learned everything at school.
Here, if you as a parent don’t know enough about emotions, then educate yourself. Be willing to learn.
Also, let your teen know that emotions are normal, it’s normal to have both positive and negative emotions.
Teach them how a feeling often gives clues about what’s needed to find balance. For example, anger is a clue that something is wrong; it’s a good thing because it tells you that something is wrong, and you need to put things right.
Teach your teens how to find a healthy, safe way to express their emotions. If they are repressing their emotions, pretending that everything is ok, then it’s not healthy at all. We are humans. We are meant to have the full emotional experience.
Tip 2 – When your teen is not mindful and too distracted to be self-aware:
The solution here is to introduce them to mindfulness and help them develop a mindfulness routine.
This could be very simple, such as taking 3 minutes in the middle of the day to sit still and check in, to ask yourself: How am I feeling right now?
Tip 3 – When your teen is aware of their emotions but unable to express themselves
The solution is to teach them healthy self-expression tools.
Examples are using language to label emotions and the Emotions Wheel.
Other tools include journaling, free writing, poetry, art, music, etc. Any form of creative expression serves as a safe outlet for emotions really.
Tip 4 – When your teen is aware of their emotions and is expressing them in some way, but they’re still stuck and unable to bring themselves back to a neutral state:
The solution here starts with first getting to the core root of the emotion.
This could be many things.
Sometimes there’s another emotion underneath the emotion on the surface and this hidden emotion is not being properly expressed, so we’re back to previous state 3 above.
Maybe your teen has a deep unmet need that needs to be addressed.
Maybe they’re going through stress at school or a past event that they haven’t recovered from yet.
Sometimes, it’s a physical health reason.
Getting to the root cause of the problem is key to finding the right solution.
And finally, always put effort into engaging your teens in activities that move them into positive emotions, such as showing them unconditional love, connecting with them and involving them in fun family time, while being mindful of your teen’s unique situation.
Quick Recap
When it comes to you teen’s emotional wellbeing,
- Make sure your teen has enough awareness and education around the topic of emotions
- Introduce them to mindfulness and checking in
- Teach them tools for healthy self-expression
- Strengthen love, connection and their sense of belonging at home
I now invite you to pause and reflect on your top takeaway from this post.
What small, simple step can you start doing today to improve your teen’s emotional wellbeing?