Parenting Teens Blog Series: Less Down Time

Welcome to 2020! I know this year has started off busily for many families. I thought it would be a great idea to restart our Parenting Teens Blog Series! As you may remember, we have talked about a lot of reasons why it is hard to not only BE a teen these days, but to PARENT a teen as well.

Here are some highlights from past blogs in this series before you check out the post about how teens are so over scheduled these days below!

• Focus on Happiness and Achievement
• Pressure of College Admissions
• Social Media

Check out this post about lacking down time below as well! We hope you are enjoying this series!

Unfortunately, our whole world seems to be impacted by a sense of overwhelm and feeling overscheduled. At Thrive, we see this all the time with our teen clients in particular. We often work with teens who are highly motivated and pursuing so much in their lives, which is incredible to see but also at times worrisome. I only use that word because I am concerned about the pace that life seems to go at for our teens. We have teens using their free periods at school to come and fit in therapy because otherwise they can’t even make it tto our office (where we have evening and weekend sessions available) due to their demanding schedules.

I am concerned about the lack of downtime for many reasons but here are the highlights:

• Stress – Teens today are much more stressed than they have been in past generations. They are trying to do much more with their time, particularly to help them secure admissions into a great college. Often, teens do not even have time to have a part-time job because they are balancing so many other activities just to get into college. This is definitely impacting their stress levels which impacts everything from memory to mood to physical health.
• Burnout – As described above, teens are super stressed currently and a big concern for me is that they are going to start experiencing burnout before they even make it to the college they have tried so hard to get into. When I talk to my colelauges in coleluge counseling centers, they share that very often this is a challenge on campus as well. Teens graduate feeling overwhelmed and then start college feeling overwhelmed, leading to struggles with grades, adjustment to college in general, mental health issues (depression, anxiety, suicidality, etc.), and some may then return home feeling unsuccessful or like a failure.
• Less creativity – Unfortunately, another side effect of our overscheduled lives is a huge lack of creativity. Consider this, in order to be creative we need to have periods of time to rest, recover, and relax enough for our brains to shift out of “productive” mode and into a more “creative” mode.
• Anxiety, mood, and sleep issues – As mentioned above, the stress and pressure that teens feel to do “all the things” possible to get into college, often leads them to be overscheduled, stressed, and places them at risk for burnout. It also places them at risk for anxiety, depression, and sleep challenges. This is extremely concerning during the teen years when impulsivity is high as well because not managing mental health challenges leads to learning to cope in often unhealthy ways like self-injury, substance use, or numbing out using electronics.

As you can see, there are many reasons to be worried about the pace of life for teens in America. A topic I often talk about with the teens I work with is the concept of cause and effect. It is just not possible to spend week after week, let alone year after year, with little down time and far too little sleep (some of the teens I work with sleep around 4 hours a night!) and not have some negative consequences. For every action, there is a reaction even if it is not immediate and it is important for parents to know this so that they can help their teens manage their schedules, responsibilities, or goals more effectively.

If you would like to talk more about parenting your teen with a Thrive therapist, contact us today!