Stress and the New School Year
The new school year ahead is one that we hope will be full of learning, friendship, and new experiences. It’s fair to say, though, that at some point the stress of academic challenges and deadlines will take over the positives for some young people. Helping our young people to understand and to manage that stress is extremely important, and that work can start now! Arming yourself and your young person with information is a good first step, and Lisa Damour’s book Under Pressure is full of useful information, ideas, and encouragement.
Damour’s book is subtitled ‘Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls.’ It’s divided into different aspects that can be sources of stress for girls in their teenage years. One chapter focuses on home life and family stress; others focus on relationships with friends and romantic partners; there is also a section on stress created by cultural expectations for girls. The chapter I’d like to focus on is the one related to girls and school, given that the new school year is starting up. At Flourish, we talk about how girls are often achieving academically, but not thriving personally; this is also seen by Damour in her work as a psychologist and practitioner in schools. She points out that ‘Research consistently finds that girls spend more time fretting about how they are doing academically, even though they are getting better grades than boys.” So what can we do to help girls to reframe their stress around school? How can we help them to build confidence in their abilities, and understand their worth outside of grades?
Step one: Understanding that stress can be good.
Schools are inherently stressful because they are full of new challenges - new topics to learn; new skills to build; new people to interact with… Damour sees this as an example of ‘healthy stress.’ This kind of stress can be positive because it can help us to build our confidence in our skills and knowledge. If our young people are able to challenge their negative thoughts about stress and reframe them positively, they can build their self-confidence to deal with the stressful situations that will arrive.
Damour likens school to weight lifting and ‘progressive overload.’ No one starts lifting the heaviest weights in the gym - good practice is to slowly increase weights and repetitions to build strength. Like weight lifting, Damour says ‘School, ideally, is one long programme of academic progressive overload… As soon as she masters new material, [her teachers] should give her something more challenging.’ This is the normal process of education - building skills using the learning that has gone before. Helping young people to understand and trust this process can lessen the worry that comes as academic studies intensify.
Step two: Trusting your brain and your abilities.
Some girls spend hours and hours revising, only to experience paralysing worry when they face their assessments or exams. This is clearly not sustainable in the long term, so Damour suggests that girls must become ‘academic tacticians’ to avoid burn-out and to enjoy learning. Tacticians prioritise, and she suggests that girls set realistic goals based on their enjoyment and interest in their subjects.
If a girl is hugely interested in PE, but not in Geography, her expectations of work effort and achievement should be different for the different subjects. The top grade in every subject isn’t realistic for most young people, especially if it’s not something that the young person is interested in. This may sound strange to you or your young person (Damour admits this herself!), but prioritising time and effort is a life skill that can pay off in both the short and long term. It also ensures that young people don’t just rely on excessive work and effort; that they can also trust their skills and knowledge too. Damour states ‘They should know when they need to recruit the brawn of their work ethic and when they can coast along on their brains. We want our girls to build real skills, to know how to work hard when they need to, and to believe that their talents will help them rise to meet challenges.’
The common saying of ‘knowledge is power’ is very true when it comes to girls and stress and anxiety. Through her writing, Damour gives useful information about a variety of issues facing girls, and encourages girls (and their adults) to understand that they have the power to face those issues head on. Although there is no fast-tracked solution to the stress and anxiety epidemic in girls, every step they choose to take can build their understanding, self-confidence, and ability to cope.
Dr Lisa Damour has published several books about raising teenagers. She also hosts a podcast called ‘Ask Lisa’ about the psychology of parenting.
