Helping High Achieving, Stressed Out Students

It may sound odd initially, but some of the most stressed out kids are the ones that get As in everything and excel in everything they do. As a parent or teacher, you want to look for signs of stress - students often give clues about their stressed out state in what they say, what they write, and how they respond to life's challenges.

Let's just take a moment to dive into the psyche of a high achieving, stress out teen. We see many of these students come to us for a home tutor - they are often completely distraught over a B or C grade in a class. What causes that stress? Probably the pressure to keep getting As and keep being the best at everything you do. Why does this cause stress? Because it is virtually impossible to always be the best at everything! What this sometimes does to kids is it makes them very conservative in the classes they pick, and makes them less inclined to try new things. After all, if you are always the best, then who needs failure at something new? Who wants to climb a learning curve in a tough class? This creates stress, and also creates a growing sense of boredom and feeling trapped by success.

Students need to be shown when they are young that trying something challenging, failing at it, and then coming back to try again is a formula for success, greatness, and most importantly, less stress. It needs to be OK to try your best and fail. It also needs to be OK to get constructive feedback from others like teachers, coaches and parents. These support people also need to be willing to call kids out on a sub par effort - not to demean them - but to help them learn that the most important thing is to try hard, not necessarily to come out on top each and every time. The more you try hard, the more you learn. The more effort and focus you put towards things, the more you learn. The more you learn, the more you grow as a person, and the less your successes (and failures) will define you. What is interesting about this is that when you apply this mindset to all that you do, you start succeeding more with less stress! It is a win win for sure.