6 Questions To Help Students Cope With Everyday Stress

Stress is a reality of everyday life for students in middle and high school. As young teens learn how to navigate increased demands on their time—newly intense workloads and schedules, after-school clubs and jobs—they’re simultaneously experiencing explosive physical and cognitive growth. It’s a complex developmental phase during which routine experiences like meeting a term paper deadline or being unexpectedly called on in class can feel like a cooling breeze—or a flash flood.
In teenagers, the brain is still maturing, and communication between the areas of the brain that generate and then manage impulses and emotions is not yet fully developed, explains Pamela Noble, a psychologist and research associate at the National Institute of Mental Health. This means the teenage brain is “extra-sensitive to the things going on in [its] environment, both good and bad,” says Noble. Learning how to cope with stress is a critical skill—especially in adolescence—and teens happen to be uniquely primed to “begin developing healthy behaviors so they become a habit for life.”

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