Don’t dismiss teen stress

A few years ago, I attended a student-sponsored parent night at Wasilla High School, a night dedicated to empowering parents with conflict resolution techniques. Students produced skits, music and testimonials about common dilemmas that plague every parent.

The students’ final exercise was a panel discussion in which they fielded audience questions about curfews, drug use, online predation, allowances, household chores, after-school jobs, payment for grades and a host of other lively issues.

Then I asked the panel: “Of all the hurdles out there, what do you see as the largest life-limiting obstacle in your life?”

Expecting an answer related to drugs, bullying, harassment or abuse, I was stunned when a panel member replied, “Stress.”

Immediately, another audience member suspiciously asked, “What stress?”

And thus was exposed the great divide, for nearly every adult in the audience shared a bewilderment that students even knew what stress was.

However, every student panel member confirmed that stress produced the most adverse effect on them. The stress of not knowing the future produces tremendous anxiety. Teens are constantly asked what they want to be and what they want to do with their lives. Weighty questions like these create clear and present expectations that far surpass students’ confidence that they possess the skills to achieve such daunting tasks.

The audience quickly produced a list of reasons that contrasted the students’ perception of stress with their own.

“But you don’t have jobs, bills, spouses, bosses or in-laws to worry about.”

Translation: You think you’ve got stress now? This is nothing — far from comforting words.

However, student stress makes tremendous sense if you consider — from a kid’s viewpoint — how ill-equipped they can be made to feel when adult questions point out all that they have yet to do.

I remember being asked these questions in high school, asked so often that I soon learned that I needed a canned response to combat the barrage, to combat the power differential and hint of superiority which often existed in the questioner.

“Hey, Okeson. What are you going to do after high school?”

“Go to college.”

Not to be put off, my questioner would usually come back with, “What are you going to major in?”

“Business.”

And because these cross examiners didn’t give up easily, “What do you hope to do with that?”

“Open a hot dog stand.”

Now, such skepticism-laden conversations did not happen all the time, but a more innocent intent of this same conversation did. It is hard for young people not to garner a message of inferiority from these questions, and such innuendos can be powerfully disheartening.

Student stress is a legitimate dilemma, but the fascinating thing about it is that the older we get the harder it is to see. It’s like a continental drift of opposing perspectives. It’s only in my old age that I can articulate the reasons for why I had to come up with responses to these never-ending questions about things I knew nothing about. I had neither the words nor the experience to understand what was occurring in such questions, but they were both off-putting and stress-creating.

Research shows that the college years are some of the most stressful of the life cycle, something that seems counter-intuitive given all the lore about college being some of the best times of our lives. But psychologists will tell us that the stress of not knowing the future can be worse than a dissatisfying one. Our high school students are no different.

Perhaps one of the best things we can do for young people is to give them the approval to not know the future, to let them know that not knowing exactly where they are going makes them just like we were at that age.

Mark Okeson is an assistant principal at Wasilla High School.