How To Improve Your Teenagers Wellbeing

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Anyone who has a teenager knows that promoting a sense of wellbeing is, more often than not, easier said than done. While it may be difficult to connect with your teenage son or daughter on their level, there’s good reason to develop a continued sense of wellbeing within teenagers. It promotes a feeling of belonging and gives them the confidence to succeed in their adult lives. Improving your teenager’s wellbeing is the first step towards clear recovery from mental health issues that they may be experiencing.

With a spotlight firmly on mental wellness more than ever before, it’s never been a better time to have a deeper conversation with your child. Here are 5 top ways to help improve your teenagers wellbeing, just by opening up to them. If none of these tactics work, it’s time to seek professional help.

Encourage Positive Connections

One of the best ways to promote health and wellbeing within teenagers is to encourage positive connections with friends, family and peers. Maintaining an active connection with all members of the family will enable them to communicate more freely, without feeling pressure to talk.

There are a number of ways you can help your child to foster meaningful connections with friends, family and peers:

• Additional hours spent at a relative’s house
• Participation in extracurricular activities such as school clubs, sports clubs
• Trying a new hobby, like a sports team, or the school play
• Volunteering in the community

Set A Personal Challenge

Setting personal challenges can be a great approach for encouraging positive wellbeing within your teenager. Often easily distracted by social media and entertainment, teenagers can easily lose focus on achieving goals.

A personal challenge promotes self-esteem and results in a feeling of self-accomplishment that can help any teenager’s development. Encourage them to finish small daily tasks, such as being in charge of walking the family dog every day. They can also be a journey to a greater sense of success, like learning a new skill, or training for a 5k run.

Here are some personal challenges to give you an idea:

• Sitting alone at lunch? – Encourage them to interact and sit with others.
• Spending too much time gaming? – Limit the time and discuss taking up a new hobby.
• Interested in computers? – Suggest learning a programming language.
• Local 5k/10k run within the community? Challenge them to train and compete.

Stop and Listen

It’s important to just simply stop, and listen. As parents, we make mistakes sometimes, so it’s not unreasonable to expect teenagers to make mistakes too. Stop and listen encourages your teen to open up, and you to refrain from judgement. This type of communication promotes positive wellbeing in teenagers because they will feel more comfortable discussing their thoughts and feelings.

Promote Good Sleeping Habits

When teenagers don’t get much sleep it can be quite obvious. A change in attitude and behavior can be telltale signs of lack of sleep.

According to the Nationwide Children Study, teenagers need around 9 hours of sleep per night, but usually manage just 7 hours. This lack of sleep can contribute to a lack of wellbeing within teenagers and can often alter moods from one day to another.

To combat sleeping issues it’s important to encourage a schedule through the week that allows at least 9 hours sleep and not oversleeping on weekends. Turning off devices at night and limiting screen time before bed has a positive impact on teenagers wellbeing – it encourages them to stop and listen too.

Be There To Support

Teens are often conflicted with the messages received through social media, and from friends. Thoughts of not feeling good enough can affect a teenager’s mood, and lead to depression and loneliness. Being there to support by offering advice and solutions to problems can improve communication between children and parents.

Always being there to support your child will make you the first person they will go to when they’re experiencing problems in day to day life.