Is Your Child or Teen Exhausted?
Internal and external stressors lead to exhausted kids.
We need to look at the interaction of the mind, body, and society on children.
The societal idea that there is something honorable and moralistic in achievement often leads to the burning out of a child.
Somehow, this burn out mentality is applauded because of the rigor, persistence, and tenacity of the child who wants to achieve in many areas of life, such as athletics, academics, and the arts.
Are We Overscheduling our Kids?
Parents seeking to maximize their children’s potential may support this achievement focus, and thus we have the current phenomenon of overscheduling our kids.
Is Your Fatigued Child Burned Out?
When a child’s life consists of persistent and chronic school stress, the end result is burnout. Lethargy and excessive tiredness are often the complements of loss of enthusiasm and tense nervous energy.
The result (fuel shortage) is exemplified in the child’s dissatisfaction with school, fatigue, poor work habits, and sleep disturbances.
When in the state of extreme exhaustion, where every reserve of energy has been depleted, we can say that our children have “hit a wall,” similar to a long-distance runner who becomes exhausted and cannot run another step.
Think of the high school student who studies so hard for college entrance exams that he or she is too physically spent to take the exams. Often [this burnt-out] response is not to the particular set of exams but rather to the accumulated stress of a long history of exam-taking that has taken its toll on the young person’s energy reserve.
Depleting Energy Resources Takes Away the Joy of Learning
Parents need to be aware that their children, like themselves, face the danger of depleting limited energy resources and that they may overvalue the supremacy of achievement, as if it was moral and even divine or heroic.
Self-discipline is sometimes so overvalued that achievement becomes an obsession, and children are misled into believing that they must be exhaustively competitive and are th]en superior to others.
There is a belief in the virtue of the perpetual battle to overcome weakness that translates to a kind of burnout pride——-
the idea that with physical and emotional work-induced exhaustion, somehow moral superiority is rendered.
It presupposes almost a duty of children to achieve exceptionally for their parents.
Are Kids Pressured to Perform so They get Exhausted?
What has happened to the fun in learning?
Is this child just filling in the blanks in her homework without really learning? Why is she exhausted and not smiling as she works?
Mommy and her child are worn out from excelling without pleasure!!
We hardly want our children to turn into exceptional but exhausted robots, depriving them of the pleasures of human contact and the capacity for empathy and critical thinking.
Such alienation and disconnectedness could lead to clinical depression.
_____________________________________________
Are You a Busy Stressed-Out Parent?
Take a deep breath and read about your Exhausted Child or Teen and then talk to them about it.
Exhaustion is a Behavior that sends a message from child to parent. Learn how to use Parental Intelligence to bond with your child and resolve the child’s or teen’s fatigue.
This is a solvable problem once we are aware of it
