Building Strong Social Skills for High School Students: Navigating Stress, Anxiety, and Transitions
High school is an incredibly important time for teens, as they are often navigating big transitions within and without peer groups. High schoolers face new responsibilities, both socially and at home. Navigating these changes can be difficult, and building strong social skills can help your teen move through this transition time smoothly. In this blog article, we will discuss these transitions and feelings, and introduce several strong social skills that can help your high school teen. These social skills can be taught well by a teen counselor in teen therapy, and we will also cover how teen counseling can help your teen.
The Importance of Social Skills for High School Aged Teens
Social skills help high school students understand and practice empathy for others. Empathy for others is one of the main determining factors of healthy adult relationships. Those who practice empathy for others in their relationships report having deeper, happier, and more fulfilling relationships in their lives. By practicing social skills, teenagers are setting themselves up for success in their future relationships with their partners, neighbors, community, and children. Social skills also help teens navigate a time of hormonal changes by helping them make friends who will normalize their feelings. Through these friendships, they learn what is acceptable and what is not. Teens who communicate well are helpful and kind, and will find themselves with friends who reflect and mirror those qualities back to them. Teenagers learn from other teenagers, not adults, and it’s vitally important that teens are in groups of other teens who make good social decisions. Through building these skills, your teen can make better decisions at a time when their pre-frontal cortex (the section of our brain that makes decisions) isn’t fully developed.
Developing social skills will also keep your teen from isolation, which can lead to depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. Social groups can look different for different teens. For some teens, social groups may look like online friendships. For others, neighborhood friends. For another group, friendships may be navigated solely at school. Whatever your teen’s social world, social skills can help them make friends and keep them.
In addition, social skills can help your teens express themselves clearly and respectfully with teachers, which can help your teen academically. High school brings a lot of new academic challenges. For maybe the first time ever, your teen is navigating homework, harder projects, and independence at home and at school in new ways. Learning good communication can give your teen a leg up when it comes to academic work and relationships with the teachers and staff in their school.
The Anxiety and Stress that comes with High School Socializing
Anxiety and stress during this time of a teen’s life is normal, but can feel daunting to navigate. For the first time, teens are navigating a whole new world of mostly independent social engagements, extracurricular activities, new challenges in academics, and new relationships with adults, teachers, and staff. Hormonal changes also make this a difficult time as teens can face existential anxiety as well as social anxiety, isolation anxiety, academic anxiety, and other kinds of new stress that comes from their new-found independence. Stress can be really high at this time with emotional reactivity. These new challenges can affect the entire family, as often their “big feelings” are expressed at home where they may feel safe to express them. Normalization of this emotional landscape is essential, and because teens get most of their advice from other teens at this time, learning good social skills is necessary for them to form relationships with each other that can help with this normalization process.
Teen Counseling: A Supportive Resource for Navigating Social Challenges
We often hear from parents that aren’t prepared for the kinds of challenges that come with raising a teenager. The transition from pre-teen to teenager can come suddenly, and often the largest problem stems from the change in hormones and communication. As a result, what seemed easy before can now seem impossible, from academics to social situations. Anxiety, stress, and emotional reactivity may suddenly become the norm, and you may feel lost in this transition. This is where Erin Rosenblum, MFT can help. Through teen counseling with a trained marriage and family counselor, these transitions can be easier for the whole family. A teen counselor can help your child navigate social anxiety, academic issues, emotional rage and anxiety, existential anxiety, and other issues with teenagehood. A teen therapist will help your child learn the social skills they need to navigate this new part of their life. Erin can provide guidance in conflict resolution, peer pressure, relationship building, social skills, communication, self-esteem, and empathy. Your teen can gain confidence in navigating teen friendships and struggles, and learn how to manage stress and anxiety.
Practical Tips for Building Social Skills for Teenagers
Practice Active Listening.
Active listening is the act of listening closely to others when in conversation. It’s a give and take, so listening before responding, and responding thoughtfully and empathically to what’s being said. This particular skill can be hard to learn, and if your teen is neurodiverse, this may not be a skill that can be taught. In that case, it’s important to play to your child’s particular skills. Info-dumping, or the act of sharing information in a stream of consciousness way, IS communication. Do not force your neurodiverse child to learn the act of back and forth communication, but encourage them to take turns sharing if it feels right and ok. For neurotypical teens, this is a skill that can be taught, and it can help them in social situations with other neurotypical teens and adults.
Join Clubs or Activities
If your teen is having trouble making friends, have a conversation with them about their interests. Once you know what they are interested in, see if there are clubs or activities available in their school or available in your city with other teens their age. A sports team can help them with endorphins, fitness, and peer-to-peer relationships. Smaller clubs like art clubs, chess clubs, or other special interest clubs can help protect your teen from isolation, and help them practice building social relationships and bonds with other kids their age. In general, these kinds of activities offer your teen an outlet for friendship, talent, and practice working toward group goals. All of these are important to their future success.
Be Open to New Experiences
Talking with your teen about this new phase of their lives can be help them understand the flexibility required during this transitional phase between childhood and adulthood. It’s important that your child understand the amount of new experiences available to them, both helpful experiences and potentially harmful ones. Developing open lines of communication to mirror the kind of communication you’d like from your child can really make a difference when it comes to them navigating new experiences. Communication based in empathy, kindness, active listening, and non-judgement can give your child space to come to you as they navigate these experiences. So much is happening at this time, and flexibility is required so that your teen can feel safe.
Set Realistic Expectations
Helping your teen understand that this time is mostly strange and difficult for most may normalize what they are going through. They may not be the most popular, smartest, or most athletic child in their grade or school, and understanding that it’s ok to be who they are, and to offer the world their own unique gifts, can be a very helpful line of empathic and loving communication that boosts their confidence. This confidence starts at home with realistic expectations on your teen. Don’t pressure them to make the best grades, or to be the best athlete, or the most popular. Don’t pressure them to be thin, or pretty, or to be anything other than who they are. Self love and acceptance starts with the parent. With realistic expectations set, your teen can succeed both academically and socially in their lives.
Reach Out for Help when Needed
Sometimes teaching your teen empathic communication, confidence, realistic expectations, and flexibility can be really hard because maybe you never learned it yourself. Or maybe you did learn it, and you’re trying with your teen, but you aren’t having any success in teaching them these skills. That’s ok! Parenting is hard, and sometimes we need some help. Asking for help is not a weakness, and by reaching out to a teen counselor for help you are showing your child that it’s ok to ask for help when needed. If you need help with your teen, or if your teen is asking for help navigating anxiety, stress, relationships, academics, or more, you can reach out to Erin Rosenblum, MFT for counseling. All counseling is virtual counseling, so your teen can join from the comfort of their own home.
High school is a time of significant change, but it also provides an opportunity for students to develop essential social skills that will benefit them for years to come. By recognizing the challenges of anxiety, stress, and the transition to high school, students can take proactive steps to build confidence and improve their social interactions. Teen counseling can be a valuable resource in this journey, helping students develop strategies for managing stress and anxiety, as well as enhancing their communication skills. With time, patience, and support, high school students can thrive socially and emotionally, making the most of these formative years
RESOURCES for TEENS:
AFSP.org has resources for loss and suicide for teens.
The Center for Young Women’s Health has monthly chats as well as tons of health information for young women.
The Crisis Text Hotline is a 24/7 text hotline that is anonymous and will connect your teenager with a volunteer to talk them through a crisis.
The Jed Foundation connects schools and communities with grief and mental health relief.
Health Talk is a website that collects individual stories about young people’s health issues.
The National Institute of Mental Health is the largest grassroots mental health organization and provides a ton of helpful information about mental health, including warning signs of mental health issues and breakdowns.
The National Eating Disorder Association provides screening and help for teens suffering from eating disorders.
Mindfullness for Teens is an incredible website teaching teens about mindfulness, one of the key cornerstones of mental health.
Teen’s Health is a multipurpose site that shares teen’s stories about everything from domestic violence to common health issues.
The Trevor Project is dedicated to preventing suicide among teens.
We hope these resources and blog help you and your teen navigate this time in their lives. If you’d like to book a counseling session with Erin for yourself or your teen, please click here. Thank you!
