Too many times we ignore teaching Health & Wellness Skills.  Maybe it’s because health & wellness is a difficult subject to discuss, maybe it’s because we struggle with some of these skills ourselves, or maybe it’s because we tried but our teen shuts us out and doesn’t want to talk about these subjects.  Whatever the reason, we must push through, and begin teaching these very important skills for a healthy teen.

Health & Wellness Skills can be defined as the ability to take charge of one’s own health and make choices to be physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually healthy.  When tackling Health & Wellness skills we must understand a balance in these four main areas is necessary.  In this post we will discuss some examples of each of these four main health & wellness skills that will help your teen find balance in these areas to get the best wellness results.

Physical Health-Skills for a Healthy Teen

Let’s begin with discussing our physical health.  When most people think about being healthy, they typically think only about being physically healthy.  The world puts so much emphasis on our physical bodies that it shouldn’t be any surprise that our thoughts equate being healthy to our physical body.  A healthy body is one really important aspect of being overall healthy.  To have a healthy body we must teach our teens physical health skills.   These skills could be skills such as learning to eat healthy foods, learning to take care of ourselves when we are sick or managing a chronic illness, or learning what physical activity we like and work best for our individual bodies.  It is important to teach our teens as early as possible as physical health skills become much harder to change as the years pass and unhealthy habits are ingrained into their daily lifestyle.  Let’s dig a little deeper into three very important physical health skills.

Eating Healthy Foods

Learning to eat healthy foods in our fast-paced world today is definitely a challenge.  And because we are so busy with our go, go, go lifestyle, we rarely spend time preparing full meals at home.  We have so many quick fix or grab and go options to help us keep up with our busy lifestyle that are just so easy to rely on.  But most of those options are not healthy options.  Without a change in our priorities, it may be difficult for our teens to learn about healthy foods and how to prepare them.  I challenge you to take the time to teach your teen to prepare healthy meals at home.  Healthy foods are the foundation for a healthy body and help build skills for a healthy teen.

Treating Minor Illnesses & Managing Chronic Illnesses

The next physical health skill to discuss is treating minor illnesses and managing chronic illnesses.  My hope would be for all of our teens to be lucky enough to be healthy with no chronic diseases.  However, even the healthiest teens and young adults are not exempt from catching the latest virus or bug making its rounds.  There will come a time when your young adult will get sick.  Our teens will need to know how to determine if they are sick, how to care for and treat their illness, know which over the counter medicines to take for specific illnesses, the correct dosage, and any drug interactions to avoid, and at what point should they see a doctor.

As for chronic illnesses, our teens need to start taking on the responsibility of managing their illnesses long before they leave our nest.  Teaching our teens to manage any chronic illnesses they have must become a priority, as the lack of this skill can have a much higher risk involved.  Allowing them to manage their own illnesses, will provide both of you more peace when the time comes for them to live independently.

Physical Activity

As we discuss physical health skills, we cannot forget to discuss physical activity.  There is no doubt that some of us were born athletic and some of us weren’t!  But whatever our athleticism is we all benefit from physical activity.  If you have a teen that is athletic and participates in many team sporting events, you may not have any issues now getting your teen to exercise now.  However, once they graduate to the adult world there are fewer team sporting activities to participate in.  Before they leave your nest, help them find some individual physical activity so that transition will come much easier for them once they reach that phase of life.

For those who have teens who are not athletically inclined, you may have a bit harder time getting your teen interested in being physically active.  If your teen doesn’t have a lot of interest in physical activity, you may want to begin with taking a family walk or walking the dog.  Another idea is to reintroduce your teen to a physical activity they enjoyed when they were younger, such as riding a bike or swimming.  If they enjoyed a certain physical activity when they were younger, chances are they will find joy in it again.  Whatever you do, try to make the physical activity fun.

Emotional Health-Skills for a Healthy Teen

As we move on to our second category of health, Emotional Health, you may find this category to be much more challenging.  Teens are emotional beasts by nature.  Pretty much everything in their life garners an emotional response.  This is likely due to a couple different factors.  The first factor is their hormones and the second factor is they haven’t yet learned to deal with all these new emotions.  Put these two factors together and you’ll likely think you’re living in the twilight zone some days.  To overcome the wild range of teen emotions, here are three of the most important emotional health skills that will benefit teens now and throughout the rest of their lives:  learning to identify and express their feelings, accepting disappointment, and being able to self-regulate their emotions.

Identifying and Expressing Feelings

While most teens have many emotions during this phase of life, they don’t always know how to identify or name the emotions they are feeling.  In addition, teens may also have trouble expressing their feelings and they bottle up their feelings.  Not being able to identify or express one’s feelings leads to long term emotional health issues.  This is why learning these skills is really important and help promote skills for a healthy teen.

However, some of you will have teens who are the opposite of this and frequently express their feelings in an explosive way which is also an unhealthy way to deal with emotions.  This leads us to our next emotional health skill, learning to self-regulate their emotions. 

Self-Regulating Emotions

After a teen learns how to identify their feelings and express their emotions, the next step is to learn to self-regulate these emotions.  Learning to self-regulate one’s emotions is no small feat, especially when we are talking about teens.  Self-regulation allows a person to be able to manage their feelings and emotions that lead to behaviors even when they are in the middle of an emotional situation or crisis.  This skill takes quite a bit of personal discipline.

Accepting Disappointment

The third emotional health skill we will discuss today is accepting disappointment.  One of the hardest feelings for a teen, or an adult for that matter, to overcome is disappointment.  The good news is the teen years provide many opportunities for practicing the art of accepting disappointment.  Whether your teen is disappointed about a grade they received at school, not getting invited to a classmate’s party, not making the sports team, or even being grounded for not following household rules, there will frequently be opportunities for you to help your teen learn the skills needed to accept disappointment.

Mental Health-Skills for a Healthy Teen

Our next Health & Wellness Skill teens need to be practicing is Mental Health skills.  Let me break here and be really clear about the type of mental health skills we will be discussing in the post.  I want to stress when discussing mental health in this post, we are speaking directly about having a healthy mindset. This information is not meant to provide treatment or guidance for those struggling with a mental illness.  If your teen is struggling with a mental illness, please see a licensed medical health professional for treatment options and guidance.

To prepare our teens to have a healthy mindset, we need to teach them skills and provide them tools that will have a positive impact on their mental health. A few healthy mindset beginner skills and tools are learning positive self-talk, stress management, and limiting social media.

Positive Self-Talk

Positive Self-Talk is super important for teens these days as they are bombarded with negative feedback from their peers during this phase of life.  This negative feedback from their peers no longer stops when they are away from school because they are constantly connected to this through social media.  This is why it is so important to help your teen find ways to discover things they like about themselves.  And we can’t just stop there, we need to teach them ways to remind themselves of their worth throughout the day.  Positive self-talk will go a long way to overcoming the negative feedback they receive from others and strengthen their healthy mindset.

Stress Management

Typically, the teen years are very busy.  Teens have increasing loads of homework, they have more and more school activities and events to keep up with, and they have lots of social pressures they are trying to navigate.  All of these things combined can cause your teen to become overwhelmed and stressed out.  Before you know it, their mindset will begin suffering the consequences.  As a parent you will want to teach your teens how to manage those things in their life that cause stress.  Sometimes helping your teen learn good time management skills, quicker ways to complete tasks, or to prioritize (and possibly eliminate) their activities.  Life only gets busier, so these are great skills for teens to learn know to help maintain their mindset and mental health in the future.

Limiting Social Media

And finally, let’s briefly discuss limiting social media.  I know, I know limiting social media is a big one.  Your teen may think it’s the end of the world and that you are the worst person on the planet.  But let me tell you why it’s worth the fight.  Teens today are connected to social media platforms constantly and this is a big battle to overcome.  The fear of missing out is HUGE if teens feel like they cannot constantly check their statuses and notifications.  But I wouldn’t be suggesting limiting social media for your teen if it wasn’t so very important.  Studies have shown that the more teens are on social media, the more likely they are to have an unhealthy view of themselves and carry more stress.  Both, of which, leads to a negative mindset and if not mitigated can lead to more serious mental health issues. 

Spiritual Health-Skills for a Healthy Teen

Our last Health & Wellness Skill to discuss is Spiritual Health.  Spiritual health relates to the wellness of the spirit within a person that extends beyond a person’s body and mind.  Spiritual health is the force that brings about joy and peace through a sense of purpose and meaning.  Without a healthy spirit a person will struggle to find joy in life and their life often seem out of balance and chaotic.   Skills that can be built to strengthen your spiritual health are practicing your religion, helping others, and spending time in nature.

Practicing Your Religion

All religions are based on a belief system and in each of those belief systems one of the underlying messages is the purpose of life.  Religions also provide a community of people to help and encourage one another.  For these reasons, practicing your religion is an excellent way to build strong spiritual health and provide another way to build skills for a healthy teen.

Helping Others

Teaching your teens to help others is another way to strengthen their spiritual health skills.  When we help others, it takes our focus off of ourselves and shows us how we can be meaningful to others.  This gives us a sense of purpose.  Helping others not only takes our focus off of ourself, but also helps us think of the bigger picture in life.  Many times, this reminds us of the blessings we have and leads to being grateful for those blessings. 

Spending Time in Nature

Something happens within our souls when we spend time in nature and really observe the wonder of all the things in it.  No matter the weather, there are so many things to be amazed by in nature.  If you really focus on those things while you are out in nature, you’ll notice how everything is created so uniquely and each thing in nature has its individual purpose.  Focusing on nature at this intimate level brings a calm and sense of peace that no other place can bring.  Taking notice of this wonder makes us ask ourselves, if things in nature, both big and small, are unique and have a purpose on this earth, why wouldn’t we?

As you have read, Health & Wellness Skills are extremely important to teach your teens before they leave the protection of your nest.  These skills are vast and can affect so many areas of life.  My hope is that you can take this information and incorporate it into your interactions with your teen to help them be successful in taking care of their physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health now and in the future.

Need more help?

Here a few more quick and easy ways I can help you prepare your teen for adulthood.

1 – If you want to learn more about other life skills teens need to master before leaving your nest, check out our blog post Daily Living Skills for Teens.

2 – Get a copy of my Life Skills Starter Kit – It’ll give you a quick and easy activity to plug in teaching life skills to your teen in your weekly schedule…so you can start preparing your teen for adulthood, even if you and your teen are so busy or if it seems the time is flying by too fast.

3 – If you’re really struggling with the busyness of life, but know you need to find time to prepare your teen for adulthood, get a copy of my Tackle Your Time Toolkit.  This kit will help you identify ways to find more time in your schedule to dedicate to preparing your teen for adulthood.