Real Talk

April as National Stress Awareness Month: Raising More Resilient and Compassionate Families

by Kevyn Gohu
April 23, 2025

During National Stress Awareness Month 2025, we are reminded that every family deals with their kind of stress

Being stressed is normal for a parent. At some point, we’ve even learned to walk it off. Whether it’s after our kids have screamed for us for the last five minutes or needing to teach our partners to do a particular household task, we look like we somehow walked away from the mess unscathed. But it’s the opposite, really. For many years, we parents have been taught to deal with our stress silently. In fact, we sometimes subtly shame other parents who express their stress loudly. But that’s why National Stress Awareness Month exists and we’re celebrating it this 2025.

But why do we have this month? What’s it for?

During National Stress Awareness Month 2025, we are reminded that every family deals with their kind of stress

How did National Stress Awareness Month start?

Since 1992, the Stress Management Society, a non-profit organization based in the United Kingdom, has championed the cause of creating “a happier, healthier, and more resilient world.” However, their real work started in 2003 as they built resources, held workshops, and trained organizations to be more aware and proactive in managing stress.

Reportedly, it all started when Neil Shah found his multi-million-pound IT recruitment company failing. No amount of therapy, counselling, and coaching seemed to help him as he was on the verge of a breakdown. So, he took the plunge and found methods that he tested on himself. Eventually, the library of sources and his team grew as they dedicated themselves to helping the world find ways to reduce stress and promote well-being.

Stress Management As An Essential Skill For Today

With mental health becoming more well-studied and debates on how to raise resilient children becoming more common, we now live in a world where there are not just more sources of stress. They’ve also become more complex.

The most obvious example would be the internet. The older generations, like Baby Boomers and Gen X, didn’t have to worry too much about what the world thought. With little to no internet to connect them to other people, they only needed to worry about how they looked to people within their immediate and physical vicinity. Millennials, who were the first to explore the internet and use it for daily needs, still had the skills to discern whose opinions mattered.

But parents of today’s Gen Z, Alpha, and Beta will struggle as they find themselves fighting an opponent they can’t see. But that’s the result of the younger generations growing up as “digital natives.” Computers are commonplace, fast and quality internet is a necessity, and everyone has a social media persona. Coupled with the pandemic, the line between the online and offline personality has either disappeared or blurred, which has become a major source of stress. After all, there are “receipts” now or what we call resibo in Tagalog.

How Can Parents Teach Their Kids To Manage Their Stress

There’s no one way to completely stop stress. But the way kids learn how to manage stress is by watching us! When kids come to us with their problems, they’re not just venting. They’re also looking for ways to cope with the stress. So, when we teach our kids to manage their stress, here are some things to keep in mind during National Stress Awareness Month:

1. Modelling > Talking

Modelling how we handle our stress teaches them better than talking to them how. We wish we could just tell them but there’s just too many things left unsaid and unexplained when we do. We don’t consider what’s appropriate and sometimes, the results of how we manage our stress aren’t always consistent. So showing how we manage our stress to our kids not only demonstrates, in real time, how it works but also how people respond to it.

2. Stress management includes knowing when we are the source and when we’re making ourselves the source

Accountability is a hard thing to teach, especially when we ourselves fear the repercussions of admitting our failures. Especially if we were raised in an environment that demands perfection, managing stress was something we had to learn. We learned at a young age that we were the cause of our parents’ stress. No amount of joy (if they ever expressed it) would change that we were.

Managing stress means being to keep ourselves from being too immersed into it, especially if we were not involved in it at the beginning.

3. Weakness due to stress is nothing to be ashamed of

Declaring we’re “stressed” has always been shamed. Many of us grew up in homes that condemned that declaration as a sign of weakness. Our parents probably even used that same mental gymnastic to rationalize their over-the-top tough love: if I’m not tough on you now, how will you deal with the rest of the world? The world is crueler!

While pounding away at our kids with all sorts of stress in the form of tough love may make them resilient, it’s only to a certain degree. Sometimes, it will harden or weaken their heart. Other times, it may darken their view. When we teach our kids stress management, don’t forget that the only way to manage and deal with the stress is to acknowledge that it’s there.

#LeadWithLove: The Goal of National Stress Awareness Month 2025

While April is often known as Autism Awareness Month, it’s also important to know that it’s National Stress Awareness Month. Parenting, whether raising a child with special needs or not, is stressful. With the overwhelming amount of studies and sources, we’re quick to doubt whether we’re raising our kids to be resilient or not. We face the fear of emotionally traumatizing them everyday while simultaneously learning what’s new in the world. That’s a lot of stress!

So for National Stress Awareness Month, let’s not forget that every parent has their own stress to face. If we can’t help them resolve it, at least don’t add to it!