Helping High School Students Manage Stress Through the Purdue Extension Farm Stress Team

Last week during the 96^th National FFA Convention & Expo, more than 70,000 students, advisors, and supporters were there as part of the festivities. With that many young people drawn together to one event, the Purdue Extension Farm Stress Team had a booth during the Expo to reach FFA students and talk to them about the importance of managing their day-to-day stress.

Abby Heidenreich, a Purdue Extension Educator based out of Gibson County, says the stress that high school students face, such as ‘being popular’ or worrying about the future, can still have a negative impact on the students if they don’t learn to manage their stress effectively.

“We talk with them about the future of the farm,” says Heidenreich. “If they come from a farm, what kind of stress do you see on the farm? Does your family handle it well? Does it make you want to come back to the farm or does it make you not want to come back to the farm? That’s a big part of what we have with the farm stress team.”

Heidenreich says much of what she and the Purdue Extension Farm Stress Team try to get across to those within rural communities—especially among farmers—is to “break the stigma” when it comes to keeping your stress bottled up within yourself and not managing it properly. She says so much of what young kids learn in their behaviors comes from their parents. If their mothers or fathers don’t handle stress well, that behavior may be learned by the child.

“I talked with a student here earlier. She lives on a farm and I said, ‘What does it feel like when you’re when your dad is stressed and something happens on the farm?’ She said, ‘I don’t want to be at home. I want to be away from home because everything is stressful, everything is tense, and anything could set him off.’ How true is that with so many of us?

“That happens all the time and it’s not necessarily something we do on purpose, but it’s something we have to be cautious of because these kids are sponges and they’re absorbing everything. That’s teaching her that her home is not a safe place to unload her own stress or discuss how she is feeling because she feels like things are going to get crazy if she does,” says Heidenreich.

For more information about the Purdue Extension Farm Stress Team, visit extension.purdue.edu/FarmStress.

Click BELOW to hear Eric Pfeiffer’s interview for Hoosier Ag This Week with Abby Heindenreich with the Purdue Extension – Gibson County office, as she talks about how the Purdue Extension Farm Stress Team offers help to high school and college students in managing their stress.

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