Distress tolerance: the missing piece in classroom management

Do your students seem less and less able to sit with anything uncomfortable, whether that’s boredom, confusion, frustration, or the feeling of not immediately knowing the answer?

The research backs up your anecdotal evidence: distress tolerance in young people is measurably declining.

In this episode, I dig into why this is happening and what teachers can actually do about it.

We’ll talk about the biology behind why comfort reduces resilience (and why that’s not anyone’s fault), why our students are more stressed than ever but building less capacity from it, and practical strategies for building distress tolerance in the classroom without being dismissive of real struggles.

I also get into how this applies to us as adults, because we’re dealing with our own version of this.

Listen in to hear:

• Why distress tolerance is declining in young people, and why it’s a predictable biological outcome rather than a character flaw
• The difference between chronic, overwhelming stress (which breaks people down) and acute, manageable stress (which builds capacity), and why modern life has gotten this equation backwards
• How stress inoculation works in the classroom, including specific strategies for gradually building students’ ability to sit with discomfort
• The tension teachers feel between “tough it out” and “honor every feeling,” and why both extremes fail
• How to help students distinguish between “I can’t” and “I don’t want to”
• Why normalizing the feeling of not knowing might be one of the most powerful things you can do
• Where teachers can apply this same thinking to their own lives

Listen to episode 352 below, or subscribe in your podcast app

Sponsored by Finding Flow

There’s something I hear from teachers constantly, across grade levels, across subjects, across school types and demographics. It sounds something like this:

“My students give up too easily.”

In other words, they can’t sit with boredom or confusion. They can’t sit with the discomfort of not immediately knowing the answer. The second something feels difficult or frustrating, there’s this almost reflexive reach for the phone, for a distraction, for a way out.

And I know that when I say this, a lot of you are nodding, because you see it every single day. The kid who shuts down the moment an assignment feels challenging. The student who says “I can’t do this” before they’ve even read the directions. The teenager who would rather take a zero than attempt something they might fail at.

And you’re also probably thinking of the adults in your life, including yourself, who do some version of this too. We’ll come back to that.

But first, I want to acknowledge that there’s a really loaded cultural conversation happening around this topic right now. You’ve probably seen that cycle image floating around social media:

“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times.”

And depending on which corner of the internet you spend time in, this quote gets used very differently. Some people use it to mock younger generations. Others use it to point out that every generation says this about the next one.

But I think for teachers, this conversation hits differently. Because you’re not sitting around debating this as some abstract cultural theory. You’re living it. You’re watching it play out in real time, in your classrooms, with real kids you care about. And you’re trying to figure out what to actually do about it.

So let’s talk about what’s really going on, why it matters, and most importantly, what’s within your power to change.

What’s Actually Happening (and Why It’s Not a Character Flaw)

When we see students who can’t tolerate discomfort, we’re not looking at a moral failure. We’re looking at a predictable biological outcome.

Your muscles get stronger when you stress them. Your immune system gets better at fighting things off when it encounters germs. And psychological resilience works the same way. You get better at handling difficulty by handling difficulty.

People who grew up in harder circumstances, whether that’s economic hardship or less access to convenience and technology, often did develop different capacities. Not because they were better people or stronger people, but because their environment demanded it. They had to sit with boredom because there was no phone to reach for. They had to figure things out without searching online for the answer. They had to tolerate physical discomfort because air conditioning and heat weren’t things you could have with the flick of a switch.

And now we have a generation of young people, many of whom have grown up with fewer of those small, manageable struggles. And that’s not their fault, and it’s not a bad thing. It’s actually a sign that in many ways, life has gotten better. We have better medicine, better safety standards, more awareness of kids’ emotional needs. Modern life is more comfortable in many ways. But there’s a cost to that, and it’s what you’re seeing in your classroom every day.

And here’s the part that makes it even more complicated: we haven’t just removed the small, manageable stressors and created a utopian society free of struggle. We’ve replaced the little stressors with massive, chronic, unmanageable ones. Almost every facet of modern life requires navigating complex systems and technology that don’t always work correctly, and folks at the top aren’t making decisions with our ease in mind, but for their own profit. There’s constant social media comparison and information overload about every terrible thing happening in the world. There’s economic and ecological and political anxiety that feels like it’s encroaching on every aspect of our lives but feels completely outside our control.

So our students are stressed, maybe more stressed than any previous generation of young people. And it’s the wrong kind of stress. It’s chronic and overwhelming rather than acute and manageable. And chronic stress doesn’t build capacity. It just breaks people down.

This is a really important distinction for teachers, because it means the solution isn’t simply “toughen up, kids.” The solution is more nuanced than that.

The Tension You Feel Every Day

If you’re a teacher right now, you’re caught in the middle of two competing cultural messages. On one side, there’s the “tough it out” mentality. Stop coddling kids. Make them do hard things. Grit and perseverance are what matter. If it’s uncomfortable, push through.

On the other side, there’s the “honor every feeling” approach. Validate students’ emotions. Don’t push too hard. Protect their mental health. If they’re uncomfortable, that’s a sign something is wrong.

And both of these perspectives get part of it right.

The “tough it out” crowd is correct that struggle builds capacity and that challenge is necessary for growth. You can’t develop the ability to handle hard things without actually experiencing hard things.

The “honor your feelings” crowd is also correct that rest matters, that trauma is real, and that not all discomfort is productive. Sometimes a kid shuts down because they need support, not a push.

But both frameworks fall apart when they become absolute. “Always push through” breaks people. “Never be uncomfortable” creates people who can’t function when life inevitably gets hard.

And you, the teacher, are standing right in the middle of this, trying to figure out which kid needs a push and which kid needs a pause. And you’re likely working in a school that’s erred so far toward giving students grace and second (and fourth, and fifteenth) chances that it feels like the only accountability left is for YOU. None for students or families or the community. Just you, trying to bend over backwards to make everything easier for everyone else.

How to Build Distress Tolerance in the Classroom

Building distress tolerance in young people is slow, unglamorous, relationship-dependent work. But it matters enormously, and it’s something you’re probably doing already. Making that work a bit more transparent for kids can help boost the impact of your attempts to help kids develop more tolerance for frustration.

1. Normalize the feeling of not knowing and feeling uncomfortable.

One of the biggest things you can do is talk openly about what it feels like to be confused or stuck, and make it clear that those feelings are a normal part of learning, not a sign that something has gone wrong.

You might say something like, “This is the part where it’s supposed to feel hard. Your brain is working right now, even though it doesn’t feel like it.” or, “That uncomfortable feeling is what learning actually feels like. It’s like when you’re working out, your muscles are sore, and it hurts, but it’s a good kind of pain, because it means you’re getting stronger.”

This is basically a classroom version of cognitive reframing, and the research on it is solid. When students can reinterpret their discomfort as a sign of growth rather than a sign of failure, they’re more likely to stay engaged. You’re not telling them it’s easy when it’s not. You’re not minimizing what they feel. You’re saying, “Yes, this is hard, and that frustration you’re feeling is not a signal to stop trying. It’s the middle part between starting something and finishing it; it’s what  you’re supposed to feel when you’re developing a new skill.”

2. Build in small, manageable challenges with recovery time.

There’s a concept called stress inoculation, and it works the same way vaccines do. You expose someone to a small, manageable dose of a stressor so they build capacity to handle bigger ones later.

In the classroom, this might look like giving students a problem that’s just beyond what they think they can do, then walking them through it. Or setting a timer and asking them to work independently for five minutes before they ask for help, then gradually increasing that time. Or having them practice a skill they’re not great at yet in a low-stakes way before the assessment.

The key here is “manageable.” You’re not throwing kids into the deep end and hoping they swim. You’re gradually increasing the challenge while also building in recovery. Push, then rest. Challenge, then support. That’s the rhythm that builds capacity.

You’re already doing this–just be explicit about it for kids. Say, “Yesterday, you tried solving this kind of problem, and when we did it again today, it felt a little easier, right? I want to add one extra step. That’s going to make it feel harder again. But tomorrow, it will feel a little easier. That’s how practice works, we gradually increase what you’re able to do.”

3. Teach students to distinguish between “I can’t” and “I don’t want to.”

This has to be a conversation, not a confrontation, and it requires trust. But one of the most powerful things you can help students develop is the ability to notice the difference between genuine inability and avoidance of discomfort.

Sometimes “I can’t do this” really means “I don’t have the prerequisite skills for this and I need help.”

But sometimes “I can’t do this” means “This feels uncomfortable and I want it to stop.”

Learning the difference helps students figure out when they should push themselves through the task, and when they should ease up, ask for help, take a break and come back to it later, and so on.

This is something I offer in the Finding Flow Solutions curriculum–there’s an activity that gives students vocabulary to understand WHY they’re stuck and have a set of tools they can select from to address the root problem. The idea is to have kids understand what they need and have the tools to address those needs as independent learners, rather than sitting and doing nothing while you, the teacher, try to figure out what’s going on.

This is a shift you can make right from the beginning, at the kindergarten level, and reinforce all the way through the senior year of high school. It’s not something you teach once, and kids master; it’s a lifelong skill. On a daily basis, I’m evaluating my own resistance to a task and using the tools I’ve accumulated to help me figure out how to get those mundane or unpleasant tasks done anyway. You are, too, right? But rather than leaving kids to figure this out and troubleshoot on their own, as most of our generation was left to do, we can name it for kids. Make this cognitive process visible.

4. Create space for productive boredom.

I know this sounds counterintuitive in an era where we’re told every minute of class needs to be engaging and dynamic and pushing kids toward learning outcomes. But hear me out.

Some of the most important cognitive work happens during moments of boredom. When your brain isn’t being constantly stimulated, it gets to wander, to make connections, to process information. And our students are almost never bored anymore, because a screen is always there to offer entertainment.

You can create intentional moments where students sit with their thoughts, like journaling prompts where they write for a sustained period without talking, or think time before discussions where they just sit and think before anyone raises a hand. Provide independent work time without background music or podcasts.

These small pockets of unstimulated time are actually training their brains to be comfortable with quiet, which is a form of distress tolerance in itself.

And again, name it. Tell students what you’re doing and why. Ask, “Do any of you feel uncomfortable when the room is quiet? Like, it feels TOO quiet? We’ve gotten so used to having TV and music and phones and ads blaring at us all the time, that not having any noise can feel weird. Should we be able to appreciate silence? Why–what are the advantages? How can we build that skill?”

Have this discussion once, reference it again the next day and facilitate a bit more conversation around it, particularly if you had absent students, and then make it part of your running classroom norms. “Let’s practice being in silence during this activity–no music or background noise, so we can train our brains to appreciate quiet.”

5. Model your own process of handling difficulty.

This might be the most powerful one, and it’s also the most vulnerable. When students see you, their teacher, navigate something that’s hard or confusing or frustrating in real time, and they hear you talk through how you’re handling it, that becomes their script for how to handle difficulty.

You might say things like, “I’m not sure how to solve this yet, so let me think out loud for a minute.” Or, “That lesson didn’t go the way I planned, and I’m going to adjust for tomorrow. That’s what we do when something doesn’t work, we try a different approach.”

When you make your own thinking and coping visible, you’re giving students something they desperately need: a model of someone who feels uncomfortable and keeps going anyway.

And if you’re listening to all of this thinking, I want to build these skills in my students, but I need something more structured than just trying to remember to do it in the moment; that’s exactly what my Finding Flow Solutions curriculum is designed for. The units on focus, initiative, and self-regulation all build students’ distress tolerance through no-prep lessons that guide you and your students through each activity and practice. Go to findingflowsolutions.com to learn more.

Teachers Need Distress Tolerance Too

I’d be doing you a disservice if I talked about all of this without acknowledging that teachers are dealing with their own version of reduced distress tolerance, and honestly, it would be weird if you weren’t.

You’re exhausted. You’re overstimulated. You’re managing thirty different humans’ emotional needs while your own needs go unmet for hours at a time. And then you go home and decompress with your phone, the same way your students do, because you’re too tired to do anything that requires effort.

The same biology that affects your students affects you. If you never sit with discomfort, you lose the capacity to tolerate discomfort. If you’re chronically stressed with no real recovery, you break down. If every spare moment is filled with input, your brain never gets the space it needs to process and restore.

So I want to gently ask: where in your own life are you avoiding a manageable discomfort that might actually help you grow?

Maybe it’s the difficult conversation you’ve been putting off with a colleague or administrator. Maybe it’s the creative project you keep meaning to start, but you’re afraid of failing at. Maybe it’s simply sitting in silence for ten minutes without your phone, which sounds easy but actually feels really hard when you try it.

You don’t need to do anything extreme. You don’t need a cold plunge or an ultramarathon or a weeklong silent retreat. Sometimes the hard thing you need to do is free, and it’s available right now. You just have to choose it.

And just like with your students, both parts of the equation matter. Yes, push yourself sometimes. And also, rest. Real rest, not scrolling-while-calling-it-rest, but actual recovery. The skill isn’t “always push through.” The skill is discernment, knowing when to push and when to pause.

You’re already doing this discernment for your students every day. I’m just asking you to do it for yourself, too.

Remember: Building resilience isn’t about making life harder for our students or for ourselves. It’s about creating the right kind of challenge, in the right doses, with enough support and recovery to actually grow from it. When you help a student sit with discomfort for just a little longer than they thought they could, you’re not being mean. You’re giving them a gift they’ll use for the rest of their lives.