To say that the next generation is primarily screwed in terms of resilience

@Menomeno The UK's prioritisation of health and safety is a bit ridiculous indeed. I come from another European country, not east, and it's the same there. I arrived here in the UK as an adult and felt babied. E.g. no sockets in the bathroom. In our office we couldn't open the windows on the top floor for health and safety. A colleague was no longer allowed to smoke on the roof terrace.

Parenting has changed massively!! I feel that is a huge contributor. Children are given more of a voice than I think they can handle. People seem to forget that we still need to teach young people and sometimes this looks like tough love.

Most of the children around me are pretty confident. I hope they grow up into confident young adults as it’s scary the influence that social media can have on them.

Examples I’ve come across recently

• My OH works in a school. A student in 6th form was 3 months late submitting their first draft essay (they even had the Christmas holiday and half terms in between). They complained to their parent, parent came in and complained. Head of Year took the parents side and the child wasn’t told off for missing a Deadline. How on this earth is this going to show the child that there are consequences when you miss deadlines? No they did not file exceptional circumstances.
• My DD in year 7 has a friend who is very very annoying and rude and cheeky to both adults and children. She was screaming on the streets when we went out and was singing loudly on the bus (2 separate occasions). Her mum said absolutely nothing! I told her to be silent as we are in a public place. She sulked - her mum didn’t seem to follow up. How on this earth will she learn resilience if her mum doesn’t nip her poor behaviour in the bud? My DD says that at school when someone disagrees with her she has a massive tantrum and complains that they are not her real friend.

I once had to train 10 under 25s. More than half had poor mental health and they were all so so talented. It was such a shame that it affected their work and progress when they wanted to grow their careers. Again as most have said there are some very determined ones that have amazing work ethic and get things done.

Of course personality plus a role in all of this but it’s so sad and something seems to have gone wrong.

I like the way you approach the problem. There are definitely things that can be done to help.

I was talking just a few days ago to my little Ukrainian mate (boy 13 who lived with us for a year at the start of the war). I asked about the differences between kids here and kids in the east. He said that children here (even older teenagers) are like babies.

His football was called off due to snow a couple of weeks ago, and he was incredulous. He said that back home, from the age of 6 or 7, when it snowed the kids would all be given shovels and they’d have to clear the pitch themselves before the match was played. Here they abandon the game because UK kids wouldn’t do it, and the parents are too scared of them hurting themselves.

He said his friends here are always moaning that they have it tough, but they have no idea how lucky they are. They’re all really spoilt and not prepared to put any hard work in to anything. Everything is just handed to them.

I can’t say I agree on every point, but it was a very interesting conversation!

I think the issue is the understanding of resilience. You do not become resilient by being, you become resilient by doing. Literally facing age appropriate challenges and overcoming them.

I see on here all the time parents saying teenagers can not go on public transport alone, stay at home alone etc because what if something goes wrong.

They have missed the point that children learn when something goes wrong at an age appropriate level. The train breaks down and they learn how to navigate getting on a different one. They make toast and the smoke alarm goes off and they open the windows to disperse the smoke. That is how resilience is built.

When I was 12 my friend and I used to get the bus to the main high street. Coming back we got on the wrong bus one day, realised and got off - we were too shy to say anything to the driver and mobile phones did not exist. We looked instead at the timetable on the bus stop and figured out how to get home. We were anxious, but we learnt that we could deal with public transport mistakes.

Teenagers don't exist in a vacuum though - this is a wider issue not just 'weak' teens.

I work in education with care experienced young people - there is a whole lot lacking to support them - schools have no money for EP's, support staff, even TA's, EHCP's being refused, taking for ever to get through, provision not available, loss of training providers (we used to have 4 locally offering pre-apprenticeships - now we have 1 with 2 intakes a year for the whole borough), no CAMHs appointments, year long waiting lists for initial assessments, even for the specialist LAC service, loss of good, experienced staff (SW/Teachers), no money for anything! Lack of opportunity for sport, youth services, libraries etc.

Families are struggling, burnt out, stressed, skint and not coping, rise in criminal exploitation of young people. It's so complex - then add Covid

Resilience isn't really the right word - I work with kids who are so bloody resilient they wont ask for help - they want to do it all themselves - but they don't know how - teenagers I work with can be resistant, suspicious, angry, scared, depressed, very mentally unwell but they are still strong and brave and funny - they just need the resources to back them up - without those things wont change.

If we don't invest in the next generation what do we expect?

I think so. I had severe problems at uni but hid them very well from everyone as I didn't really understand what was going on. For example I was incredibly anxious but no-one talked about anxiety back then so I wouldn't have even known how to verbalise this. I only knew that I didn't feel right in my body.
I think it's great that people can feel comfortable to talk about these things now but there is a line between "normal" worries/sadness and clinical mental health issues. I feel it's got to the point now that those with real mental health issues are being dismissed by people saying "oh everyone seems to have something these days" which is unfair.

I'm going to throw in the internet, phones etc as one factor. It's the root of so much misery. Our brains are not supposed to look and scroll for hours every day. We aren't supposed to live in a virtual world. They no longer know what it's like to not access any information any time or contact someone any time with a reply in minutes or hours at the most. This life is too fast. Expectations of the virtual world are too high. You get restless or 'anxious'.

On days I make a conscious effort to stay away from the phone but be present in the here and now, maybe read a book instead, I feel so much calmer. When you feel calmer things also feel more manageable. It's not the only reason but it's a contributing factor.

Aside from covid and lockdown related issues, a lot of young people don't know how to deal with even very minor conflicts because their parents have always jumped in and sorted everything out for them. You see it on here all the time, helicopter parents getting involved in minor disputes, or when their child isn't invited to something, instead of letting their child learn from it . Anything the parents can't fix, the internet will figure out for them. This generation have grown up with the world at their fingertips, instant assistance and instant gratification, they can find it difficult to cope with the real world because it's no longer the real world to them. So much of their time is spent on social media where they can be anything they want to be, smart, beautiful, interesting, no wonder they are anxious, how can they possibly measure up outside.

I worked in a school through covid.

It does not surprise me in the least that there has been a major impact on mental health from it.

I know teenage MH wasn't great before, but covid just amplified it.

At one point in my school, if a kid got covid anyone who had sat within 2 metres of them in any lesson had to be sent home immediately for two weeks isolation.

There were set seating plans and you were not allowed to change them.

I remember at one point a deputy head turning up to my maths lesson with my year 9 class and reading out a long list of names and saying they had to get their stuff, leave the classroom immediately and go and sit in the hall 2metres apart from each other until their parents collected them.

In the silence after they had left one of the ten or so kids who were left asked my if they were all going to die.

That kind of environment and fear leaves a mark.

@shearwater2 it is many years since institutions were the answer. By the mid eighties the last had been closed down. They have all been turned in to luxury flats where I live.

Exactly same with my two kids. One outgoing and desperate to "do" everything. The other has been out of school two years, can't go to shop, get on bus, speak to strangers etc. He is autistic though and no amount of CAMHS/CBT/kick up the arse parenting will change him (we've tried all of this.) I'm very worried about his future.

We may never know why this is, but it strikes me there are certain factors and changes that have happened while these young adults were growing up that can't have helped matters:

1. The 'everyone is special' ethos in primary schools gives young children an inflated idea of their importance;
2. The tendancy over the last few years for parents to protect children from anything that might make them unhappy/bored/out of their comfort zone
3. The increasing isolation of childhood - the pandemic will not have helped - where parents shun any offers of advice/help/experience and gather their children up if a stranger dares to speak to them
4. The increasing tendancy to normalise mental health issues - in general this is probably a good thing, but it can lead to over-thinking and obsession
5. It used to be quite normal to be married and have children in your early-mid 20s. Nowadays this is fairly unusual, so young people have a bigger window of opportunity to think about just themselves
6. The tendancy for people to make excuses for everything. You see it all the time on here: A woman parked in a disabled bay and she was not disabled - she might have invisable disabilities, she might be collecting someone disabled, she might be fleeing some one and needed a safe space asap etc etc etc. The liklihood is she was just being a twat really, but excuses, excuses, be kind etc.
7. Resiliance isn't encouraged anymore. Everything is always someone else's fault and no-one is accountable for their own actions.
8. Finally - the internet. There is no longer any requirement to get on with others or fit in as no matter how niche your opinion is, there is always someone who will agree with you.

This too.

And it goes in with the loss of unstructured, unsupervised play. Parents didn’t need to spend their evenings ferrying kids around to structured activities ( or stopping them fighting in the house) when kids just played out unsupervised

The kids of that has not been good for the mental health of kids or parents

She said it was a Covid hangover. She does understand the impact. So, presumably does the uni, given they are taking attendance for lectures (not just tutorials).

And she didn’t say ‘a little bit stressed’. Clearly it’s much more than that. Choosing to absolutely not attend in person anything at all that you can view online is surely not healthy. Not only do you miss out on the lecture, you miss out on walking to and from, meeting up, chatting, etc.

Plenty of grownups would sooner wfh the entire time, as would plenty of the uni faculty I suppose. I think it’s (eventually) disastrous for mental health.

I've had a quick read of the articles on the report that i assume triggered this post. The one where people in there 20s are more likely to be off work than people in their 40s?

The things that leap out are the big difference between men and women, with women much more likely experiencing mental health disorders

And the link with only having gcse level qualifications

So i guess if we really want to tackle this rather than go on about how terrible young people are, we are looking at increasing mental health support focused on increasing participation in education of school age children esp girls.

"A friend who’s a teacher told me recently that about half of every year has to use break rooms during exams, because of the supposed stress that exams cause. The ‘stressed’ pupils get longer to sit an exam."

Perhaps that's the case in your friend's school but in my DC's school there are absolutely no allowances made for exam anxiety, no matter how severe.

It's society in general that allows this bs.

Not in between exams, during.

And we're moving back towards exams because of the prolific cheating in essays and projects - essay mills, plagiarism, AI. It's very hard to stand over anything that doesn't happen in an exam hall, with a sheet of paper and a biro and no other resources.

It's not just young people. I am sat here in my office and there are 6 of us who work in here and only two of us in today. The policy is that we are in at least 3 days a week. I can count on one hand how many times that every one has been in as they should be, people are either off sick or wfh due to 'unforeseen circumstances' every week. Everyone is over 40, I'm the lowest earner. The other 5 earn over 50k a year, some of them earn up to 100k. Someone cried in this office last week because another colleague raised his voice. I was in a meeting again last week, where there were people on over 100k a year asking me for detailed instructions for sitting on a conference panel in their area of expertise. Anxiously asking for spoon fed instructions on how to sit and answer questions and they are top of their field.

I have also seen three friends face to face this weekend, one has an issue with alcohol and can't seem to knock in on the head, the other has awful mental health issues and hasn't been to work for months. The third was obsessively talking about her body. All three were Mum's over 40 who own their own houses, are in long term marriages, taking regular holidays and have permanent employment.

It isn't just the kids.

Great post, @taxguru - the secondary school environment for most is just awful. Noisy, aggressive, unpredictable. In my DC's school there are constant fights, shouting from children and teachers etc. The teachers do their very best but it's a horrible out of control environment that few adults would cope with.

@Namechangechangeobv I didn't say doing well... I mean the very basics like getting up in the morning and keeping going even though they are very clearly struggling. Sometimes I think we need to reconsider what we see as a 'win'. A lot of the young people I work with have limited family support at home or come from difficult backgrounds. Just getting up the morning is a win sometimes and as I'm sure you know progress isn't linear. So I think when we're talking about resilience specifically it's important to remember that resilience looks a whole lot of different ways and how one person displays good resilience will match what you've listed (making phone calls confidently for example) whereas for another it's the fact they made it over the door to see you at all. If you're working in BE and you're actually seeing these young people, then their resilience is good on some level. Otherwise they'd be completely disengaged. If you're always looking for them to act like well supported peers who are NT and have a decent emotional vocabulary and good social networks then you're going to be disappointed. Their resilience and their 'wins' just maybe look differently.

Why shouldn't ALL the pupils have somewhere quiet to go to chill out in between exams that let's face it, adults still have nightmares about 30 years on?

And it would be far better if we hadn't gone back in time and made everything about final exams instead of having a mixture of coursework and exams.

You've only got to look at this forum to see why the younger generation are struggling.
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.