To ask you why so many children have anxiety these days

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Why is today's parenting producing youngsters with so little resilience?

Who says it’s the parenting? There are many external influences that affect our moods and behaviours.

What have you done that’s so different then?

There is a lot of pressure on them more than when I was a child

There’s a lot of pathologising I think. Rather than feeling that an emotion is on the normal spectrum of human feelings, there seems to be a tendency with some to think “I have anxiety” when it might well just be feeling anxious.

This is one of those 'kids these days are snowflakes' and 'there was no such thing as x/y/z in my day' threads, isn't it? Do you really need it explained to you the difference in social pressures today as opposed to 50 odd years ago? Or the fact that it's now considered healthier to be more open about worries to try and stem mental health issues in the future?

What age are you talking about?

Totally agree with cauliflower

Also projection. Plenty of parents see their own behaviour in their children. I’ve seen this happen with depression, anxiety, self harm, and eating disorders/sleep disorders.

Social media

There was a thread on a similar subject a while ago, and one reason that was suggested was that children nowadays have a lot more choices - possibly too many - than they did, say, 30 years ago.

That is, children are consulted on all sorts of family decisions such as meals, where to go on holiday, days out, what to buy. Whereas 30 years ago, these things were decided by the parents and as far as the children were concerned, just happened whether they liked it or not. It was an eye-opener for me that parents nowadays would ask their children for input on all these things.

That might sound like a negative, but if you think about it, it can be relaxing to have everything decided and organised for you even as an adult. Children today are having to take part in decisions when they haven't built up the experience that adults have, which might be empowering but is also stress-inducing.

There is a lot more pressure on children now with regard to testing in school, volume of work, homework, etc. and the expectation that higher education is the only valid path to take.

Anxiety and related mental health is better recognised now whereas previously a child or young person acting out may have been branded as naughty or attention seeking. Now we know that behaviour is communication and when a child starts acting out of character we look at the reasons why. Mental health is more talked about now too so people are more comfortable being open about it.

Sites like MN exist for parents to seek support and advice so you see a large percentage of parents with anxious children here purely because this is somewhere for them to congregate and help one another.

cauliflowersqueeze. I think you’re right. The sort of things that people would once have accepted as being part of a range of human emotions and experiences are now regarded as ‘having anxiety’

It's something I've pondered, I think we are more anxious parents (the older the parents the more obvious this is) but there's other factors at play for sure ... I'm convinced childcare at a young age, helicopter parenting, too many scheduled activities (vs playing out) all have their place in causing it. Yet the biggest one is medicalisation of normal emotions, rather than telling them (from young) it's normal to be worried

Screen time. It's preventing kids from experiencing normal social interaction, as they're used to doing it from behind a screen. Hence they find it stressful when required to interact face to face.

Children used to be anxious all the time when I was little!
I was anxious, my brother was anxious.
My parents's siblings had been anxious (some of them)
Childhood fears date back a LOONG time. Just read Jane Eyre or A little Princess. Children have always been frightened of losing their parents, or losing their friends.

In fact most Disney films and Fairy Tales are examples of the sort of things that children are wired to find upsetting and anxious making, which is why they are so popular, because usually the anxiety is resolved in the narrative by Happy Endings.

Did Child Pyschiatrists exist 80 years ago? Did people seek advice worried about their children 100 200 years ago? yes.

I think the primary state school curriculum has got a lot answer for. I say that as a primary school teacher who doesn’t think 6 year olds learning about fronted-adverbials should be a priority. I have never seen so many KS1 children suffering from anxiety, school refusal and self harm.

Dear god yes. A significant proportion of dd friends (10/11) have this - tantrums tears clinging therapy. I am sympathetic but her birthday outing recently drove dh and I to drink. They were worse than toddlers it was so stressful

You can't even feel nervous these days without it being labelled as anxiety. When we were young, exam nerves were a thing. Now it's all about the anxiety!

I don’t think it’s parenting so much because it feels like every other adult has anxiety or mental health issues too now.

I do think it’s more to do with the spread of social media and the ease of seeing what other people are doing, have or feel and directly comparing it to our own lives. If I didn’t see other people’s fun holidays, amazing days out and special memories with their wonderful children then I would be much less likely to feel that my life is lacking.

Children get anxious because their parents are anxious. Pressure to pass tests starts early and we are busily filling any spare time with enrichment activities. Many children have to go between homes on a regular basis too.

I look back on my imperfect seventies childhood and although we were poor, we didn’t really know it. Fun was playing out with friends or exploring the woods or hours out riding our bicycles. We had very little homework, never knew we were being tested and life was simpler. It wasn’t all fun but it was unpressured. We had very little compared to my DC today but we didn’t know we were missing out because we only knew what our immediate friends and neighbours had.

I suffered horrendous anxiety as a DC. I often felt like an inferior bag of nerves, many DC did.
There is many adults suffering from anxiety I doubt it all started in adulthood.
These days we discuss it, we help the DC with CBT the tools to deal with it, people think we are rearing snowflakes.
I think this will be the generation that lives through mind body and soul.

I think a lot of these kinds of MH issues were just named differently in times gone by. Shy, nervous, highly strung would all come under different headings these days.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing but I do think that sometimes a label isn’t completely helpful. These children still have to live in a world they’re not 100% compatible with and I feel that sometimes labelling them means a delay in them finding their own strategies and coping mechanisms. It’s a fine balance I think.

FWIW I was a very anxious child because by nature I’m an over thinker. I can see how some support would have helped me navigate certain things in a better way but ultimately I’ve grown into a relatively stable adult although perhaps some of my unhealthier coping mechanisms would have been less likely.

Why is today's parenting producing youngsters with so little resilience?

I don't agree with this statement. Why do you think today's parents are 'parenting wrong'?

Society, social media, the world as it is now.

Go back 100 years ago people mainly had their lives set out for them. As time has progressed we have more and more options to the point where we're at now, where children are told "you can do and be whatever you want to be!! Your all winners!" Then they trot off to uni/work to realise there is only one job available and suddenly told no, and they feel a failure because they are starting at the bottom. Then they have pressure of social media where their friends "appear" to do so much better than them.

This link below explains it a lot better than what I can:

What I found depressing was the kids involved had not one thought about how their behaviour might impact others. It was all me me me how do I feel. Urgh.

Parenting

I am not even going on the idiots pushing the gender neutral nonsense for kids who are far far too young to care and are really damaging them.

It starts with lack of clear boundaries and rules. Kids used to be told off, quick slap on the bum for worst scenario and back to play - they now have to go through an hour of dramatic rambling about "mummy's feeling being hurt" - no adult would put up with that!

It's absolute bollocks to pretend there's more pressure at school - it's a lazy explanation but if you read a bit about the subject you will quickly realise it's so not true. Exams used to be a lot harder for a start.

It's competitive and lazy parenting - but whilst in the past, lazy parents would mean many kids would be outside with their friends all day, lazy nowadays means junk food and tablets. I am horrified when I see how many kids, not even teens, have a huge tv in their bedroom.

It's pretending to treat kids like adults on subjects that really should be completely out of bound, but treating them like babies when you should let them grow up.

There was a thread about someone horrified about leaving a 14-15 year old spending the day in ... London! FFS...

I think that lots of children in my childhood suffered crippling anxiety, which has been recognised and dealt with in their adult years. Now we recognise it much earlier.

Lots of factors at play of course. It yeah poor parenting and the use of screens is a biggie