To ask you why so many children have anxiety these days

[Tvstar]

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

PS my above comment relates to young adults not children sorry I didn’t explain that properly.

I think there are few parents whose kids get to their teens who can then look back and say they didn’t make mistakes. Part of parenting is owning mistakes and learning from them.

That doesn’t mean you can blame the rise in anxiety at the door of parents. There are many factors that cause it.

The MH drive in schools was pushed by somebody with a huge, huge agenda. Just bear that in mind.

No internet when I was young. But boy what a difference it would have made . DF was an alcoholic and it was the elephant in the room which no one talked about (no doubt my DM did but not around me). Hence it became the biggest shame (no one talks about it means it is a dreadful shaming thing) for me. 30 years on it still affects my confidence etc.
Now I would know what an issue it was for some people, would have support groups online I could discuss it with, share horror stories. How different my life would have been.
So social media can obviously be very bad but some aspects of internet use must be helpful.

I was a super anxious child in the 80s/90s.

I couldn't eat as I was so scared of vomit.

I had ocd - every night after my light was turned off I had to walk around my room and count in a certain way before I could sleep. If I did it wrong I had to start again. I could be up for hours.

I had huge meltdowns and smashed lots of things.

I grew out of it (well, apart from the vomit phobia which I still have) and to this day am not sure why I was that way.

So I guess my experience shows kids having issues is not a new thing.

Haven't read the whole thread but I think @cauliflowersqueeze is right. Pathologising and projection.

I personally think social media is a trigger for young people's anxiety of today... What we look like and also our safety when we go out. I am so concerned about my younger brother going out as, if you look the wrong way at someone these days you might get stabbed... Hate that the world's like this

Some reasons might be:-

Liberal parenting where actions are not followed by consequences and where manners and doing what one is told are not taught or followed through. Also, the child is taught she is the centre of the universe.

Useless left wing state propaganda instead of a traditional curriculum in schools taught with traditional methods.

Social media whereby smartphone technology allows outside influences from advertisers to friends to bypass parental authority.

The ubiquitousness of porn even in primary school.

Non stop testing of children and pointless targets in school. Bench marking is OK but you cannot get an A grade from someone who does not have the natural ability to achieve one.

Computer gaming, especially harmful to boys.

Parents who support the child against the school, not the school to the child.

An inability for the child to run around freely outside the house and learn things for themselves.

Children doing anything else but reading books.

There are so many difference s between life ‘then and now’ that it seems like a different world for children from the largely happy and feee place I grew up in.

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

Social Media is possibly the cause and the endless "talent" shows on TV.

These days a career move is to be a celebrity, You Tuber or some form of "influencer". It's totally unrealistic.

I do also feel schools don't help, where everyone is a winner and gets something for taking part.

You take part in a sport or competition and don't come first, second or third? Tough luck, you get nothing and try again next time. This is the way life is and at the moment they are woefully prepared for the real world.

We have tried our best to instill this mentality in ours, because that's the way of the world.

I disagree with so much of that Lily

Schools have quite a traditional curriculum now - it was far more left wing when Labour were in power (unsurprisingly.)

I don’t know where this talk of tests as a trigger for anxiety has come from. Children have always done exams. 11+? When I was at school (started secondary in 1992) we had formal exams in the hall every summer and the results were read out to the class

Kids have GCSES and they have assessments but that shouldn’t be hugely contributing to mental health problems unless you say a child anxious about her GCSEs is suffering from anxiety.

Parents who support their child are often right to do so. I wish mine had.

School is incredibly more formal these days- primary and secondary. Doing O Levels in the 80s was a picnic compared to GCSEs now. The content is dull, massive and harder with oodles of rote learning. Constant tests and meeting targets.My dh and I have 3 degrees between us so have been through the system ourselves back in the 80s.

I don’t think tests or targets are necessarily wrong but when coupled with the sheer dull content, volume and memorising it is not a great mix.

My dc are pretty bright, god alone knows how kids that struggle academically or who have SENs cope.

Thanks Gove

Magpie:

"The MH drive in schools was pushed by somebody with a huge, huge agenda. Just bear that in mind."

That wouldn't come as any great surprise! give details please.

I don’t know where this talk of tests as a trigger for anxiety has come from. Children have always done exams. 11+? When I was at school (started secondary in 1992) we had formal exams in the hall every summer and the results were read out to the class

That isn’t my experience of school at all (80/90s). The 11+ was done in our own primary classroom on a Wednesday morning (with the afternoon off afterwards!) and only those taking it had to go in that day at all. Now, it’s held on a Saturday in a
Grammar school hall with hundreds and hundreds of other children.

I sat no formal exams until GCSEs-certainly nothing in the hall and no results read out to the class. We had little tests at secondary and that’s it.

Natasha Devon. Her whole raison d’etre is based around the idea of children struggling with their mental health.

The charlatans and snake oil sellers have jumped on board with glee.

shrug schools do things differently. However, kids have always had tests and exams. The way these were approached differ but that much has been consistent.

I have no idea how the 11 plus is conducted now but I think knowing that a pass or fail largely determines your future is pretty stressful regardless of how or where it is done.

Over introspection and too much stimulation. Anxiety is a fact of life for everyone. It can't be avoided. I find too much emphasis is on avoidance and then when it happens panic or worry. We all need to learn how to feel anxious, accept it, not be frightened alarmed by it, slow down a bit but keep moving forward.

We're not good at this! We feed the fear by trying to fix it and give it more time than it requires.

I grew up in the Troubles. I and the kids around me were really fecking anxious all the time. But it was ignored, that’s the difference that I can see. Everyone had to just get on with it and emotions weren’t really dealt with leaving a whole generation with PTSD at adults. Most of it still not being addressed.
We still had school exam stress, bullies, teenage angst, no jobs, political upheaval and all the rest of it.
Kids now are being taught that their mental health is as important as their Physical health. That’s good, no?

Well, a lot of the things that are good for physical health are also good for mental health. But there are also a category of unsolvable problems - the troubles being a good example really. It’s normal to worry. When that tips over into anxiety is when there’s a constant worry about something you just can’t explain (I’ve got it at the moment, it sucks arse!)

The charlatans and snake oil sellers have jumped on board with glee.
This is quite true.

There's so many positives about being more aware of mental health, having more avenues to help children and teens. It's a great step forward compared to years gone by, and absolutely right we've made progress.

But this goes hand in hand with a rise of snake oil selling. There's a lot of money to be made pathologising normal ups and downs. There's a lot of money to be made selling a behaviour programme that focuses on buying in consultants Vs simple rules.

It's got nothing to do with politics, I'm sure plenty of Tories overparent their kids as well.

My mum is a lifelong Labour voter and she was also very strict and certainly didn't raise us to believe we were the centre of the universe.

I don't think one can always blame the parents! I think it's a combination of greater recognition and diagnosis of mental health issues in children (it used to be often assumed that only adults could have depression and anxiety disorders); and a society in which insecurity, which contributes a lot to anxiety, is more common. We have become what I call the 'non-tenured society', where jobs, not to mention relationships, are not expected to be permanent. This has a very positive side: more freedom of choice; less assumption that the son must follow his father's occupation, and the daughter must become a housewife; less risk of being permanently trapped in an unsatisfactory or even abusive marriage. But it also has a negative side: since your life is not determined in advance, you have to make a lot more decisions consciously, and there is always the danger of suddenly losing what you have.

My dc are pretty bright, god alone knows how kids that struggle academically or who have SENs cope.

Eldest DS is very bright and has the most amazing ideas but due to ASD he struggles to get these ideas across in a coherent way as he tends to jump off down tangents and then ends up miles away from his original point. He gets so animated when he does it, it's truly awesome to watch. In one conversation about long division I will end up learning several new facts about volcanoes, get details of an invention he's being thinking of making, and be treated to many celebrity catchphrases and advertising taglines before he'll finally stop, stare into space, and then come back to me with a "where was I?" at which point I can ask him the original question and he will answer it. Unfortunately this approach doesn't transfer into school because they don't have the time or resources for it. School is a trial for him. Its noisy, it's full of smells and people, the corridors are crowded, he doesn't understand social rules and so on. They give him support but not at the level he needs and then when he's doing well they take the support away as "he's doing really well, he doesn't need it any more". He then starts to slip both academically and mentally so we fight with them to put support in place which they do then a few months later when he's balanced again they remove it because he's doing really well and doesn't need it anymore....

We're in the process of an EHCP to try safeguard but in the meantime he isn't coping well in school. They're doing year 6 SATs later this year (age 10/11) and the school have already started the pressure. He's been "invited" (in a way that implies it's not optional) to SAT practice before and after school three days a week, 8.15 - 8.45am and 3.15 - 4.15pm, the letter says this will increase to five days a week after Easter. School have very firmly been told that no, he will not be attending. He would be a whole lot less anxious if he didn't have to go to school!

Over introspection and too much stimulation.

Put simply, THIS^

But there is no single simple explanation, and anxiety - in children and adults - was not at all uncommon in the past. It just wasn't always recognized as such.

certainly nothing in the hall and no results read out to the class. We had little tests at secondary and that’s it.

I left Secondary in 89 and we certainly did have formal tests apart from the final year ones. The teachers did read out the results in class too and I think bloody enjoyed reading out the ones that were shit. I was only the shit list a few times too. It happened, we just had to get on with it to be fair.