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?

I don’t agree children are worse I bet in the olden days there were some very unhappy children

But I do agree that social media as a whole is making everyone more anxious, adults included

Nerves are a survival instinct we need to teach DC it is a normal feeling, it is adrenaline.
If we teach the DC it might prevent it manifesting into an volcano in adulthood.

YABU. And clearly a goady fucker with your one line OP

From my experience there is not more children with anxiety or other mental health diagnoses.

There are more children recognised to have these conditions. The causes may be more up to date such as social media pressure or bullying, but these conditions existed in people long before the modern screen age.

I used to think it was normal to spend the whole day getting the courage to go out the house to the corner shop. Now I recognise that as an anxiety condition.

My husband felt suicidal as a teenager due to his separated parents domestic violence to each other. He stopped riding his bike to school because he had overwhelming urges to ride in front of a car on the road. We would now recognise this as depression.

I fully support schools teaching children and young people to recognise the risk factors that can cause mental ill health and identify the symptoms in themselves, friends and family so they can seek support. Yes it runs the risk of over self diagnosis with these conditions, but it will help many who really are struggling.

Yeah I also think there is too much pressure in primary schools especially to excel academically. School is telling me my 7 year old must be independent when his medical conditions mean he needs support to organise himself, in this regard I think schoolchildren with SEN can be set up to fail and this feeling of inadequacy brings the anxiety and fear of school settings.

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'?

Another example, is the amount of parents who come to hold their hands at uni! Fine, give a lift because it's easier to carry everything but mummy doesn't have to come in and clean the kitchen and make your bed and stay for a week because it's the first time Darling child will leave home.

And yes feeling nervous, scared, anxious are part of the normal range of responses. Would be a weird and tiring world if we were all happy, joyful and thrilled to be us all the time regardless of what was happening.

I have nothing against the woman but people like Meghan M telling us that we are all entitled to thrive not simply survive is total bollocks and really doesn’t help anyone.

I think it’s just knowledge and awareness. I had horrific ocd and anxiety as a child but I was just weird and as a teenager quite significantly obvious bipolar and I was just naughty.

Diagnosed with bipolar at 23 and will make sure my children don’t slip through the net

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.

Originally the fairytales didn't have the happy endings. They were warnings and they were also designed to help children deal with fears in a safety of their homes.

I think it's because the parents are generally more anxious now and it transfers to children.
And absolutely this Yet the biggest one is medicalisation of normal emotions, rather than telling them (from young) it's normal to be worried

I suffered with anxiety(still do!) as a child in the 1990's so I dont think its a new thing at all. Whats changed is that parents and teachers actually get it more now and dont treat anxious kids as a nuisance as I was, but thats a whole other thread...

Totally agree @cauliflowersqueeze
It's the same for adults. Feeling a certain way doesn't mean you are it. I have felt anxious plenty of times in my life. I have felt shy in certain scenarios. That doesn't mean I am an anxiety sufferer or an introvert.

My own DD as a child would ridiculously cling to my legs or hover underfoot when walking into school every day making me trip up. I was carrying her baby sister at the time and heavily pregnant with my DS so it was pretty dangerous to risk me falling every day. I lost it one morning and shouted at her to move her butt and stop being so stupid. She was happy with her school and there was no reason for pretending to be nervous.

My virtual kick up the arse worked and that day she started trotting our happily in front after realising that nothing actually bad happened if she walked more than a step away.

Yes there are more pressures these days on kids but also I've seen too many people pandering and allowing their child's negative feelings to grow.

It yeah poor parenting and the use of screens is a biggie
There was a typo in your sentences
Are you blaming parents for anxious DC? Really. I find that highly offensive as a DM with a DD with MH issues and anxiety, I lay in bed at night wondering will she be a teen statistic and take her life.
I try over and over to give her the tools to love herself. I spend my life trying to better hers all the while pretending to her I am super strong, super positive, mirroring what I want her to see.

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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

This is a really good point, and it doesn't just apply to children. The problem nowadays is that people choose to use social media and thus present themselves with images to compare themselves to. The lives of the very affluent are no longer a closed book or, at most, the subject of an occasional magazine article or documentary - you can follow them on social media and see the ins-and-outs of every part of their day. It breeds envy and discontentment, a feeling that an ordinary life isn't enough.

Yes, we should be "a parent" and make informed choices on behalf of our children but the acceptance of parental decisions in the past on many many aspects of children's lives that made children actually unhappy really didn't make them less anxious. EG: boarding school. Smacking. Being made to eat horrible food. Being sent out to work in factories (Dickens's mother insisted he stayed on in the factory rather than going back to school) The idea that these things make children more resilient and less likely to be anxious is just nonsense.

I think the most obvious reason for children's "increased" anxiety is that we are sharing it more.

But lack of fresh air, playing out and just playing could be affecting the Vitamin D of many children, their immune systems their energy levels their very bones. And advice to put sunscreen on, when there is any sunshine, without also giving them warnings about Vitamin D supplements needed. So many parents I talk to have never thought of Vitamin D supplements although they know about five a day fruit and veg.
How many people on this thread do give their chldren vitamin D supplements that are recommended by the NHS in winter months?????

I think this is hidden cause of mental health problem and it could be so easily avoided if everyone understood the importance of this building block

Emerald has your daughter had Vit D tests? B12 is also often overlooked cause of feeling terribly down and low as well. A friend's daughter who was self harming was found to have B12 deficiency and had to have injections, she is much much better now 4 years on.

I'm in my 50's and when we were children we just sort of slotted in to the family. I don't recall being treated, even once, as special or worthy of one to one conversation with parents. Saying that my parents were kind and certainly not abusive. I didn't know anyone with any mental health conditions though that's not saying they didn't exist.
When I parented in the 80's and 90's it was becoming more apparent that children had needs and feelings, it was the dawn of the internet and mobile phones and there was just so much more to think about and worry about
I now see my Grandchildren and their day to day life is so far removed from mine. They are actually asked how they feel, what they fancy for dinner etc. It sounds so minor but just maybe if we'd been given the opportunity to discuss feelings in the 60's / 70's we would have also had mental health problems

Blaming parenting is incredibly ignorant. I've always had bad anxiety but my siblings are completely the opposite.

Fiona I used to carry my four year old to school. She is now the least anxious of my three kids (at 17). She knew what she needed and my job was to respond. Bellowing at your child to stop being stupid is not a particular effective way of increasing their confidence. Reminding them that they need to walk in a different way or Mum will trip up and encouraging them to try a different way of walking is actually a lot more likely to bear fruit.

When 90% of people have finally been diagnosed with something like anxiety or one the other myriad of conditions that currently are being recognised will it become the new norm. Will it the minority who don’t claim any of these issues who will require assistance to live the full rewarding adult life that we are apparently entitled to now regardless of input?

Interesting topic! I think there are potentially loads of factors at play, eg:

Screens, social media - pressures are completely different from say 30 years ago.

The medicalisation of normal human emotions, driven in part by pharmaceutical corporation companies - obviously this may be very helpful for some in terms of coping strategies or treatment but I do wonder for some whether a diagnosis is more of an excuse not to engage with the real world.

Climate change - this is something that genuinely should provoke anxiety!

Poverty and wage insecurity- this is on the rise and kids pick up on parents’ stresses.

Pollution - I’ve read some interesting stuff about the effect of air pollution on developing brains (causing depression etc).

I think most children are concerned now about stuff I never even thought about when I was a kid - —appearance (we all looked pretty motley - hand-me-downs, flares, hand-knitted jumpers)
—environment- never occurred to me really - although there was not so much plastic then
—grades at school - we were tested each year but the stakes felt pretty low. We had a range of exams we could take and different routes to a job. University/college was free

We’re all under so much more pressure, and live much more uncertain lives that it’s hardly a surprise that it has trickled down to our children.

Blaming parenting does a disservice to the vast majority of parents whose children have mental health problems. These parents are doing everything can ti help and support their DC. I can 100% guarantee you they will have asked themselves countless times "is it my fault?" so shitty posts about how they're causing their DC's problems really do seem like kicking them while they're down.

I think a lot of comes from over involvement. I don’t remember my mum staying at most of my hobbies as a child . I did a sport to a high ish level and she would drop me off and pick me up. Due to insurance, health and safety and the idea that a child is an investment of money and time these days parents in this hobby and in others I’ve been around with kids in my family etc never seem to leave them to it and give them autonomy

To blame the parents without knowing the situation is shit. Infact to get a child diagnosed and treated for anxiety it takes a lot of fighting - which of course will be mainly done by the parents!

Ds is 9 and on antidepressants. I have beaten myself up about it in the past but I know really it’s nothing that I have done and actually if I hadn’t fought as hard as I did he would be in a much worse place now

Also with the advent of social media I think kids who feel anxious can easily get embroiled in a world of incredibly deep and dark discussion and exposed to things that either then feed into their illness in a really dreadful way, or, if they are not ill but susceptible and vulnerable (like most kids are) gives them a forum to wallow and brood.

Previously they would tell family who might be able to help them reframe things or move them on mentally, who would normally do things to encourage them. Or not tell anyone and just “get on with it” (for better or worse). They would be unlikely to find a group in real life who want to sit and discuss how they should kill themselves and look at all their self-harming for hours and hours.

Now they are taking advice from the most ill and sick members of whatever random internet site they have stumbled on. Which may well include people who want to see them do harm to themselves.

Yes it’s good to talk and share but the level of brooding and wallowing that goes on with kids desperate to find an identity as something I do think is hugely concerning.

That’s just one aspect of things from personal experience by the way. I also think people are often hard wired to be a certain way and nothing has ‘caused’ it so to speak.