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

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And WTF do we do about it?

Obviously many young people are wonderfully resilient but the overall trend I’ve seen in my line of work (behavioural education) is that there are vast, and I mean VAST numbers of young adults who cannot leave the house, come into a classroom, look someone in the eye, make a phone call, speak infront of the class (if they make it in), cry when pronouns are wrong (daily occurrence), take responsibility to revise/get a job/learn to drive.

What is going to happen to these humans in the future?

Isnt that because society expects a quick fix though?

When you are expected to only be off a day for a close family members funeral, a few days for a parent, adult child or partner and then you are back in the workplace which bleats on at you about leaving personal problems at the door why wouldnt people think there should be a quick fix when society expects there to be one? There isnt much opportunity to sit with distress when people are pushing you back to normality.

I don’t know how you put up with it.

Unpopular opinion but if the child enters the school using she or he, that should be it until they leave.

Interestingly, there may be a parallel with the 1990s when there was a rise and then a peak in diagnoses of bulimia.

At the time eating disorders were in the media a lot (largely because of Princess Diana) and there was speculation about what was driving it.

This paper suggests that it was that a lot of previously undiagnosed people came to the GP and got help and then once that "blip" if you like was through diagnosis rates fell back to where they had been.

www.brown.uk.com/eatingdisorders/currin.pdf

You’re spot on!

Older generation thinking younger generation is flawed and sure to end the future of man kind - tale as old as time. They’ll be fine.

I don’t disagree with you, and would include the closure of Surestart centres left right and centre.

When I was a child in infant school we had milk at break I think or during a lesson and access to a fountain at breaks. At lunch we had drinks. In junior school much the same and also secondary school. We certainly didn’t gorge on water or other drinks and ate when we needed to. Adults these days seem to suck on water bottles like they’re dummies/babies milk bottles.

My last permanent post was in middle management. Latterly, a lot of my time was spent dealing with parents who would not accept that their children could ever be in the wrong.

I'd be dealing with arguments over grades, behaviour...

Nothing was ever the responsibility of the pupils.

I recall one time when a pupil copied and pasted their coursework from the internet. (Took me 5 minutes to Google it.)

When I challenged the pupil, they claimed that I was lying, cursed at me, overturned furniture... Same pupil turned up clearly inebriated for a mock.

At the parental meeting, the parent berated me. How dare I claim that their angel had been drunk? How dare I say that their essay had been plagiarised?

When I provided the URL for the original essay, I was then told that the pupil didn't think that it was plagiarism, because it had been copied by hand and not copied and pasted. [It had not been handwritten.)

The parent was a solicitor.

Actually I do recall older colleagues talking about younger colleagues who would now be described as snowflakes and would give silly excuses as to why they couldn’t come into work. This was in 90s/00 time so before wokeness.

You don’t have to do anything but a therapist should have some awareness and some empathy( and some professional know how).

‘Yes and that would explain why suicide rates shot up after the war and continued that way until the 1960s because people's mental health was impacted’.

Im not sure that this is a correct interpretation of the statistics. There were more young men ( the main risk group) who were not being killed in the War (sorry if this is too blunt) or being given the structure of military discipline , so increased the suicide rate.

And of course amongst the civilian population, many suicides and murders were just not noticed if the bodies were found as part of the clear up after a raid. That’s what my uncle said anyway, and he was in the Police force throughout the period .

Yep, that is my point. Too much banding around ‘neuro diverse’ - when it actually can't be as common as it is currently.

Neuro diverse - what are the likely proportions of children? Currently there are many, many parents claiming their child is neuro diverse - surely that can't be correct and does a disservice to those that genuinely are.

I work in education, I understand the term, but I also see the term used as an excuse by parents.

SEN are often linked to MH struggles and threshold for what?

Do you now. There are more neurodiverse children because diagnostics are better
and women and girls aren’t flying under the radar. The numbers should be as big as they need to be. It’s concerning that you say you work in education because you should know struggling parents don’t used it as an excuse they are simply concerned about their children.

@Newbutoldfather great post.
i agree it is parially genetic, and partially familial outlook towards adversity.
i think resilience can be learned and that bods well for the younger generation.

Positive change often comes out of adversity. I was suicidal after i had bad postnatal depression, and once i felt better, i set up a support group for local mums.

We both work full time, but I volunteer after work, bits of weekends. So does my husband, and my children. Giving a child an opportunity to make a difference gives them a little feeling of control in a world which is big and overwhelming and scary, with all the negativity thrown at them through social media,peer pressure etc - it a really tough place for them. Our psychologist how children are in this 'fight, freeze or flight' mode as its just too much for their developing brain to process, so to try to make their world feel smaller and more manageable, to focus on what they can change rather than what they can't, and that's really helped our children.

So can either go 'it's all too big for me to change, so I won't even try' or go 'this is a small thing I can change to make a difference for a few people'. I never suggested you could change all those things, but that people could start small and hopefully grow.

It has lots to do with society. Too many things to list really.

Maybe it's just the newest natural selection?

Agreed. And everyone has “mental health” issues. Not a diagnosis or anything they need treatment for, of course. Just self diagnosed “mental health” as an excuse for not doing stuff.

I agree, there's way too many posts of people that can't deal with very trivial problems.

I agree.

My children are half-Israeli, and the difference I see in their fully Israeli (living there) cousins is incredible. They are strong, bold and feisty with none of the people pleasing "niceness" we have here in the UK, and none of the pandering.

Well good for you but considering that parents of MH teens spend most of their time battling for treatment in a broken NHS and holding on to impacted jobs I doubt very much that there is much energy left to change the world and set up groups. Our children don’t get to feel better as they don’t get the treatment they need.

Or sit exams. I am on that what I wish I knew about university group and the amount of parents with kids who have “panic attacks” in exams is nuts. I’ve sat countless exams in my young days and never known anyone have a panic attack at an exam paper. Or who can’t cope with A levels due to “mental
health”. How they’ll cope with a degree is anyone’s guess

I keep making the difference between genuinely neurodiverse children and those where parents find it much easier to make their own diagnosis as an excuse.
It is banded around far too much.
Actually boundaries, strategies, involvement, accountability, responsibility and engagement by the parent would help the child ( who is not neurodiverse, except in their parents eyes).

I see it!

In a broader sense surely not everyone can be neuro diverse?

It's actually really hard to get a diagnosis of Autism, especially in higher functioning girls who get really good at masking their difficulties at school/in public and then let lose at home as they can't hold it in anymore. This can then get labelled as 'bad parenting' as "well she looks fine at school", when it's actually just a case that they stop pretending where they feel more comfortable.

It's also a spectrum, children who previously would have been labelled as 'shy' or 'awkward' or 'delayed speech' are now being correctly diagnosed, alhough the correct support is still lagging behind this. So numbers are not necessarily going up, just detected better. My brother definitely has high functioning ASD, but it was never picked up at school and he struggled his way through, with my parents trying to help but not really knowing how, teachers calling him stupid or lazy, bullying etc. Nowadays the support would be better (but by no means perfect) as would get diagnosed and understood.

But services cannot keep up with demand, the pressure on special schools places is immense, and children are forced into the wrong school setting as the right one is full, which creates issues for both the other children in that setting and for that child. My daughter had a child with ASD hit her on a daily basis and basically told to not moan as 'that child can't help it'. So she became scared to go to school. SEN is definitely an area which needs a huge amount of input from both the government but also voluntarily organisations, and parents themselves who are the experts in what is needed