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?

I can 100% promise you that I don’t read that paper! The post was borne out of a conversation I was having with a friend who works in a similar field to me yesterday. I guess the fact that there are reports echoing what we’re saying means that it’s becoming a recognised issue, which hopefully is a good thing!! Although I do want to punch anyone in the face who chucks out ‘snowflake culture’ or ‘wokeism gone mad’ BS!

@ghostyslovesheets anyone who works in a SEN school will tell you they do not take those children any more, because there has been an explosion in the numbers of children with more complex SEN needs.

@Ohanotherflippingcold safe and inclusive workplaces? I wish
Employers do not care about either, whatever lip service they pay to it.

@Bushmillsbabe this is so true. Even I as an adult feel like I might soon be in an existential crisis when I follow the news too much. I can't imagine what some of these messages do to kids and teens.

I sometimes think to myself that I'd be lucky to not experience war in my lifetime. But is this even true? There were wars in the 90s in the balkans and others...I didn't understand it all then as I was just a kid. I do remember going to school one morning and being told there was bombing in Yugoslavia and wondered if I might hear it at night. But it didn't feel like my existence might disappear etc. then there was Tschernobyl... I think we heard about things that happened a day later and the got some daily news but you weren't flooded with it and it still seemed far away.

This video touches on some of the issues around lack of resilience these days. It makes for very interesting viewing.

I agree with you wholeheartedly though I do sympathise with young people.

An example for me. I was bullied in secondary school, had to leave and attend a private school for age 14-16 years.. Also had severe undiagnosed PMDD which resulted in approx 3 mini nervous breakdowns with insomnia, anxiety, depression and slightly psychotic behaviour. Could also have been PTSD from my childhood which was traumatic sometimes. I also was diagnosed with an underactive thyroid in my 30s which meant it could send up same symptoms as PMS/T. No one thought to test for that either. I ended up seeing a therapist through the council mental health team (he just listened) from when I was approx 14-16 and I was on largactyl, valium, sleeping pills etc when I was suffering but these were only approx 3 week periods. My DM eventually made the connection it was PMS/T. But as in 80's there was little or no help for it. I had counselling and therapy privately but that wasn't much good either!

Throughout all the above, I was encouraged to take exams, go to school/college independently, get a job and move out when I was ready (early 20s) and learn to drive. Some things I couldn't cope that well with though.

I think if I didn't have the help and support I needed then to make me more resilient I'd definitely have become far more scared of life in time.

We were anxious, but we learnt that we could deal with public transport mistakes.

This is so so important. And it's such an important part of building resilience. You don't build resilience from never suffering from anxiety. You build resilience from being anxious and getting through it.

Dh used to work in theatre. He regularly tells our DC that he often felt anxious before performances but he'd done it enough times to know that the anxiety was just going to keep him sharp.

DD has to go on a school residential recently. She was really really anxious. The school did a good job of digging up the positives but I also told her that this anxiety was normal, and it would make her feel even better when she got back and realised that even though she was anxious, she did it anyway. And she did.

In DS' year, there were many children who just didn't go on the residential because, according to their parents, "they were too anxious". Now, I'm not saying that every child's anxiety about this is the same or that it's not true that some might be experiencing much higher levels of anxiety, but I do think that parents aren't always good at telling the difference.

Huge sen backlogs.
Very little mental health support.
Huge pressure on children to be in school when ill.
Family Court forcing children to spend time with physically abusive men.
Overstretched stressed out teachers meaning a poorer learning environment.
Parents struggling with a COL crisis.
Children aren't less resilient, they are just expected to get on with it with very little support.

It's quite worrying re resilience not being taught or learned by doing.

As many others here, I learned resilience by doing things including travelling widely when younger. Yes, sometimes there might have been things go wrong but coping and troubleshooting is all part and parcel of that. My NDN/friend has an on the spectrum DS who now lives away from home but has built resilience by using public transport widely.

This generation learned what the vast majority of us didn’t learn until we were 30+, that were living our lives slogging away to make another person rich for next to no return in our personal lives. Doesn’t matter how hard you work the chances of escaping financial insecurity are minuscule so what’s the point in continuing to live in a society that doesn’t value us.

I’m afraid that the “demand for safe and inclusive workplaces” has become part of the problem. Employers should employ working practices that comply with Employment Law, but some employees believe that their employer should bend over backwards at every unreasonable demand instead of just accepting that some things are outside of their control and thats the way employment works. What precisely do you mean by ‘inclusive’? Not everyone is able to do every job, and a job description is not, by its very nature, inclusive. neither is holding interviews or requiring specific qualifications for some jobs. Life itself isnt inclusive. The word is overused and exploited.

I refuse to watch anything that has the word ‘woke’ in it for fear of an hour long right wing rant.

Lots of solid suggestions earlier in this thread.

How about

• imminent climate collapse, meaning many young people expect to see breakdown of society in their lifetime

Or

• mass global experiment of parents happily giving very young children a glowing box to carry round with them at all times, with which they can access all the world's problems, be sent pictures of penises by adults, be harassed by their peers and adults to send pictures of their intimate parts, and have their attention spans fried by games, websites and apps, deliberately designed to make them addicted and grind down their self esteem?

(I'm a secondary school teacher)

I agree wholeheartedly with most of what you say, but the key is social media and people believing they can ‘have it all’. All the other things you list are not new, and people have been living in those circumstances for millennia.

Do people make the link between lack of resilience and almost total lack of free play for children - on the street, in school, anywhere - children are being deprived of the chance to grow up playing for hours with peers - resolving conflicts, making friends, having small disagreements and making up again

this is all because of a loss of play!

What a pathetic response. If you think like that, whats the point of this thread? It has eminent psychologists discussing whats gone wrong in their field of practice, alongside historical background information. Its far from ‘right wing’.

I think social media has had such a damaging effect and we can’t underestimate it. It seems as though it’s made people less resilient, more narcissistic, shallow, people are actually interested in shallow rubbish like the Kardashian family’s exploits and attention seeking. But maybe I just really hate it!

You know we’re not talking genuine needs…we’re talking the ‘bad wee bastard’ plans. All the ‘challenging’ behaviour that gets labelled as some problem when really, most of the time, the problem is incompetent parents. Plans for genuine needs are nothing new. My best friend was in the special education department as she has learning problems - she now lives in assisted living. Now, we are labelling bad behaviour as special needs, so there is less money for children who are like she was and genuinely need support through school, and yes, through life. It’s a disgrace.

I'm interested in why, as a society, we've decided to wrap children up in cotton wool so much because how do they learn if they aren't experiencing tough situations? The children whose parents let them skip the school play, or not attend their sports activity. The children who are never allowed to use a knife or the stove or the kettle. The children who aren't allowed to go to the park or to the corner shop without their parents until they're much older. The children who aren't allowed to take public transport or ride their bikes.

We do children no favours by not letting them have the opportunity to learn for themselves or to do things that are slightly scary.

This is just one facet, but I think it's hugely important.

There are so many factors at play.

Social media.
Poor quality of teaching.
Disrespect for the police force.
Mobile phones.
Covid.
Labelling everything and everyone.
Making excuses for behaviour because of the above.
Cost of living.
Poverty.

Not giving back to society.
Over exposure due to the Internet.
Decline in basic ability to read and comprehend and memory - due to google.
Increased anxiety.
Nuclear families.
Lack of sunshine and outdoors.

This comment will probably get deleted, but I see it as natural selection.

We have the kids wanting it, and a society that panders to it. The old fogey in me remembers the time were we were thrown out in the mud to play and bullied at school-which im grateful for, whereas today's kids are stuck indoors with anxiety, on their iPhones craving 'likes', raised with no red pens on their homework and people 'agreeing' that they are a cat because they have a right to believe what they want.

The world is tough. The rainforest is practically gone, the oceans are practically empty and polluted, oil and gas are almost exhausted, and countries like Russia are seeing the weakness in the west... the world is going to get a LOT tougher.

Something is gonna give...

Personally I think it's 5 things:

1. Fear whipped up by the media that your child is in danger so parents are overprotective and don't give enough freedom to their kids
2. Pressure on parents to get your child to do well. Leading to solving their mistakes for them, dealing with issues on their behalf, over scheduling them, making decisions for them
3. Stupidly strict school system with a ridiculous teach to the test curriculum, underfunded schools and stressed teachers
4. Parents / family less present both physically and metaphorically, often living away from wider family / community networks so not having same support systems and both parents working or distracted (by tech or life stress)
5. Technology - taking away barriers that previously led to creativity, resourcefulness and problem solving (eg boredom) and physical presence and replacing it with meaningless dopamine hits, nasty brain-rewiring content, unhealthy comparison, bullying etc and no physical interactions

At my school we are having to hire portacabins and extra invigilators this summer for those students who require “a small room” environment and “stop the clock” rest breaks.

Are you sure it isn't largely because mental health and wellbeing is being considered by educational establishments much more now? There's no doubt there is an increase in teen anxiety now but they are navigating an increasingly horrendous world since the invention of social media.

It’s from the organisation started by Peter Whittle and it’s NOT right wing? I think you may not have quite the grasp of politics that you think you do.