What's happened to young people? Can parents give me insight.

[EveningSpread]

I work in Higher Education, and I'm increasingly worried about young people.

So far this year, I've encountered more students than usual who:

• say they are unable to attend classes due to anxiety
• who are afraid of being in classes
• who won't speak when spoken to by staff or other students
• who say they find getting on a bus and getting to class to overwhelming
• who find the thought of doing their work so stressful that they can't cope
• who don't come to classes due to family parties / their hamster dying / waking up late (to name the reasons I've had just this morning) and expect you to fix what they've missed - in other words, who seem totally immature and unprepared for life (a different problem to the other things above, perhaps)

Obviously we express sympathy, reassure, and explain that they need to access the help that will enable them to function - to enjoy life, succeed on their degree, and get a job afterwards. (So the wellbeing services, and their GP.) Often the reassurance really helps. But equally a lot of these students don't cope at University. I'm sure this problem is exacerbated by the fact that I work in an institution that attracts students from postcodes with multiple indices of deprivation.

Part of me hopes that mental health issues are sometimes exaggerated or even an excuse, as an increasingly large percentage of my students seem essentially afraid to leave the house -- which would be much worse than them just trying it on/being a bit lazy! It's great that we have a language to talk about mental health now, but it's hard to know how/when to tell people that (a) they are responsible for improving their own mental health so they can function in the world, and (b) experiencing some mild discomfort and difficulty, such as being nervous around new people, is normal and crucial to development.

But I'm left wondering: how are parents coping with their young people if these are the miserable lives they're living? If they're not going to classes, are scared to leave the house, and can't function?

So AIBU, or is this problem getting worse? What can parents of roughly 16-20 year olds tell me? Are we still dealing with the legacies of COVID? What's the word on the street among young people about mental health these days?

@Petitchat you don't live like that now though, right? You've adopted a smartphone and central heating just like anyone else. So what's the point?

I do find it strange how the wartime generation's attitude was about giving their kids a better life, boomer attitude always seems to be resenting future generations for having a better life.

Normal emotions are labelled as mental health issues now. So they all have 'mental health issues'. Schools constantly talk about mental health, about emotions, about their 'zones of regulation' so much so that kids feel they are not normal unless they have 'issues'.

Rather older than that, as my bad back could tell you.

And really, if you don't want to be patronised, don't write such complete fucking drivel.

And they get bags of attention for having these issues so they are reinforced all the more!

Covid lockdowns. I am an introvert who quite enjoyed having to stay at home but I still haven't quite got back to normal socially. I'm in my 50s and have years of experience of life. Teenagers don't have that anchor. Universities should be meeting them where they are and helping them. My DD was relatively unscathed and has just finished her degree but needed extensions and mitigating circumstances for most of her essays. The uni was very supportive.

This isn't really true, zones of regulation is about helping kids notice their feelings and manage them - something kids have done for all eternity, it's just codified as zones of regulation.

So if a kid always loses their shit, they notice they're going into the red zone. Maybe they used to be sent outside the classroom to calm down or told they'd have to rein it in or face consequences.

One other thing - young people are fed up. They had covid and Brexit mess things up for them, and then they see all the furore over the winter fuel payment. I wish people were as bothered about young people, instead of saying they lack resilience and are feckless and lazy and all the rest of it.

TBF there are boomers who aren't like this at all, I don't think one can generalise. The ones in my family get it.

What does this mean?

If I could add a viewpoint. We can't really say how awful life was. We got through it. But it does seem generally with so many changes, everywhere. That it's no wonder this generation is struggling in more ways than ever. For each of us there are only 24 hours in each day. We need rest and stimulation but not too much of either. We need lots of things as human but the essential business is only so many hours in one day... Many lessons. We all need to juggle but children need a balance of support and autonomy. Out of whack and problems arise

Totally agree with this.

I think the pp is trying to say that parents project their anxiety onto their kids.

Good post. Forgot about Brexshit in my list of negative things today for our young people.
Think I’ll add the dismantling of Sure Start Centre too.
Oh and climate fears.

Please ignore my post thought it was a new thread!

@VickyEadieofThigh
absolutely! I agree with everything you said. A friend helps out at a Food Bank, one regular comes with five young primary aged children. Each child except the baby has an iphone.

To all those blaming Covid - are young people in other countries also experiencing the same issues?

I read a study on school refusers, it found that giving the parents parenting lessons worked better than solely treating the child. So there may be something in it.

I’m not saying that to be horrible, my own parenting had to be constructed out of self help books because my parents were shit. But it’s always worth considering. I second guess myself all the time.

It’s also worth considering that the environment in which we place our children/young people is awful for their mental health. Secondary schools in particular are terrible today.

The risk of being certain that COVID is the cause is that there isn't an easy counter-factual and if the cause or amplifying factors are social and techological/social media and which might be somewhat addressed then it ignores those dimensions. Correlation with COVID lockdown isn't causation if it's, for example, a result of deliberate actions by social media companies.

I'm curious when the OP appears to think there is a link between deprivation and finding routine life difficult to manage. I know there's the stereotype of the private school-educated privileged who are given the means and opportunities to succeed but anecdata/IME, the deprived and 'working class' tend not to get caught up as much in the way the OP describes, rather it tends to be more the MC young people deep in social media. Happy to defer if there's decent evidence to the contrary.

@Autumnweddingguest, we must have been born at around the same time. Like you, l noticed that one of the very first comments on the thread was blaming the boomers. An easy target. My parents were more affluent than yours by the sound of it, but there was very little money to spare and holidays were often days out until we were older as it was simply unaffordable to go away. Even then, the annual holiday was a week in this country as it was for almost everyone we knew in the seventies. I had piano lessons and was in the brownies and guides, but that was it apart from Sunday School. I later learned the violin at school under the excellent peripatetic system. I was able to borrow an instrument from school at first to see if I took to it and the lessons were twenty minutes long and free. I had my own first violin a few months later and it was a joint birthday and Christmas present. My birthday is in early December and if I ever had a bigger present, it would be a joint present. My parents always had a car, but it was always several years old and not necessarily reliable. We had a black and white rented TV until l was eleven, when my parents bought their first colour set. We had a lot more freedom from an early age and by the time I was eight, I was catching the bus by myself to the next village for my piano lesson. By the age of ten, my friend and l were riding our bikes unsupervised all over the Norfolk countryside. We used to look after younger children, too. I was babysitting at thirteen. We had huge classes - thirty-five was the average. Only 10% of the population studied for a degree in the eighties when I was a student. However, I think the one thing we had that later generations have lost is certainty. Adults were adults and their word was law. Right and wrong were instilled into us and we were allowed to be proud to be British and our history. We were also more resilient because we had to be. There was very much a feeling that what didn’t kill you made you stronger. When I was ten, I had major, potentially life-saving surgery on my ear. I was in an adults’ ward for two weeks and visiting hours were strictly adhered to. My mother was not allowed to visit me at all on the day of the operation. Nobody questioned this - it was just the way it was done. Afterwards, I was left with a severe hearing loss in one ear. I was told (totally wrongly) that the perfect hearing in my other ear would make up for it. In other words - just get on with it, so get on with it l did.
I think Covid has not helped this present generation, but that is only a small part of a much larger problem. Social Media is a much larger issue and the lack of certainties. Where there is a culture of ambiguity, where you can be and do anything you want, where even five year olds are told they can be a girl or a boy if they so choose, it is no wonder that anxiety is at all-time high. Additionally, many parents are over-scheduling their children to a degree that they rarely have time at home to enjoy playing with their toys and using their imaginations. If we factor in the fact that far too many children are cosseted to a degree unknown to previous generations and not given responsibilities, as well as being babied to an extent far beyond babyhood, it should not be surprising that things are the way they are. So many parents seem to not want to be parents but their children’s friends. This is confusing to a child - they have their own friends and need their parents to be parents and teach them right from wrong.

Rubbish. I’m of the boomer generation, as are most of my friends. I font know of any who harbour this resentment, on the contrary we all want things to be better for our children and are doing all we can to help them. And those railing against the ‘bad decisions’ of the boomer generation, well most of us are powerless to majorly influence fiscal policy and I don’t think global warming was a big issue in the 50s/60s.

You don't know much history, do you? Here's a handy introduction to that particular age of anxiety and a quick world tour around the sources of strife, anxiety and threat.

There's plenty more in the popular music and songs of the era.

But why did she need extensions and mitigating circumstances? What is that teaching her? Is work going to extend deadlines?

I am sorry, it one extension or one mitigating circumstances, but having them for for most of her essays?? That is taking the XXss!

I did my nurse training at uni with 2 bloody children, a husband who worked away and not once did I ask for an extension or mitigating circustance!

Omg. Revisionist history right here.

Yes, but to a lesser extent.
The UK has been fairly unique in placing so little priority on parenting services and support for young people, and effectively self-sabotaging through failing to embed resilience in society from the bottom up.

A PP summed it up nicely, imagine being under-30 and seeing the off-hand rejection of proposals for reinstatement of a degree of FOM for young people. After Brexit. After Covid. After austerity. And then seeing the furore over means-testing winter fuel payments for Covid and being told that they should be upset about that. Is it anxiety or suppressed rage at the older generations for fucking them over at every opportunity?