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?

Also a HE lecturer and you wouldn’t believe how much we’ve had to bend to students in recent years. Some students cannot be asked questions during seminars, they have an actual signed agreement put in place to state that it stresses them out too much so I’m not allowed to ever put them on the spot. We have had to lower the dissertation word count because the standard 10k was stressing them out. Regularly have late submissions because they can’t get their shit together enough to do it on time.

I worry about them coping in the real world when uni is over.

My daughter has this.

She can be selective mute due to ADHD/ASD. And in fact the insistence on questions caused her to crash out of A levels even though she was really bright. School would not get this.

Shes now in FE college. Theyre fine with it.

This has been raised in previous threads, but, SEN aside, why aren't some parents teaching their DC life skills before they leave for university?

The number of students with brilliant A levels who don't realise that you have to remove the packaging on a pizza before it gets put into the oven (one of DD's flatmates in halls did this) and not knowing the basics of cooking, sleeping in the same bedding all term because they don't know how to change a bed, taking washing home every weekend because they don't know how to operate a washing machine etc, etc.

I agree that gap years are an excellent idea for many students. DD had a gap year where she worked and volunteered, then went interrailing with her BF for three weeks. She didn't have a gap ya

Her work experience during her gap year helped her land her first job staright after graduating, and the soft skills from this job have been instrumental in her gaining a place at another university for a post grad degree.

Good grief. If a lecturer can’t ask questions, how will they cope in a workplace?

Great understanding of selective mutism there👍🏻

Whilst of course some do genuinely have this, several within one cohort is ridiculously unlikely though. Reality is some people will opt out of anything that is remotely outside of their comfort zone if they have the chance which further exasperates it. Of course for those who genuinely have something such as SM it's different, and those utilising concessions when they don't need them invariably makes things worse for those who genuinely need them.

I understand it alright - like any anxiety disorder, if it cannot be overcome it will affect employment as much as it is affects education.

@Sartre

Some students cannot be asked questions during seminars, they have an actual signed agreement put in place to state that it stresses them out too much so I’m not allowed to ever put them on the spot.

That's actually a genuine problem that I used to suffer from and I'm glad that educational establishments are taking it seriously. I used to be mute when asked a direct question like that and ended up either not saying anything at all and just hoping the teacher/lecturer would move on, or say I didn't know, just to get them off my back. Even when I did know the answer, I couldn't actually articulate it to speak the answer.

If the teacher/lecturer was actually speaking to me in normal conversation, and casually asked, probably the same question, I'd have no problem in telling them the answer.

It's the environment, i.e. large classroom/lecture theatre, that made me a gibbering wreck. And no, being forced to answer or constantly being asked WOULDN'T cure me, like some people seem to think!

Why? Just because she doesn’t like to talk in front of other people.

She got 10 GCSE grades 7, 8 and 9. Those teachers helped her. The A level teacher that drove her ot didn’t. Who’s in the wrong here? It didn’t affect her when accommodations were in place. So no employment or education because she has a disability? A diagnosed disability. Is that what you’re saying? Would someone with a broke leg or vision problems be spoken about like this? They have to ‘get over it?’

Shes on an FE Access to Higher Ed course. Theyve been amazing. She’s flying through it.

It didn't affect my education - I'm a chartered accountant. Nor did affect my employment. I've successfully managed to avoid any job that required public speaking in large groups - most don't require it. For the last 20 years, I've run my own accountancy practice. Neither my employments nor business have required me to answer random questions in the middle of large groups of people!

Thank you. And pushing is the worse thing for this type of condition. It makes it worse.

Young adults often outgrow this. But let’s not make any accommodations for invisible disabilities.

MN eh? As disablist as ever.

Very few workplaces are anything like a lecture theatre!!

Where did I say any of this? Simply that if treatment is not successful anxiety disorders can be life limiting.

Pff! Not much to be sacred of in the 70’s and 80’s was there? 😂

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow I remember reading the headlines of an afternoon paper in the early 1980s about a belligerent stand off between Russia & China along the Chinese border. My friends and I started to wonder how we would find out where the nearest bomb shelter was, and how we could get there.

It was serious. Anyone living near the border between East & West Germany (I had friends & family there) got used to regular alert sirens.

And so on ...

I am a teacher of secondary English, in my last GCSE class over half the kids were on either anti depressants or anti anxiety medication, this was discussed with me by the students and their parents and the general reasoning was that they were ‘stressed’ ‘anxious’ and ‘overwhelmed’ this was an outstanding school in an affluent area. I imagine the reason is a combination of social media, being infantilised by their parents, long hours in nurseries from a very early age and a general feeling which is pervasive in UK culture that children are a nuisance to be gotten out of the way with bedtimes or screens so that parents can have their downtime, their wine, their conversations (I am British) so unlike other cultures where children are included

I was also a teacher in an outstanding school in an affluent area

ONE os the issues is SM.

But the other one is exam pressure. And my students used to tell me that this was hell and worse than SM

Fear of public speaking in particular is not the same as selective mutism which is not limited to that and can apply to a wide range of social situations particularly involving strangers or unfamiliar situations.

The trouble is that on MN it's almost impossible to have a full and frank conversation about it without someone taking enormous offence because of their own child. The conversation then becomes dominated by their offence.

Quite clearly there is a massive problem going on, and it's much worse than it used to be.

Maybe it was too much sleep training when they were babies?

Yes, I know, I was just explaining MY position. I fail to see how being put on the spot in a lesson/lecture is in any way helpful for my education (nor that of my peers). It's entirely right that a student can "opt out" of such situations and is highly unlikely to have any long lasting effect on their education nor employment. Constantly putting a reluctant student on the spot like that WON'T "cure" them!!

Personally I feel that a lot of the problems faced in schools, colleges and universities these days arises from the "one size fits all" comprehensive system.

We used to have different options for education between primary and Unis. We had grammars, we had secondary moderns, we had technical colleges, we had colleges of FE, we had polytechnics, etc. Students had more choices as to "how" and "what" and "where" they studied.

(Yes, it wasn't perfect, especially the 11+ to decide between grammar or other, but rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water, we should have found better ways of segregating and more options for transfer between types!).

Now basically everyone is shoe-horned into Comps and mostly taught the same subjects by the same methods. They're basically forced into an "academic" education even if they're not academic. It's no wonder that so many students have problems!

long hours in nurseries from a very early age
Some mothers return to work, some don't. Some have a choice, some don't. Anecdotally, the dc who suffer from anxiety among the people I know have SAHM. Ime from the school run, it was often the mums who don't work outside of the home who did the whole helicoptering things and got drawn into gossip and drama. The dc who went to excellent nurseries and preschools were often socially mature and did extremely well academically in infant school and those going to after school club were generally socially confident and had good friendships at school. I am not judging, as I am a SAHM now, when my teens are in secondary school. Arguably they need you the most when they are teenagers.

The discussion was SM so your ‘position’ isn’t really relevant.

As it goes not everyone can find a job that doesn’t require speaking in public or they may want to do one and feel deterred.

If you’d wanted to work for one for Deloitte for eg and get to board level - your fear may have held you back.

No-one has suggested putting a student on the spot as a cure but it is possible to overcome it.

I agree with this. And I also think some schools are simply too big. The sheer size of schools can be very overwhelming for children. And it leads to an impersonality - and a feeling of being unseen and unsupported. And the bigger the school the harder it is to keep on top of behavioural issues and bullying.

You could see it as 'one size fits all', but you could also see it as giving equal opportunities. Do you really want to cut 11 year-olds off from choices by segregating them into different schools? Given the size of a lot of schools, it shouldn’t be impossible to offer academic and vocational courses, or to have a more tiered system. If schools were properly staffed and funded... I work in a grammar school, but ideally there should be no need for them.