Are we bringing up a nation of snowflakes??

[shellstarbarley]

Are this generation of kids going to be a nation of snowflakes? I am bringing my children up the way my mum brought me up and I would say I am quite a strong person with minimal issues. I work in a primary school and every little graze or bump has to be accounted for children fall over and cry and scream until somebody comes, very few kids seem to just get up and dust themselves off and carry on. My kids rarely have a day off school but their friends seem to be off for any little thing and everyone seems to be dying when they have a cold or a sprained wrist etc. Parents won't let their children walk to school or even catch a bus so they are reliant at parents at all times. When we were 13 all our pocket money was stopped and she we had to find a part time job I did a paperround, babysitting and washed up in a local pub my brother mucked out at a stables and my other brother helped on our cousins farm. I know now it is much harder to get jobs like it was then but teens parents seem to do so much for them that they can't do much for themselves anymore. I loved being busy and still do and loved the responsibility in my part time jobs aand I remember my dad saying to me when I was out of work in my early 20's and claiming benefits that the one thing I cettainly wasn't was lazy but I would always be out doing something constructive whilst looking for work as they had instilled this strong ethic in me. We got buses and walked everywhere and we never lied to our parents we always told them where we were or used a landline at a friends house or phone box if our plans changed. Maybe looking back as my mum worked full time it was a bit of a parenting cop out. I don't know. BUT I am sure this made us strong adults. I don't give up everytime I get a cold or period pain dose up and carry on like wise I don't miss work. I also remember phoning and booking my own hair and dental and dr appts and even going to doc appts on my own at 15. I am trying really hard to bring my kids up this way but is so hard because their friends get lifts everywhere , their parents give them an endless supply of money and shower them with sympathy every time they have a sniffle or a grazed knee. I want my kids to be able to survive in the adult world because actually it is quite a harsh place and you have to be strong and determined to fight against the problems you may come up against and I think my parents did me a massive favour as I feel able to cope with adult life and conquer the problems because I learnt to build up strategies when I was growing up and not be 100% reliant on my parents for everything.

[quote DazzlePaintedBattlePants]@AccidentallyOnPurpose But it appears that far more children from this generation are sinking, compared to previous generations. It was incredibly unusual for there to be serious mental health problems in my peer group growing up. Yes, no doubt some were swept under the carpet or not talked about, but the default was you trundled along okay.

Educators and parents are routinely saying that teenagers and young adults are far more stressed and unhappy than ever. And yet they are getting and expecting unprecedented levels of support, so something is not stacking up.[/quote]
I remember being astonished at university by the sheer number of people with eating disorders, depression, self harm issues etc. I had been blissfully unaware of all that at secondary school but it seemed ubiquitous at university. This was 30 years ago.

And my mum failed her degree nearly sixty years ago thanks to mental health problems. They just didn't talk about that sort of thing in those days.

Maybe things are worse now, I'm not sure. However, I do think part of it is to do with the fact that people are more willing to talk about stuff now.

Do you think this is the case for top universities in the UK? Or does it mainly affect lower ranking universities?

Definitely observable at the top ones too. We aren't really able to discipline them if they don't do the work, sadly. But it used to be up until recently, you'd have a certain number of students who were lazy and didn't do enough work and then put on a desperate sprint before exams - they at least had the grace to own it though, and didn't try to pretend otherwise! Now we seem to have a lot of students who don't do the work but also are surprised when they don't do as well as they'd like.

The top ones are as good as ever - some are astonishingly good. But I'd say probably the average band are significantly less hard-working than ten or fifteen years ago, and need a lot more spoon-feeding. They also are extremely wedded to received or popular ideas and find it exceptionally hard to change their minds or evaluate evidence for themselves. It's very much "this is the right view and I won't deviate from it", even if you spend hours discussing sources and texts which complicate their picture.

As an example, our students recently lobbied to have new assessments introduced, so that their marks are spread across weighted coursework, on the grounds that this is supposed to be better for female, state school and minority students. That's the received wisdom, right - that women do better in coursework? It's been a platitude throughout secondary education for decades.

Except - it's not true. We had extremely good data analysis done on our examinations, dating back decades, showing that far from benefiting underprivileged students and women, weighted coursework actually discriminated against them and allowed independent-school educated men to increase their achievement gap. No amount of explaining this made a difference. That's what the student union wanted, and that's what they lobbied for, despite all the data and evidence.

I also agree with @beastlyslumber about the general level of knowledge, too. Time was when you didn't know something your lecturers were talking about, you'd at least try to look alert, and then you'd take notes, go off and do some frantic research and improve your knowledge. Not so much today...

But, as I said, in the intervening period between me being a student and now, there was a generation around 2005-2015 that was actually much more hardworking and professionalised. Better than my generation by a long way I think. I can't help but wonder why that was. They would have been at primary school in the early and mid 2000s, and secondary school in the mid-late 2000s, so I don't know if it was the big influx of money under the Labour governments, or the National Academy For Gifted and Talented Youth which existed in the 2000s for state school students, or the culture in schools at the time, or what it was...it would be interested to hear what teachers think.

Exactly! I remember going to university in the 80s and lived in the same student house as someone with anorexia (she was hospitalised) and in my year two students had full blown breakdowns during exam season, and one had some sort of personality disorder. All the mental health problems were there, but people didn't know about them, so were less aware they existed.

[quote DazzlePaintedBattlePants]@AccidentallyOnPurpose But it appears that far more children from this generation are sinking, compared to previous generations. It was incredibly unusual for there to be serious mental health problems in my peer group growing up. Yes, no doubt some were swept under the carpet or not talked about, but the default was you trundled along okay.

Educators and parents are routinely saying that teenagers and young adults are far more stressed and unhappy than ever. And yet they are getting and expecting unprecedented levels of support, so something is not stacking up.[/quote]
In my teens my classmates described me as the happiest girl they knew. They didn't see the neglect,the abuse, the beatings,the sexual abuse, the self harm ,the many unhealthy coping mechanisms.

Someone in my peer group hanged herself. The adults around us scrambled to find the most ridiculous explanations. First of all she was from a good home,they had means, she had nothing to be unhappy about, can't have killed herself. Then there was the in depth analysis of her position and how she was found, she can't have killed herself. In their absurdity they decided it was curse/witchcraft thing and tried to rationalise to us in many ways, even going as far as setting up "protection " in their houses and us getting "advice" of what to look out for so we can be safe.

The truth is that as a kid/teen yourself you have no idea what your peer group dealt with and how. Would you have known the signs? For anxiety,depression,self harm(in it's many forms)? Would you have seen alcoholism, sex, drugs and other dangerous/risky behaviours as unhealthy coping mechanisms and cries for help ? Would you have spotted changes in behaviour no matter how subtle? Would you have questioned why some is gone ?

Sorry that post below was in agreement with Alexshutup!

@Antiqueanniesmagiclanternshow

Part of the reason we have so many anxious teens is because we pathologise a lot of normal feelings. Feeling sad and worried sometimes is normal. Not knowing which way is up is normal as a teenager. We have lost sight of that i t hink.

Completely agree with this, sometimes feeling worried and nervous (eg before an exam or an interview) is a perfectly reasonable response, but now it gets labelled as anxiety and is often used as an excuse not to push yourself and do something out of your comfort zone

I have GAD myself so I totally get mental ill health but I find this quite irritating

My ds is 16 in education and has a part time job , he has expensive taste in clothes so needs part time job as we can't probide everything , he has had a jib since 15 and recently got his new one as many don't take until 16
A few will do 14/15 but none 13 anymore and 16 seems more the age
Mine always got up and brushed themselves down when little , so much so that when my ds fell and split his head open , he got up and it was a friend who told teacher.
I do think some parents overindulge kids and jump to their every whiim , but prob always been parents like this
I think kids have to grow up to quick now though and freedom of being a kid is not there for many kids so its tougher for them in certain ways
Yes years ago people had less , but with that came more freedom

I went to university 30 years ago and didn't know people with mental health issues. There was one girl in our halls with anorexia.

The truth is that as a kid/teen yourself you have no idea what your peer group dealt with and how.

So true. I didn't give much thought to teen mental health issues when I was at school. However, one of my classmates poured petrol on herself and set herself alight shortly after we left school. Who knows what she had been going through. It makes me shudder to think how little support would have been available to her then, and how easily her problems might have been dismissed if she ever plucked up the courage to ask for help.

@julieca

I went to university 30 years ago and didn't know people with mental health issues. There was one girl in our halls with anorexia.

So actually, you did know at least one?

Chances are, you knew many more with mental health problems, you just didn't realise it.

@julieca

I went to university 30 years ago and didn't know people with mental health issues. There was one girl in our halls with anorexia.

So no one drinking to extremes? Engaging in risky behaviours, sexual or otherwise? No one dropping off never to be heard of again? No one with wild mood swings or changes in behaviour? No one addicted to drugs? No one that isolated themselves from everyone else ? No one constantly late or struggling with the work for no apparent reason? No one wearing long sleeves/trousers even when really hot? No one that twitched or flinched at physical contact and avoided it? No one ending up with "the wrong crowd"?

No "losers" , no "failures", no "weirdos"? No one marginalised ?

@AlexaShutUp I was very sociable and everyone was just getting on with life. Of course, people were sad or worried at times, but back then we saw that as a normal part of life. So yes a friend whose parents had both died when he was a child, was sad when Christmas came about. Another friend was upset when she went to see her mum and her uncle turned up who had raped her as a child.
But this was not mental health problems. This was normal upset or sadness at life events. Life is not always easy.

I do agree with pp that it's good there's more awareness of MH issues and also ASD, ADHD, dyslexia and so on. There's way more support for young people now.

BUT I also think that young people identify with/as their MH issues and expect all sorts of unreasonable accommodations to be made for them, such as they can't come to lectures or do class work or do assignments. Okay, so maybe they're not in the best place to be at university, then... And there's an issue with young people finding themselves unable to disagree. They find it really anxiety-making. I grew up in a family where we talked about EVERYTHING and that's why I enjoyed university when I went, because everything was up for question and debate. Nowadays there is one right way to think about issues and if you ask a student a question, such as, "How could you back up that claim with evidence," they will feel attacked and undermined. Opinions are not to be debated or discussed, they are to be nodded along to. Because they feel that their opinions are attached to their identity, and their identity might be 'anxious, depressed, mentally ill' and so disagreement feels unbearable to them.

I think there are lots of contributing factors, but social media has to be one of the biggest. It's like a global dumbing-down machine, where what is valorised is not wit, intelligence, grace or eloquence, but victimhood.

I'm very glad I'm old and missed out on all this. I think we did have a better time growing up in the 70s and 80s. Young people today have it really, really rough.

[quote julieca]@AlexaShutUp I was very sociable and everyone was just getting on with life. Of course, people were sad or worried at times, but back then we saw that as a normal part of life. So yes a friend whose parents had both died when he was a child, was sad when Christmas came about. Another friend was upset when she went to see her mum and her uncle turned up who had raped her as a child.
But this was not mental health problems. This was normal upset or sadness at life events. Life is not always easy.[/quote]
Lucky you. I was surrounded by people with significant mental health difficulties. A lot of them were getting some sort of professional help, but many weren't.

Maybe it was something to do with the high pressure environment. Maybe people just told me stuff. Maybe I was just unlucky. But mental health issues were extremely common.

I don't think being a "weirdo" is a mental health problem. Yes, there was a mature student in his twenties who was "eccentric" who I really liked.
No one dropped off never to be heard of again. Yes, some drank too much in the first year and then calmed down. The only drug use I was aware of was weed. I wore long sleeves and trousers when it was really hot. Nothing to do with mental health problems, just a very poor body image. No one twitching at physical contact.
Life isn't easy.

@AlexaShutUp did you go to a top university? I always got the impression mental health difficulties were more of an issue at those.

Of course there is a difference between people being a bit sad or a bit worried and people having mental health issues. However, these issues really aren't new, they were just better hidden.

It's hard to say whether you were just lucky not to encounter people with mental health issues or whether you were simply very unaware of what was actually going on for those around you. For example, was your friend just "upset" when she encountered her childhood rapist or was she actually suffering with ptsd as a result of her childhood trauma? I guess we'll never know.

[quote julieca]@AlexaShutUp did you go to a top university? I always got the impression mental health difficulties were more of an issue at those.[/quote]
Yes

I know what PTSD is, and she had no signs of it at all. She was upset of course, that is normal. She now has children and had issues when her oldest was the same age as when she was first raped. That is quite common. But she had some counselling for it.
But an enormous amount of women are abused sexually as children. Only a small minority have PTSD.
I agree with the commenter who says normal feelings about situations are getting labelled as mental health problems. I don't think that actually helps people. It is normal to feel upset and down when something bad happens to you. It is normal to be anxious about doing new things.

@AlexaShutUp thanks I suspect that explains our different experiences. I went to a university and course with a lot of mature students in their twenties and a lot of people who came from poor backgrounds.
Lots had had really difficult experiences e.g. one lad had been homeless in London as a "rent boy". He was my boyfriend for a bit which is why I know his background.
We all just got on with life. Including being sad, upset or down at times.

I totally agree that some negative emotions are entirely normal, and I agree that some people over-pathologise those emotions. But genuine mental health problems are not uncommon and in my view, they never have been. We just didn't talk about them much previously.

I know an awful lot of people my age who self harmed as teenagers, and they didn't all go to top universities either. It just wasn't talked about.

@AlexaShutUp I knew people at school who self-harmed. I do not think self-harm is automatically a sign of a mental health problem.
Most people self-harm in some way - the food they eat, drinking too much alcohol, smoking, taking drugs, etc.

[quote julieca]@AlexaShutUp I knew people at school who self-harmed. I do not think self-harm is automatically a sign of a mental health problem.
Most people self-harm in some way - the food they eat, drinking too much alcohol, smoking, taking drugs, etc.[/quote]
OK. I guess we have different definitions of what mental health problems might mean.

For me, deliberately hurting yourself eg by cutting yourself is symptomatic of a mental health issue. I do not regard this as normal, healthy behaviour. Same with eating disorders, problem drinking, substance abuse etc.

@julieca what is your definition of mental health problems/issues?

Mental health problems are when you have problems with your mind e.g. psychosis, or emotions e.g. depression, anxiety, which mean you can't live a normal life or carry out your usual tasks, or you are at serious risk of killing yourself. AND it is not a short term reaction to a bad event e.g. bereavement.

So someone with anorexia does not tend to live a normal life. Someone self-harming by eating too much and being a few stone overweight can live a normal life. Someone spending hours a week cutting themself is not living a normal life. Someone deliberately banging into something occasionally to hurt themselves, can live a normal life.