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.

@julieca

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.

Thanks, your opinion/view makes a lot more sense now.

@julieca

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.

So what about someone who cuts themselves a couple of times a week but otherwise gets on with life as normal. Do you think they're mentally healthy?

Or what about someone with bulimia who gets on with life as usual but deliberately makes themselves sick three or four times a week. Are they mentally healthy?

Personally, I wouldn't set the bar so high that people have to be severely disabled by their mental health condition before we can define it as a mental health problem.

I've skimmed the thread.

One thing that I missed seeing mentioned, is the importance of exams these days. In the 'old days' (whenever they were) less academic kids could leave at 16 and still get jobs in factories, or shops, or as apprentices etc.

These days they have to stay in education until 18, and a lot of things require GCSE passes in maths & English before you even start.

The government are even suggesting you shouldn't be able to pass the new vocational T levels without those GCSEs. (Can you imagine not being allowed to pass A level History because you haven't passed GCSE Maths?)

It puts a lot of pressure onto teens, much more so than when I did O levels in the early 80s.

Also, the GCSEs have gone back to being terminal exams, something that people who did GCSEs prior to 2010 won't recognise at all.

@AlexaShutUp someone who cuts themselves a few times a week is unhappy, but no I would not say this automatically mean they have mental health problems. It may for example be a way to cope with a very stressful time, and the behaviour will end as life gets easier.
Someone making themselves sick 3 or 4 times a week is tipping over into mental health problems, but there issues may be relatively minor, or it may be the beginning of more serious mental health problems.

I know you don't agree with me. I have seen serious mental health problems up close. I think a lot of what gets labelled mental health problems is more akin to someone having a headache, or slight ezema. Some things we just have to get on with. So with slight eczema you put a cream on, but you don't need a Dr or ongoing medical support. Being upset or sad for a defined time in response to actual bad things happening may require loved ones to support you, or to make life easier for yourself, but it does not require professional mental health support.

By the way there is research from wars and even the holocaust, that shows getting too much help rather than getting on with things, can make any upset or being down worse and prolong it.

I too have seen serious mental health problems up close, including several which have ended in the death of the person concerned. Of course, those cases are a world away from people who are just feeling a bit blue. However, it isn't simply a case of people having a major mental health crisis or being perfectly mentally healthy - there is a whole spectrum in between. And just as we don't tell someone who has a non-life threatening physical health problem that they're perfectly healthy because they haven't got terminal cancer, I don't think we should try to argue that people with non-life threatening mental health issues are perfectly healthy either.

I really don't think it's healthy to cut yourself in order to cope with a difficult time and I would worry about normalising that kind of behaviour. I don't think that's the response of a healthy person at all, and I would encourage someone in that situation to seek professional help. You don't think it's an issue. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

@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.

Ooh, wonder why that could be?

Did you have to live with a pandemic, CEV parent requiring family isolation, no physical social contact with anyone of your own age - or any age in fact - for 16 months until that parent was vaccinated and piss-poor online A level provision?

I doubt it. Our youngest did. Nonetheless achieved UCAS points he needed and now through choice living independently at university at 18 in spite of the negative impact of those conditions on his intellectual, social and emotional development. We’re an hour away, could comfortably have stayed at home but made the positive choice not to.

Our eldest, 25 at the time, had a first baby mid-lockdown, who is only just now beginning to encounter other children. She and her husband have done a fantastic job in circumstances which, again, I don’t suppose you encountered at their life stage.

Has Covid-19 and its impact on young people somehow completely passed you by?

I also wonder how much time you had to spend worrying about what sort of world would be left for you when you were a teen?

@MrsSkylerWhite a lot of my generation of young people thought there would be a nuclear war and we may die. We were scared silly by the propaganda around it.

Yep, me too, julieca
Did anyone call you a snowflake as a result? Doubt it.

[quote julieca]@AlexaShutUp someone who cuts themselves a few times a week is unhappy, but no I would not say this automatically mean they have mental health problems. It may for example be a way to cope with a very stressful time, and the behaviour will end as life gets easier.
Someone making themselves sick 3 or 4 times a week is tipping over into mental health problems, but there issues may be relatively minor, or it may be the beginning of more serious mental health problems.

I know you don't agree with me. I have seen serious mental health problems up close. I think a lot of what gets labelled mental health problems is more akin to someone having a headache, or slight ezema. Some things we just have to get on with. So with slight eczema you put a cream on, but you don't need a Dr or ongoing medical support. Being upset or sad for a defined time in response to actual bad things happening may require loved ones to support you, or to make life easier for yourself, but it does not require professional mental health support.

By the way there is research from wars and even the holocaust, that shows getting too much help rather than getting on with things, can make any upset or being down worse and prolong it.[/quote]
There is also research that shows that ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) not only have a long lasting effect on the person, but they also can cause physical illnesses. It's not just about "getting on with it".

To be honest, I find some of the things you consider normal/acceptable quite worrying. It also explains a lot why you say you haven't encountered anyone with issues.

I didn't say I hadn't encountered anyone with issues. I was close to someone who killed themselves, and have known someone with szichophrenia and someone else with bipolar. Also, a friends sister was sectioned for a month as was a friend of DPs. As I said I have seen serious mental health problems up close.
The majority of the population have one ACE. The risk is with multiple ACEs.

I don’t think snowflakery is a new thing, OP.
When DD went to uni, 14 years ago, she had to give loads of her fellow students tutorials on how to use a washing machine, wire a plug, and cook basic meals!

She was shocked that they had been so mollycoddled by their parents that they lacked the most basic life skills.

@Babdoc

I don’t think snowflakery is a new thing, OP. When DD went to uni, 14 years ago, she had to give loads of her fellow students tutorials on how to use a washing machine, wire a plug, and cook basic meals! She was shocked that they had been so mollycoddled by their parents that they lacked the most basic life skills.

Is wiring a plug even a life skill these days? I know I've never had to do it.

@MrsSkylerWhite I grew up in Northern Ireland in the Troubles. Classmates families ha 24h police guard at their house because their father was in the judiciary, others had lost family members in the semiskilled bombings and one routinely checked under their car for bombs as their father was a journalist. We were sent home from school because of bombscares, and actual bombs. And yet most of us coped.

The mental health issues predate the pandemic.

Semiskilled should be Eniskillen

I work in a primary school, most of my time is spent dealing with arguments on the playground, it’s relentless. The children go home, tell their parents their version of events and then the parents email into school. I then spend my time micro managing them on the playground to prevent this from happening again. And repeat. It takes up so much time & energy. So much so that I’ve just handed my notice in 😂. The best thing we can do for children is to teach them to be resilient.

Time will be the judge for today's teens

They may well be much more resilient longer term having gone through covid.

Or maybe they will swing the other way and have a whole heap of issues.

We can't judge our kids by what we did as kids though as times have changed. Getting a part time job under 16 now is hard. Many employers won't take you and how many of us are lucky enough to have a pub so kids can help Not many

Also the pressure on kids that age to revise is massive compared to my day. I was never encouraged by my school to revise. I knew that I could go to college or find a job easy enough without qualifications so the pressure just wasn't there. House prices were affordable on one wage.

I think I had it a lot easier than my kids ever will. I'm 50

The responses here cannot be based on reality because research shows kids are less resilient these days, hence why resilience is now a thing taught at schools.

So if the majority on here think there is no problem then who does the findings of these research refer to? Only kids whose mums are not signed up to mumsnet?

@whenwillthemadnessend

Time will be the judge for today's teens

They may well be much more resilient longer term having gone through covid.

Or maybe they will swing the other way and have a whole heap of issues.

We can't judge our kids by what we did as kids though as times have changed. Getting a part time job under 16 now is hard. Many employers won't take you and how many of us are lucky enough to have a pub so kids can help Not many

Also the pressure on kids that age to revise is massive compared to my day. I was never encouraged by my school to revise. I knew that I could go to college or find a job easy enough without qualifications so the pressure just wasn't there. House prices were affordable on one wage.

I think I had it a lot easier than my kids ever will. I'm 50

The pressure on kids today is driven by competitive parents.

My mum taught me how to correctly use paragraphs and punctuation...

No, I think Gen Z are a lot better than Gen X or Y and will have to be, because they do have and will have a lot to get to grips with.

If the internet had been available then, you would have seen acres of moaning about Gen X kids and their parents.

@TCMcK

I work in a primary school, most of my time is spent dealing with arguments on the playground, it’s relentless. The children go home, tell their parents their version of events and then the parents email into school. I then spend my time micro managing them on the playground to prevent this from happening again. And repeat. It takes up so much time & energy. So much so that I’ve just handed my notice in 😂. The best thing we can do for children is to teach them to be resilient.

I think this is schools' and government's fault by encouraging parents to get involved in every little thing about their children's education, by things like giving a shed load of homework which parents have to help with, so effectively it's homework for parents, and so much emphasis on reading that it put my DDs off reading for pleasure at all, in spite of my reading to and with them since they were babies. Plus headteachers telling you how to parent your child in school newsletters. Of course then parents will question more what is happening in school - the line between school and home has become blurred. So being a parent of a child in primary school is like another full time job in a way it never used to be.

As has been said, today’s teens have different pressures and a lot to cope with. I think that for some reason we like to look at ‘the past’ through rose tinted specs, believing that we are tougher than the generations that followed us. I grew up in the 70s and don’t remember people/kids generally being more resilient than they are now.

@Why2why

The responses here cannot be based on reality because research shows kids are less resilient these days, hence why resilience is now a thing taught at schools.

So if the majority on here think there is no problem then who does the findings of these research refer to? Only kids whose mums are not signed up to mumsnet?

I think it's a load of bollocks, yes. How on earth do you measure resilience? It's not something that can be quantified. Were previous generations more resillient because men came home from the war traumatised and beat up their wives and children and families stayed together and nobody talked about it? Each generation has their own shit to deal with. Resillience is a buzz word for self-aggrandising psychologists and lazy journalists.

We are being taught to rely on government, adults and children alike.

If resilience is being taught, then jolly good.

Some of the responses on this thread are quite eye opening.
Expecting to be looked after by government and others in life, is asking for a whole heap of trouble.