Are We Raising Weak Kids?

 Are We Raising Weak Kids?

I’ve gotten this question a lot recently in some form or another. And the short answer is, YES.

But the long answer is NO, all things considered. Let’s explain.

Past generations had it rough. They had more wars, more abuse, more crime, less social welfare, more disease, more economic insecurity, more lead in their pipes, and they actually had to make phone calls instead of texting. The further in the past you go, the more “Do or Die” it was. And the result?

More people died. And they died a lot earlier.

And those that didn’t learned to survive hard things. It’s just that the way they survived looks different from how kids do today. And, if we really look closely, we’d find that we don’t want kids to adapt the same way their parents did.

Let’s look at “Anxiety” and “Depression,” which most kids identify with these days. Anxiety is the activation of the Fight/Flight response (which all mammals have) and Depression is the activation of the Freeze response (for when the Fight/Flight response is overwhelmed or shut down). 

Everyone is going to have stressors and get their Fight/Flight or Freeze activated. The healthiest and most resilient people encounter stressors, allow their natural emotional responses to cycle through (they don’t avoid emotions), and their brains learn to become less afraid of those stressors. These people occasionally cry, get mad, take mental health days, and are generally happy and social. They might not be at the top of their class, or hyperproductive, but they feel ok about that.

I find that environments where emotions can play out naturally are the exception, rather than the norm these days. It is more common for a child to live in an environment where their anxious or depressive feelings are viewed as problematic, rather than natural, which makes it harder for emotions to play out and resilience to follow (because having anxiety makes YOU problematic, causing you MORE anxiety, which triggers the depressive response).

This is a tough cycle, producing a lot of kids on psychotropic meds, or addicted to phones or games, that drop out of college, and dwell in their parents’ basements.

Speaking of parents…

What happened to THEM if their Fight/Flight or Freeze responses ever got activated? You can imagine how these were seen in the 60s, 70s, or 80s. They weren’t just problematic, but character flaws. Anxiety and depression were heavily shamed, and often literally whipped out of kids (or rather, whipped deep INTO suppression). There was no expressing anger to parents (talking back), no taking mental health days, no crying, and certainly no being a “sissy” or “chicken.” Not if you wanted to feel loved by your parents, that is.

So you had a few choices. You could drop out of school, start drinking or smoking, leave home early, or rebel in other ways that allowed your natural emotions to happen (all these behaviors were much more prevalent in previous decades). Or, you could sit down, shut up, DISSOCIATE from your natural emotional responses, and develop a somatic disorder like a good kid (fibromyalgia, migraines, arthritis, gut issues, over-eating, etc.).

In my conservative religious neighborhood, you’re more likely to find the latter. Good, God-fearing people who follow the rules, but also have a high incidence of chronic body conditions and, the worst dissociative side-effect of all…immense difficulty feeling empathy for their children’s emotions. And this makes sense! The older generations have such little familiarity with overt mental illness because they had to adapt differently if they wanted to get by. I wouldn’t expect someone who was taught to shame themselves for feeling anxious/depressed to suddenly feel compassion for someone else feeling that way. This doesn’t mean they don't try to act kindly about it, but they are more likely to feel judgmental when they can’t relate.

But one of the hardest things about the middle-aged population I work with is the double bind they feel with their kids. On one hand, they don’t want their kids to have to endure the same hardships they had growing up, so they ENABLE them by bailing them out of stressful situations and continuing to parent them into adulthood. On the other hand, they feel resentful towards their kids for not picking themselves up by the bootstraps, and convey that resentment through passive-aggression. Again, this makes sense if you don’t know how to address conflicting feelings (or admit that they exist).

Unfortunately, this combo puts kids in a double bind. They feel bad about taking the handouts, but they don’t know what else to do because they never have to adapt on their own. Their shame of weakness increases, but doesn’t drive them to get stronger. They aren’t getting harshly punished into dissociation (which could make them more productive and relieves parents’ anxiety), but they also don’t have the resources to recover properly and build resilience.

So what do we do about these judgmental parents and their hapless children?

First, we need to recognize that no one is the bad guy here. We’re all doing the best with what we’ve got. 

Next, we need to recognize that people need certain things, one of which is the environment to recover from emotional stress. Children need to be allowed to be depressed and anxious, and given space to digest their emotions, but WITHOUT unnatural numbing mechanisms. An example would be letting your kid stay home from school if they’re not doing well emotionally, making time to listen to and validate them without fixing, AND not giving them access to screens (actually letting them work through their pain).

For parents to keep their cool while they do this, they ALSO often need to heal. This is usually harder because it requires unlocking emotions that have been hidden away since THEY were kids! They also need space to digest those without judgment from others, and also without unnatural numbing mechanisms (cut down your screen time!).

Is it really too much to ask to produce humans that are healthy, productive, AND empathetic? Not gonna lie, it’s a tall order. And it requires that we change how we view health–from a measure of productivity/accomplishment to a measure of attunement with our bodies and our fellow humans.

See podcast episode “What’s the Matter with Kids Today?”

See blog post “They HAVE to Go to School Right?”

Video: Building Emotional Resilience, https://youtu.be/fwFvL0nJUHo