Richard Hogan: Why do we have an epidemic of anxiety in our children?

Richard Hogan. Photograph Moya Nolan

Of all the many issues facing modern teenagers, anxiety seems to be the most prominent.

A 2019 study in universities found that anxiety was the most disruptive mental health issue experienced by young adults.

Why do we have an epidemic of anxiety among our student population? First of all, it’s important to define what we mean when we say ‘anxiety’.

In my experience, anxiety is a fear of an unknown future event.

Running under that is a paradigm that we do not have the skills to meet that future event.

Nothing provokes the amygdala like an unknown potential threat. Over the years I have come to understand that the past is not simply recalled, it helps us to make sense of the present while also — and more importantly — allowing us to
accurately predict the future.

That is such an important insight if you are to help your child become less anxious. If we have never experienced moments where we overcame a challenge or adversity, we will have a depleted reservoir of coping skills. 

In short, we must not solve all our children’s problems when they come to us with them.

The question I have put to parents for years is, whose needs do you meet when you rush to solve the problem for your child? 

Of course, we all want to be the hero in our child’s life, but we often deprive them of coping skills when we don’t allow them to solve their problems.

Think of it like this... which would be better for your child to think: ‘I solved that issue myself’ or ‘my parents solved that issue for me’?

Our own childhood experiences are never too far from our parenting strategies and if we felt we were not supported enough when we were young, we can often over-parent in an attempt to ameliorate that earlier childhood experience.

So, we have to listen and remain calm when our children come to us with an issue. Not rush to solve it. Asking questions is far more empowering for children than solving the issue.

I carried out a huge piece of research in 2018 when I was writing my book, Parenting the Screenager. I was trying to understand teenagers and their device usage, while also exploring their resilience levels.

What I found was remarkable, but not surprising. Resilient teenagers spoke about challenges as transient, they understood that adversity will come and go, whereas students who lacked resilience selectively abstracted a negative event making it a whole or Gestalt.

For example, if they miss a penalty in a football match they would interpret that as meaning they are terrible at football.

They have a fight with a friend — ‘no one likes me!’.

Remember, one child is not born with loads of resilience while another child is born with a dearth of resilience. They learn it. They learn how to talk to themselves in a more optimistic and positive way.

It is all about perspective, and how does a child gain the perspective that they have the skills to meet an unknown future event? Their past experiences.

Resilience doesn’t mean you are immune to stress, it simply means you have learned how to manage your reaction to stress.

Of course, the bogus health machine on social media tells our children the opposite of that.

They are bombarded with constant messages telling them they should feel great all the time, and they should do whatever it is that makes them happy.

Nothing could be more antithetical to removing prolonged anxiety.

I ask the adolescents I work with, on the scale of 1- 10, one is not feeling good and 10 is feeling great, where are you on that scale?

Mostly they tell me they are between four and seven. I respond by saying, that’s great. I can see them look at me in surprise. They were expecting me to think they should be much higher all the time.

I tell them: “It’s okay to be okay”. Most of us are only okay from day to day.

When I tell them that, I can see the relief. The pressure moves off them.

Our children are surrounded with constant catastrophic news.

Teachers, in their attempt to be advocates for the climate, can often terrify children.

We have to be careful how we speak to children about climate change. It is important to make them feel they can be a productive part of the solution without scaring the life out of them and making them feel hopeless about the future. 

I had a 10-year-old tell me recently: ‘What’s the point? The planet will be dead soon anyway!’.

In my experience, I believe that we can endorse mental health issues among our student population by feeding them too much information about negative mental health promotion.

Children are incredibly suggestible and if we put a minor celebrity in front of them talking about their experience of self-harm, we have to question the value of that experience for our children. 

What will they learn from that? Schools have to ask the speaker: ‘What will the children learn after your talk?’

If they can’t answer that, they have no business in front of your child. We all become anxious from time to time.

Supporting our children so that they have the tools and skills to meet the future, will empower them to thrive in their lives.