Colman Noctor: Three parenting goals to focus on in 2023  

However, January is an obvious punctuation point where we reflect on a year that has gone well or not so well and vow to right the wrongs or prolong the positives in the year ahead.

In the spirit of reviewing the year, I decided to revisit the themes of my 2022 columns and suggest parenting goals for 2023.

The prevailing theme of 2022, regarding children and young people’s mental health, was anxiety, with many experiencing constant worry. In response, many of the columns I wrote featured ways to foster resilience in our families. The concept of resilience is contentious as it often leaves the responsibility to the individual when the leading cause of the crisis is a collective one.

The claim that kids are resilient is true in most cases, and I have witnessed many children who have coped remarkably well considering the disruption caused by Covid-19.

However, many others have not come out of the pandemic so well. This year we saw the consequences of the 2020/21 lockdowns with mounting evidence of developmental delays in children and young people due to pandemic disruption.

This delay is something most teachers, nurses and professionals who work with children and young people have recognised. 

The missed opportunities have been evident in how many children have struggled to cope with the return to everyday life in 2022. The residual effects of this disruption are plain to see.

For example, there have been notable gaps in children’s ability to socialise and organise themselves and there seems to be a lack of maturity and wisdom among many.

We need to concentrate on providing our children with opportunities for social and emotional development in 2023. While recognising the importance of academic and intellectual progress, I would encourage adults to pay attention to children’s social and emotional needs.

Adversity does not produce resilience: resilience determines how we respond to adversity. For this reason, young people will benefit from informal social opportunities such as youth clubs or places to hang out over the next year.

Sports pressure

Another theme of my columns in 2022 was the observation of the mounting ‘pressure’ being placed on children by adults, particularly in the field of sport. 

Over the calendar year, stories emerged of match officials being abused from the sidelines, children being dropped from U13 development squads for playing other sports and a probe into a culture of cheating in Irish dancing competitions. 

And there was a case of a nine-year-old being allegedly assaulted by an adult on a sports pitch.

There was one significant theme to the numerous column inches covering these stories: the perpetrators were grown-ups, not children.

There are times when adults need to be involved in the lives of children. And while these interventions are to be applauded, have we become too involved? 

If we are to learn anything from 2022, adults should step back and let children be children. 

It seems when adults get over-involved in children’s activities, the fun element decreases and the competitiveness rises in equal measure.

While young people may need our help to instigate social and emotional opportunities on their behalf, maybe once this is achieved, we need to step out and leave them at it.

Consumed by outcomes

The third theme of my columns this year is exclusivity. 

As a culture, we seem to have become consumed by outcomes and accolades at the cost of recognising effort. The culture of league tables, prizes, awards and academic achievement has become all-consuming for many.

The discussions in 2022 about grade inflation and feeder school tables have further intensified the points race and the conflated notion of achievement and success into the narrow fields of academia and sport.

We seem to be moving further away from recognising more comprehensive versions of what success can look like. The Leaving Certificate and university places remain dominant in our national discourse as we continue to reward 10% of children whom we deem outstanding and leave the other 90% with little or no recognition.

My hope for 2023 is to celebrate the average rather than criticise it. 

Terms like ‘only average’ or ‘just average’ have crept into our discourse. This is unfortunate because, by definition, most of us are ‘average’, so by disparaging average, we consign the largest cohort of our society to a state of discontent. I would like to see us flip that belief to consider average as good.

Average should be a relief, not a disappointment. If we can change how we value average, we will reduce the unnecessary pressure on children to be extraordinary, and that would be a hugely successful outcome for 2023.

Top tips for 2023

Concentrate on offering children opportunities for social and emotional development

Step back from children’s activities and allow the fun to increase and the competitiveness to decrease.

Realign our understanding of ‘average’ and see it as something to be met with relief, not disappointment.

• Dr Colman Noctor is a child psychotherapist