Essay and Questions: "This simple fix could help anxious kids."
Is the cure for childhood anxiety more freedom, autonomy, less adult structure, and taking more risks early on? This piece in the NYT argues, "Yes!"
A very interesting piece in The New York Times connects the excessive caution many of us contemporary parents have and rising mental health problems, particularly anxiety. In their piece, “This Simple Fix Could Help Anxious Kids”1, two experienced experts specifically asking this question:
“What if the problem was simply that kids are growing up so overprotected that they’re scared of the world?”
Of course, complex problems don’t always have simple solutions. And, of course you should always seek a professional’s advice if you think your child is struggling with mental health. That being said, right after I got this cued up, another similar piece came across the wires, this time in The Washington Post, titled, “Children today have less independence. Is that fueling a mental health crisis?” I will do an Essay & Questions break-down of it soon, but if anyone wants to read it now, you can find it here.
This piece is one perspective only.
Nevertheless, it raises some interesting questions about the way we most of us parent—even if our children are not currently suffering from anxiety or other related illnesses, and even if we don’t want to engage in overly-protective helicopter and snow plow parenting. The reality is that this our culture, and we are all likely influenced by that, perhaps more than we would like to admit.
The authors are Camilo Ortiz and Lenore Skenazy. According to their bios, “ Dr. Ortiz, a psychologist, is an associate professor of psychology at Long Island University, Post. Ms. Skenazy is the president of the nonprofit Let Grow and the author of “Free-Range Kids.” (N.B. It is well worth your time to become familiar with Ms. Skenazy’s work. Even if you don’t agree with everything she says, she provides a useful counter-balance to some of the parenting excesses we easily internalize in our culture).
A colleague in suburban Kentucky let his 12-year-old daughter walk two houses down to her friend’s place. At the end of the play date, the other girl’s mom walked her home, just to be safe.
Such excessive caution is hardly unusual — over the past several decades, children have become less and less independent. Instead of running outside to play after school or riding their bikes around “Stranger Things”-style, they’re more likely to be indoors, on TikTok or in adult-run classes and organized sports.
Or, like the girl in Kentucky, protected from a danger that’s all but nonexistent.
There are reasons for this cultural shift from the childhood many of us remember:
There are many reasons for this clampdown on kids, including the birth of cable TV in the 1980s, which evolved into round-the-clock internet news alerts, bringing a stream of scary news to parents. A gradual increase in homework started in the ’80s, too, thanks to the fear that American kids were falling behind. And as the years went by, parents growing wary of a winner-take-all economy focused ever harder on getting their kids into college. They sprang for things like tutors and travel teams, giving kids a more curated, less autonomous childhood.
But here’s the key point and it is worth careful reflection and thoughtful consideration:
But as kids’ freedom has been going down, their anxiety has been shooting up. The surgeon general has declared this “the crisis of our time.” As a society, we’ve been trying everything from breathing exercises to therapeutic horse grooming to keep kids from shrinking from life.
While there could be many reasons our kids are suffering, what if the problem was simply that kids are growing up so overprotected that they’re scared of the world? (Emphasis mine)
Of course, one could argue that this is not causation but merely causation. One could argue many things.
But, on the other hand, why? Why might we feel compelled to argue with this?