King’s timely message to parents
Comedian and mental health educator Mike King told a packed out Victory Community Centre in Nelson that what youth wanted was more time with their parents.
Hundreds of people turned out to hear King speak in Nelson on Wednesday as part of the I Am Hope tour.
Along with seven others, King is riding a Suzuki 50cc bike from Bluff to Cape Reinga over four weeks, hosting free public talks to raise awareness of youth suicide and shed the stigma attached to it.
He said the focus of the evening was about empowering parents and communities to better support young people.
King said there was a common feedback from youth around the country, regardless of their ethnicity or school decile.
‘‘Our kids feel that their thoughts and opinions aren’t valued by adults.’’
He said parents led busy lives and often put pressure on their children to achieve.
It was a case of asking ‘‘what can we do better?’’, and part of the answer was taking the time to sit down and listen.
‘‘The thing our kids want more than anything is our time.’’
With both parents working in increasingly demanding jobs, King said we were the most time-poor generation ever. Much of that work involved managing risks, for individuals, customers, employers and communities.
He said when you applied that to kids, it often meant a focus on the negative.
‘‘They come home and say they had five things happen in their day, four of them are amazing and one is bad. What do we focus on? The bad one.
‘‘What we think we are saying to our kids is, ‘you are an amazing child, your dad and I love you but we both know you can do better’.
‘‘What the kids are getting is, ‘no matter what I do, I’m never doing to be good enough for you’.’’
King said how we spoke to children became their inner voice.
‘‘If we are constantly criticising or constantly focusing on the negatives, that inner critic is going to grow up to be pretty negative.’’
Instead parents should focus on the good stuff and empower them to come up with solutions for the things that didn’t go so well. ‘‘Stop being so judgmental, stop taking your risk-managing work behaviours home.’’
King said 40 per cent of young people would have a major crisis in their lives before they left school. Of those, 80 per cent never asked for help because the feared the judgement of others.