Want a well-balanced child? Don’t be a ‘snowplough’ parent
With children’s anxiety on the rise, they should be encouraged to take more risks, says Rosa Silverman
Zak Gildea was about seven years old when he started to become particularly clingy with his mother, Kelly. “It was hard getting him into school and he wouldn’t sleep,” she says. “He’d be in my bed and wouldn’t settle unless I was there, too. If I went to the lavatory, you could guarantee he’d be beside me.”
Kelly had recently split up with Zak’s father and believes that her son bottled up his feelings for fear of upsetting her – only for them to spill out in the classroom and playground.
“Other kids would think, ‘Why is he so angry all the time?’” says Gildea. “He shut down.”
It was only once Zak, now 11, started seeing a counsellor from Place2be, a children’s mental health charity, at his school in Leeds, that he was able to get “a lot off his chest”.
Zak is not unusual. Research suggests that as many as one in six young people will experience an anxiety condition at some point in their lives – a rising figure frequently referred to as a “crisis”. In tandem have come an increasing slew of reports of “snowplough” or “helicopter” parents, who attempt to clear all obstacles from children’s paths or metaphorically hover over them, holding their hands.
This week is Place2be’s Children’s Mental Health Week, and this year the theme is bravery; in other words, how we can help our children become more resilient. As parents, do we need to look at our own behaviour first?
“It’s important that [parents] are there to support and protect and help children be safe, but it’s a balance,” says Paula Nagel, one of Place2be’s educational psychologists. “We need children to be able to take a safe risk and to try things, and as parents it’s important we give the message that it’s OK to have a go and not to get it right first time.”
Leaping in to fix things, instead, suggests that failure is not an option – an ethos to which even toddlers and preschoolers seem sensitive. Nagel recalls a visit to a nursery in an affluent area, where the teacher was surprised by the children’s reluctance to try things they weren’t sure of. “She said they were worried about taking a risk and getting it wrong,” she says.
The roots of mental health difficulties are, inevitably, complex; perennial subjects mentioned by young people seeking help include friendship, identity, exams and the environment, according to Nagel. Yet feeding into them all is social media.
“In the past, children might have been able to come home from school and switch off,” says Nagel. “Now there’s the capacity to compare yourself with people you’ll never meet and whose back story you don’t know.”
Studies have highlighted the high number of young people who are keeping their phones on at night, a phenomenon that has in turn been linked to poor mental health, not least because it impacts on sleep.
A study published by the World Health Organisation last month found one in four 11- to 15-year-olds have too little sleep, which “can have a massive impact on our sense of wellbeing, our mood and anxiety [levels]”, says Nagel.
Despite growing awareness around mental health, there has not been a parallel boost in funding for child and adolescent mental health services.
In the absence of adequate state funding, charities plug the gaps. But there’s only so much they can do. Andy Calvert, assistant head teacher at Ilkley Grammar School, in West Yorkshire, says he could fill up his Place2be spots “three times over”.
What kind of issues are raised by the children? “Body image, self-harm, sexuality and gender issues,” he says. “There’s a lot of self-help out there, but some of it can be not helpful.”
So what can parents do? Try to be more present, for a start. “Some of the young people say that when they’re trying to talk to their parents, [they] are on their phones,” says Nagel.
As well as cutting our own screen time, she recommends ensuring our children know that things need not be perfect the whole time. “If you’re nervous about a work meeting, tell them,” she suggests, so they can see that such feelings are part of life.
Since receiving help from Place2be, Zak is “a lot chattier now”, says Gildea. “He’s not afraid to say, ‘Actually, this is what’s up. I’m sad.’”