We’ve handled our kids with kid gloves for too long. We’re raising little wusses | Guest Opinion

Objectively speaking, young adults and children have it really good these days.

Compared to 100 years ago when their days were filled with school, chores and even hard jobs. History suggests even though crime was higher than it is now, kids were often left unsupervised to play on weekends from dawn to dusk because parents were busy working or surviving the Great Depression. Despite their access to mind-blowing technology, relative wealth — poverty has declined significantly since the 1960s — and quality education, the irony is that it’s actually a confluence of these that has created a generation of children unable to handle stress, disappointment and fear. This does not bode well for them, or the rest of us.

Perhaps you are familiar with this quote from author G. Michael Hopf, “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.” It’s hard not to look at our society, with its cushy conveniences from smartphones to DoorDash, remote work and stimulus checks, and think we might be nearing the end of the cycle Hopf warns about. A closer look at the health of our young adults and kids suggests as much.

Young adults are struggling with their mental health. Even before the pandemic, studies show anxiety in children had been steadily increasing. A generation ago, the biggest issue at stake for a college student was how best to pay for it and where to find the right life partner.

Now, young adults are getting to college and they require safe rooms and coloring books to help soothe their anxiety over the fact that they didn’t like the current president — this was just 2016. It’s one thing to be worried about your physical safety when moving to a new college town, it’s another to be unable to regulate uncomfortable emotions politics can elicit.

A KQED article about this topic sums the problem and solution up well:

“Psychologists have directly connected a lack of resilience and independence to the growth of mental health problems and psychiatric disorders in young adults and say that short cycles of stress or conflict are not only not harmful, they are essential to human development. But modern childhood, for a variety of reasons, provides few opportunities for kids to practice those skills.”

In fact, these days this has become such a problem that classes akin to “Adulting 101” are proliferating on college campuses. This is likely because young people weren’t taught at home during their “modern childhood.”

In a study under review on risk, Americans were asked to describe a dangerous experience. They cited relatively normal occurrences like being outside alone. Their peers from other countries like Russia cited events such as witnessing a violent fight on public transportation, something that’s actually scary. In other words, American students have a terrible risk threshold, or even a risk assessor. Experts have chalked this up to low autonomy in childhood, which can translate later into low efficacy and then stress.

Clinical psychologist Camilo Ortiz, a professor at Long Island University-Post, says kids experience less of the “four Ds’ ‘ than they used to because their parents, who have great intentions, deprive them of the chance to have these feelings. What are they? “[D]iscomfort, distress, disappointment and danger.”

After reading about this story and researching similar studies, I asked myself where my four kids, who range in age from 9-15 years old, fall on the scale of autonomy and independence. How do they handle those four D’s?

I’ve noticed my eldest has been doing more activities after school with friends, like going to a football game. However, most of my anxiety was assuaged by the fact that he had a cell phone and could reach me if needed.

We live about a block and a half from a gas station. My 13-year-old loves to walk there and back with a treat, probably to get a break from her younger siblings. I’ve let her do it and warned her to stay aware of her surroundings and be vigilant. I still worry.

They say the traits we admire most about adults — resilience, independence, courage and compassion — are often forged in them during hard times in previous years, even in childhood. Yet as parents, we want to keep our kids from feeling pain, even if it produces resilience. Sometimes I think there’s such an awareness of trauma now, and parents, rightfully, want to prevent it so badly, perhaps they are overcompensating. They’re also preventing kids from feeling uncomfortable or distressed and overcoming it.

Maybe it’s time to loosen the reins a bit and remove the bubble wrap, piece by piece.

Nicole Russell is an opinion writer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

This story was originally published December 29, 2022 at 12:20 PM.