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Fredericksburg Parent & Family

Finding Balance

“The challenges today’s generation of young people face are unprecedented and uniquely hard to navigate. And the effect these challenges have had on their mental health is devastating.”

-          U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, December 2021

“In my conversations with parents and caregivers across America, I have found guilt and shame have become pervasive, often leading them to hide their struggles, which perpetuates a vicious cycle where stress leads to guilt, which leads to more stress. … Our cultural norms must support us talking more openly about the challenges parents face and building more community for parents whose disproportionately high levels of loneliness compound the day-to-day challenges they face.”

-          U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, August 2024

Over the past several years, a growing chorus of experts has drawn attention to a mental health crisis in America. In 2021, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory calling attention to spiking indicators of mental health struggles among the nation’s youth. This past summer, he followed up with an advisory entitled, “Parents Under Pressure,” raising the alarm about the state of mental health and well-being of parents and caregivers.

 

According to the most recent advisory, parents are feeling more stressed than ever, with about 41% saying they’re often overwhelmed. This stress comes from juggling work, worrying about finances, and keeping kids safe. It’s not just about managing the day-to-day — things like social media and school safety also weigh heavily. Over time, this constant stress can lead to mental health struggles, affecting not just parents but their kids too, creating a cycle that impacts the whole family.

 

Parental stress comes in part from the pressures children are facing. Trends were already going in a troubling direction before the pandemic. As the 2021 Surgeon General’s advisory reports, from 2009 to 2019, the proportion of high school students reporting persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness increased by 40%; the share seriously considering attempting suicide increased by 36%; and the share creating a suicide plan increased by 44%.

 

Dr. Jonathan Dalton, a licensed psychologist who has treated anxiety and related disorders for more than 20 years, says it’s important for communities to understand just how many of today’s young people are grappling with suicidal thoughts. According to 2023 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 10% of high-school-aged children attempt suicide each year.

 

“If you think about the average high school with around 2000 kids, you’re looking at 200 of them attempting suicide every year,” he said. “It’s ungodly the frequency and intensity of it.”

 

He notes that girls tend to exhibit double the rates of anxiety and depressive symptoms as boys across all measures. In 2021, the CDC reported that 57% of teen girls reported persistent sadness and hopelessness. That figure dropped to 53% in 2023, but is still significantly higher than teen boys, at 28%.

 

CDC data have also showed that parents face significantly higher stress levels than other adults. In 2023, 33% of parents reported high levels of stress, compared with 20% of other adults. And 48% of parents said most days their stress is completely overwhelming, compared to 26% of other adults.

 

Anxiety and mental health struggles can be a common precursor to negative coping behaviors such as substance misuse or self-harm. Finding positive coping strategies that help build the skills and self-confidence needed to manage stress is essential.

 

In this special publication, the Rappahannock Area Community Services Board shares perspectives and strategies to help children and parents develop healthy coping skills. Hard things do happen in life. Exercising the muscle of healthy coping habits can promote resilience when things get tough.


What to do when you feel overwhelmed

Examples of healthy coping

 

Practice Deep Breathing: Take slow, deep breaths to calm your mind and body.

Step Away for a Break: Take a moment to be alone and reset when needed.

Prioritize Tasks: Break down overwhelming tasks into smaller, manageable steps.

Spend Time Outside: A short walk or time in nature can reduce stress.

Talk About Your Feelings: Share how you feel with a trusted person to gain support.

Physical Activity: Exercise or move around to release tension and improve mood.

Creative Expression: Draw, color, or engage in a creative activity to channel your emotions.

Read or Listen to Music: Escape into a favorite book or soothing music to relax.

Use Grounding Techniques: Focus on things you can see, hear, touch, taste or smell to stay present.

Practice Gratitude: Reflect on things you’re thankful for to shift your mindset.

Create a Routine: Having structure in your day can create a sense of control and reduce anxiety.

Set Boundaries: Learn to say no and protect your time and energy from added stress.

Self-Compassion: Be kind to yourself and avoid self-criticism when feeling overwhelmed.


Get more comfortable with being uncomfortable

For both kids and adults, facing fears head-on is the ultimate healthy coping skill

 

Observing a caged lion while visiting a zoo with his family, Dr. Jonathan Dalton was reminded of how society’s efforts to insulate children from hardship have had counterintuitive effects.

 

“On its face, the situation looks good for the lion. It doesn’t have to face predators. It doesn’t have to chase its food. It’s getting good veterinary care. It’s as comfortable as a lion can be,” he said.

 

But watching the lion trace endless circles on a well-worn path in the grass revealed that all that comfort hadn’t produced a life abundant with joy and happiness; the lion was miserable.

 

Dalton is a licensed psychologist who has treated anxiety and related disorders for more than 20 years[MW1] [EF2] . He is the founder of the Center for Anxiety and Behavioral Change (CABC), a therapy practice that treats children, adolescents and adults suffering from anxiety and related disorders in the Greater Washington, D.C., area.

 

He sees parallels between the lion’s plight and the state of mental health among youth today.

 

“We have been successful in removing the struggles and creating comfort for today’s children,” he said. “Physical health, longevity, infant mortality and literacy rates are all going in the right direction, while mental health is going in the completely opposite direction,” he said. “That’s the great paradox.”

 

“We seek comfort, but we need struggle.”

 

Too busy to learn to cope?

 

While public outcry over the state of mental health has gotten louder in recent years, Dalton notes that even 20 years ago, young people were experiencing far more anxiety than they did during World War II and the Great Depression. Why would today’s kids—with so many more modern conveniences, and fewer existential threats—experience these outcomes?

 

“We are seeing this stripping away of the protective factors that have helped other generations before not experience these mental health crises,” Dalton said.

 

One of those protective factors is unsupervised, child-directed play with peers.

 

Play has been crowded out by busy schedules—when kids are in school or other programmed activities all day long, they don’t have free time where they must make their own decisions, or just learn to cope with boredom[MW3] . Self-directed play and free time create opportunities for kids to be creative and use their imagination.

 

“What we call risky play can be protective against later anxiety disorders,” Dalton said. “It’s almost like an immune system being tuned by playing in the dirt.”

 

 

Kids can be scared AND brave

 

In his work, Dalton treats children who avoid school to cope with feelings of anxiety. He calls avoidance "the lifeblood of an anxiety disorder." Only when we stop avoiding the things that make us anxious—whether that be going to school or watching our child drive away at the wheel of a car—can we start to reduce the intensity of the anxiety.

 

This means parents have to stop thinking that they are failing as a parent any time their child is struggling.

 

“If you are seeing your kids struggling, you are getting a front-row seat to their growth,” he said. “What parents often forget is that growth and comfort are incompatible experiences.”

 

It also means reminding children that just because something makes them scared or nervous, doesn’t mean they can’t do it.

 

“Kids can be scared and brave at the same time,” Dalton said.

 

An important skill parents can build is validation of their children’s ability to do hard things.

 

“We want to teach this core skill of delivering statements like, ‘I know this is really hard for you, AND I am 100% sure you can do it.’” he said. “We want to encourage persistence in the presence of anxiety, not avoidance. That runs contrary to the way that everything else in our lives works. If we have a pebble in our shoe, we don’t handle the pain in our shoe. We take the pebble out. But when it comes to anxiety, it rebounds against us when we try to avoid it, or enable others like kids to avoid it.”

 

What does healthy coping look like?

 

Dalton refers to a well-known quote by the late Fred Rogers of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, who said, “Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable.”

 

Those words from one of children’s television’s most beloved entertainers deliver important advice about how parents can model healthy coping in the household.

 

Parents should talk openly about their emotions in age-appropriate ways, sharing stories about times that were hard, and how they overcame them.

 

“We want to make it okay to struggle, and to talk about struggle,” Dalton says.

 

It’s important to help younger children build the vocabulary to talk about emotions they are feeling. Parents can do this through “reflective listening.” When a child describes an experience, a parent could say, “It sounds like you are feeling frustrated right now,” or, “It seems like you are really scared right now.”

 

Over time, helping children learn to use emotional vocabulary helps them learn that emotions that can be named can more easily be tamed.

 

“There is research that shows that just naming an emotion reduces some of its power over us,” Dalton said.

 

Building a sense of self-efficacy in children is also important. We can’t guarantee children will never experience anxiety, but we can help them learn through experiences that they can be strong in situations that make them anxious, and that they can tolerate the experience of anxiety.

 

Strong personal connections are another important protective factor promoting healthy coping in both children and adults.

 

“Having someone outside of the nuclear family be a mentor for a teen, for instance, is a tremendous protective factor against mental health challenges,” Dalton said.

 

Connectedness can be a deceptive concept, especially in today’s tech-heavy world. Dalton cautions that having lots of friends on social media networks, or having lots of other kids around amidst a hectic schedule jam-packed with programmed activities, is not equivalent to true human connection.

 

This shows up in research demonstrating that both children and adults are experiencing unprecedented levels of loneliness.

 

“They are in proximity to other kids, but that’s not the same thing as being connected to other kids,” he said.

 

Children need time and space to develop in-person relationships with peers that are not bogged down by competition over grades, sports or popularity. Parents can help by modeling this in their own lives. Make time to invest in friendships, model asking for and offering help to friends, and communicate that personal relationships are a deserving use of time, even amid a busy schedule.

 

Relationships, emotional intelligence and the self-confidence that comes from facing anxiety head-on are essential defenses in a world that is certain to present children with situations that cause them to experience anxiety. Those defenses can help ensure anxiety isn’t a roadblock; it’s just part of the scenery.

 

“Anxiety is a door disguised as a wall,” Dalton said. “We want to move through it, not around it.”

Strategies for Families

 

Building healthy coping habits into your family life does not require an expensive getaway or a wholesale lifestyle change. Here, two experts who regularly work with parents and children offer strategies that can help both parents and children build these skills.

 

These tips are offered by Lisa Dolan, Coordinator of Social Work for the Spotsylvania County Public Schools, and Kristyn Hunter, a child and adolescent therapist with the Rappahannock Area Community Services Board.

 

 

Make positive observations a habit.

 

It’s easy for children and parents to focus on the negative—a bad grade, or stressful events in the news. But there’s a lot of positive in the world—we just need to develop the habit of seeing it.

 

Dolan recommends establishing a family gratitude practice—something as simple as saying something each person is thankful for before starting a meal.

 

“We are hardwired to attune to the negatives as opposed to the positives,” Dolan said. She recommends being intentional about making multiple positive observations every time you bring up something negative with a child.

 

 

Take care of yourself—and model it for your children

 

In her work, Hunter often talks with children and parents about healthy eating and sleeping habits.

 

“All of these things are connected—your mental, physical and emotional health are connected by what you eat, how often you sleep and just generally how you take care of yourself,” she said.

 

She recommends taking the time to establish routines around bedtime and meals to ensure these important daily events happen, and to signal to children that healthy eating and sleeping are fundamental to basic self-care.

 

Find your pause.

 

In her parenting classes, Dolan emphasizes the importance of an intentional pause when life or interactions with family members get particularly stressful.

 

“When all those things are coming at you, sometimes you have to physically take the deep breath, relax the muscles and put that pause in so that you can respond to things instead of reacting to them,” she said. “If you aren’t managing yourself, you certainly are not going to be able to help manage anyone else.”

 

This is one area where Hunter says technology can help. Meditation apps and YouTube breathing exercise tutorials can help parents and children find the strategies they can use regularly to manage stress and find calm.

 

 

Connection starts at home.

 

Dolan recalls instituting a tradition she jokingly called “Forced Family Fun” when her kids were younger. Even if it means pushing back when a child would rather play video games or scroll social media, she recommends making the effort to have regular family activities that do not revolve around electronics.

 

“These can be things like board game nights, making cookies together, engaging in a family movie night,” she said. “It’s absolutely worth the fight it sometimes takes to make these things happen.”

 

Hunter says this “quality time” is crucial to helping children build the strong family connections that can help protect them when they experience high levels of stress. And it can even be incorporated into more mundane activities like household chores.

 

“Make it a game. See who can separate laundry the fastest,” she said.

 

Conquer fear with knowledge.

Fears about children’s safety drive anxiety among many parents, and with frequent news reports about violence at American schools, that fear is understandable. But it’s not insurmountable.

 

One way parents can cope with and reduce fears they may feel about their children’s safety during the school day is to get involved at school, Dolan said.

 

“If we can get our families involved in our schools, I think some of those safety concerns will naturally go down, because you have that exposure and that experience of ‘What does it look like? What are we doing to keep the children safe?’” she said.

 

By gaining knowledge about the environment and people where their kids are spending their days, parents can reduce the unknowns that may be driving safety fears.

 

Encourage emotional literacy

 

A focal point of Hunter’s office is a giant tapestry that depicts a “feelings wheel” full of words to describe the spectrum of human emotion.

 

“Before I start any session with my kiddos, I say, ‘Look at the feelings wheel and tell me where you are today,’” she said. “They will start naming off the emotions, and the visual gives them the language they need to describe what is happening in their emotional lives.”

 

She encourages parents to model this by naming their own emotions with their children, and helping to pass on that vocabulary.

 

Remember to model

 

Both Dolan and Hunter emphasize the important role that parents, caregivers and others who spend time with children play in teaching by example.

 

“Children are going to watch how we cope, and they are going to emulate those skills,” Dolan said.

 

“We are the blueprint in these children’s lives,” Hunter said. “They are listening and watching.”


Recommended Reading

 

 

“The Anxious Generation” by Jonathan Haidt

 

 

“Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World” by Vivek H. Murthy, M.D.

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