Are we over-protecting our children?

Yes, says this really provocative piece in USA Today. It certainly provoked me into looking back (the boys are now older) and wince. I was a bit…protective.

“Summertime,” goes that wonderful old song by the Gershwins, “and the livin’ is easy.”

Well, it used to be, anyway. This past one seemed fraught with peril, as they usually do, these days, for parents. Allergies, skin cancer, air pollution, injuries, drownings, heat stroke, West Nile virus … oh my.

Gone are the golden afternoons of my own childhood, when I left the house without a hat, or sun screen, to noodle about on my bike (without a helmet) and play hide-and-seek in the bushes (without benefit of mosquito repellant or pedophile spray) and invariably stayed out until supper (which consisted of fattening foods).

Now, my children cannot exit my home from May through October unless they are dressed in the equivalent of a hazmat suit.

Well, I wasn’t THAT bad.

But children are growing up more anxious than ever these days because parents are so worried about all the dangers out there. Yes, they really exist. But so many parents are over-reacting. And yes, I can relate. I remember sitting in on a mother’s sort of roundtable at a middle-school on this subject several years ago, kicking around ‘how much is too much’ worry vs. freedom, as if the two have to be mutually exclusive. It’s good to hear other parents views and set your own parameters.

But listen to this:

A psychiatrist based in Vermont, Paul Foxman, noted this problem in his 2004 book, The Worried Child: Recognizing Anxiety in Children and Helping Them Heal, when he talked about the increasing tendency to preach about health perils to young children: “Teaching about the dangers of drugs and alcohol to youngsters is supposed to help them make healthy choices as they mature,” he wrote. “But these early interventions may create anxiety in some children who are not ready for — and do not need — input about such dangers and issues.”

Of course they’re not ready. They’re kids. They have no sense of context. They can’t prioritize threats in their environment. Ghosts compete, in their minds, with chardonnay and peanuts. What do they know? It’s our job to sort out the relevant fears. And frankly, we’re not handling it very well. 

Ouch. But this is more than a slap on the wrist for the hovering parent.

According to the National Mental Health Information Center, 13% of American children ages 9 to 17 suffer from anxiety disorders in a one-year prevalence rate. This is a striking increase over the number of children who felt anxious in the 1950s, as psychology professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University points out in her book, Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable than Ever Before. The average child, Twenge told me, reports more anxiety than child psychiatric patients did 50 years ago.

These are not the children of Beirut and Israel’s Haifa, nor of Afghanistan. These are American kids being terrified of math tests and bicycles.

“Why,” asks California-based child psychologist Madeline Levine, “are the most advantaged kids in this country running into unprecedented levels of mental illness and emotional distress?”

In Levine’s book, The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids, she offers some interesting answers.

“Parents are genetically programmed to protect their children from threats,” she says. “Thankfully, the more recent historical threats to our children’s well-being — malnutrition and devastating childhood illnesses — have been eradicated, or greatly reduced. Yet, levels of parental anxiety remain extraordinarily high.”

We worry about our children, which makes them worry, and then — surprise! — we treat their worries as a health crisis and medicate them.

And what will be the consequences?

I wonder what kind of soldiers and citizen heroes we are raising to meet history’s next great challenges if they’re made to believe that they need sun hats and Zoloft just to get through the day.

It is interesting to consider that the so-called Greatest Generation, which fought in World War II and grew up during the Depression, exhibited very little fear of bodily injury or death in childhood. According to a study done in 1933, American children at that time were most afraid of the supernatural and the dark — what you might call normal childhood fears through the ages.

Now, apparently, there is no normal. Everything is frightening.

There was a lighthearted but poignant musing on this in the July 6 issue of Country Life magazine from the UK, and thanks to my colleague Sherry Tyree for connecting these two stories. I think they make not only a good reflection on raising children in our times, but an important examination on raising sound and strong individuals in any age.

This is from the UK’s Country Life:

When did you last see a child with scabby knees? What was once ubiquitous on every boy and many a tomboy has somehow virtually vanished. What a shame that the tatoos of youthful endeavour have disappeared. But why?

This morning, my own three children had perfectly smooth kneecaps — something that would have been unimaginable 20 years ago for three country-living children at the end of the summer term. It’s clear some great change has taken place in the way we bring up our children.

The clean knees of today must mean that children fall over less often. This certainly proves that they ar less adventurous than previous generations were. We parents are to blame, because we subconsciously stop them from doing anything remotely dangerous or interesting. Health and safety warnings have permeated our brains, however much we try and shut them out. The newspapers also keep all parents on tenterhooks with their stories of muggings and paedophiles. We are gradually taking away our children’s ability to behave as children. They simply grow up faster than ever. How awful. Perhaps we should start a campaign to bring back scabby knees.