What Should Parents Do About Rising Levels of Depression in Children?
Depression rates are rising among children in our country. Multiple research studies show that the current generation is far more likely to suffer from depression than those who grew up decades before. Parents must do something radically different from the norm if they want to reduce the risk of their children becoming depressed.
One study cited by the USA Today states:
Major depression rates among teens and young adults are rising faster than among the overall population. The authors of a 2016 study in the journal Pediatrics found that rates of major depression among children ages 12 to 17 jumped to 11.3 percent in 2014, up from 8.7 percent in 2005.
This article goes on to suggest that smart phones and other digital devices coupled with the use of social media is the cause. Another study by the Clinical Psychology Review suggest that materialism and status seeking is the culprit. My gut tells me that it’s pretty obvious the two are related.
Do Children Lack Skills to Deal with Pressure?
Regardless of the cause, the bigger question is what to do about it. I’ve written several articles related to focusing on intrinsic goals over extrinsic goals. I believe this is a great first step.
If you have the discipline to routinely work with your children on goal setting with intrinsic goals as the foundation, I commend you. However, this is not a silver bullet. There must be a method in place to deal with the external pressures of extrinsic goals as well. Pressures that are mostly the result of competition.
- Pressure to compete in school
- Pressure to compete in sports
- Pressure to compete socially
- Pressure to compete with siblings
Children feel this pressure to compete not only from their parents, but from the world in general.
What’s more, many older adults show little empathy for the youth of this generation. They see them as being “snow flakes” with thin skin and no coping skills. While this may be true to some extent, the real problem starts with parents who don’t help their children build these coping skills. Parents fail at this because they fail to help children grow more resilient as they mature.
Developing Resilient Children to Reduce Risk of Depression
Resiliency is a characteristic that defines one’s ability to overcome and persevere through obstacles, adversity, misfortune, and unwanted change. Humans are not born resilient, it’s a learned behavior that is developed over time.
It’s a parents responsibility to develop resiliency in their children. However, there is a strong tendency for today’s parents to unintentionally shelter their kids. This is understandable, as parents want to keep their children safe. Parents want to prevent their children from facing the obstacles and making the same mistakes they faced. Unfortunately, this behavior prevents children from experiencing situations that build resiliency.
While it may appear your children are safe and successful while they are young, their lack of resiliency is a problem waiting to happen. A child who rarely or never experiences failure, loss, ridicule, embarrassment, or even bullying is in for a rude awakening when they get to the real world. While it may sound extreme to allow your child to experience bullying without intervening, overcoming a bully is a life skill that’s hard to simulate.
With that said, I believe the best thing we can do as parents to reduce the risk of our children growing up depressed is to actually do less. Do less sheltering, do less helping, and do less protecting. This is a clear case of less is more.