Nurturing Growth: Understanding Anxiety and Support for Young People

Recently our Deputy Principal, Mrs Chiba, returned from a conference on assisting young people to flourish.

The talk that really impressed her was on anxiety, by Dr Judith Locke. Judith has written a book on parenting called ‘The Bonsai Child’ which talks about the idea that some parents raise their child to have a perfectly happy and successful childhood which may inadvertently stunt a child, much like the extreme caregiving to a tiny perfect bonsai tree is essentially not allowing the tree to reach their full height and potential.

Judith has recently published a book specifically on anxiety with Dr Danielle Einstein called ‘Raising Anxiety: Why our good intentions backfire on children (and ways to fix it)’. Her talk at the ICGS conference in Auckland was specifically on some of the ideas in this. In the book, the authors draw attention to the fact that a lot of our good intentions may inadvertently cause children to be more likely to be anxious. For example, protecting your child from facing challenges that make them feel nervous or temporarily overwhelmed might seem like loving and caring parenting, but ends up not allowing them to learn to face typical age-appropriate challenge which is an essential part of them growing up.

Even in conversations in the car on the way home from school, many parents can easily ask the child more questions about the difficult or challenging situations they faced rather than the pleasant things that happened. While this is the sign of a loving parent who wants to make sure that child isn’t overly burdened, it may mean that the child gets more reward for reporting their minor troubles than their nice moments. This might inadvertently stop them being equally aware of the good parts of their day. This is a subtle process and hard to get the balance right, but what we focus on is a big part of our process of forming an ongoing world view.

The authors also explore the idea that sometimes a diagnosis of anxiety might be somewhat rewarding for the child who might be excused from having to do the tricky things their peers have to face (the talk to the class, the school camp, or the sports carnival). In this, children may prefer to keep a diagnosis of anxiety rather than do the hard work of facing down their temporary fears and becoming proud of their strengths, grit and growing skill. This reluctance might make them have less chance of reaching their potential by slowly learning to do more difficult things.

What makes this whole area harder is that we all know of cases where the anxious person goes downhill, and the consequences can be terrible. When we hear of a child falling off the playground equipment and damaging themselves, it feels right to want to stop them getting on it again. Yet consider the times when you are together with loved ones looking at something beyond yourself. Perhaps you are looking at a waterfall or a group of birds in flight. Perhaps your children are in the pool laughing and playing. Perhaps you are entranced by a book or a film or are engaged in conversation with someone you respect. Perhaps you are singing in worship or calmly relaxing in a deck chair.  It is not that the things that make you worried have gone away - you have simply seen or experienced something greater than them. 

In all of these cases, there is an element of self-forgetting, of seeing beyond yourself. It is wonderful when we overcome our own egoism. 

There are, of course, also times when we need to stop and hear our child, listen to their needs. We don’t live only in the transcendent. We live in the immanent. Anxiety though, is the product of the life that is constantly immanent - life is seen as one thing after another. 

Judith Locke makes me ask questions:

None of us need to retain a sense of guilt about parenting. It is a tremendous privilege and adventure to parent. I encourage parents to trust in their own parenting and in all of the good things they have built into their children. I see them in your children. They are multitudinous. I think you should be very proud of your girls. We do well when we constantly practice relaxing with them. 

At PLC Sydney we try to build a lot of opportunities for self-forgetting, for being astonished at the world in which we live, and for seeing beyond ourselves. Yet we know we are not perfect. We can inadvertently be drawn into bonsaiing children too by giving them the perfect conditions that don’t exist in the real world they will eventually face where not all of their days are wonderfully happy and successful.

Let us encourage each other as we help our children flourish.

Part of the language we are using to help give us structure is that we are assisting girls as they ‘grow themselves up’. We might also say we are communicating with parents as they parent themselves in how to parent, or with teachers as they teach themselves how to teach. This helps position our activity.  Your daughter is 'growing herself up'.