After the pandemic, the decline in the mental health of children and adolescents has become a cause for alarm. To the point that, in 2021, the American Academy of Pediatrics requested a declaration of a national emergency due to the increase in disorders of this type among minors in the United States. In Europe, we are lagging behind: in 2022, a Unicef report estimated that nine million young Europeans suffered from mental problems. Spain, with a percentage of 20.8%, had the dubious honor of leading the ranking.
It was also last year when the Spanish Association of Pediatrics presented a study that concluded that the pandemic had caused "an increase of up to 47% in mental health disorders" among minors in Spain. The cases of anxiety and depression and the diagnoses of ADHD stood out. As factors of this increase, "the home confinement of two years ago and the subsequent restriction measures" were indicated.
The pandemic has undoubtedly been a trigger for what Unicef describes as "an epidemic", which globally affects the psychological well-being of children and adolescents. However, this organization also says that this crisis is not new. Long before Covid-19, "parents, teachers and many others were already expressing growing concern" about this issue. The pandemic, UNICEF maintains, has shown the tip of the iceberg of an existing problem. Like the dinosaur, mental disorders among young people were already there.
There is unanimity that, to combat them, more public and professional resources are required, but also the involvement of families. Because at home you can work on your skills so that life's setbacks don't crush your children. As hostile as this may be, not everything is the environment: the way in which we raise influences, and a lot, psychological health.
This is highlighted in an article entitled The decline in autonomous activities as a cause of the decline in the mental well-being of children, published in the prestigious journal The Journal of Pediatrics. Faced with the voices that attribute everything to the global situation (pandemic, screens, war, climate change...), the study points out that the increase in mental disorders in minors is attributable to other, simpler factors that have been taking place in the childhoods last decades. And specifically "to a consistent decline in the opportunities they have to play, to go on their own and to participate in independent activities."
That educating is, in essence, giving tools so that children know how to fend for themselves, it seems like a drawer. However, in recent years, fathers and mothers have been led to believe that, in order to be good parents, they must control and intervene in the lives of their children at all times.
This upbringing, predominant in the most prosperous countries, is known as “helicopter upbringing” or hyper-paternity. In addition to constant supervision, this educational style implies an almost business-like management of the offspring, which is relentlessly trained: hours and hours of "useful" time, so that they "don't get left behind" in the races against time in which they have converted so many childhoods today.
And these dynamics, they argue in The Journal of Pediatrics, result in parenting that, despite its good intentions, "has deprived [children] of the independence they need for their mental health, which contributes to these record levels of anxiety." , depression and suicide among young people”.
The key argument of the study is that children's autonomy has been significantly reduced in recent years and that this has consequences. Autonomy is the ability to do certain things without depending on anyone, something that, the authors say, has a very direct link with happiness. For this reason, if there is always an adult watching and willing to intervene, either helping you to do your homework (even doing your homework), accompanying you everywhere or solving any obstacle, that source of happiness, autonomy, is difficult. to achieve.
This lack of independence is increasingly palpable in the classroom. Even in high school and university, where teachers detect that students require more and more adult supervision. Analyst Emily Oster, an expert in applying the data to parenting, also emphasizes the reduction of the so-called "physical independence" of minors: those children who until not long ago (the 80s, specifically), they went in and out of the house, went to school alone, played in the street with their friends or did odd jobs. The data, both at a European and American level, indicate that today children move much less independently and carry out responsible tasks later and later.
The lack of free time is another aspect that affects the well-being of minors. The authors warn about those children who spend more and more hours at school, at home doing homework or in extracurricular activities. Their time, they describe: "It is increasingly structured and less free." All this results in a game deficit: a right of children, recognized by the United Nations.
And if free play involves a little risk... don't be scared. The study also warns of the loss in current childhoods "of the ability to face somewhat risky activities, such as climbing a tree, without adult supervision." Although many are horrified by the idea, games that involve facing a certain risk are recommended: "They protect children from the development of phobias and reduce future anxieties", since they promote "self-confidence to deal with emergencies".
However, climbing a tree on your own, hanging out with friends, fighting with your gang or riding a bike at full throttle are activities that are on the decline. Today, if something is climbed, it is done in organized circuits or in padded gyms, always under the watchful eye of the adult. A protective zeal that, on the other hand, does not exist in other aspects of contemporary childhoods, potentially with more risk: children are given their mobile phones increasingly earlier, which means that, in countries like Spain, the average age of access to pornography is 8 years old… It would be interesting to know how many of this age have climbed a tree.
Few, surely. As David F. Bjorklund, Ph.D. in Psychology, one of the study authors, reflects: "Today's parents are subjected to messages about the dangers that lie ahead if they stop supervising their children and about the need for them to have great school results." , writes.
On the contrary, he says, very little is heard about how important it is for the mental balance of minors: "That they have opportunities to carry out activities independently, including self-organized play and contributing to family and community life" . For children, things like playing on their own, going to buy bread alone or babysitting for an afternoon "are messages that the world trusts them, that they are responsible and capable," Bjorklund insists. Self-esteem and self-confidence are built this way: through everyday acts and opportunities to wake up.
Cristina Gutiérrez Lestón, director of La Granja, an emotional skills center through which thirty thousand minors pass each year, between Madrid and Barcelona, is very clear. This pedagogue has spent years urging parents to trust their children, starting with the little things. She is also clear that anxiety and depression problems among minors already existed long before the pandemic. “I began to detect them in 2002, in the midst of the economic boom: I saw that the culture of being had been replaced by the culture of having. That's where the rush also began: those intense lives that children have today, that feeling of 'the more I do, the better I am...'”.
The beginning of the century, he adds, was a turning point, "in which there are fewer and fewer children in the houses and each one is like glass." Lestón already detected an increase in overprotection, the consequences of which are disastrous: "Because if I do not feel capable of being my own protector, since I do not have the autonomy to face the day to day, my self-esteem is low, with all the consequences that it entails… I always say that overprotecting is underprotecting”, he sums up.
At La Granja, the first question that Lestón asks parents is this: “Who educates your children, you or your fears?” And to counteract the prevailing climate of fear, which has increased in recent years, he advocates giving them tools so that they know how to protect themselves: "So that a fear does not lead to a phobia, anxiety and even depression, we must educate in the courage and autonomy.
How to do it? Again, those small daily gestures: “give them free time to play, of course, but also give your child a little setback every day: 'You tie your jacket, you carry your backpack, you make a sandwich, today you come over a little to that animal that scares you…' Setbacks that they can overcome and with which they build their self-esteem”. When children discover that their courage is greater than their fear, Lestón assures, they will be in control: “And that is fundamental, because if you are not in control of your life, it is not that you are afraid, it is that fear has you. you".
