A lack of sleep, too much screen time and academic demands are ramping up anxiety for today's children and adolescents, leaving many in a state of toxic stress that could undermine their future mental health, says clinical neuropsychologist William Stixrud, PhD.
"The balance between rest and activity in our culture is way out of whack," says Stixrud, who focuses on learning, attention, and social and emotional difficulties in his Silver Spring, Maryland, practice and is an assistant professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences.
Children's brains need downtime to function best, but "today, kids sleep less than they did 10 or 20 years ago, and high school students are now used to enduring devastating levels of sleep deprivationopens in new window," says Stixrud, adding that many high school kids clock slightly more than six hours a night, instead of the eight to 10 that are generally recommended.
Further amplifying kids' stress is technology's encroachment. "Being plugged in 24/7, connected on social media, playing video games and doing homework on the computer leads to mind scattering and mind racing, and, eventually, mind numbing," he says. While stimulating and enjoyable in reasonable doses, high use is contributing to fatigue, quick boredom and low tolerance for frustration.
The result is stressed children who are more likely to experience anxiety and impaired sleep, factors that change their developing brains in ways that increase their risk for depression and recurring anxiety as they grow into adults, he says. "We should think about chronic stress the way we think about the effects on athletes of repeated mild blows to the head: The effects aren't fully obvious now, but they will be painfully obvious over time."
What's the solution? One powerful antidote is giving kids more control over their daily lives, says Stixrud, as well as daily doses of "radical downtime"—daydreaming, meditating, sleeping and simply doing nothing to give their brains a chance to refresh. He explores those concepts in the new book "The Self-Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives," co-written with Ned Johnson, founder of PrepMatters, a Washington, D.C.–based tutoring service.
The Monitor asked Stixrud about the ways psychologists can help children gain the sense of control and calm they need.
Why is autonomy so important?
As psychologists' research has shown for decades, a lack of perceived control leads people to feel overwhelmed, helpless, hopeless, passive and resigned. So, we want kids to gain a healthy sense of control or a feeling that they can direct their own lives in ways that are meaningful to them. This happens, in part, by remembering that it really is the kid's life—and by encouraging kids (and requiring adolescents) to make their own decisions. That's why we believe parents should serve as "consultants" to their kids. They should love, guide, support, teach, help and set limits but be clear that their children's lives are their own. Children and teens can make very good decisions for themselves when parents help them think through the pros and cons of a situation. The parents' job is not to solve their children's problems but to help them learn to run their own lives. That's one thing that I think psychologists could support.
What else can psychologists do?
I am a strong proponent of changing the balance between rest and activity in favor of more rest. We've got to be working more with schools to develop stress-reducing teams that include psychologists, teachers, administrators and parents. We've got to work with kids on this, too, because so often the best ideas about how to help a kid come from the kid. Particularly crucial is working with schools to enable students to get more sleep.
Also, many psychologists are already teaching mindfulness approaches for dealing with stress-related issues, and that's really important. Meditation (including mindfulness and Transcendental Meditation) is a form of radical downtime that can be extremely beneficial.
Another important point involves homework. The longer I do this work, the more I feel that the best way we can help kids and families is to reduce homework-related stress. It's completely absurd to see kids working five or six hours a night on homework, which is counterproductive even from a learning point of view, in part because it makes learning more stressful. Psychologists can work with teachers and schools to help them understand the tension that excessive homework causes for families and to find solutions.
What guidance should psychologists be giving parents of anxious children?
In addition to helping children "face their fears," one of the best ways parents can help kids is by being a warm, responsive, nonanxious presence. We know this is what our kids need when they are babies, but often as our children get older, it's harder for parents to be warm and responsive because they're feeling anxious, worried, mad or guilty. Psychological research has shown that stress and anxiety are contagious—and that calm is as well. This often is not intuitively obvious to parents of anxious children, so I think that one of the most important things parents can do for their kids is to heal their own anxieties.
Also, contact between kids and their parents should be based on enjoyment, not constantly checking up on a child because of parental anxiety. That doesn't promote a child's autonomy, competence and confidence—it just gives the message that the parent doesn't trust the child to run his or her own life.
What other advice do you have?
I think it's important that psychologists give parents and children a more accurate model of reality when it comes to a child's future. Many kids and parents have a delusional idea that only straight-A students become successful and that if kids ever struggle, it will hold them back forever. If kids who share this delusion aren't good students, it makes them think that they shouldn't even bother trying. The psychologist can play a really important role in helping parents, educators and students understand that many people become successful who drop out of school or never go to college or have learning disabilities. It's also important to emphasize that research has found that it doesn't seem to make much difference where you go to college in terms of income, career success and satisfaction, and personal fulfillment.
It really helps kids to know that there are many roads to becoming successful and, in this forgiving country, that you always have a chance to re-create yourself.
