A Few Facts On Growing Up & The “New Normal”

I’ve never met a parent who has not been stretched for time as they work to make a living and raise their families as comfortably as possible. So often, in this increasingly fast-paced world, adults are so focused on ensuring they are making money, paying the bills, advancing in their careers so that they can provide for their children that they end up with no time to spend other than managing life’s logistics.

If you’re a parent who is struggling with your own stress, while now being faced with a child or children who are acting out due to their stress – you are not alone.

Here are a few stunning facts about the “new normal” for some kids growing up in today’s world:

When we meet with parents who have come to us for help understanding and addressing their children’s fears and often paralyzing anxiety episodes, we always prefer to start with analyzing the behaviors of the child, their environment at home and school, the specific pressures they are under that may not be immediately apparent to their mothers and fathers.

While some children can of course be helped with medications, very often with a steady course of counseling and changes to each child’s lifestyle, we experience tremendous improvements in creating a calmer, more adaptive and peaceful existence for the children and their entire families.

What’s causing this growth in childhood anxiety across the board?

First, we see complications coming from the high speed of information technology and rising expectations from schools, parents, friends, and from media and social media which can add relentless images of what it means to be popular, smart, attractive, charming and cool.

Parents understand this – and talk about it openly but with frustration. They themselves are more preoccupied than ever before given the same non-stop digitally demanding environment.

Generation X (parents of generation Z) are on 24/7.

Parents may be physically at home but their mind is preoccupied by social media. They are expected to be available at all times, so reflection and deep conversations are neither modeled or rewarded in our transaction-obsessed society.

Parents must ask themselves: What are we teaching our children as role models? What do they observe and see us doing and feeling?

Self-regulation, frustration tolerance, affective regulation, and continual management of stress at this requires skill building, and we owe it to our children to teach them how to live in this non-stop world, including creating moments when the world does go away and in a quiet and peaceful place, parents and children can talk and think and laugh together.

From an evolutionary perspective our brain and our physiology have not had the chance to develop and build the necessary neural network that can help manage our affective regulation in response to the ever increasing demands and stress that we are exposed to – so it becomes our opportunity to work on our brains as well, whether through ensuring we are getting enough sleep, exercise and a brain-healthy diet, or through neuroscientific approaches and exercises.
We can educate ourselves as adults and parents, in order that we can in turn educate our children and young adults from an early age, helping them to build sets of skills than can accelerate their ability to respond to and manage variety of sources of stress and anxiety in their daily interactions.

In many cases the amount of stress and anxiety children are exposed to in this world, which we cannot always control, hijacks their physiology, leaving them feeling helpless, out of control and depressed.

Without such skills building, training and exercising, the risk of increased life-long psychiatric disorders, problems with sleep problems lack of focus, concentration and a host of other academic, psychiatric social implication will follow children as they become teenagers, young adults, and parents themselves one day.
If your child or children are struggling with anxiety – get the professional help you need now.

Non-drug treatment alternatives:

NEURO TRAINING helps self-regulation of brain function and strengthen the prefrontal lob which can increase the ability to control emotions by building targeted networks more robustly.

SELF-REGULATION TECHNIQUE such as biofeedback

COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL METHODS

MEGA COGNITIVE SKILL BUILDING

ADAPTIVE MINDFULNESS