Teaching Children to be Neurotic

Warning to All NZ Parents

Every parent worthy of the name wants his or her children to grow up in a safe and secure environment. Moreover they want their children to be able to face the future with confidence. If our children grow up fearful, neurotic, and ridden with anxieties we would rightly shoulder the blame. We would have failed in some of the basic obligations of parenting. Right?

Well, then, what would you think of parents whose children at age eight were clearly phobic and neurotic, expressing fears such as the following:

Recently I've been worrying about some of the wars that are happening on the other side of the world, why are we just killing people, why can't we just kind of stop it? I kind of just think, I hope it doesn't get any worse.

Or,

I'm worried about the environment and the global warming, the ice and how it's going. I write it down in my little notebook ... I'm thinking people should actually stop the global warming before it's too late for their children.

Or,

The future, if we have children, would there be a future for them?

These attitudes and fears were expressed to a PhD researcher studying children aged eight to ten to find out what was causing stress in their lives. The researcher suggested that these kinds of fears partially explained why so many children are neurotic.

When children have those concerns it can be very distracting and I don't think it's surprising that we have increasing behaviour problems, increasing diagnosis of childhood anxiety disorders and childhood depression.

Then there is the case of nine year old Joanna Laxon, who is growing up in a world of fears, dreads, and neuroses:

Nine-year-old Joanna Laxon stresses about finishing school projects, "stuff outside of school", the environment and "what will happen later on in life".

It's a lot for the Auckland girl to worry about but she has plenty of ways of coping with it, from talking to her parents to writing it all down.

According to research into what many 8- to 12-year-olds stress about, Joanna seems to be typical of New Zealand children these days.

When asked what things outside of school caused her stress she said "things that just don't have to do with school". Some are things she's read in the paper or heard from friends.

She had plenty of environmental concerns, including global warming and Iceland's erupting volcano.

"I don't know much about it but I know it's not very good," she said about global warming.

Joanna said these environment issues stressed her out because they "could make a problem". She also worried how they could affect her and other people in the future and the potential harm from pollution.

"Sometimes I just kind of worry about how so many people are killing animals, like in Africa a lot of people are killing lions because their territory is being ruined and then they come to the farms and kill the cows and the farmers shoot them."

Where do children get this from? Well of course they get it from the media and from their parents.

Dr Peter Coleman, a developmental and educational psychologist, said many of the world stressors indicated by children were reflective of their surroundings.

"You'd expect it from the point of view that their parents are concerned about it, talk about it. They see it on the news so they would pick it up."

But is that the whole story. We fear not. Think of the lexicon here: wars, global warming, pollution, and looming destruction of the planet. We fully and confidently expect that these kids--along with most of their age--have been fed these phobias by their teachers. We know that these issues are relatively unimportant to adults, as expressed through surveys ranking the relative importance of issues of voters. It's highly unlikely these children are daily sitting around the evening table hearing their parents express doom and gloom about Icelandic volcanoes.

But the classroom is another matter. Now, we have completed no research into the matter, but we are confident school children (particularly intermediate school age pupils) are being fed a steady diet from their teachers of alarmism, global warming sirens, and a litany terrible things that are happening and about to happen. Just at random, here is a classic of the genre from Melville Intermediate School.

Polar Bears and Global Warming

View more presentations from Myles Webb.

Our view is that it is neither parents nor the media that is to blame for NZ children growing up racked with fears and neuroses about the future. It is our state schools and the tripe they are feeding our children.

It's parents who should be alarmed--not at life in general, but over the damage government schools appear to be inflicting upon our children. Time to start asking the hard questions about a few sacred cows in the state education system.