Anxiety is a term most modern-day parents and teachers are very familiar with. Trauma is another becoming common place in conversation.
Part 1
Statistics suggest that one in 10 kids will be diagnosed with depression before they reach the age of 18. If this is the case, then SOMETHING ISN’T WORKING.
Advances in technology alone means childhood is almost unrecognisable to what it was in the past, even back just a few decades like the 80’s for example, I remember trying to get my timing right to hit play and record simultaneously on the cassette deck at the right time to tape my favourite song on the radio — nowadays, standard expectations have us cutting, shutting, editing, mixing, bluetoothing, playlisting, random playing and on and on. With the higher expectation comes more pressure. Pressure can not only just feel like anxiety, it can be it.
Anxiety is a term most modern-day parents and teachers are very familiar with. Trauma is another becoming common place in conversation.
Does ‘Trauma’ sounds a bit over-dramatic to you? Meanings of words change over time, in the 1300s if you were called sly you were skilful and clever, — not so sure you’d be keen to hear someone describe you as that now! What we knew as trauma in the age of childhood of the past is different now.
Trauma to us was when we witnessed something horrific, a house fire, a car accident, an act of violence. While all of these can rightly be labelled as traumatic, there are other levels or grades to trauma. A child on the Autism Spectrum who goes to school and forgets their drink bottle, who is then forced to either go without water or use another bottle or another water source. This can be traumatic to them in the sense it is scary, it’s frightening, and it produces a set of negative emotions which bring out a response similar to an adult who has been involved in an accident.
Appreciating this, then allows us to help our kids handle their own respective traumas, their own personal anxieties so they don’t develop into more serious or sinister problems later.
If, as we mentioned earlier, that childhood is different now to what it used to be, then surely adulthood will be also.
PART 2
So, we appreciate that growing up now is much different to growing up when we were kids
That mental health issues continue to dog us, continue to be a thorn in our side and the evidence of this is in the suicide rate, the growing list of people who suffer from mental health issues.
Dealing with trauma needs to be tailored to the type of trauma and the person experiencing the trauma. More so however, appreciating that we are all vulnerable to trauma, no matter what our role or place in the line of life is. If this is the case, if trauma in itself is inevitable, then we should skill ourselves and our loved ones with ways to handle it. For all of us who have a car, we know that at some stage, we may run into car trouble, we may run out of fuel, get a flat tyre, overheat the engine. We can skill ourselves with a basic mechanics type course or we can get some roadside assistance — both methods are good, with neither necessarily better than the other. It’s not what method is best; it’s about making sure we have something to use when things go wrong.
Us adults we understand that metaphor, for kids though, it might be the anxiety of turning up for footy colours day hoping we got the day right, that not everyone else is in school uniform or did we turn up in uniform and everyone else was in footy colours. This leads to standing out, to questions of “why are you wearing your uniform?”, bullying and then the trauma that goes with all of that.
This is why the team at PALC are keen to coach children to give them the tools they need to be able to move forward. Tools they can then “pass it forward’ to others by example or by intentioned lesson. We wont always be in the position to have leaders to show us the way, so self-leadership here is crucial.
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If you want to learn more about this topic or other similar topics, then please do not hesitate to get in touch with us via:
team@progressaheadlifecoaching.com
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