Mental Health: Hope and anxiety - the dichotomy of our youth
“He gets it from me, always worrying…”
Perhaps. It is certainly true that our children - the ones born to us and those we teach - pick up on our own tensions, trials, tribulations. But that is not the only source; increasingly anxiety is prominent in the lives of children, in our homes and in our classrooms and to blame parents is not the solution.
With a history of first class worrying myself, and one who still strives to find balance and learn from others in managing this, I empathise with our youth. There is a lot going on.
I am writing not to state the obvious or even to give advice; but to take a moment to recognise the power of both empathy and at least, patience with children who worry.
To tell them that ‘everything will be ok’, although well intended, is not enough in my view. Because often things are not ok. And judging their youthful experience through our adult and aged eyes is also not always helpful. Our perspective and theirs are poles apart.
Some children will worry more than others, of course. Some of this is just who they are and how they see the world, some of this is subconsciously - or consciously - watching those around them and how adults cope with and respond to challenges and concerns.
Working in inclusion I often see extreme ends of the scale regarding worry, anxiety and indeed trauma. Many of those that I work with through Alternative Provision, are not in school because of a crippling sense of panic and anxiety, borne out of mistrust and fear from their experiences of school. A heartbreaking case of being misunderstood and thrown into a spiral of self-depreciation and defence. In contrast, I also work with children who have little safety awareness, lower spatial awareness, often due to neuro-diversities of autism, adhd or dyslexia, and they will easily find themselves in dangerous situations because a sense of fight or flight has, or in some cases has not been triggered. Their sense of safety balance is misaligned with the ‘norm’ and so sadly, we also see these children out of school - through exclusion from ‘poor or dangerous behaviours’ or because their fears of ‘getting it wrong’ at school are so great, they are paralysed when it comes to attending at all.
EBSA [Emotional Based School Avoidance] is real, inappropriate use of exclusion is real.
And when in school, drowning in paperwork and trying to serve the community in the present moment, one could be forgiven for not keeping EBSA students at the front and centre when the children in school require so much of our time and support. But surely there is a better balance to be found?
The sense of hope in all of this however, is that when I work with these incredible individuals, I am reminded again and again that we are working with a broken system, and not broken children.
Once trust is established, hope appears. Hope - not that they will ‘return to school’, but that they, and we, will find peace in who they are, acceptance in what they need, and the courage to provide another way.
Our young people are, and always have been beacons of hope, even under the shadows of anxiety.
Clare Haly
April 2025
