Chicken Little the Sky Isn't Falling: Raising Resilient Adolescents in the New Age of Anxiety

Introduction

I wrote this book because so many of my clients and friends asked me for a comprehensive guide to parenting a teenager in this stressful time when anxiety, depression, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are on the rise. Even if you do everything right and you and your family have a warm and loving relationship, many aspects of an adolescent’s daily life are stressful enough to tip the balance from health to distress.

The world your children live in is more complicated, more intense, more pressured academically and socially, and filled with more choices and pitfalls than the one in which you may have grown up. We give our children the gift of resilience to the stress of navigating the shoals of adolescence by loving them, accepting them, listening to them, and most importantly understanding them. It is the understanding that makes the difference between a child who feels supported versus one who feels alone. I hope this book helps you to understand your adolescent child better.

You may be tempted to read only parts of this book and skip the chapters you feel do not apply to your family. In my practice and in the schools I consult for, many of these issues are universal and have touched many families I know to varying degrees.

You may say, My child will never have an addiction, or, My child doesn’t have an eating disorder. I encourage you to read the entire book, even though it may not apply to you now or ever and even if some of the chapters make you feel uncomfortable. Your child may not have a technology addiction, but they may struggle with regulating technology. Your child may not have an eating disorder but may be preoccupied by body image. Your child may not suffer from depression or anxiety at the moment, but they are vulnerable, as are all children, to mental health issues.

We know that having mental health challenges is not uncommon. Many adolescents will experience mental health challenges at some point, and as a parent you want to be prepared to know how to support them. Knowledge is power, and that power is critical to helping your child get through the challenges, losses, and traumas of adolescence.

As a parent, you have the power to influence, educate, and impact your child’s emotional health well into their young adult years. By using this book as your guide, I am certain you can be a beacon of hope, change, and mental health for your child.

CHAPTER 1

THE NEW AGE OF ANXIETY

Adolescence has always been a time of emotional turbulence and change. But teenagers now face a more challenging road to adulthood than previous generations did. In today’s rapidly changing world, economic, political, and environmental crises occur daily, and a good education does not guarantee you a good job or economic stability. Feeling unsafe and uncertain is the new reality, and hate crimes and violence are at an all-time high. Kids no longer feel like the grown-ups in charge are capable of protecting them or know how to fix things. The belief that there is room for everyone to succeed has been replaced with a realization that the world’s resources are limited and not everyone will get their fair share.

Adolescence has always been a complicated mix of hormones, social stress, parental expectations, and internal criticism. Yet today’s adolescents are also facing new pressures from technology and increasing pressure because of the scarier world we live in, turning that complicated mix into a boiling pressure cooker. And, like a pressure cooker, there is always the danger that things can explode. Parents are anxious and justifiably worried about their adolescent children, many of whom do not seem to be on the way to becoming functional, responsible, or resilient adults. In fact, while many of us have long believed that adolescence essentially meant the years between twelve and eighteen, according to adolescent researcher Lawrence Steinberg, adolescence is now thought to begin as early as nine or ten, and end later, at around twenty-five. Based on the young adults I see in my practice, many of them are still struggling with adolescent conflicts even into their thirties. In fact, the neuroscience behind social-emotional brain development has shown us that adolescence is the second most turbulent and critical window of brain development; the first is from birth to three.

We are asking children to handle more—more stress, more stimulation, more pressure, more choices, and more decisions—without giving them a secure foundation of support, emotional security, and real and meaningful connections to cope with the emotions that come with these challenges. Then we wonder why our kids collapse when the emotional, social, and hormonal storm of adolescence hits.

Being a teenager in the age of anxiety is scary. Being a parent of a teenager is scarier. Our children may seem more together, more confident, more independent, and higher achieving than we were; but in fact they’re more anxious, lonely, depressed, insecure, emotionally fragile, and less resilient to stress. They wake up every day to a less secure world and an environment with more political and economic instability, fierce competition for fewer jobs, changing career paths, unrealistic expectations of perfectionism, more social and academic pressure, more emphasis on status and living an Instagram lifestyle, and more social conflict. They listen to the endless droning of hysterical cable television hosts and read the headlines about climate change and end-of-the-world scenarios, the possibility of nuclear war, rampant school violence and shootings, and people famous for being famous flaunting their wealth and fabulous lives on social media.

It is also a more challenging time to be a parent to an adolescent. The messages parents get are confusing and contradictory:

Don’t be a helicopter parent/Monitor their academics and social life.

Encourage their independence/Insist they do things your way.

Be their friend/Be an authority figure.

It is difficult for most parents to sort through which of these messages are valid and which to ignore. Parenting an adolescent is not a binary, either/or proposition. In a more child-centric approach, what works for you and your family depends on your individual child and their needs.

An Epidemic of Mental Disorders

Statistics from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) show that one in five teenagers have or will have a serious mental illness. This includes depression, anxiety, ADHD, and addictions of all kinds. A study published in Pediatrics looked at drug use trends in young people ages twelve to twenty-five from 2005 to 2014. The number of teens who reported a major depressive episode jumped from 8.7 percent in 2005 to 11.3 percent in 2014; young adults who reported a major depressive episode jumped from 8.8 percent to 9.6 percent. That’s a 37 percent increase in less than ten years. Between 2012 and 2015, depressive symptoms rose by 21 percent among boys and a staggering 50 percent among girls. In fact, in 2018 the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that youth ages twelve and up be screened for depression at their annual well-child visit.

There has been a 400 percent increase in adolescents and young adults being prescribed psychopharmacological medication from 2005 to 2008. A 2017 report from the National Institute on Drug Abuse noted that 14.4 percent of young adults ages eighteen to twenty-five and 4.9 percent of teenagers from the ages of twelve to seventeen reported they used prescription drugs like Adderall and Vicodin for nonmedical reasons. Even more frightening, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the suicide rate for children ages ten to fourteen tripled between 2007 and 2017 and rose 75 percent for fifteen- to nineteen-year-olds between 2007 and 2017.

Why Is This Happening?

There is no single cause of this epidemic that we can point to; it’s a perfect storm of factors, including cultural and societal stressors, a change in parenting styles, and socioeconomic dynamics that has made vulnerable teens and young adults even more vulnerable.

Children are not born resilient to stress or adversity. Every house has to have a solid foundation to stand strong in the face of a storm. The foundation of emotional security is a healthy attachment to a primary caregiver. If infants and very young children learn that they can depend on their parent or caregiver to take care of their physical and emotional needs, and soothe them when they are distressed, they will have a strong and secure emotional foundation. The rise of two-parent working families who have to rely on inconsistent or group care means that very young children often do not get the kind of sensitive, responsive care that they need. These children are more emotionally fragile because they have had to become emotionally and defensively independent too early.

There are two critical periods in a child’s life when these emotional, or right-brain connections, are made. The first period is from birth to age three, and the second is during adolescence, from nine to twenty-five. That’s good news and not-so-good news.

The less good news is that emotionally fragile young children become emotionally fragile adolescents if their losses, conflicts, or symptoms are not addressed early. They are not just more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression but often turn to addictive behaviors and substances to self-medicate.¹

The better news is that this second critical developmental window of adolescence offers parents another opportunity to connect with and repair their relationship with their adolescent child while promoting emotional stability and resilience.

What Does Attachment Have to Do with It?

In an age of individualism and parents either having to or wanting to return to their own lives, work, and interests as quickly as possible, it is the attachment process that suffers the most. Attachment between parent and child forms the basis of emotional security, and that gives teens the ability to cope with stress.²

Many parents believe that attachment occurs immediately after birth or in the first few months and then they are all set: their child is attached and emotionally secure. This is a misunderstanding of the process.

Bonding, which can take place immediately after birth, is not attachment. Attachment is, as the father of attachment theory John Bowlby says, the emotional scaffolding on which a child’s emotional security and resilience are built. A mother may bond with her baby right away or in the first few days after birth. Secure attachment is a long process that takes place over the first three years of a child’s life. When a mother or primary caregiver is physically and emotionally present as much as possible and responds to a child’s needs and distress by nurturing and reassuring them, they provide a framework for their child of what to expect from the environment and relationships in the future. Will a mother or caregiver be there when they are scared, sad, angry, or fearful? Is their caregiver a reliable source of comfort? If the answer is yes, a child internalizes that sense of security. If something goes awry in the attachment process, and a child lacks the sense of emotional safety, they are more likely to develop what mental health professionals call an attachment disorder. Children with an attachment disorder see the world as an unsafe and unreliable place. They have trouble with self-esteem, forming healthy relationships, and regulating emotions.³

The toddler who still cries after six weeks when his mother leaves him at nursery school is an example. These children often still have the same attachment disorders in adolescence and young adulthood.⁴

They are less equipped to deal with the new realities of this stressful world. Many of the teens breaking down and experiencing crushing anxiety suffer from attachment disorders, which may not be evident to their parents.⁵

The Separation Process and Premature Independence

The dramatic increase in teens and young adults suffering from anxiety can also be attributed to the mishandling of the separation process. Margaret Mahler talks about rapprochement as a young child’s ability to practice independence while still having their secure love object, usually their mother, to return to and emotionally refuel so that they can toddle off again to explore. The ability to internalize their mother or primary caregiver as a source of strength and security when they are distressed does not happen until a child reaches the age of three, and only if their mother or primary caregiver has been present enough both physically and emotionally. Separation is often pushed too early and in such a rushed fashion that children do not get to practice independence in a slow, meticulous, and somewhat cautious manner. This push for early independence is backfiring, leaving our kids less able to cope with the stress of a more complicated and overwhelming environment.

Our culture expects premature independence and self-sufficiency from our very young children. This demand that our kids grow up faster puts them at more risk for anxiety and depression later in adolescence. When we leave our children too early, before they have developed a healthy sense of security and self-esteem, when we sleep train them too early, potty train them too early, or expect them to be emotionally self-sufficient or to handle frightening or strange new situations or people without us too early, we are creating more fragile human beings. Ferberizing, a popular method of sleep training, is not meant for children younger than six months, but parents often use it on babies as young as three months. Even Dr. Richard Ferber, who developed the program, has said that it doesn’t teach children how to fall asleep on their own; it simply keeps parents from their children and lets the children work it out by themselves. A New York Times article noted that some parents were encouraging their children to potty train as early as six months, before children develop the sphincter control necessary to learn toileting.

Children may adapt and become more self-sufficient, but this often comes at the expense of that deep-seated feeling of security in adolescence. Their seeming independence is a defense—a kind of emotional callus that allows them to cope with society’s and their parents’ expectations. Because these defenses come from fear and insecurity, rather than developing naturally and on a developmentally appropriate timeline, they’re like the little pigs’ houses of straw or twigs that collapse in the face of the storms of life.

What Does Genetics Have to Do with It?

Serotonin is used by the brain to feel and regulate pleasure. Research by Grazyna Kochanska at the University of Iowa found that children born with a short allele—a gene mutation—on their serotonin receptors are more susceptible and more reactive to stress, as well as more vulnerable to mental health issues like depression and anxiety. For reasons that scientists still do not understand, an increasing number of babies are being born with a genetic sensitivity to anxiety and depression. This tendency can be mitigated in the first three years of a child’s life by sensitive and empathic nurturing and the consistent emotional and physical presence of their primary caregiver or mother. A child who receives that kind of care has as good a chance of growing up mentally and emotionally healthy as a child born without that gene. During adolescence, parents have a second opportunity to help their sensitive child by lessening the effects of stress and anxiety.

What Else Makes Adolescents Vulnerable?

A number of developmental issues can make adolescents more vulnerable to mental and emotional instability. While some of these issues and internal conflicts have always been a normal part of development, the additional pressures of contemporary culture, on top of the usual challenges of growing up, can create a tipping point, even for healthy kids.

Like toddlers, adolescents have trouble regulating their emotions. (I talk more about the brain science of why this is in Chapter 3.) While a teen may not throw themselves on the floor in a tantrum, parents of adolescents are very familiar with the sound of a slamming bedroom door. Also, like toddlers, early and middle adolescents are present-oriented and struggle to grasp the concept of a different future. Many cannot see beyond the emotional pain and stress they feel in the moment; their feelings of distress feel permanent. This puts them at risk for despair, hopelessness, self-harm, and suicide.

Separating from parents is a necessary part of becoming an adult. However, in separating, adolescents—and this includes young adults—can feel like they’re losing the source of security and comfort they’ve relied upon their entire lives. They don’t yet understand that independence is not binary and that they can ask for help without compromising their independence; this is a powerful source of ongoing tension and distress.

Becoming an adult means figuring out who you are as an individual. It involves taking stock of all the things your parents represent and believe in and deciding what you believe in, what you don’t accept, and who you are as a person separate from your parents and family. This obviously can create tension and often conflict between parent and child. In a healthy family dynamic, there’s the same kind of emotional refueling that occurs in toddlerhood—a slow and organic process of rapprochement. If parents feel rejected, however, they may be quick to reject or push their child away during this process. An adolescent may reject their family because they are afraid of getting stuck and not wanting to leave. In both cases, this can delay or impair their healthy development.

It’s a Bigger and More Competitive World Than You Remember

Going from feeling small to feeling big is an important milestone for children and adolescents. Not too many years ago, people lived and went to school regionally. When they graduated from high school, college, or trade school, they were confident they could find a job to support themselves, usually close to their family. They were able to be big in a smaller, more manageable world where they had a sense they had some control over their future.

Today, the world has gotten much bigger. Twenty-eight percent of high school seniors go to college 100 to 500 miles away from home, and almost 16 percent go to school more than 500 miles away.⁶

Teens and young adults are not only competing with those immediately around them; they are competing with others around the country, and sometimes in other countries, who want the same education, opportunities, and employment. As early as middle school, children become fully aware of what is at stake; even at this tender age their academic, athletic, or artistic accomplishments matter and are being judged. They don’t just feel the pressure to do well, but to be perfect as they build their résumé for college. It doesn’t feel like being good enough or normal cuts it anymore.

We have become a society that values achievement and material excess as indicators of a person’s value. We spend our time focusing on being busy and accumulating more possessions rather than spending time building and nurturing relationships. Parents who feel this pressure pass it down, consciously and unconsciously, to their children. This overemphasis on high achievement and material success leaves adolescents constantly questioning their worth and feeling like they have to prove their value through what they do, how much they make, and how much they accumulate rather than who they are.

Carol and Joseph were worried about their sixteen-year-old daughter, Charlotte. Smart and hardworking, Charlotte attended an academically pressured gifted and talented high school and was doing well, but she suffered from intense anxiety, insomnia, and occasional panic attacks.

Charlotte and her older sister, May, had competed for everything, including their parents’ attention, since they were young. May was just finishing her freshman year at an Ivy League college and excels in everything she does, said her parents.

Carol and Joseph were successful professionals in their respective fields of banking and medicine. They had high expectations of themselves and their children. We expect the best from them, Joseph told me, and don’t really tolerate less. Carol said that May thrived under that pressure, but Charlotte clearly didn’t. Charlotte had always been a good girl who tried her best to do what her parents asked of her but had always suffered from separation anxiety and was afraid of everything from the dark to dogs.

Carol and Joseph said that they had been telling Charlotte to take the pressure off herself. However, they also needed to be aware of their unconscious expectations, and how they communicated those and their own anxiety and impatience to her. If Charlotte had struggled on a test, for example, grilling her about whether they should get her a tutor or how this would affect her transcript for college sent the message that she had disappointed them, fueling her anxiety.

As a result of working with me, Carol and Joseph concentrated more on their conscious and unconscious messaging to Charlotte. They encouraged her to engage in more social and fun activities rather than schoolwork alone. Rather than focusing on performance, they were able to recognize that Charlotte had different academic strengths and weaknesses than May, and they helped her look for colleges that would best suit her needs rather than pushing her into a more competitive academic environment that would only exacerbate her anxiety.

Favoring Left-Brain Development

The long-term effects of the increased emphasis—at all socioeconomic levels—on left-brain, or cognitive, development before right-brain, or social-emotional, development increases the likelihood of mental breakdowns in adolescence.

Think of social-emotional development as the socks you put on before you put on your cognitive shoes. You need socks to protect your feet from the rough edges of the shoes or you get blisters. The movement to replace unstructured play with reading and math skills, to teach children sign language before they can speak, and to use flash cards to enhance cognitive development sacrifices their social-emotional development based on play, which is critical for the mental health of children and adolescents.

Sensory Overload

We all know what happens when you have an overstimulated toddler—crankiness, tantrums, meltdowns. They may become wild or zone out completely. We don’t think of teenagers or young adults as being overstimulated, but they can be, and they are. It’s not surprising, because we now know how similar the brain of a toddler is to that of an adolescent. When kids, no matter what their age, are overstimulated, they can’t deal with what they’re feeling or tell us what’s wrong, so they act out. Sound familiar?

Exposure to explicit violence, sex, political and social instability, and end-of-the-world scenarios affects adolescents in ways we are just beginning to understand. In the past, stronger societal and parental boundaries protected children; those boundaries were based on knowledge that children and younger adolescents are not emotionally capable of processing explicit exposure to violence and adult sexual behavior and are not able to cope with the effects of drinking and using drugs at a young age. Even caffeine was off-limits when I was a child.

A study in the November 2013 issue of Pediatrics discussed how media overexposure can affect children’s mental health. The journal reported that R-rated films of the 1980s like Terminator or Die Hard would likely be rated PG-13 today. A movie like The Hunger Games, aimed at the adolescent demographic, contained more violence than either of those films.

Not only that, but most kids have unsupervised access to media at some point; they’re almost certain to be exposed to pornographic and violent content. Vulnerable young people who haven’t developed emotional coping skills or haven’t had honest discussions with their parents or caregivers may be overwhelmed by the excessive aggression, emotional abuse, and sexual content. Exposure to such explicit and sometimes violent pornography impacts how teens and young adults experience intimate relationships in the real world. There is a new reality of the normalization of perversion and emotional detachment rather than connection, and the volatile and confusing combination of sex and violence makes real relationships more