For Gwendoline Smith, safety nets enveloping backyard trampolines sum it up – we are literally cocooning kids from discomfort. “When I first saw them, I thought: give me a break. Before they came along, you were bounced off but you learned,” says Smith, an Auckland clinical psychologist and author. “You paid attention and if you didn’t, the consequences were that your legs got caught between the springs, or you landed on the ground and you were bruised.
“The trampoline cages reveal a wider problem. We are taking away lessons in consequential thinking: ‘If I do this, that will happen.’ No, because if it looks like that might happen, Mum will helicopter in and make sure it doesn’t.”
Smith is articulating what many professionals who work with young people are noting. Anxiety and depression reported in Gen Z (those born between 1997 and 2012) are at record highs, but at the same time, there is a noticeable increase in parents’ willingness to shield children from the rougher edges of life, from enclosed trampolines to demands for kid-glove treatment on supposed adventurous activities. Could there be a causal relationship?
According to the Youth19 project, a large-scale study in 2019 of secondary school students, 23% had depressive symptoms (up from 13% seven years earlier), with depression hitting young females, Māori and young people in low-decile communities harder than most. There is agreement that it is important to open up about mental health and get help for those who need it, especially as 2015 data showed New Zealand had the highest suicide rate for teens aged 15-19 in the OECD.
But there are also rumblings of concern that some young people can’t cope with the normal stress and distress of daily life – and that this gets looped into a mental health condition – because parents and wider society are not teaching resilience skills or that life comes with ups and downs. Another theory is that raised awareness campaigns and self-diagnosis on the internet could be contributing to the rise in reported mental health statistics.
Smith has written a number of books aimed at helping young people, her area of psychological practice. Like others in her field, she is concerned about an “epidemic of anxiety”. But she also argues that helicopter parents (always hovering) and lawnmower parents (intervening to smooth the path ahead) are making their children more fearful about normal, everyday tasks.
The pandemic has not helped. Today’s teens have suffered massive disruption to their lives and live with uncertainty in ways previous generations did not. One notable result is falling in-person attendance at schools and kura: children attending more than 90% of the time in term one slumped from 72.8% to 59.5% between 2019 and 2023.
The golden myth
Smith’s view is that some young people are being overprotected, and shielding kids doesn’t help their development. We learn and grow through tough times, she says.
“For Generation Z, happiness and pleasure are viewed as a right,” she says. “Hardship is an inconvenience and something that can be fixed by the parent. This teaches kids the big golden myth – thou shalt never, ever have to experience discomfort.
“We have a situation where failing is not good. Being better than others is not good. So we are not going to allow anyone to fail.
“What we are doing is allowing our young people to also have a grand sense of entitlement.’’
She points to generational changes in parenting. Parents of the baby boomers weren’t willing to let their children eat bread without butter, they weren’t going to experience hardship like they had, coming of age through the 1930s Depression and war.
Each generation, she thinks, has got more protective. “Teachers have told me they’ve got these parents coming in abusing them because their child is an A-plus student and the fact that their child is not getting A-plus is because the teachers are duds. Not that the child might have an average IQ by birth.
“Being able to tolerate discomfort is essential for resilience. A child who can adapt to all weathers is equipped to deal with frustration, disappointment, loss, unfairness, injustice. The entitled do not have these skills.’’
Bruce Pilbrow knows what Smith is talking about. He’s the CEO of the Spirit of Adventure Trust, an organisation dedicated to developing life skills by taking kids to sea on sailing adventures. Over the past three years, an average of about 10% of the secondary students who embark on its three-masted barquentine, Spirit of New Zealand, pull out before the voyage is completed. In the past, it was rare for any young person to leave.
Pilbrow says on most voyages of 40 kids, three or four leave because it is too challenging to climb the mast or jump into the sea for a 6.30am swim. Sometimes, they’ve fronted up to the trip only to baulk at meeting their 16- to 18-year-old shipmates because of social anxiety.
This professed anxiety is a challenge, he says. “How do we gauge what that actually is? We might ask, ‘Are you medicated for it? Are you seeing a psychologist for it?’
“’Oh no,’ they say. ‘I just get anxious around certain things.’
“Sometimes, you get a parent who will overthink it for the child.’’
Professor Scott Duncan, head of AUT’s physical activity and nutrition department, thinks that a growing risk-averse culture is filtering through schools and communities to the disadvantage of young people.
He points to changes to the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 which mean schools – principals and boards – can now be prosecuted and fined for hazards, resulting in “teachers refusing to let children climb trees’'. The safety component of the law is promoted and followed at the expense of health and wellbeing, he says, and denies kids the chance to develop coping skills.
Combined with a decline in childhood physical activity, it’s no wonder that “you find someone gets to an activity like going on the Spirit of New Zealand and it’s just so off the deep end that they freak out and can’t cope with it”.
“Resilience is about being able to cope with these things, process your emotions, regulate your emotions and carry on. And if they haven’t learnt to do that, they fail and they leave. It’s not their fault.’’
Circuit breaker
The reality is that schools and adventure-offering entities face a backlash if something goes wrong. Accidents do happen and they can be fatal. In May, Whangārei Boys’ High School student Karnin Ahorangi Petera died after being trapped in a cave that rapidly filled with water while on a class outdoor education trip. Parents at the school said they would now think twice about sending their children on such a trip.
And trampolines – even with cages – do cause injuries. Last year, 1295 ACC claims were for new trampoline injuries, at a cost to taxpayers of $902,000.
Pilbrow points out that his organisation is highly conscious of health and safety needs. But to appease parental angst, crew have begun sending parents images of calm waters if there is a storm at home but the weather is settled on the voyage.
And demands for special treatment are typically a high-decile problem – like the parent who questioned why their son was to share a cabin with 19 other boys and told Pilbrow “he needs to be on the top bunk’'.
For those who do climb the mast and take part in the early-morning swim, there’s plenty of positives. Pilbrow says they often get feedback from schools noticing a change for good in a student. “They say things like, ‘What have you done to Johnny?’ These kids suddenly see themselves again and almost fall in love with themselves and realise they can achieve anything.
“My view is that you do need a circuit-breaker for a young person, a reminder of who they are and what they can do.’’
Eliza McCracken was nervous and anxious about going on a Spirit of New Zealand voyage in 2018. She explains that her generation have become used to really meeting and liaising with new people only online. That was the initial shock for the then-Year 12 student from Kaiapoi High School – how was she going to handle meeting 39 other people her age, in person, let alone share a small cabin with 19 females she didn’t know?
As it turned out, she loved the 10-day voyage, made new friends and has since volunteered about 200 hours on 20 Spirit of New Zealand voyages. She has also completed her BSc, has a skipper’s ticket and is headed for a career in marine science. “I was able to believe in myself more and I got so much confidence on board. I wanted to give that back to other individuals,’’ she says.
McCracken has witnessed some quitting the trips she has volunteered on. “Staying engaged in that programme can be quite physically and mentally tough. You’re pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone and all the individuals have different fears. It might not be just the physical challenge but the mental challenge of having to meet new people and having to be in a small space.’’
Cancel culture
At the Adventure Specialties Trust, which runs school camps and outdoor activities for school students, Auckland operations manager Jeff Lappin talks about a new culture where it is okay to cancel. Schools cancel camps if the weather is predicted to turn; parents pull their children out “if someone has got a runny nose’'.
“Kids will pick up on that and tell us, ‘I don’t feel well.’ Schools are more cautious and getting pressure from parents.
“Young people have had three years of uncertainty because of Covid and then add the earthquakes and shootings in Christchurch, the added lockdowns, floods and the cyclones.
“The base level of anxiety has grown. Parents are totally caught up in that as well because they haven’t been able to provide certainty for their young people.’’
Mental health fashions
A recurring question for some working in mental health in different spheres is: are we pathologising normal distress? This is particularly relevant for children and young people, according to Smith, who reiterates that discomfort leads to resilience.
In a revisionist and controversial paper, Lucy Foulkes, research fellow at Oxford University, talks about the inflation of mental health diagnoses. Her hypothesis is that awareness campaigns in the UK by the World Health Organisation and in schools are contributing to the rise in mental health diagnoses. In a paper published in New Psychology in April, she writes that milder or transient psychological difficulties don’t need to be labelled, reported or treated. Mental health problems can be glamorised or romanticised, particularly on social media, she writes. Clinicians are reporting that people are coming to them having self-diagnosed via the internet; some are accurate, some are an overdiagnosis.
Smith is concerned there are “fashions” in mental health: the current one is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
“My colleagues are booked up until next May; everyone wants a diagnosis.
“Generalising can become harmful. The idea that everybody who experiences this amount of anxiety should be on an antidepressant – that’s not true.”
Smith has not seen any research on whether there might be a neuropsychological link between overprotective parenting and anxiety or depression, but says the answer lies in epigenetics – the relationship between genetics and the environment.
For parents now concerned they’re harming their children by being too protective, she suggests allowing more risk-taking, encouraging independence and “do not model fear-based behaviour”.
Online drivers
Terry Fleming, an associate professor at Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University’s School of Health, is part of the adolescent health research group that runs the Youth 19 project, a representative study measuring the wellbeing of rangatahi/youth. She sees both sides.
The study she co-authored found a marked increase in depression among young people from 2012-2019 – up from 13% to 23% – and anxiety had risen to 41.8% among the 7200 students surveyed. One concern was the rise in suicidal thoughts – a fifth of those surveyed reported this.
The causes? Increased technology, climate anxiety, heightened perfectionism and increased parental monitoring, according to the report.
Fleming points to three key trends contributing to poor adolescent mental health: helicopter parenting, social media/online stress, and “doomerism” – fear about the future. No one cause is thought to dominate, although the rise of digital-media use correlates with the global increase in adolescent depression and anxiety.
She is not sure if some young people are misinterpreting normal distress as a psychological condition. “There is reasonable evidence to say that people are reasonably quick to think, ‘Oh, do I have this mental health problem?’ rather than accepting that feeling down and feeling bad tells us that we want to change something in our lives and it’s part of the human experience. You can’t have human emotions of love and pleasure without also having some of the opposite.’’
Fleming is concerned that parents and society send the wrong signals. “Parents say, ‘All I want is for my child to be happy.’ [There’s this] idea that good parenting is around micromanaging and supporting every moment.’’
At a recent webinar for the Youth 19 project, an overriding theme was that it’s important to talk about mental health and wellbeing “without treating every piece of distress as a kind of pathology that becomes part of an identity. Getting that balance is really, really important because there’s been terrible harm when we have said, ‘You can’t have depression, you can’t have any of that’, and we don’t want to go to that extreme.’’
School counsellors are struggling with long waiting lists. NZ Association of Counsellors president Sarah Maindonald says there is a youth mental health crisis and the school counselling service is overstretched and underfunded. One recent survey of school counsellors showed 82% have wait lists of one to four weeks.
She says when young people come for counselling, they often reveal something far worse than the initial reasons once they have built up trust. “It’s really important to listen to young people,” says Maindonald. “What complicates it sometimes is the internet and online communications. They do these online assessments around anxiety and depression by themselves, and sometimes make some assumptions without talking to a specialist. But they’re not going to look it up unless there’s something there.’’
Maindonald rejects Foulkes and others’ arguments about a possible overdiagnosis and heightened awareness from destigmatisation campaigns. “With mental health it’s too risky to make too many assumptions about kids just doing it for attention. If someone has an episode of depression, we don’t want that to become their defining characteristic. But with the highest youth suicide rates in the world, we have to take notice of our young people.
“I think the opposite is probably true, sadly: that some young people don’t have anyone who notices their distress. And sometimes it’s too late by the time they’ve hurt themselves.’’
It’s okay to fail
Smith argues that young people with mental health conditions need to know they can get help. Kids should be allowed to fail, and success and talent should be rewarded.
One of her books, The Book of Knowing, offers skills for young people to help them understand that anxiety is just what happens, it’s okay and it will pass.
“When I’m working with youth, unless they’re suicidally depressed, medication is certainly not the first port of call. Give them skills, give them understanding, give them education, give them strategies.
“My hope is that now there’s more of a swing to the importance of resilience, and it being learned by experiencing discomfort and hardship.’’
AUT’s Duncan thinks we need to keep the school camps on if it’s raining, get kids off screens, and let them roam a bit more than they are now.
He also thinks children should not be enrolled in too many structured extracurricular activities. They need downtime, and time to be bored.
“I’ve done several talks to parents, and they know kids shouldn’t have unlimited access to screens and social media at a young age,” says Duncan.
“But parents find all this very difficult to do in the modern age. With time pressures, financial pressures and the parental peer pressure of what is a good parent now, one of the things that is being highlighted is that a good parent should smooth away every little thing for their kids. We really need to move away from that idea.’’
Time to step back
“If we try to prevent their distress, this is when anxiety gets stuck.”
In Christchurch, Jo Prendergast tries to parent using a concept she describes as “benign neglect’'. The psychiatrist and stand-up comedian has just published a book, When Life Sucks: Parenting your teen through tough times. She has two young-adult children, Charlotte, 22, and Angus, 20, and talks about how she and her husband, Marty, tried to parent them without micromanaging their lives.
Despite her urge to hover, help and send out rescue ropes, she tries to let them work things out for themselves. Angus is about to go to the US to study and she is leaving it to him to sort his visas and organise his trip.
But it’s tough and Prendergast sees that youth in Christchurch are particularly stressed and anxious. They’ve grown up with the earthquakes, mosque shootings and Covid lockdowns.
She also blames phones: parents can get in touch with their kids 24/7 and worry if they don’t hear from them. But Prendergast argues parents need to stop micromanaging. “There are pressures around the expectations on parents. And occupational health and safety. I’ve just filled out a massive safety plan for Basement Theatre [in Auckland], for my very straightforward, one-woman show. There are questions like: ‘What’s the harm and what’s the worst-case scenario? What’s the prevention strategy?’
“There’s a very strong societal need to put in every safety measure possible, which has flowed on to parenting: ‘I’ve got to keep my kids as safe as possible because a good parent doesn’t allow your kids to come to any harm.’”
But she sees parents are intervening too much. “They’re emailing teachers, messaging the coach and asking if so-and-so can be put in the football team.
“But that’s not helpful. There are parents doing that the whole time, rather than kids experiencing the fact they didn’t get into the football team and have to problem-solve what’s next.’’
Her book aims to give parents tools to help teens who are distressed or mentally unwell: how to tell when your teen is a bit down in the dumps as opposed to depressed, and when and how to get professional help.
For those who are distressed she says they need to sit and listen, and try to understand rather than always problem-solve. She writes: “Your teen’s distress is uncomfortable for everyone, but they are experiencing anxiety and that’s actually what we need them to experience.
“The way to become less anxious is to feel the anxiety and do it anyway. Then they get to see that the feared outcome doesn’t happen and their distress calms. If we try to prevent their distress, this is when anxiety gets stuck. Parents need to breathe and hold onto this knowledge while their teen’s alarm system is freaking out.’’
Prendergast has flexed her own resilience skills in recent times, dealing with grade 2 breast cancer two years ago.
“Having grit is the most important attribute and that’s something that we parents can model. Yes of course we need to minimise bad harm, but we should allow them to gradually develop and take more of their own risks.’’