A Simpler Childhood Could Be The Answer To Protecting Against Mental Health Issues

Dec 04, 2018 by apost team

Do you feel pressured to give your child everything and fill their days with structured activities? While our parents and parent’s parents struggled to provide enough and go anywhere, parents today are struggling to resist the urge to provide everything and be everywhere.

What mental impact has this newfound structure of giving and going had on our children? Science says it's not a good one.

“Simplicity Parenting,” by Kim John Payne, has a simplistic, yet poignant, message that may help to explain. In the book, Payne says that the stress of “too much” combined with unique personality quirks can spur kids into the spectrum of mental disorder. In other words, a dreamy child with too much may lose his/her focus, or a systematic kid with too much may become obsessive.

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To prove the point, Payne conducted a study concerning children with ADD (attention deficit disorder.) Payne simplified their lives. In turn, they showed a 37 percent cognitive and academic aptitude increase, which are results not even reported with Ritalin prescriptions. Amazingly, 68 percent transitioned from clinically dysfunctional to clinically functional within just four months.

The takeaway here is both terrifying and hopeful. As parents, you have an empowering opportunity to provide an environment for your children to emotionally, physically, and mentally thrive. It’s just not the environment of excess you’ve perhaps been conditioned to believe is ideal and warranted. The question is: How do you create this simplified environment within a world of excess at every turn?

Payne has a history of volunteering at refugee camps in war zones, where he saw the jumpiness, wariness, hyper-vigilance, and nervousness effects of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) on war-torn children encountering anything new. While operating a private practice in the UK, he noticed the same effects exhibited by affluent children.

This congruency led him to wonder why affluent children and war zone children would be showing similar behavioral patterns and symptoms. The answer Payne found was that both were living in internal mental war zones.

The constant influx of information modern children are exposed to is something they can’t efficiently and effectively rationalize and process. They’re exposed to the fast pace of parental lives, fears, ambitions, wills, and drives. In response, children attempt to construct their own boundaries and safety level through what ends up being detrimental behaviors.

Payne goes on to explain that it’s a cumulative stress reaction from too much. While parents are often highly involved in protecting a child’s physical well-being, their mental well-being’s safety isn’t as forefront. Meanwhile, children develop their own coping strategies to feel mentally safe and secure.

In turn, kids are growing up faster as we thrust adult roles, responsibilities, and expectations upon them. The end result is a society of children searching for the aspects of their lives within their control - how they respond to the stressors.

• Too much stuff
• Too much information
• Too much speed
• Too many choices

Did you know that the average American child has over 150 toys? If a little is good, then more must be better, right? You enroll your kid in as many activities as possible. You fill their spaces with as many games, books, and toys as possible to entertain and educate.

Yet, this excess isn’t making smarter more adaptable children. Instead, the multitude of rapid-succession choice is blinding and overwhelming. Instead of immersion in thought and imagination, kids are merely superficially playing without active thought.

Payne’s Simplicity Parenting recommends fewer toys to enable children to deeply engage with each one. The four tiers of too much create an overwhelming circumstance that prevents children from exploring, reflecting, and ultimately releasing any tension, depletes happiness, and steals the creative thinking and self-motivated learning that comes from periods of boredom.

As parents, we are obligated to protect the childhoods of our children. Instead, we, as a society, often inadvertently chip away at it and its wonders. A child’s immature brain simply isn’t adept at keeping up with the pace of today’s childhood.

David Elkins, a Developmental Psychologist, says that children over the last two decades have seen a 12-hour per week decrease in free time. Elkins notes that some schools have drastically reduced or eliminated recess for more learning time, and even preschool has become less play-oriented and more intellectually-oriented.

It’s downtime that’s the issue, which may be best demonstrated by studies showing that organized sports lower creativity as unorganized sports boost creativity. Studies have shown that just two hours of unstructured play per week can boost a child’s creativity levels.

The solution to protecting kids from the new norm of excess is simple. Parents must take charge and say no when it’s too much. No, John can’t play soccer, baseball, football, and tennis. No, we won’t make three different birthday parties this weekend. No, we can’t buy a new toy this week after getting one last week.

Another key component is in creating regular, routine downtime that’s calming in an otherwise chaotic world. Children have an opportunity to release the tensions and stresses weighing on them. They can recoup, recover, and grow in both their physical and mental development.

You can also become the filter your child needs. Simplify their lives. Keep adult and unnecessary business off their plates. Engage on their level. Think about how often you talk politics, world news, finances, and so forth with other adults at the dinner table with your kids sitting there. What are you watching on television? How many toys are in your house, and how many are electronic? Simplify and respect childhood.

Children will eventually grow up to have all the demanding complexities upon their shoulders, but they only have a short time to reap the rewards of just being a silly, carefree, loving child. In order to ensure they get this time, remember that childhood serves a very tangible and important purpose.

It exists to bathe developing young minds in a protective filter, offering time and space to slowly gather, process, and interpret all the information needed for the future of adulthood. The best gift you can give your child is simply allowing their childhood to be a childhood.

Do you agree with Payne’s take on excess and childhood? How do you plan to change your lifestyle to give your child more childhood and less excess? Pass this article along to other parents you know to let them in on the discussion.