‘I remind people anxiety is a normal part of life’

Parenting expert Dr David Coleman is bringing his new nationwide tour, 'Helping Children and Teenagers Cope with Anxiety', to Mullingar Arts Centre this evening, Wednesday October 9. He spoke to Rodney Farry about what people can expect.

Tell us a bit about your upcoming talk in Mullingar Arts Centre.

I first gave this talk in Tralee around this time last year. I was surprised that it sold out and that there was such an interest in the topic.

In some ways I shouldn’t really have been surprised because certainly I’ve seen in my own clinical practice, and anecdotally I hear a lot from other people, just how many children are getting anxious these days and how much of a problem it’s becoming for them.

It really is something that seems to be impacting more and more on their lives.

I’m not sure necessarily that as many children as would claim to have anxiety as a condition have anxiety as a condition.

I think there’s certainly lots of kids and teenagers who get anxious, but then there’s always been kids and teenagers who’ve got anxious.

That’s part of what I really hope to try to do in the tour – remind parents and other people living and working with the kids that anxiety is just a normal part of life.

We need to give children and teenagers the message that it is something that they can expect to experience at some point, but also something that they needn’t be frightened of.

Why do you think anxiety has become such an issue in recent years?

I think there’s been a much broader discourse about mental health generally.

I never talk about mental health in the media or reference it in my own writings. I do refer a lot to children’s emotional wellbeing and I think some of the discourse on mental health has pathologised things like anxiety and even depression.

That, I suppose, has left some kids and teenagers with this sense that normal feelings in response to circumstances that might be challenging or upsetting are in some way abnormal, something that is beyond what one should expect.

This has maybe panicked some of them and certainly panicked their parents.

Some parents are bringing their kids to me because they feel anxious and they are concerned that they might have some lifelong debilitating illness or that this is just a precursor to more serious things like self-harm or even suicide.

I think that sense that it’s abnormal for kids to feel these challenging feelings is part of what has made anxiety seem like it’s such a huge problem now.

We all know the phrase ‘It’s okay not to be okay’, but it appears that message isn’t always getting through.

Think about how people talk about feeling anxious. People say I have anxiety, much like I have Covid or I have some other illness, whereas they don’t talk about having happiness, even though they might feel happy sometimes.

I think that’s the kind of approach we now need to take with anxiety; to see it as just a normal feeling. Of course kids will feel anxious sometimes, it’s a natural, healthy response if they’re in a challenging or frightening situation.

What we don’t want is for that worry, that anxiety, to become so overwhelming that they start to avoid things. Once they start to avoid things, it can become its own kind of negative cycle because a child might learn that the only reason their anxiety has diminished is they have avoided the situation.

The opposite scenario is that if you can encourage a child to still try to do the thing, even if they’re feeling a bit anxious, they’ll realise it’s not as difficult or as frightening as they thought.

They experience that achievement and then feel a little bit more confident and a little bit more motivated to try other challenges again. That’s certainly the direction I would be pushing in the talks I’m giving – to try and give parents a good understanding of anxiety to normalise it and then give them some good strategies to empower their kids.

Do you think, is it harder to be a child and a parent today?

I think it is and that’s largely to do with the internet. I think smartphones have become a scourge of childhood and adolescence. I think even before they get smartphones, for younger kids, technology is a disaster. They perceive it as a source of entertainment but essentially also a form of switching off. I think it disconnects them from their world and then they face a whole new set of challenges.

It is really difficult to parent kids now because in the past typically you lived in a community and that community held largely similar views and values to your own. The Catholic Church wasn’t always a force for good in Ireland but one thing it did offer was that sense of kind of commonality and communality when it came to values. That meant that as a parent, you were quite supported in the decisions you’d make for your child because pretty much everybody else was making the same kinds of decisions and that was, I think, helpful for parents.

Now kids are being influenced by forces from different cultures and values and lots of parents have no idea of the kind of stuff their kids are being exposed to or how their kids are processing that information. I think the internet is definitely a force ultimately for bad in children’s lives. I think that has made their lives harder and I think it has made parenting kids’ lives harder as well.

Do you have advice for parents regarding technology?

Delay as long as is humanly possible, while still recognising that sometimes pester power is significant. If your child genuinely is the last child in their class who doesn’t have a smartphone, there is always the potential that they’re going to be socially disadvantaged because one thing that it does allow kids to do is stay socially connected. That is the main form of social connection for a lot of kids outside of school, but definitely delay as long as you possibly can.

I also think when you do give your child a smartphone, you have to be restrictive. You have to try to monitor what they’re doing, talk about what they’re doing, help them understand and contextualise some of the things they’re seeing.

If they’re making mistakes in terms of how they’re communicating with people online through social media or whatever else it is, you sit down and you talk with them about it.

Only when you are reassured after six months or a year that they really have a handle on their phone, then you start to taking off some of the parental controls and give them a little bit more freedom. If they make lots of mistakes, you pull it all back.

A phone for a child really is a privilege, it’s not a right. If they’re going to manage that privilege, then they have to be supported to learn to manage it correctly.

What’s the response been like from parents during the tour?

Generally speaking I get good feedback from talks that I give. I think people find them both useful but also enjoyable. I try to use a little bit of humour. I certainly draw in my own experiences as a parent as well to normalise a lot of what we’re talking about, but also to make it a little bit more accessible for people.

Do you get anxious before a talk?

I always get anxious and I think the day I stop being anxious is probably the day I should stop doing talks. I would see my anxiety prior to a talk as being something that is useful because it allows me to focus.