Kids and Anxiety

Teens and young adults are currently experiencing more stress and anxiety today than any generation before them. Today, Bob shares wisdom from clinical neuropsychologist Dr. Bill Stixrud who urges parents to schedule “radical downtime” for young people—a few minutes of unfocused time each day to recharge their brains and reinvigorate their lives.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Stay Calm as a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
to Stay Calm, your daily dose of calmness. I'm Bob Roth,
and I've been teaching people to meditate for fifty years,
helping them to stay calm under pressure, reboot and re
energize their lives, and basically be a happier, healthier version

(00:22):
of themselves. And now I want to help you do
the same. Ready, sit comfortably, take a few deep breaths,
and let's begin today's journey. If you think the stress
in America is bad today, we'll count your blessings. Go
back a hundred and forty years to one. That's when

(00:44):
a medical doctor wrote a book that warned about the
harrowing increase of nervousness in America and the causes he cited.
And I kid you not the emergence of the railroad,
Western Union and the pocket watch. I guess you could
say it's a matter of degrees. According to doctor Bill
sticks Rude, a clinical neuropsychologist in Silver Spring, Maryland and

(01:08):
co author of the national bestseller The Self Driven Child,
the impact of stress on life today is about ten
thousand times greater compared to a hundred forty years ago. Obviously,
doctor sticks Root is exaggerating a bit here, but he
does so to make two key points. One, it is
terrible out there, especially for our kids, and two, as parents,

(01:31):
we can do something about it. I have known doctor
sticks Rude as both a friend and a colleague for
over twenty years. In addition to his private practice, he
also serves as assistant professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at
the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences.
He has spent thirty years working with stressed out children, teens,

(01:54):
and young adults. Doctor sticks Rude says, even before the
COVID nineteen pandemic make the levels of anxiety, depression, and
other mental health problems were an epidemic proportions among kids.
Now it's only gotten worse. Kids are suffocating under the
pressure to get the best grades to get into the

(02:14):
best schools. Parents often ask doctor sticks Root, will it
get better for my kid in college? His answer, no,
it actually gets worse. The reality is that the mental
health crisis among college students has been escalating for years,
and now colleges, including the most elite, can't hire mental

(02:35):
health professionals fast enough. Doctor sticks Root has strong advice
don't micromanage your teen's life lighten up quote. As parents,
we need to be honest with ourselves. We don't always
know what's best for our kids. We don't always have
the right answers. The best message we can give a

(02:56):
teenager besides I love you, is that I have confidence
in your ability to make decisions about your own life.
And I have confidence that you will learn from your
own mistakes. And I want you to have tons of
experience of both before you go off to college. The
opposite approach certainly hasn't worked under the gaze of well

(03:16):
meaning but overbearing parents. Kids work ferociously hard for much
of their young lives to get into a top college,
but once they arrive, they are emotionally unprepared for what
follows doctor Sticks, who says there is one thing parents
can do to take the pressure off their kids and
give them a better shot at a healthy, happy life,

(03:37):
and that is not to pressure them to work harder
to do more. In fact, parents should encourage the opposite.
Give your kids what he calls radical downtime. Schedule more
time for things as simple and incredibly valuable as meditation
and sleep, daydreaming and mind wandering doctor Sticks Truth said

(04:00):
that teenagers need an average of nine and a quarter
hours of sleep, and yet most kids sleep less than
seven hours a night during the school year. That means
your teen's cognitive capacity is more impaired than if he
or she were legally drunk. But the best thing we
as parents can do to send our kids safely off
into the world is to foster an ongoing close relationship.

(04:25):
Closeness with a parent is like a silver bullet for
protecting our kids from emotional distress. He says. As parents,
we should strive to become a non anxious presence in
the lives of our kids. We all know it's much
easier to soothe a crying infant if you stay calm.
It's much easier to handle a three year old who
is having a tantrum in a store if you stay calm.

(04:47):
And if you've got a fifteen year old who comes
home and his girlfriend just dumped him and he's really upset, well,
it's much easier to listen and help problem solve if
you stay calm. So I leave you with Bill sticks
Dud's words, which, as you know, are the title of
this podcast. Stay Calm, My advice is to follow Dr

(05:08):
sticks Rud's advice, do everything you can to stay calm.
The primary beneficiaries right after you will be your kids.
All right, Let's end this time together doing something that
I think should be a feature of our everyday life,
and that's appreciation and gratitude. So let's take thirty seconds

(05:29):
of quiet, thirty seconds to take a break, just take
a moment. It turns out when we do that, it's
good for our health as well. I'll be right back

(06:07):
all right. Thank you for joining me today. I hope
you heard something that inspires, that uplifts you and that
you can incorporate into your own life. This is Bob Roth.
Stay calm. Hey, all of you out there, I'd love
to hear from you. You can send me your stories,

(06:28):
your questions, or anything else on your mind. Just connect
with me on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram at Meditation Bob.
You can also send me an email at meditation Bob
Roth at gmail dot com. I look forward to hearing
from you.