Our children are at breaking point – and it’s our fault

I think it’s time we stopped scaring the children. I think they’ve had enough. They’re at breaking point now, every generation more anxious than the last – and anxious younger, too. There’s a record number of British children diagnosed with anxiety, and a record wait – two years – for therapy, though I’m not at all sure the therapy as it is helps much.

The usual idea is that if the kids are troubled, it’s the world that’s to blame: smartphones, Instagram, the constant comparing; Trump, Putin, the existence of Tories; Covid, global warming. No wonder they have the heebie-jeebies. But I think in fact that we’re doing it to them. It’s us, the parents, carers, teachers in charge. We’re inadvertently torturing our kids.

Last week a consultant psychiatrist at the private mental health Nightingale Hospital, one Dr Chetna Kang, told the papers that she’s seeing children in London who are traumatised by the war with Russia. ‘Kids are scared there will be a world war and are frightened for their future,’ she said. ‘Very young kids just don’t understand why people fight like this.’ But why in God’s name is anyone telling the very young kids anything about the war?

Five-year-olds aren’t naturally interested in geopolitics. They have their own concerns: space, woodlice, puffy stickers, friends. If they’re worried about politics, it’s because the adults meant to care for them have made them worried – and to what end?

I have several friends who’ve felt the need to explain to their children exactly what a bad man Putin is – with one who’s gone the whole hog and told his seven-year-old all about the radius of blast zones and how much of London would be destroyed in the event of a nuclear war.