The adults aren’t okay either
High stress, failing relationships, trouble sleeping, an increase in loneliness, and an overall decline in close friendships. When the adults aren't doing well, the kids won't be okay either.
There’s a pattern I’m noticing in my work with young people: When there are kids who are struggling, there are adults around them who aren’t doing so well either. With all this attention on rising adolescent mental health rates, we keep hearing some version of “the kids aren’t okay.” I’m wondering if we’re missing something important, which is that adults aren’t okay either.
Adults are better at hiding it
Developmentally speaking, kids are a lot more uninhibited, are less restrained, have less practice regulating their behaviour, and, put frankly, haven’t had as much time to shove away their shit. As adults, on the other hand, we have had a lot more practice packing away our problems. Sometimes I wonder what “healthy” even means anymore. Sometimes it seems like everyone is struggling and other days it feels like we’re the only ones.
In any case, I wonder what adulthood is supposed to look like. There is talk of having more confidence, more developed leadership and decision-making skills, and better self-management skills. Being an adult was sold to us as a thing you automatically become and not something you have to work at. There are many pressures that come with being an adult in today’s world. When I look around at other adults, I become less and less convinced that anyone truly has this whole adult thing figured out; many of us are faking and fumbling our way through it.
I see us pushing ourselves to become the adults we admired growing up and I see us desperately trying to avoid becoming the adults we hated. Many of us have become expert pretenders and have become really good at hiding our insecurities, shortcomings, and greatest fears. I think that’s part of the reality of being an adult.
Kids are the thermometer for the family
In family therapy and behavioural mental health, we have a saying we commonly use, which is that “behaviour is communication.” When I wave hello to you, it is a behaviour I am using to communicate my intention to greet you. When I throw my toy across the room, it is behaviour I am using to communicate my anger or show my distaste for something I don’t like. Luckily, I’ve outgrown the impulse to throw my toys across the room, though there are times I’d love to throw my phone at the wall… :)
We use our behaviour and actions to communicate to others (and to ourselves!) what we need, how we’re feeling, and what we’re thinking. When there is bad, negative, or harmful behaviour happening around us, it is communication that something in the relationship is wrong or something in the environment is off.
A child’s behaviour is an external indicator of their internal world. Kids show on the outside what they can’t describe on the inside. Big behaviours are communication that something big is going on around them. Kids are the thermometer for the family. To that same point, kids are the thermometer for the temperature of a classroom, a sports team, and a friend group. When things are going wrong in a child’s environment, we’ll usually be able to see it in their behaviour when it isn’t being spoken about. And sometimes their behaviour doesn’t match what is being said.
Adults throw their toys sometimes too
Being an adult is stressful. As adults, we, too, have the same patterns of communication when it comes to our stress management. When we are unable make sense of our stress, we might struggle to notice how we’re feeling and we might find it difficult to cope. Our behaviour and our choices are also a good indicator of how we’re doing. In today’s world, parents are pulled in many directions and we have our own, maybe more socially acceptable, adult ways of coping with stress. But perhaps they are just the adult version of throwing our toys across the room (yes, I’m talking about things like scrolling, social media, excessive drinking, smoking, and other harmful behaviours that help us relieve, resolve, or escape our stress). Sometimes we hold little kids to a higher standard than we hold ourselves. Sometimes we notice bad behaviour in kids without acknowledging the same types of coping behaviours in ourselves.
The role of our nervous system
My main point in highlighting this similarity is to normalize that adults are stressed too, we just have different ways of showing it. We all have our preferred coping behaviours and we all manage our stress differently. Despite our differences, we all have a nervous system whose main job is to turn our stress on and off. The nervous system dials the stress up and dials the stress down, somewhat like a dimmer switch with a gas pedal to speed it up and a brake to slow it. When the gas pedal, brake, or dimmer switch isn’t working well, we may struggle to feel good, to maintain social contact with others, or solve our problems effectively.
Hanging on by a thread
The data doesn’t lie. Rates of loneliness are increasing. We’re experiencing drastic rates of disconnection in friendships. We’re spending too much time alone and screen time is even impacting our sleep. Our marriages and relationships are also not doing well and new data even suggests second marriages are more likely to end in divorce. Regardless of the rates of adult mental health diagnoses, these cultural trends are enough proof that adults are struggling too. I’m afraid we are not as aware of it as we think we are. We are all just hanging on.
Who’s in charge here?
I remember throughout the pandemic, I kept saying the same thing to myself: “Where are the adults?" Who’s in charge here? Who is taking care of us?” I think these statements speak to an important need we all have, which is that when we’re feeling stressed and dysregulated, we need someone to give us hope, to provide structure, and to help us reclaim some of the control we’ve lost. Kids need the same thing when they’re feeling stressed and overwhelmed. Kids cannot regulate themselves when they are surrounded by dysregulated adults.
We are the adults in this situation, both literally and for the sake of the pandemic analogy I used earlier. We are the adults. We are in charge. And it is our job to take care of those around us. Dr. Becky Kennedy, acclaimed parenting expert, talks about a parent’s role as being the CEO or leader of their household. Being the CEO of a family is hard work, especially when we’re struggling to be the CEO of our own sole proprietorship.
It’s not your fault
There’s a quote by Alexander Den Heijer I always come back to when there’s a big adult problem on my hands and I’m trying to remember that it’s not just me, and it goes like this: “When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.”
This quote is meant to help us see the different factors that go into a flower’s process of growth. They need nutrient-rich soil, enough room to spread their roots, and the correct amount of sunlight and water. Humans are no different. Sometimes we aren’t in the right soil, aren’t getting enough water and light, and don’t have enough room to reach our full expression. When we don’t have these things, we start to wilt, rot, decay, and decompose.
This is all to say that the environment we’re growing in isn’t always conducive to our growth. Giving kids a safe home environment helps them bloom where they are. It is hard to do that when we’re not taking care of ourselves or we’re unaware of how the soil and sunlight impacts our growth. It’s hard to do that when our environment is poisoned or we don’t have access to nutrient-rich soil or a steady drip of water.
In order for us to feel better, we’re going to have to get some dirt under our nails. We can’t control the weather or sunlight, but we can control the soil, the water, and where we replant ourselves. Some of us are planted in the shade, no doubt, which keeps us from accessing our light. We are all a different type of plant and some of us have had to survive some pretty harsh conditions. Maybe you’re sturdy like a succulent or hold the healing powers of an aloe plant. Maybe you’re not a flower after all.
Although being an adult is hard, we can weather the storm when we don’t choose the weather and we can reground ourselves when we’re feeling ungrounded.
I’m rooting for all of us,
Jake