What is going on?<\/b><\/p>\n
I have never witnessed so much anxiety in children as I have in the last five years.\u00a0 Previously in my role as a Kindergarten teacher, I witnessed so many children who came to school with so much fear and anxiety and I often wondered \u201cwhat is going on?\u201d\u00a0 Children, as early as four or five years old, religiously sanitizing their hands at every move,\u00a0 constantly worrying, quickly getting angry and irritable to the point of lashing out at their peers and adults, and having tremendous difficulty concentrating.\u00a0 It is alarming.\u00a0 In one incident, a student so overcome with anxiety began throwing chairs and bins of books, with the teacher removing the class to the hallway to teach in the hallway while the school administrator and social worker tended to the needs of the anxiety ridden child.\u00a0 This incident is not in isolation. Even before the pandemic, anxiety and depression were becoming more common among children and adolescents, increasing 27 percent and 24 percent respectively from 2016 to 2019. By 2020, 5.6 million kids (9.2%) had been diagnosed with anxiety problems and 2.4 million (4.0%) had been diagnosed with depression. [1]<\/span><\/p>\n In fact, this past winter, for the first time in my 27 years in education, I have witnessed the assignment of TWO paraprofessionals for ONE child because of the heightened anxiety and outbursts that have manifested in the child hurting themself and others.\u00a0 One of the paraprofessionals went to the ER because the child slugged the para in the lip so hard and required stitches.\u00a0 What is going on?\u00a0 In my conversations with other instructional coaches in other buildings and districts, the narrative is the same. . . growing, at an alarming rate, the number of children coming to school with behavioral issues connected to extreme levels of anxiety.\u00a0 <\/span>Of the 73+ million children in the United States, it is critical that we excogitate how we regulate our anxiety and health as leaders, parents, and grandparents. [2]<\/span><\/p>\n Is there any hope?<\/b><\/p>\n Federal policymakers are considering this research as it offers new evidence that children\u2019s mental health is trending in the wrong direction. After reading our text this week, I question whether it is not just children\u2019s mental health trending in the wrong direction, but my own health as a leader.\u00a0 Search ME! \u00a0 This trend also causes me to reflect. . . what outcome is being manifested out of my leadership?\u00a0 More importantly, how do I reflect Christ in how I care for myself and others. . . my sphere of leadership (leadership of self and others).<\/span><\/p>\n So my question is. . . If children learn by example, and if leaders are made and not born, how are we doing at developing the next generation of differentiated leaders, pondering this alarming trend towards anxiety and depression?\u00a0 How might myself and other leaders respond? This question isn\u2019t meant to cause any of us to become enmeshed (sucked up in the energy of this alarming trend), but rather, <\/span>extend empathy and reflect on our own practices of differentiation, that live in the knowledge of where our self begins and ends and where someone else\u2019s self begins and ends. [4]\u00a0 Reminder. . . as followers of Jesus, we know the end of this story.\u00a0 There is hope.\u00a0 So while it seems that God has so much work to do in me, there is hope.\u00a0 His love intersects my brokenness.<\/span><\/p>\n A testimony of this hope is manifesting itself across college campuses across our nation.\u00a0 Hunger and brokenness are intersecting, meeting the love of the Father.\u00a0 People are experiencing an outpouring of the Holy Spirit (i.e. Asbury Outpouring – February – ?, 2023).\u00a0 God, in His goodness, is redeeming what we think we know about the devolution of society and the alarming percentages of children with anxiety, doing a new thing.\u00a0 Waymaker!<\/span><\/p>\n What will it cost?<\/b><\/p>\n God graciously reminds us, inviting us back into a non-anxious journey with Him. Journeys involve movement.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/b>Movement does not imply an anxiety often found in the idea change, but can look more like a rhythm of abiding and morphing.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/b>The movement each person takes, in becoming a better regulated leader, looks different, but often involves, at the start, a change in the posture of one\u2019s heart. <\/span>\u00a0<\/b>Edwin Friedman in his book<\/span>, <\/span>A Failure of Nerve<\/span><\/i>, brings to our awareness the idea of emotional regression as more of a\u00a0 \u201cgoing down\u201d, or devolution, than an evolution, \u201cgoing up\u201d. [5]\u00a0 He noted the irony of how this devolution process can appeal to the very leaders who could pull a society out of its devolution by rerouting their focus on data and technique rather than on emotional process and the care of the leader\u2019s own self.\u00a0 [6]<\/span>\u00a0 We have a responsibility to be a part of the going up, caring for ourselves and being light in a dark, very anxious world (leadersmithing with apprenticeship).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n How does a leader just \u201cbe\u201d?<\/b><\/p>\n While this idea of \u201cresponsibility\u201d may probe an immediate anxious response (a \u201cto-do\u201d list with numerous habits, methods, disciplines, practices, and all the \u201cto-dos\u201d that one could conjure up) let\u2019s consider reorienting our minds to a \u201cto-be\u201d list. Or better yet, inviting the Holy Spirit into the work of reordering our hearts, to produce the best version of self for the glory of God . . .\u201c<\/span>Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.\u00a0 See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.\u201d Psalm 139:23-24. [7]\u00a0 It is in the work of being, that God has a unique long-term purpose for each of us.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Our \u201cto-be\u201d list is our priority.\u00a0 It is in this differentiated version of a regulated self that God invites us to join Him in mastering our own \u201cships\u201d. In the book, <\/span>The Body Keeps the Score,<\/span><\/i> author Bessel Van der Kolk, offers this challenge of how individuals can return to being masters of their own ships, seeing how imprints from the past can be transformed. Understanding this depends largely on our internal leadership skills – how well we listen to our different parts, making sure they feel taken care of, and keep them from sabotaging one another.\u00a0 [8]\u00a0 As we master our ships, it is vital that we have the courage to care for our different parts, whether emotional, spiritual, mental and physical.\u00a0 Being, is our priority.<\/span><\/p>\n In the book,\u00a0 <\/span>Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, <\/span><\/i>author Peter Scazzero shares a story about a moment in his life where he made some realizations about his own emotional and spiritual health as a leader, \u201cExternally I appeared kind, gracious, and patient, when inwardly I was nothing like that.\u00a0 I so wanted to present a polished image as a good Christian that I cut myself off from what was going on within myself. . . . I was stuck in an immature level of spiritual and emotional development.\u201d [9]\u00a0 We (I) can become so consumed in our (my) roles as leaders that we neglect the care of ourselves, emotionally and spiritually.\u00a0 When we experience sabotage, the systems within us that are resistant to change in our health as leaders, let\u2019s consider \u201cbeing\u201d as our primary responsibility to ourselves and to our Creator, resting in His care for the doing.\u00a0 This movement in our journey may have the greatest impact on those who we come alongside and lead. . . ourselves.<\/span><\/p>\n [1] Lydie A. Lebrun-Harris, Reem M. Ghandour, Michael D. Kogan, Michael D. Warren. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Five-Year Trends in US Children\u2019s Health and Well-being, <\/span><\/i>2016-2020. <\/span>JAMA Pediatr.<\/span><\/i> 2022;176(7):e220056. doi:10.1001\/jamapediatrics.2022.0056<\/span><\/p>\n