Children, Like Adults, Are Suffering Burnout : Health: Expectations, images of perfection, fears and guilt can bring children to the edge of overload.
The terrible toos afflict children of all ages.
Too many expectations.
Too many media images of perfection.
Too many fears.
Too much guilt brought on by too many “shoulds.”
These “toos” douse the energy and enthusiasm of too many fired-up kids.
And they ignite another terrible too: too much burnout, a malady that has affected parents for some time and has now spread to their children, some as young as 7 or 8.
According to Joseph Procaccini, associate professor of education at Loyola College in Baltimore and the author of two parenting books, “20 to 30% of kids experience some kind of burnout.” Procaccini, who has for at least a decade focused on parent burnout--the subject of one of his books--is expanding his interest to the other side of the family.
Child burnout may be relatively minor and fleeting, marked by a temporary lack of interest in school or occasional temper tantrums. Or it may persist until a child feels trapped and begins dropping out--socially, mentally, even physically--from school or home.
Burnout happens when the demands on a child outweigh his energy, Procaccini says. There is, however, a delicate balance to work with. Imposing demands on children is not wrong; it is, in fact, a good way to motivate them, he says. When energy and demand are equal, a person is performing at his peak; when those demands get out of hand, burnout threatens.
“Unrealistic expectations are the real culprit” in burnout, he says. These expectations can come from within a person, from parents and teachers, from peers and from the media.
Procaccini lays a good part of the blame on parents. “I think most parents overestimate their kids’ abilities. Many parents will not accept anything but an A,” he observes. “There’s a whole group of parents out there . . . just waiting to get kids into programs”--soccer teams, computer camps, language clubs or tot gym classes.
Children bombarded with unrealistic demands and expectations begin to believe that their parents’ love is based on their achievements, that it depends on how well they do some thing or many things, Procaccini says.
“A burned-out kid is an angry kid,” says Procaccini. “To burn out you have to be on fire.” That fire is fueled by frustration over the conflict between what a youngster assumes “should be” and what he knows “is.”
Here Procaccini sees television as a big contributor. It is not the programs that affect youngsters as much as the advertising that prompts them to “try to become something that’s impossible to become,” he says. Anyone 20 and younger has grown up with “constant images of perfection” that lead to “an awful lot of anger.”
A burned-out child will also feel guilt, which Procaccini describes as anger turned inward, over the disparity between “should” and “is.”
This anger eats away at a child’s energy, he says, imbalancing even further the energy-demand scale.
A child’s unrealized expectations combine with the stresses that are inherent in both childhood and family life. “Stress is caused by change. Change is constant. Bodies change, lives change, people change,” says Procaccini. “Every day in our lives, families are changing.”
With 40% of all American families breaking apart, many children have more than their normal share of change, he adds. Even children from intact families have “a sense of impending loss,” because they know so many children from broken families.
These natural, and human-derived, stresses add to the possibility of burnout among children.
The signs of it are several, says Procaccini:
* Fatigue. A child may become “abnormally sluggish” physically and mentally lethargic.
* Irritability. Temper tantrums may become frequent or more intense than usual.
* Mental exhaustion. This is often characterized by forgetfulness, especially of well-known facts.
* Paranoia and disassociation. These mark the “serious stage” of burnout, when a child is feeling trapped and may be questioning his values, talking about dropping out of school or society, and even threatening suicide.
He cautions parents to “factor out normal types of behavior” for their child before determining burnout. But, if a parent detects a trapped feeling or paranoia, “your child probably needs counseling,” he says.
What can a parent do to prevent burnout?
Parents need to show, Procaccini suggests, that their love is unconditional, that nothing a child does or fails to do will diminish that love and that children do not have the power to make or break their parents emotionally by their actions or achievements.
Parents can also foster a tolerance for ambiguity, so children learn that life does not work like a math formula: That just because they play--and play hard--they don’t necessarily win. “We’re not letting them know that in some areas you can be fourth or fifth,” he says.
Even the best hitters in baseball “fail twice for each hit. The game of life is the same way.”
“The only way to survive in the ‘90s, as adults, is to trade off,” he says. For example, if a woman gets an A-plus this week as a mother, she may get only a C in her workplace. She can’t get an A-plus in all facets of her life simultaneously, he explains. Nor can her children.
Parents can give their children responsibility for their own happiness by teaching them they can control their feelings rather than being tossed about by others’ actions and opinions. “Teach children to establish their own criteria by which to judge themselves.”
Parents must also listen, he says. “Kids have reached the conclusion that their parents don’t really know them,” Procaccini says. And rather than telling their parents who they are, such youngsters suffer silently because they are not the children of their parents’ imaginations. Hence, “a lot of kids are very lonely today,” says Procaccini.
