Sooner or later, people are going to start wondering why we’re not getting the return on our investment we were promised.
I’ve been saying this for a while now. And lately, I’ve been finding some other voices that are saying/asking the same thing: “What’s going on with our kids’ mental health?”
We are throwing everything we have at children’s mental health.
More money.
More therapists.
More diagnoses.
More school programs.
More awareness campaigns.
More conversations.
And by every meaningful metric, kids are struggling more than they were a decade ago.
That should bother us.
According to CDC data, between 2009 and 2019, high school students reporting persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness jumped by 40 percent. Suicidal ideation rose by more than a third. After the pandemic, the numbers climbed again. Attempts went up. Thoughts of suicide went up. Distress did not level off. It accelerated.
So here’s the uncomfortable question we keep avoiding:
If we are doing more than ever to support kids’ mental health, why are we losing?
Recently, I stumbled across this post on HuffPost. I don’t know the author or her background, but this article comes with receipts. She has links that take you to her conclusions. Read it here.
She talks about the negative correlation between mental health and early social media use. I would cautiously remind the reader that correlation does not prove causation and there is such a thing as confounding variables.
The Problem with Blaming Phones
The popular answer is social media, with some truth to it.
Phones.
Screens.
Algorithms.
Dopamine.
That explanation is convenient. It gives adults a villain that doesn’t require us to look in the mirror.
Phones are not the cause.
They are a symptom.
Social media did not raise children who cannot tolerate discomfort.
Phones did not create kids who collapse under normal disappointment.
Apps did not teach children that their value is tied to performance.
Those lessons were taught long before kids got their first device.
Screens amplify what already exists.
They do not invent it.
You can keep your child from social media while providing them with a phone. I did it with all of mine. We allowed different apps at different stages of development.
But, research is starting to show an interesting trend: it’s not the social media, it’s how you teach your child to pursue life that mostly impacts their mental health.
We’ve created a weird paradox in our society. On the one hand, we seem to be creating more fragile, less resilient humans at an alarming rate.
On the other hand, we are creating a bizarre, unrelenting pursuit of success earlier in life.
We’ve taken away free play and replaced it with organized play and practice. Backyard baseball games have evolved into travel teams with pitching specialists, hitting coaches, and thousand-dollar price tags. Play in the backyard has become a billion-dollar industry.
At the same time, we tell them that any sadness is depression.
We Optimized for Happiness and Lost Resilience
One of the most honest points in the article is this: many parents are unintentionally harming their children by chasing happiness instead of maturity.
We decided kids should be happy all the time.
So we intervened early and often.
We removed obstacles.
We smoothed paths.
We fixed problems before kids could feel them.
We rescued them from boredom, frustration, and failure.
Think about the first generation of video games. There was no save progress button. Failure was guaranteed. If you wanted to keep playing, you had to be willing to lose. Repeatedly. You learned persistence not because someone taught it to you, but because the game demanded it.
That repeated failure, paired with continued playing, wired brains toward resilience. At some level, the game was teaching the brain that failure was a required element of success.
This created what Angela Duckworth calls Grit in her phenomenal book by the same title. Buy it here.
Then things changed.
Games began to allow you to save progress.
Guides appeared showing you how to beat the game instead of enduring it.
Failure became something to avoid rather than something to persevere through.
It’s not just video games.
I’ve met people who hired a tutor for their three-year-old to get a jump on writing.
I’ve met kids who played sports year-round despite there being a continually growing body of evidence to suggest that not only is it bad for kids physically, but it’s also detrimental to their emotional health. Read that here.
The vast majority of kids drop out, citing the fact that they lost love for the sport because of playing year-round. They do that by age 13.
A simple Google search will result in quite a bit more research, which would be too cumbersome to list here completely.
The result is not emotionally healthy children. It’s emotionally fragile ones.
Children learn emotional regulation by experiencing emotions. Not by being protected from them.
If a child never sits with disappointment, they don’t learn how to recover from it.
If a child never fails, they don’t develop confidence.
If a child never struggles, they never learn that struggle is survivable.
We raised kids to expect relief, not build resilience.
Mental Health Became a Product, Not a Practice
Here’s another hard truth: we invested heavily in services and neglected formation.
Therapy is valuable.
Medication can be lifesaving.
Awareness matters.
But none of those replace daily parenting. Parenting that is willing to adjust when new data happens. Parenting that is willing to push against the societal peer pressure to do it a certain way because “your kids and college.”
In some ways, I’ve found this to be worse in church circles, where people spiritualize their preferences. Parents seem unwilling to let their child rest. It’s like they hate the idea of Sabbath, but that’s a different conversation that will happen on my Hiding Behind God blog. If you’re not subscribed there yet, be sure to do that today.
When it comes to our child’s formation,
No therapist can undo:
• a calendar packed with pressure
• a home organized around achievement
• constant comparison
• praise that only shows up when performance is high
• parents who cannot tolerate their child’s discomfort
Mental health does not grow in sessions alone.
It grows in kitchens, car rides, bedtime conversations, and ordinary responsibilities.
You cannot outsource formation and expect stability.
Kids Are Drowning in Expectations, Not Trauma
Many of the kids struggling today are not traumatized in the classic sense. They are overwhelmed. They’re often drowning in bad expectations or, at best, the wrong expectations.
They live in:
• achievement culture
• constant evaluation
• perpetual comparison
• unspoken pressure to justify their existence
And yes, some sort of weird, “comfort is everything” culture.
When children believe their value is contingent on grades, likes, wins, or approval, anxiety is not a disorder. It’s a rational response.
And when parents unintentionally reinforce that message through how they spend money, schedule time, ask questions, and argue, kids internalize it fast.
You may love your child unconditionally.
But love isn’t measured by intent.
It’s measured by impact.
What Actually Helps Kids Mentally
The article points out several counterintuitive points. Children need permission to experience the full range of emotions, not just the pleasant ones. Sadness, anger, fear, and disappointment are not problems to eliminate; they are experiences to be understood.
When kids are allowed to feel without being rushed toward happiness, they learn that emotions are information, not emergencies.
They also need space to fail and to be disappointed. Failure is not a detour from growth; it is the path. When children are protected from frustration at all costs, they never develop confidence in their ability to recover. Letting a child struggle, within reason, teaches them something far more valuable than success ever could: I can fall, and I can get back up.
Daily conversations matter too, especially when they are not disguised attempts to fix, coach, or optimize. Regular check-ins create emotional safety, not because problems are solved, but because presence is communicated.
When kids know they can talk without being managed, they are more likely to talk when it actually counts.
Gratitude practices help anchor children in reality rather than comparison. Learning to notice what is good does not deny what is hard; it keeps hardship from becoming the whole story. Gratitude grounds perspective in a culture that constantly tells kids they are behind, lacking, or not enough.
The way we praise children also shapes their inner world. When praise is tied primarily to outcomes and achievements, kids learn that love is conditional, even when parents insist it isn’t. Highlighting character, effort, kindness, and integrity tells a different story: you matter because of who you are, not what you produce.
Adam Grant shares a fascinating study where children who are told “you must have tried really hard” over “you’re really smart” despite failing were far more likely to persist in a test designed beyond their knowledge level. In other words, when effort is praised, that effort is reproduced, and out of that identity is formed. I believe that research can be found in this book.
Finally, children need real responsibilities. Not token chores, but meaningful contributions that others rely on . Responsibility creates a sense of mattering. It tells a child, in practical terms, you are needed here. And that sense of being needed is one of the most underappreciated protective factors in mental health.
Notice what’s missing from that list.
None of it requires an app.
None of it requires a diagnosis.
None of it requires a professional.
It requires present, regulated adults who can tolerate discomfort, including their own. I’m not saying our children shouldn’t see therapists; besides being a professional counselor, three of my four kids have been in therapy at one point or another.
I am begging all of us to ask if we are relying too much on therapy and not considering the impact of our own parental actions and systems.
The Real Crisis Is Adult Anxiety
Children are struggling because the adults raising them are anxious.
Anxious about outcomes. (What will happen if my kid doesn’t get into that school?)
Anxious about appearances. (What will people think if they see…?)
Anxious about falling behind. (Mary’s son is already doing XYZ, and my child isn’t…)
Anxious about discomfort. (I don’t want my child to feel like they’re different or not accepted)
So we tried to control environments instead of preparing kids.
We treated pain as pathology.
We treated stress as danger.
We treated unhappiness as failure.
And in doing so, we robbed kids of the very skills mental health depends on.
A Hard Reframe
The goal is not happy children.
The goal is capable children who become capable adults.
Children who can feel sadness without panicking.
Children who can fail without collapsing.
Children who know they matter without performing.
Children who can sit with discomfort and keep going.
Mental health isn’t built by eliminating pain.
It’s built by learning you can survive it.
Until we shift from managing children’s feelings to forming their character, no amount of money, therapy, or awareness will reverse the trend.
May you have the courage to raise capable children, not just comfortable ones.
May you tolerate their disappointment without rushing to erase it.
May you teach them that emotions are real, survivable, and worth listening to.
May you learn to tolerate your own anxiety and distress enough to allow your child to experience the pains and failures of life while you walk beside them, not in front, clearing the path.
And may your presence, not your panic, become the safest place they know.
If you found this piece challenging and provocative, please share.
We still need to talk about Therapists role in this crisis and what can be done about it. If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe today.
