How to parent in a messed up world | Emma Woodward | TEDxUOA

Hello. I don't think that it would be too much of a controversial statement to make that the world we live in today is not set up for human flourishing. So I guess that gives us two big questions. Firstly, what impact is that actually having on us? And secondly, more importantly, what can we do? And how can we parent in a messed up world? Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, koutou. My name is Dr. Emma Woodward, I'm a child psychologist and as you heard I have 25 years experience working with children, young people and their families. And today I'd like to share with you some of the crucial changes that I've observed during that time and what this means for supporting future generations to flourish. So to begin, I'd like to ask you to join me in a brief show of hands. Please raise your hands if you know what this means. Brilliant. Okay, for the rest of you, I can imagine you might have been able to pick out a few bits and pieces of it, or if you're anything like me, it does look like a little bit of a foreign language. I think even five years ago, a sentence like that would have been completely incomprehensible for everybody to understand. From COVID-19 references to the explosion of TikTok, it's actually a snapshot of the world that we live in today and it can make you feel a little bit unsettled not to recognise some parts of it. And that's okay because feeling unsettled is quite a familiar feeling for all of us right now. Our whole world is currently marked by uncertainty, instability and rapid change and that is ultimately quite destabilising. I think the fact is that the issues that parents face today are oceans apart, in fact rapidly warming oceans apart from those faced by our parents just a generation ago. And it was actually in becoming a parent myself to my own four children that not only made these differences more apparent, but also gave me a deeper perspective on some of the factors that enabled me to navigate my own childhood experiences with instability and what lessons I could take from this to hand on to my own children. This is me and in this picture I'm about five. I know, I haven't aged at all, have I? And not long after this I was placed into temporary foster care for the first time. Now growing up in an environment defined largely by adversity meant that by 14 I was living in foster care, by 15 I'd left school and by 16 I was homeless. Without the appropriate support and resources to navigate the often overwhelming situations I found myself in, I never really got to learn how to identify my emotions or understand the impact they had on my behaviour or my mental health. Now luckily for me, you don't need to be emotionally literate to be academically successful. They are mutually exclusive. So it wasn't until I got to university to study psychology that I began to realise how many gaps I actually had in my emotional development and also the impact that my childhood had had on me. I think I spent most of my undergraduate years feeling a little bit like an alien who had to learn how to human. So I spent a lot of time watching and a lot of time learning and more often than not feeling completely baffled by this intuitive emotional language that more well-adjusted people appeared to communicate in so easily. And whilst that was quite an awkward and uncomfortable situation to be in, it made me curious. And that sparked a lifelong interest in both human psychology and also how trauma can deeply embed itself throughout all of our lives. And what mental health professionals like myself are now seeing are those same trauma driven behaviours that were prevalent in my childhood manifesting in those with all of the privileges typically associated with a well-adjusted life. My practice sees hundreds of young people every year and they are sharing with us that they are feeling increasing levels of hopelessness, grief, anxiety and anger. And in New Zealand alone, signs of mental distress amongst our youth population have risen dramatically in the last decade. And more globally, 80% of children and young people have recently been identified as being vulnerable to mental health concerns such as anxiety and depression. And it's statistics like these that have led to the World Economic Forum recently identifying youth disillusionment as one of our greatest immediate risks. And as mental health statistics like that begin to creep up, I think for parents this sense of panic starts to creep in because it feels like no matter what we do for our kids, things keep getting worse and we're always behind the curve. So I think we need to stop and I think we need to ask ourselves, is this really poor mental health or a perfectly understandable trauma response to a threat? But why might that be? Because if we can understand that, then maybe we can provide our children with the right support and resources to enable them to cope. Over the last generations, the world has become increasingly set up to focus on money, productivity and consumption. And this means the things that we as human beings need most deeply in order to feel safe, basic stability and authentic connection, have become an all but fundamental impossibility. Our global politics really model them. Our economic imperatives certainly don't prioritise them. The way we live doesn't encourage them. And our very climate around us can't guarantee them. The truth is, evolution simply didn't prepare us for the way that we live today. And our own threat response system is now becoming repeatedly activated in response to a society that we have created. The modern day equivalent of a sabre-toothed tiger is now our everyday way of life. And because we can't fight that threat with a spear, we've started to adopt more psychological defence mechanisms in order to try and cope. We numb out on our devices to avoid overwhelm. We tend to succumb to our biases and we begin to avoid, defend against or attack things that challenge us. We're internalising unrealistically high standards that we can never possibly meet because failure doesn't feel like a safe option. And we're beginning to blame each other for our own discontent and therefore becoming more polarised. The thing is, engaging in these psychological defences can give us a sense of temporary relief, but the trade-off is that we begin to lose the ability to connect, to self-reflect and to creatively problem-solve. And herein lies the dilemma. Our future success and our mental health rely on connection, self-reflection and creative solutions. And that is impossible if, like 16-year-old Emma, we are all too focused on self-protection and too dissociated to realise how traumatised we actually are. But how do we get here? Because maybe if we can understand that, we can start to redirect ourselves. I think there are probably many, many, many reasons as to why we're here today. However, I think the one that might be really important for us as parents to consider, largely because it's the one that we've got most influence over, is how we learn about the world around us. Because the world is so complex and because human beings are largely social creatures, we are greatly influenced by the beliefs and the values of those around us, and more markedly so in our childhood. Now this kind of provides us with an unconscious psychological blueprint on how to navigate the world. And over the last generation, we have focused on money, productivity and consumerism. But these things are a little bit like fossil fuel for our soul, in that their ability to sustain our wellbeing is finite. And due to the rapid acceleration of the world, the blueprint that contains these as the key markers of success is no longer fit to pass on. But because we have internalised the need to prioritise these so deeply, we're struggling to reshift our focus. My generation has now largely shouldered the burden of transitioning from a world that we recognise to one that we don't. Let's not impose that on our children too. Yes, I think we need to consider the messages that we hand down to them. But we need to give them the right support and resources in the first instance so they don't have to spend a lifetime, like us, undoing the conditioning that doesn't serve them well. Because not only is that not fair, we actually don't have the time. But that doesn't mean it's too late to do something about it. Because as anybody who currently lives with a preschooler can tell you, that children are naturally resilient, creative and determined to learn. And even amongst all of the instability in the world today, there are many, many, many awesome young people taking great strides to make the most of the cards their generation has been dealt. Yes, adversity can leave its mark. But there are many people who experienced adversity in their childhood who have gone on to flourish. And I think we need to take inspiration from what we know about that. I think we need to move towards a more trauma-informed approach to our parenting. And this means recognising and addressing the things that actually traumatise us, rather than simply trying to deal with the impact. So we definitely, definitely do need to continue to provide the resilience to our kids to cope with the world we live in. But more importantly, we need to nurture and encourage their inherent resilience and creativity to reimagine the way that we live. So what does that mean as parents? And how would we actually do that? And I think one of the first things we need to think about is how we create the opportunity for change to naturally occur. So I'm going to share with you three evidence-based pointers that might be able to help us to do that. First, get curious. Curiosity is the foundation to all innovation. It is a key skill that enables us to adapt and deal with change. And it helps us to see the possibilities instead of the pitfalls. Now, a simple way to start cultivating a curious mindset is to practise shifting statements of fact into question. So things like, oh, this is really hard, flip into, how can I make this easier? Or, yeah, but we've always done it this way, flips into, yeah, but why? And I think that in particular is a very important question that we all need to be asking ourselves right now. And it's not as simple as being curious about the outside world. We need to get curious about our own inner workings too and raise our level of self-awareness. We need to get curious about the blueprint that's inside us and what we're handing down to the next generations. We need to get curious about our emotions and consider what our triggers are and how do we respond. And if emotions are the biological push behind our behaviour, then it is actually our values that are the aspirational pull. And our values give us the courage and determination to consciously govern our own behaviour, even when things feel tough. Now, I know that it can feel uncomfortable to interrogate yourself in that way. However, it can often give us some starting point to some small but meaningful changes. And without direction, there is rarely action. Point two, get connected. Our earliest relationships lay down the foundations for how we trust other people and navigate the world around us. And your child's earliest relationship is with you. We definitely can't provide certainty that ship has sailed, however, we can provide connection. And relationships act as a buffer against all of the senses of instability and safety that exist in the world today. And I think the research highlights that actually relationships can act as a buffer against anxiety and depression, and they can even make our immune systems function more effectively. Relationships don't cost anything apart from effort and time. However, they are often the first thing to dissipate when we feel stretched or stressed or overwhelmed. So we need to think about how we intentionally prioritise them amongst the other competing demands of our day. So go out, build your villages, expand your bubbles, get involved in your communities. Talk to your children about what's going on in their lives. Talk to each other about the wider social and environmental issues that we all face, and more importantly, how we can take positive collective action. Because ultimately, things just don't seem so scary when we're reminded we're not alone. And three, get compassionate. And I think in a world of comparison culture and perfectionism, compassion can seem a little bit like a radical act. We have become so quick to judge and to criticise, but choosing to cultivate compassion shifts our perspective and in turn how we treat each other. It starts to act like a virtuous cycle that brings us together. Compassion goes beyond simply recognising suffering. It motivates us to help. And it doesn't need to be some big, magnanimous effort. Even the micro-moments of compassion I experienced as a child made a difference I'll never forget. The custody sergeant who snuck me a hot chocolate while I was waiting for my social worker to pick me up from the police station after I'd been caught shoplifting again. The nurse who held back my hair and rubbed my back when I felt sick. And the teacher who used to share his flask of tea with me in detention. They all connected with me as a fellow human being at the times I was most vulnerable, which in turn enabled me to embrace my own vulnerability and show compassion to myself. And it is actually self-compassion rather than self-esteem that enables us to continue when things feel tough. Self-compassion teaches us that we don't need to be perfect to be lovable. It teaches us that suffering and distress are a common experience to us all which makes us easier to tolerate. Now I'm no Pollyanna and I am well aware that we have many, many big obstacles to overcome within our children's lifetime. However, even though there are so many things that feel like they're just outside of our control, I also don't think we're making the most of the things that are within it either. In the words of Margaret Atwood, to create a future that works, we must work together. And we do this best when our basic needs are met and we feel safe. So I encourage you to take on board these three pointers and realign with what is actually important and provide our kids with the skills and the resources that they actually need. And then, maybe that small light within us, that sense of hope that has all been extinguished can shine brightly enough to illuminate a clear path ahead, a way forward for us all. And for those of you who are curious, that's the translation of the first slide. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.