Are you always rushing your kids out the door? Life is a constantly hectic schedule and although you need to be places on time, it can actually be damaging to kids to be rushed everywhere, resulting in what experts call 'Hurried Child Syndrome.'
We totally understand that life for modern parents is a constant round of enrichment activities and playdates. When it's time to go back to school after any holidays, parents feel the pressure more than ever to rush out the door every day in a bid not to be the parent always running late.
However, alongside the constant need to be in a multitude of places on time, experts reveal this could be contributing to the increase of kids being treated for anxiety. Such is this spike in children needing treatment for anxiety disorders, experts have coined the term 'Hurried Child Syndrome' - a potentially dangerous downside to their hectic lives.
Psychologist David Elkind brought the idea of the hurried child to the mainstream, in 1981. He hoped to draw attention to the effects of hurrying children through life and the blurred boundaries of what is age-appropriate for them. If that was true back in the 80s when most people reminisce of a stress-free childhood full of tree climbing and scraped knees away from the eyes of adult supervision, you can see how much more relevant it is today.
Elkind believes we're expecting too much of our children and placing them on adult schedules that exceed their developmental capacity. Being rushed from activity to activity prevents them experiencing downtime, being bored, and other feelings they need to learn to sit with. In reality, they don't care for adult timetables and the need to be hurried everywhere - and the effects can be have more of an effect than parents realise.
5 signs of Hurried Child Syndrome
According to Psychology Today, there are five key signs of Hurried Child Syndrome.
- Poor sleep. If your busy child has poor sleep, it could be a sign they aren't getting their basic physical needs met and are overstimulated by being overscheduled.
- Slowed emotional development. Your child might struggle to form close relationships with others if they're too busy. Working on meaningful relationships needs time, and if your child doesn't get the chance to do this, they'll also struggle with conflict resolution and feeling comfortable with a slow pace of life.
- Feeling unworthy. Your child could not only feel unworthy with Hurried Child Syndrome, but also have an obsession with achievement. Again, quality relationships get pushed aside in favour of earning love through being the best.
- Don't know how to relax. Children turn to watching mindless content online or 'doom scrolling' to soothe themselves, because they simply never learn how to relax through reading, or gentle exercise.
- Appear resentful. Their hectic lives take a lot out of them and they lash out in frustration. Rebellion, and pushback can bring tension to the parent/child relationship that both sides struggle to understand an resolve.
To counteract the effects of rushing, have a few days each week where nothing is on the calendar apart from school. On those days, use the extra time you have to connect with your kids, instead of focussing on where you have to be and how little time you have to get there - have you ever checked in with your kids to see if they actually want to be doing multiple activities, or whether they're doing them out of obligation to you?
Don't be afraid to say no. If there are activities you're invited to that neither you or your kids are excited about, forget the fear of missing out and bask in the joy of missing out. If you were a hurried child, you might struggle with your own frustration and communication - if you're frequently shouting or snappy and you don't know why, you can work with your kids on learning to sit with your difficult feelings together as you spend quiet and quality time in each other's company.
Mum-of-two, Leah, tells us "My children go to what I see as a 'competitive' school, where most kids do multiple activities every day after school. I have to admit to feeling 'less than' and giving my own children a silly schedule to fit in. I had an epiphany one day getting them ready for swimming - they hated it, I hated getting them dry and dressed afterwards, it was a box-ticking pantomime.
"I cut their activities right down to just football and rugby - the only things on their schedule they chose to continue when we re-evaluated it. They bask in doing nothing on some days now, and I can honestly say it's made school holidays so much easier. They used to need me to entertain them at all times - they had no idea how to alleviate their own boredom. Now, they hardly need me at all and their imaginations and ability to solve their own problems has improved unrecognisably."
For more on how to teach kids emotional intelligence and how to talk to kids about feelings, we have plenty of advice for managing those big emotions.
