Are We Making Our Kids More Anxious? Dr. Chinwé Williams

0:00When you don't have a lot of reps, when you don't have those chance encounters to stumble, not find your words, look in bareist, say something wrong, then the anxiety is going to grow. The number one thing that feeds anxiety is avoidance. And so that's really what's happening when we see our kids that are afraid. To take risks and the longer we as adults allow them to not get their driver's license to not even try the brain learns, oh this is a real threat. I thought it was scary but this is dangerous. It has become well established at rates of anxiety, depression, loneliness and suicidality have skyrocketed among younger people today. The statistics are staggering and frightening, but what is the cause of all this? Is it smartphones and social media and overall addiction to be an online? These certainly seem to be playing some role, but are there other things that factor in?

1:02And why does it seem that younger people today struggle with social anxiety, much more than previous generations? Why are they waiting much longer to get a driver's license or engage in social environments that older generations naturally just flock to? Most importantly, how can these mental health challenges be addressed? It's one thing to diagnose the problem, but it's quite another to identify and pursue effective solutions. To help us navigate these complex issues, I've invited my friend Dr. Chinway Williams to come on the show. Dr. Williams is a licensed and board certified therapist with expertise spanning a variety of domains including youth and family, mental health, parenting and trauma recovery. She's also the co-author of the best-selling book, Seen, Healing, Despair and Exiting Kids and Teens, the power of connection. And her latest book is Calm, Courageous and Connected, a parents guide to raising emotionally resilient kids. Some of you remember Chinway from our recent ex-el's of Babylon conference, which she spoke at, and in my opinion, she absolutely crushed it.

2:06Chinway has become one of my main go-to experts in the topic we're going to discuss today. So without further ado, please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only, Dr. Chinway Williams. You are an expert when it comes to working with teens, anxiety, trauma, mental health, challenges that are facing teens, teens, younger people, especially, not just teens, but we often hear from you. We often hear that there are skyrocketing rates among Gen Z, maybe younger millennials even, rates of anxiety, depression, even suicide ideation, mental health challenges, trauma. First of all, is this true? We hear that a lot. I think it's true, but you're a therapist. I mean, is this something you've seen as well? Yeah, so not only am I, like boots on the ground clinically, I've actually been a researcher, I've been a professor, so I'm not doing hardcore research, but I'm certainly paying attention to the trends.

3:13So what I always tell parents and ministry leaders is, yes, COVID did a number, I even say COVID really just did a wrestling move on our young people, our teenagers and our young adults. But I was actually looking at really concerning trends, probably about 10 years prior to COVID. 10 years. Yeah, 10 years maybe even longer, but there was a point where I remember thinking, this is concerning, and then right before COVID, I was like, oh, this is alarming. This is alarming. Or right, I should say right before we saw what COVID had the potential of doing in terms of its mental health impact. But yeah, I think right now, and of course, it depends on the stats that you're looking at, but 10% of children between the ages of three and 17 and 32% of teenagers have a current diagnosed anxiety disorder. So they're not just worried occasionally or have roomidating thoughts, they actually meet criteria for a diagnosed disorder.

4:21So anxiety is sort of the big thing that we've been focusing on here lately, especially since COVID. But we've also seen a spike, I would say probably since 2023, no, 2012, not 2023, 2012, a spike in team self-harming behaviors. So this may or may not indicate suicidality. Oftentimes it's just pressure that's just maxed out, and a kid doesn't know what else to do. And we see that numbers in girls, it's actually tripled since 2012 in girls and even for boys, girls between the ages of 10 and 14 and girls between the ages of 15 and 19. So that's been alarming and just consistently, I'm sure you and your audience have heard about the CDC report looking at just how, how are our kids doing and consistently four out of 10 high schoolers will say that I am persistently sad or hopeless.

5:23So that's kind of what we've been seeing for a while. So yeah, I think the crisis is real. The decade before COVID or even 2012, that's a little shocking to me because I thought that the smartphone social media, you know, when that really became kind of a mainstream thing, which was a little bit after, I guess it started around then, but it wasn't really 2014. So it kind of even predates some of that. The million dollar question is what's why, right? I mean, and I think excessive online being online, especially on social media, has to be part of it. Right. Has that been, that's been not just suggested or shown to be correlated, but actually a cause. Is that, is that correct? Okay. Absolutely. We in the mental health field, we've always suspected that technology just in general is, you know, is pulling not just kids, but we adults away from something that's really important, which is connection.

6:33But definitely, I'm sure your listeners are aware of the anxious generation, that groundbreaking book by Jonathan Hight, who's a sociologist, who has studied this for a long time. So we did absolutely see a spike once the smartphones came out and the cameras that are now, you know, you can take selfies. Yeah. We did see a spike in youth mental health. So technology isn't the single cause. I just, I would really say to anybody that's listening, it is a convergence. Yes, technology and social media gets a lot of air time. Yeah. Which isn't surprising, but clinically, I really point to just disconnection, right. So before we say, oh, it's just technology. And by the way, I have a 11 year old who just started middle school. And this is the second year, his school district, our school district decided for middle schoolers that school kids won't be able to have their smartphones nor their smart watches during the school day. Praise God for that. Praise God.

7:38And let me tell you, can I tell you that not just parents, but teachers thought that there would be like this huge meltdown. There hasn't. They were expecting just a lot of side effects, right. Like your, your weaning kids off of something that they some of them are addicted to. The kids are more focused. I remember a friend of mine went into the classroom walked by several classrooms. And maybe three kids were paying attention to the teacher. That is no longer the case that we praise God. But this is really it, right. It's not so much that it's social media and technology. I look at it as what is social media pulling kids away from well, they're pulling kids away from hanging out with their family hanging out in the mall as I talked about it exiles playing ball. It's also disrupting sleep. It's increasing social comparison. It's increasing social evaluation. And it's also upsetting them because they're seeing content. My husband always says I knew bad things were happening, you know, because every now and again, I would over here an adult talking about something that happened in the next county over or the next state over.

8:52But right now it's right in the kiddos hands, just the exposure to trauma is is huge. However, there's a convergence, right. Other contributing factors. If you talk to kids, academic pressures, right family instability. A loss of of unstructured play, my child that just started middle school, guess what's gone. He's got seven classes, seven different teachers. He doesn't leave the building all day. I'm like, okay, we know too much. We have too much information for him to be stuck even in gym class. He's he's in the building, right. And then something called I'm not sure if you're familiar with this Preston the erosion of third spaces are you familiar with that. So this is so the primary space, let's say the primary space where we want our kids to find a sense of community is the family, right. And then the secondary space, let's say church and probably in the 50s, 60s, maybe even the 70s, that was absolutely the case. But when we look at third spaces, we are talking about ball fields. Yes, kids are still playing sports, but a lot of kids are on their phones when other kids are playing sports youth groups clubs, other, you know, malls, other groups band, right.

10:20Yes, there are kids that are still participating, but the research is really showing that when kids are not engaged in these third spaces as much as they're engaged in the first two spaces, we're going to see them more and more vulnerable to making friends and finding peers via technology. And so research shows that young people who spend more time on technology because they're not in these third spaces have a greater vulnerability. Have a greater vulnerability to depression and anxiety. So it's really helpful. I like what you said about the convergence because. You know, you could think well, if you just take away the phone, minimize online use, then that'll solve the problem, but it has to be replaced with connection. Sure, that would be a step, but it has to be replaced with the true kinds of connection and community that they're kind of long and for through social media use. So that be accurate. Yes. And those in the third spaces are the pickup game, you know, the neighborhood pickup game when you're playing basketball or tea ball, your baseball fan, right.

11:29The front porch, the coffee shop, the spending time at barber shops. My husband takes my boys to the barber. And I'm like, where are you guys? Dinner's cold. He's having this whole conversation, not only with the barber who's lovely. Shout out to our barber in Atlanta, but also just the family, you know, the dad and the son next to next to them, right. See to next to them. These days, we're always sort of like in a hurry. And so those spaces are quietly shrinking, which I think really does. The movie theaters, even downtown, like areas, like, this kind of city square type places. I was just in Europe for a couple of weeks, a few weeks ago. And just the way these older cities were laid out, where they are just oriented around a common space where there's cafes, people are hanging out. And it's just everybody's there, you know.

12:32Yeah. And a lot of modern cities just aren't designed that way, you know. Yeah, the third space is that's interesting. Have we seen a, I'm curious. I don't know if I've ever seen any stat on this. Is there a D decline in youth being involved in sports or something that is physically challenging and demanding, like using their bodies. Is that is that going down? And that has to play a role too. Because we know that if you're not, I mean that physical exercise is really good for your mental health. Oh, 100% and you're talking about your trip to Europe. So are those unplanned and counterts, right. When you have those spaces where you meet a friend that you weren't expecting, or even you have that mild friction. Because you meet a friend that you weren't expecting and that opportunity to work it out that just can't be replaced with screens. So I can't point to a specific data point around if kids clinically, that seems to be the case. Right.

13:40I'm seeing a couple of things, right, where sports is taken over Sundays. Right. And so I say, you know, to a school if they invite me to do a talk and we're looking at dates. Yeah. So obviously not Sunday. They're like, oh, no, like, you know, just not around this time because the football field is going to be full and the little cross field is going to be full. And they can't wait a minute. You have activities. I'm not surprised anymore. But I remember there was a time where I was like, wait a minute. These are Christian schools where athletics. According to some of the school leaders seem to be prioritized sometimes even more than academics. So I don't I don't know for sure with all certainty that kids are playing sports less. I'm seeing two things where sports is taken over. Right. Yeah. Almost everything. And then there are a group of kids that are just afraid to take risk. And if they're not sure they're going to make the team. If they're not sure that they're going to have a friend on the team, they would actually just rather not try out.

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16:53Well, okay, yeah, I've heard that a lot that there is a rise in like social anxiety, fear. People are getting their younger people are getting their drivers licenses a lot later. I guess one good, you know, they're drinking a lot less, which I guess they are. Yeah, which is good. But I wonder if the motivation is. And I think teenage pregnancy is also down. I heard that too. Yeah, I, yeah, so the tricky thing it's like, oh, that's great. I'm like, it probably it is. But if the reason is just I don't want to be around people and I'm scared of this, scared of that. If it's kind of out of this fear of being in a social environment or something, I don't know, like that might not be a good motivation. But is that yeah, what's going on there? What's causing this kind of social anxiety? I, yeah. Yeah, so let me frame it this way or start by sharing this. Have you ever heard of the movie Disney Pixar's Inside Out 1 or 2?

17:59I've heard of it. I've not seen it before. You're not seeing it. That's okay. That's okay. So this is a movie that's all about anxiety and fear. So it, when I tell you, it broke box office records worldwide. It was number one here in the US, number one in Chile, number one in Brazil. Okay. So what's my point? I went to this student camp and I did a mental health talk and I was sort of debating if I wanted to even bring up the movie because I was like, you know, you never want to be like the speaker that's out of touch. And I tried it, you know, I pride myself to kind of know what's going on. And I was like, as soon as I made the decision, thank you Holy Spirit. As soon as I pulled it up, a thousand kids went nuts. And I just went wild because they could relate to it. So I did a little bit of digging and, you know, anxiety is a big deal. So separation anxiety is the number one anxiety disorder among younger kids.

19:04So social anxiety is the number one anxiety disorder or challenge among teenagers. So what is causing this? We don't necessarily need to go back to our conversation about social media. But there is a tie there, right? This doesn't involve a lot of risk. It could get, you know, the charge can go out and in the middle of it, you're not talking to your friend because there's no charge. You can pretend like, oh, we got disconnected, right? Because the conversation got really uncomfortable right now. And I'm sure you've heard this AI chat boxes are in some ways replacing their rights, right? Young adults, the age range that we're talking about, they're seeking AI chat boxes for mental health support for companionship. They'll even say, well, my therapist could tell someone, but I know Gemini won't, which we're not sure about that, by the way. So when you don't have a lot of reps, when you don't have those chance encounters to stumble, not find your words, look away, look in barist, say something wrong or get into that conflict and figure out a way to resolve it.

20:24Then the anxiety is going to grow. The number one thing that feeds anxiety is avoidance. And so that's really what's happening when we see our kids that are afraid to take risks and the longer, you know, we as adults allow them to not get their driver's license, to not even try to not go out to that party. The brain learns, oh, this is a real threat. I thought it was scary, but this is dangerous. And so it's going to shut down that child even more. So, okay, you, I want to keep going on that. So from a parenting or caretaker perspective, teacher perspective, some adult figure, what is, what should our response be? I'm hearing you saying it's to challenge them to push them into those uncomfortable environments or can you unpack what that could look like? Yeah, so I think I've heard you say this Preston. How was resilience? Yes, it's a buzz, it's a buzz word. It's been around forever. In our first book, my self and Will Hutcherson shout out to Will, who's a youth pastor.

21:31We wrote a book called Scene and we didn't use the word resilience on purpose. We really wanted to get it dad's just kidding. We use the fourth term, which by the way, dads came to a lot of our seminars. We used a sports term called grit. Grit, I like that. Yeah, so it's it's the same thing pushing through hardship, pushing through adversity, because as you know, that's where resilience and perseverance is built. Yeah. Now what we are seeing and I just I love parents. I am very much a parenting mental health therapist as much as I am anything else because parenting stress is real and it's an all time high. So I never want to come down to hard on parents, but what I do want to say is it is normal for you as a parent to hate to see your kids struggle. That's just part of our wiring. That's that impulse to remove any sort of obstacle or distress from our kids lives, right? So not only are we busy doing ministry busy working.

22:37We're also really in tune. I think a lot of parents are to their kids mental health, but I think that we're getting it wrong in this way. When the child complains about a friendship, when a child is not sure that they're going to make the team or make the band or don't want to go to that birthday party because they're not sure if it's going to be awkward. Some parents not all will say, well, that's okay. Sit this one out. Right. I, I, someone very close to me was going to pull their daughter out of the soccer club at nine years old because she, she did cry. I was there. I witnessed it. She didn't get physically hurt, but emotionally she was just spent and she said, mom, I want to quit. And the mom said, okay, I'll let the coach know afterwards. And I just gently put my hand. I don't know if this is being video recorded, but I put my hand on the mom's forearm. And I said, call me later before you call the coach.

23:37That's happening, right? Because who wants to see their kid struggle? But this is what I want to explain about how anxiety works. Not even, I'm not even going to get into the neuroscience. I could when I'm talking to therapists. I do. But a parent sees that their child is afraid of something. Let's say anxious or embarrassed or just doesn't want to be a part of it is over it. But a parent then rescues because the parent loves the child. The child feels better than the parent feels better. Right? Like I did something to get rid of that uncomfortable feeling within the parent. Right? So everybody feels better temporarily. But then what happens from a brain-based perspective? Anxiety gets reinforced. Anxiety is like, yeah, I won. Right? And it gets bigger because it actually likes control. It's predictability. And it likes to have a roadmap. If I do this, this is what's going to happen. And life isn't like that. So what we need to do is tell parents and leaders that good parenting does not mean that we eliminate every single obstacle in our children's life.

24:41Right. Every uncomfortable experience will teach them something. It's actually helping them to develop the capacity to tolerate bigger things that will, as we know in this life, will cause trouble and will be uncomfortable. So how can we help them to tolerate appropriate amounts of discomfort and not do so alone? That's resilience. This is so good. I had a, I was at a camp and the speaker was talking as a father-daughter camp and one of the speakers, older man, get you talking to the parents and stuff. And I'll never forget. He was talking along the lines of what you're discussing. And he said, we know that the challenges in life is what made us who we are. Getting yelled at by a boss, working two jobs, you know, getting broken up with. Getting broken up with, you know, having a teacher that gave us a bad grade on chat.

25:43Like these adverse experiences in life, we look back and say that that's made us who we are. So why would we rob our children of the very things that we know made us better people in life, you know? And I was like, oh my gosh. It's so simple, but like, yeah, I'm so prone to do everything you said. Where is that coming from? Why is our generation of the parenting? Why does it just want to remove all the obstacles? Is there something there? Pressing, this is so interesting. So this is Holy Spirit. I had a session at the Tuesdays and Thursdays. I'm in session all day. And I had a session with a parent. I'm not going to share any sort of identifying factors. And so let's just say her 14 year old son said, hey, mom, I want to go to Six Wags. Six Wags is this theme park in Atlanta and the Atlanta area with my friends.

26:51And the mom's like, I'm not driving in Atlanta. Everything's an hour away. I'm not doing that. Well, why? I just don't want to. Well, mom, you're not doing anything. He got real nasty with her. And she said, you're not going to talk to me like that. And for sure, I'm not taking you and your friends to Six Wags. So then she had a session with me and she said, he didn't speak to me for the entire day. And I said, okay, let's unpack that. I'll make this quick. But usually I'm slower when I'm doing trauma work. And I could see she was just visibly upset, distraught. I said, what's coming up for you? She was just like, well, I mean, I said, no, I put my foot down. I felt like I was being a good parent. I didn't want to be out there in the heat. And plus, why do I need to do that? And I said, all of that makes sense. What's coming up for you? And she said, I'm afraid. And I said, what are you afraid of? She said, I'm afraid he's going to go off to college and never speak to me again. I said, oh, that's so interesting. I said, tell me a little bit about what's there. I say, what's the root? My clients understand. What's the root of that? And immediately tears. And she started sharing how when she was just younger that her parents would actually ice her out. She shared immediately, I'm going to make up this. I'm going to make up some of the details.

28:10Press and she was chosen to be the person within her school district to go to the, let's say spelling bee. Okay. She won the school spelling bee, the entire school. This was fourth grade. And then she got to go to the district spelling bee. Okay. And her mom's like, I got to work. Her dad's like, huh, what? I mean, this is a big deal. The teacher was so mortified that the teacher asked the principal if she could take this little girl to the spelling bee. So immediately that memory of mom couldn't care less. Dad couldn't care less. She didn't have that connection that attachment wasn't there. And other traumas that I won't really go into right now. I think that that is a thro' root of so much of what we're talking about. Some of it is we just want our kids' lives to be easier than what we had. I've heard parents say that. No big, big traumas.

29:11But oftentimes it goes back to something that we needed as a child that was unmet. So an unmet need. A lack of intimacy and attachment that we experience leads to overattunement to possibly coddling or protecting bubble wrap in our kids from adverse experiences. That makes total. We're pushing them towards something that we really wanted. Dance, you know, basketball baseball. It was a dream that we had. And maybe we didn't get to realize. And so it can go the other way as well. Right. Wow. That makes total sense. There's also I remember I don't think this was in his recent book, Anxious Generation, but Jonathan Hyte. I think it's previous one, the coddling of the American mind, maybe. Yeah. He talked about the milk cart generation. Do you remember this?

30:13No, tell me more of us who grew up in the 80s. I was born in 76. The 80s. I just thought this was every generation. But apparently it was a thing in the 80s where missing kids would be posted on the back of the world. Yes, I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. And I remember I remember drinking melokids. Oh, so on so eight years old, missing whatever. And it was our first kind of glimpse at this kind of like overexposure to Eric. Yeah. Yeah. And so people who kind of grew up with that had this belief that like white vans are pulling up in neighborhoods right and left and snatching kids up, you know. Because look, little is missing every time. I mean, you know, by weedies, I got some missing person, you know, kids staring at me. And so people that grew up with that kind of overexposure had this fear. And by life, and I talk about this a lot because yeah, we're like, we had that the back of our minds. We're like, gosh, our kids run down the street, you know. So, you know, they're gonna get snatched up, you know, which statistically it's like, you can happen in certain neighborhoods more than other, but it's like,

31:18yeah, it's like a family member. It's usually not, you know, it's it's extremely like there's no reason why we should orient our life around that kind of fear in most neighborhoods in America. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's what anxiety does, right? It propels you toward the worst case scenario in Georgia. My, my, my husband was saying that there when he was growing up that there were 10 kids not far away from where he grew up that were taken. That is for right need. That's frightening. And he did remember a season probably about a year, a summer where there were extra eyes on him. And he was just more aware of the dangers of the world. So, I mean, that makes sense. Anxiety is there to protect us, right? And I always tell my clients, I tell, you know, parents, I tell leaders, you know, anxiety is not the enemy. It's there to keep us safe. It's there to keep us prepared. You and I speak a lot. I had anxiety about this podcast. A moderate amount of what is he going to ask me? And am I going to know the answer and a really, you know, very succinct way because as a professor, I'm not very succinct. Right.

32:34So that helps us to sort of, you know, stay on guard, stay prepared, stay motivated, but too much anxiety can be really debilitating. And if you think about your beautiful example about the milk carton, that is kind of synonymous with what's happening with our kids, right. The phone is the milk carton. It's so much exposure about what's happening in Gaza, what's happening in Israel, what's happening in Africa and Uganda, what's happening. And they don't share it always with their parents or even their friends. But when you get them behind a closed door as a therapist and you're really asking them, what's really going on? I always say, what's the percentage out of 100% what percentage of worry do you have about this thing? You would be surprised. Really? Climate change, racism, the economy. I'm talking about 13, 14. Oh my gosh. Yes. I'm going to have employment. I'm like, you're in the fifth grade. Well, no, that's too young. But do you know what I mean?

33:39I mean, like these kids worry and because there's so much more exposure than they're used to be. So kids are always wonder because like I'm I sense that in my life, but I you know, I follow the news every day. It's kind of part of my job to be aware of what's going on. I'd like to know about what's going on the world and stuff. And I have to really discipline myself like, hey, just because I'm staring at this stuff every day doesn't mean I need to like just let that occupy my mind and heart 24, 7, you know, or just freak out or just throw your arms up or think this whole world's coming to an end like these things. I've always been going on different ways, but I mean, we just have just we've never had such exposure to it all. I've wondered if kids are following world events or stuff like that climate change if they're even thinking about that. So you say and they they may not talk about it at home, but they're more engaged with what's going on around the world than we might know. Oh, yeah, we saw studies around that, especially during COVID were of course the world shut down and we were all more plugged in.

34:45But something just is recent and I would say very close to so many people's communities are school, you know, shootings. Of course, that is the most scary thing that kids will talk about. And I do absolutely think that that has spiked anxiety. I mean, we don't talk about that as much as we should, but that's under the umbrella of trauma, of course. Wow. All right. So let's we've kind of identified the problem. Actually, I do want to ask one more social media connected to other things. Are there anything else we haven't talked about yet in terms of identifying the cause or do you think we can't on trauma? Trauma. Okay. What way like what way what are what kinds of trauma are kids experiencing? Yeah, I would say number one is is sexual violence. Okay. It's sexual abuse. It is trauma that stems from exposure to scary and hard things trauma that is stemming from even bullying.

35:53That is something that I think doesn't really get enough airtime. We've actually had completed suicides. A very young children, elementary age children due to bullying. But oftentimes the trauma that is playing out in the life of an adolescent is closer to home. It's family, parental discord. Parents aren't getting along. Maybe there's some financial instability. But the most deleterious or significant trauma comes from sexual abuse. So I want to say there was a was a CDC 2024. So not that long ago, study where it asked kids directly for the first time, not just, you know, educators and parents. They didn't rely on, you know, other reports, but asked directly, hey, are you have you experienced some of these, you know, terrible things and 80% of adolescents, I'll have to send you the citation.

36:54No, I'm sort of, I call it traumatic, but the term they use is add first childhood experience. Sex sexually speaking or just in general, just in general. You know, instability in the household, a parent that has some sort of addiction. So those are, you know, just a couple of examples. But when I talk to young people, oh my goodness, yes, they know of someone that has been inappropriately touched or sexually harmed in their friend group. Not every single person, but yes, that's very high on the list of traumas. Is that going up the sexual, you would think with all the news it gets not as much as it should, but it seems like it's more much more aware. It seems like it's being addressed more than ever. There's much more taboo around it, whereas with the past, I mean, it's always, I guess, been some taboo, but I mean, it's just now it's like, much more people are much more alert. Is it still happening at the same or even higher rates than before? And if so, what's, why is that?

38:01Why is that? Yeah. So I don't have the hard data to present to you, but I will tell you that when I have, you know, so I get this cool, I have a cool job. I get to talk to parents, I get to talk to leaders, I get to talk to parents who've been traumatized and I get to talk to their kids. And it's not recorded, it's behind closed doors, and I go to schools and sometimes the teachers are in the room and they're like clutching their pearls at what young people share when they feel safe and vulnerable. So I'm hearing it more and more in the past six years that that is something that they worry about that they are aware of. And here's the thing, you talked about the van, right? Or the milk carton and then we see parents afraid of, you know, the broken, I call it the broken down ice cream truck. It's like, I see, you know, one, you know, what is it? The rainbow push thing and everything else is sort of tattered and like old and the paint.

39:03You're not going anywhere near that like cream, they're in sweet heart. Keep it clown, keep it clown, keep it clown pops out. Hey, little boy. That's what we, that's what we think of sometimes or say, yeah, every now and again, we'll think of, you know, clergy abuse and coaches. And yes, I've known kiddos that have been sexually abused by their, their coaches, by their teachers. But what I am seeing is peer to peer sexual abuse that seems to be steady or actually climbing. And when some interviews that have come out transcripts, the perpetrator will be like, well, I thought that this was, you know, what's the word I'm missing? I thought that this was, I thought that we were in a place where she, this is what she kind of wanted or it was agreed upon consider. I thought this was a consensual thing. That's got to be porn, right? Yeah. Did you say porn? Oh, yes. Yes.

40:05Yes. If people are, if that's then what they think is a normal kind of sexual behavior and experience. And want to touch, you know, we'll fall into that category, right? And there's a new story right here in, in Georgia, it's a famous person, a reality star, her 15 year old son, followed a friend, a female friend into a sauna. First of all, I'm like, what high school has sauna? I mean, like, let's start there. Is this Beverly Hills, not a two-one-oh? No, it's not. But that it was the back of a gym. There was a sauna, a changing room, and she, I guess, felt like this is her friend. And then when he tried to take it to the next level, she said no. And he placed his hand in that sexual cell. Do you see what I mean? So it's, and he's like, no, well, you know, so anyways without going into the details, which can be triggering, I do think porn plays a role. And you know, our friend Dan Allender talks a lot about just how easily accessible pornography is on our kids' phones, on the internet, everywhere, and it's reaching younger and younger ages.

41:21Yeah. Yeah, I saw a study while back that the porn industry targets nine-year-olds. Like they're doing what they can to get it into the algorithms or into the minds and hearts of nine-year-olds. To get them curious. And then so that when they get older, they kind of keep coming back to it. And yeah, it's studies are showing it's getting darker and darker and more violent and just, you know, I know it's a, you know, we all know it's bad, it's everywhere, it's a problem. I just, it's just, I think it's the layers of darkness and destruction that it's causing in the ripple effects, I think, or just, I don't, I don't know what the solution until you make it like not just illegal, but like inaccessible somehow. And I don't know if that's possible. I don't know if that's possible. I mean, but I don't know. We can do whatever we set our minds to do. Yeah, I think we know a lot of billionaires that have a lot of have sharp tech mindsets that can make a lot of things available. Why wouldn't they?

42:24There's too much money wrapped up into it. And see that's it. That's it. And the people that are in those kinds of places of power, if they're not directly involved, their friends are, I mean, yeah. That's my assumption at least is once you peek behind a curtain of the upper escalon of the oligarchs running everything, it's a pretty tight net group. And yeah, I don't know. And we're protecting, you know, money or prioritizing money over our kids safety. So remember your earlier question, Preston, is this really a crisis? You didn't ask it in that way. What does people do? The youth mental health crisis, is it a real thing? Or is it, you know, when we sort of see the way that society has unfolded the pace, the technology, the disconnection connection digitally, but disconnection in terms of relationally, I think that that's where we are. I am optimistic. I'm hopeful. But when you use the word dark, yeah, I think of the dark web. I feel like a lot of our kids will get stuck.

43:29Okay, let's move to solutions now. I would love to be a fly on the wall of your office. When you just got done listening to, let's just say a composites, just take all the stories, just kind of make a composite story of your typical mom with a 13, 15, 17 year old kid who's, you know, kind of the textbook example of all the things we're talking about. What is your advice? What are your next steps? How do you approach this? Yeah, so the first thing is what neuroscientists teach us is that whatever is happening with your child, if this is, if you're listening and maybe you're just having, you know, discipline issues that are frustrating to you, maybe your teen is a little bit rebellious or not listening or not following up with assignments, this is going to work. If you have a child that's struggling with anxiety or despair or self-harm, this is going to work and it sounds too simple to be powerful, but it is and it's called, you know, connection, it's co-regulation.

44:38So what, where I think I want to start with is because I can teach on this for hours is a child's brain has no clue as to how to calm itself. Right, and even something like empathy, we want our kids to be empathic because that makes them, you know, better humans, you know, that even shows other people that they're Christian, if they have compassion and empathy, that may mean that they're not a sociopath, but here's a thing. Empathy is a skill that is taught and cut. If a child doesn't experience empathic moments from an adult, how do they learn to be empathic? They just, they just don't. And so we can help our children to develop the capacity to actually be empathetic towards themselves and trauma research we call it self-suiting by actually calming them. So we as humans can experience self-suiting by being calmed by someone else. So before a child can regulate their nervous system, they need to borrow hours. So one of the most important things when I say co-regulation, it's really about we as parents and grownups and carrying adults, learning how to see kids, which means, you know, seeing someone doesn't mean noticing them.

46:04It really is about understanding their internal world. When you are seeing you feel like somebody accurately for the most part understands what's beneath the surface. So when we're able to sort of calm ourselves, I always say connection before correction, realizing as a parent, you don't have to immediately fix it, realizing as a parent that you get to feel whatever you want to feel on the inside. You don't push down that anger. And by the way, that's what I say to that mom, you get to feel upset that your son talked to you that way. Absolutely. But on the outside, what he's going to need is that calm, steady, sturdy force. And when a child is really having a hard time, really having a hard time. The thing that you want to communicate the most, the thing that's going to help a child feel seen is, I see your fear, I see you're having a hard time and I'm not going anywhere.

47:06I'm not going anywhere. Isn't that attachment? Right? When people ask me to talk about attachment science, I break it down to a really simple phrase. When I am really hurting, will you be there? When I don't have the words, I'm not articulate. I'm not even that kind. I may not even be that respectful. Right? You give, you know, you can take a moment. You can set a soft boundary. You can walk away. But please come back because I need you. Right? To me, that's attachment. I see your fear talking to the child and I'm not leaving. And what's coming up for me now is that isn't that how our Heavenly Father interacts with us. Right? Isn't that that sits really at the heart of what Abba Father wants us to know and how he relates to us. He doesn't glance at us from a distance. He is, you know, sure, there's there's a rebuke. There's a conviction because he loves us.

48:10But that's very different from condemnation. Right? And so he's going to look at our hearts. He's going to look at our internal worries and our anxieties, not just our behaviors and what we're projecting. So to me, that's the essence of like attunement. So that's the first step. Right? The second step is like a strategy. Everybody needs a strategy. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So cognitive flexibility. Now we're getting into sort of like the psychology of some type of of some things that you can do to help a kid who is frustrated, who wants to get it right, who's disappointed. And that's really what we're seeing my newer book, Com Courageous Connected Preston is really about what we're seeing post COVID. Our older kids were struggling. Now we're seeing some things with our younger kids and our preteens around frustration and tolerance and dysregulation. So when you have a kid that gets disappointed because he didn't make the varsity team and he's really, really good.

49:11I had another client say, you know, my 13 year olds friend group has like, you know, like broken up. And I'm like, and it's boys, all boys. And one just decided not to eat at the cafeteria with the rest of the group. I called the mom. She was a little bit shady. I was like, okay, don't call the mom let the kids work it out. But she said, I'm hurt. I'm heartbroken for him. So this is a perfect opportunity, right? Instead of wanting to fix it or trying to pull him from activities where the other kids are involved. And he's uncomfortable. He's a terrible use a technique where you are really just determining, okay, what I'm feeling is valid. It feels real. But how do I want to respond to it? So cognitive flexibility just as a way to, you know, simply state it for those who just have no idea what I'm talking about. This is your brain's ability to shift when life doesn't go according to plan.

50:12Okay. Yeah. Isn't that the case for so many of us? Yeah. And we as adults, we learn through life experience and context. But kids need this as a skill. Again, they're not going to just automatically have it. We have to teach it. So what we tell a child is number one, let's really look at what happened, how we feel about it, self-south, this sucks, whatever you want to say, that this hard, and then challenge your brain to find an alternative. Okay. This plan failed. There's nothing we can do with this, right? Unless there is. And can we find what we can do since I can't do X, what's the next thing that I can do right now, even if it's just read a book, listen to some music, go for a walk, go for a jog, call a friend that really wants to hear me. This friend doesn't really want to hear from me right now. I don't know what's going on with him. But there are other people that do. And then the second piece of this is the Grace check.

51:16So this is where you are assessing the situation and asking yourself, can I give someone the benefit of the doubt? Right? So your teacher tore up your, whatever your project or your writing assignment. Is it that this teacher is awful? They have no idea how to grade or they hate you? And maybe you honestly think that you put in a lot of effort and this isn't there, right? So if that's the case, the Grace check of cognitive flexibility asks, what else might be going on? The teacher has 20, and I say this mic is all the time, the teacher has 28 students. Everybody makes a mistake, right? Or the teacher has stressed out if she spoke to you or the coach spoke to you in a really harsh way. Maybe they're having a bad day. They're human as well. What are other reasons for this happening other than somebody hates me or I'm this terrible person? So that's kind of what I do and there be amongst other things. But we need to help, we need to help kids think about alternative viewpoints,

52:25then what their brain initially brings up because they could possibly be wrong or there might be context that needs to be added. Oh, it's so helpful. Oh my gosh. I'm going to go back and relisten this for your times. I know you got to run here just a minute. I am curious about the practicality of like cell phone use. Social media. Like is, or is that some, you just almost don't even address early on or are there some, potentially legalistic guidelines that you would say, hey, if your kids on their phones like seven hours a day, they're just scrolling social media and they're getting anxious and jealous and then be as scare and everything. Are there some immediate like challenges you give the parent and the kid regarding cell phone news or? Yeah. So I delay delay delay. So if your if your child isn't on the phone, it doesn't have a phone yet delay, get some, you know, simple dumb phones or a watch.

53:27I always say that for because there are some parents who are struggling because their kid wants it. If your child has the phone, just pay attention to their behaviors. I think what you said is spot on. If you're noticing that after their extensive, you know, cell phone use, social media scrolling or even gaming, they seem more lethargic, which is really withdrawn. They seem sadder. They're more irritable with you. Some of that is just being a teenager. Oh, yes, you see some tearfulness or you just see them withdrawing from life. That means that something needs to be adjusted. And I like to tell parents, stay out of the power struggle. Speak about balance, right? One of the best things that I would offer is have a space within the house where there were time frame where no one in the family is on the phone. So that could be meal time, right? We have driven from Atlanta to Florida. This was like a seven or eight hour drive. And we had a TV in the back. And I said, in my husband, let's just he was like, are you sure? And I was like, no, let's not put a movie.

54:34Let's just see if we can have conversation, let the boys bring some books. And we made it. And nobody, you know, we all made it alive. And of course there was like, whining and mom, what about now? We're in a restaurant area. I said, no, let's count, you know, how many, you know, tags that we see license plates from a different state, whatever the case may be, but just have a rhythm where the entire family chooses not to engage in any form of technology, because that's really what we want at the end of the day. It's not so much about the technology. It's what the technology is pulling us away from, which is connection. And I like that you said, I mean, include parents us as well. Like it's not just a kid. I mean, sometimes that's sometimes all the time. I see older people, really old people sometimes just so addicted to their phones, you know, it's just new thing that they just, you know, we don't know how to handle. And say same with, I mean, I've did do that. And so yeah, this isn't just how do we manage our kids addiction, but how do we as a family address this as a whole?

55:38Can I add one more thing? So what I say to teenagers in my office who I'm sort of the ones where I'm sensing that there might be some digital addiction or over digital use, I'll say to them, when you need somebody at 2 a.m. Who will you call? And I'm not kidding, Preston. There are kids who can't name a single person that they could reliably call or they could fully rely on when they really need it. And it just opens up the conversation, right? Digital community will never, ever, ever replay. There's some positives. There's some benefits, but it will never, ever replace or replicate a real community. Yeah, that's so good. Well, Chen, thank you so much for being on the algebra. Again, yeah, you mentioned your book, but I'll mention it again. Calm, courageous and connected, a parents guide to raising emotionally resilient kids, that's your latest book. You've written several others. So invite people to check those out. Thank you for being on the algebra. This has been immensely helpful.

56:46Thank you, Preston. Thank you.