Understanding the Emotional Well Being of Teenagers and Children and the Family

This talk  for parents on 5th April provided a thought provoking presentation which looked at why our teenagers and our children no not have appear to have developed resilience. Research now show us that 1 in 5 second level students in Ireland now present with self-harm and high anxiety disorders, and this is now beginning to manifest in the primary school setting.  Recent surveys are now telling us that a lot of young children are not learning empathy as they are not learning relationship skills particularly within the home, due to the fact that they are only learning virtual relationships through screens. The recent WHO report on suicide tells us that we now have the third highest rate of suicide in Europe. The lack of resilience that is presenting in our teenagers who just don’t appear to cope with life very well, has often to do with the fact that they are not learning these skills as children. Our expectations of life and the World around us can be very grossly over exaggerated by the fact that we spend so much time living in the lives and worlds of other people online. Often then we can find it very difficult to relate to the reality of our own lives, when our expectations are often based on living in the lives of other people. This has led to a massive increase in Anxiety in a generation, to an extent that we have never seen before, and is causing a lot of alarm among families and communities. 

Fergus Heffernan, with School Principal and members of the Parents Council who organised the event