8 student deaths so far this year at NC State

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Its 100% social media. That's the big different between when we grew up and how they are growing up. That's it.

We had suicide when we were younger. We just didn't have news that let us know about clusters like this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Its 100% social media. That's the big different between when we grew up and how they are growing up. That's it.

We had suicide when we were younger. We just didn't have news that let us know about clusters like this.

and again social media is behind this and is what spreads the rumors and gets others to want to do it. Tiktok, SnapChat etc. You have your head in the sand if you don't know this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Its 100% social media. That's the big different between when we grew up and how they are growing up. That's it.

My kid are minimally on social media. I encouraged them to make connections and sustain them IRL and get away from the need to catalog their lives for others. They are in their late teens - mid 20s, and they do not feel they are missing out on anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a mental health crisis amongst our young people.

Why? How did it get this way?

I don’t think we really know. Here are three theories:

1. Social media and technology. Less genuine human interaction, more watching other people seeming to be having a better time. Peer pressure, unrealistic body expectations, bullying.

2. Parenting that undermines resilience. Over programming and not letting children explore and fail leaves them unable to deal with any adversity.

3. A more competitive environment. Economic insecurity higher up the food chain, a winner-takes-all environment increases pressure on kids to get the best grades, work all the time, everything becomes goal-oriented rather than fun.

And I am sure there are more. Take your pick.

These are great, and I will also add that if you choose to embrace a parenting style that does NOT undermine resilience, you won't have a lot of company and your children will not have as many friends because 1, 2 and 3 add up to parents who are cliquish and unable to accept people who are different from them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2023/02/13/8-students-have-died-nc-state-academic-year#.Y-uGmf9zTU0.link

What is happening? Our kids are hurting and this pressure is just too much!

So what's changed in the past 20, 30, 40 years that makes suicide more common?

Downward mobility is more prevalent and a college degree isn’t the guarantee it used to be. Kids now are under more pressure than we ever where especially if they have a specific outcome they are working towards

[Anonymous]

My kid is in 9th grade and had one B+ on her report card first semester. Reading DCUM it appears she is no longer in the running for our state flagship, UVA. Why are we expecting kids to excel in every way at such a young age? Is there no room for error or mistakes? The pressure to be perfect academically, beautiful, popular, etc. at age 14, which is only compounded by social media, is leading to a lot of depression and anxiety.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid is in 9th grade and had one B+ on her report card first semester. Reading DCUM it appears she is no longer in the running for our state flagship, UVA. Why are we expecting kids to excel in every way at such a young age? Is there no room for error or mistakes? The pressure to be perfect academically, beautiful, popular, etc. at age 14, which is only compounded by social media, is leading to a lot of depression and anxiety.

Absolutely no room for error or mistake if you mark Asian on the check box

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Parents allow electronics, teachers, daycare workers, Nannie’s, and coaches to raise their children, then expect them to be able to handle the stress and changes that come with college. They give them cell phones at 8 or 10 and that device quickly shuts out the parenting capabilities even more. They send them to schools that don’t even use textbooks and expect them to handle college life with note taking, writing, studying and reading from actual books and professional publications is often a requirement. They coddle them and cater to their every whim, claiming little Suzy doesn’t have time for learning how to cook, clean, do chores, plan a menu, learn finances because she has sooooo many activities. They don’t prepare them for the real world, too much coddling and not enough actual parenting. Then they get out on their own and lack basic skills and now college seems so much more difficult because someone missed how to adult 101 during the first 18 years of life.

I see this from the opposite side. With school standards that are developmentally unreasonable for many kids beginning at a young age and schools focused on "college and career readiness," the role of grades and testing looms large over kids. Their adult monitored activities consume their lives, leaving little time for free play. There's little time, inside and out of school, for free play - barely any recess. Teachers have increasingly been held to impossible standards and not given sufficient autonomy, which causes them to push back on students and their parents when adequate progress isn't being made. We also shifted to an ideal of intensive parenting, where parents are expected to cultivate their kids' lives, monitoring and supervising every minute. You can't blame parents for doing exactly what society tells them to do.

Look at this forum and the contradictory messages.

DCUM: You need to stop coddling your children and let them fail.

Also DCUM: If your children fail, it is evidence that you are a terrible parent.

Also DCUM: I'm a hiring manager, and I only hire students from top schools students with GPAs above 3.0.

We didn't coddle kids too much; we collectively deprived them of the unstructured experience of childhood where they could socialize without adult interference, make low-stakes mistakes, and learn how to problem-solve on their own. With college and career readiness school standards, we pushed adult ideas on them when they weren't ready, while we (both parents, teachers, coaches, etc.) modeled a stressed-out adult existence that no one would voluntarily choose. Many kids haven't had the experience to figure out who they are, which is exacerbated by the pandemic. They have been taught to focus too much on achieving goals, often by winning the approval of adults, and not enough on developing human connections. Social media exacerbates this problem.

Resilience isn't developed through failure and adversity alone. Resilient kids need support to try and fail and the strength to get up and try again. In this fractured world, many of them are terrified of making even a minor mistake because we taught them that their entire future depends on adhering to a particular path that doesn't include missteps or failure of any kind. Fear and anxiety are controlling their lives, which is why they have trouble forming the relationships that would help them become more resilient.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid is in 9th grade and had one B+ on her report card first semester. Reading DCUM it appears she is no longer in the running for our state flagship, UVA. Why are we expecting kids to excel in every way at such a young age? Is there no room for error or mistakes? The pressure to be perfect academically, beautiful, popular, etc. at age 14, which is only compounded by social media, is leading to a lot of depression and anxiety.

So take her off social media.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid is in 9th grade and had one B+ on her report card first semester. Reading DCUM it appears she is no longer in the running for our state flagship, UVA. Why are we expecting kids to excel in every way at such a young age? Is there no room for error or mistakes? The pressure to be perfect academically, beautiful, popular, etc. at age 14, which is only compounded by social media, is leading to a lot of depression and anxiety.

100% this. Just imagine if our kids or our spouses expected us to be perfect all the time and excel at everything we do as a parent or at work. Imagine that! We are doing this to our kids. No room for mistakes or failures. Just get straight A’s, take all the challenging classes, excel at multiple sports, start a nonprofit organization… etc etc. we are terrible. And then we have the audacity to ask why is this happening to our kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parents allow electronics, teachers, daycare workers, Nannie’s, and coaches to raise their children, then expect them to be able to handle the stress and changes that come with college. They give them cell phones at 8 or 10 and that device quickly shuts out the parenting capabilities even more. They send them to schools that don’t even use textbooks and expect them to handle college life with note taking, writing, studying and reading from actual books and professional publications is often a requirement. They coddle them and cater to their every whim, claiming little Suzy doesn’t have time for learning how to cook, clean, do chores, plan a menu, learn finances because she has sooooo many activities. They don’t prepare them for the real world, too much coddling and not enough actual parenting. Then they get out on their own and lack basic skills and now college seems so much more difficult because someone missed how to adult 101 during the first 18 years of life.

I see this from the opposite side. With school standards that are developmentally unreasonable for many kids beginning at a young age and schools focused on "college and career readiness," the role of grades and testing looms large over kids. Their adult monitored activities consume their lives, leaving little time for free play. There's little time, inside and out of school, for free play - barely any recess. Teachers have increasingly been held to impossible standards and not given sufficient autonomy, which causes them to push back on students and their parents when adequate progress isn't being made. We also shifted to an ideal of intensive parenting, where parents are expected to cultivate their kids' lives, monitoring and supervising every minute. You can't blame parents for doing exactly what society tells them to do.

Look at this forum and the contradictory messages.

DCUM: You need to stop coddling your children and let them fail.

Also DCUM: If your children fail, it is evidence that you are a terrible parent.

Also DCUM: I'm a hiring manager, and I only hire students from top schools students with GPAs above 3.0.

We didn't coddle kids too much; we collectively deprived them of the unstructured experience of childhood where they could socialize without adult interference, make low-stakes mistakes, and learn how to problem-solve on their own. With college and career readiness school standards, we pushed adult ideas on them when they weren't ready, while we (both parents, teachers, coaches, etc.) modeled a stressed-out adult existence that no one would voluntarily choose. Many kids haven't had the experience to figure out who they are, which is exacerbated by the pandemic. They have been taught to focus too much on achieving goals, often by winning the approval of adults, and not enough on developing human connections. Social media exacerbates this problem.

Resilience isn't developed through failure and adversity alone. Resilient kids need support to try and fail and the strength to get up and try again. In this fractured world, many of them are terrified of making even a minor mistake because we taught them that their entire future depends on adhering to a particular path that doesn't include missteps or failure of any kind. Fear and anxiety are controlling their lives, which is why they have trouble forming the relationships that would help them become more resilient.

Well said. Totally agree

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid is in 9th grade and had one B+ on her report card first semester. Reading DCUM it appears she is no longer in the running for our state flagship, UVA. Why are we expecting kids to excel in every way at such a young age? Is there no room for error or mistakes? The pressure to be perfect academically, beautiful, popular, etc. at age 14, which is only compounded by social media, is leading to a lot of depression and anxiety.

The room for error just isn't there anymore. I had a C in high school and a few Bs as a freshman as I adjusted to high school and ended up at a great college. I just checked and my college now has an incoming unweighted freshman GPA of 3.95.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2023/02/13/8-students-have-died-nc-state-academic-year#.Y-uGmf9zTU0.link

What is happening? Our kids are hurting and this pressure is just too much!

So what's changed in the past 20, 30, 40 years that makes suicide more common?

Guns are more prevalent (so access to lethal means).

Social media (which can be harmful to fragile young minds).

I feel that having parents work full time means sometimes, no one guides what the kid does/is into.

[Anonymous]

Suicide is to some extent contagious, so you see clusters like this at universities. We had this happen at W&M when I was a student.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is in 9th grade and had one B+ on her report card first semester. Reading DCUM it appears she is no longer in the running for our state flagship, UVA. Why are we expecting kids to excel in every way at such a young age? Is there no room for error or mistakes? The pressure to be perfect academically, beautiful, popular, etc. at age 14, which is only compounded by social media, is leading to a lot of depression and anxiety.

Absolutely no room for error or mistake if you mark Asian on the check box

Oh, stop already with the victimhood.