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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]So in your first example, your child used a term that she'd been taught in school to communicate to you that she was feeling overwhelmed. Your belief is that the things she's being asked to do are normal, reasonable expectations, which is fine, but she's also telling you that she's feeling overwhelmed. The point of teaching empathy about anxiety is to teach children that they do not have to bottle up their feelings of stress/anxiety/whatever word you are comfortable with - that it is okay to communicate those feelings. The obvious next step would be to figure out a way to alleviate the anxiety while still meeting expectations. That should be a thing you do together, and her desire for you to lower your expectations isn't something that you have to do because she said she was anxious. It's not a get-out-of-jail-free card.

In your second example, a child learned about a new behavior and was curious about it. A trained counselor (I am one) is able to tell the difference between a child who does what this child did and a child who is actually engaging in self-harm. If it hadn't been an English project that "put the idea in her head" it would have been something else - a TV show, one of her friends actually self-harming, etc. This situation became a teachable moment because it occurred in an environment where she was being monitored. A child who cuts in a non-superficial way almost always goes out of their way to conceal that behavior from adults. Instead, this child experienced this issue being addressed directly, in an appropriate context. While I'm sorry that the child cut herself, it sounds like it was handled well, which is a lot better than how these things usually present and are handled.

I have nothing to say about your third example. People do not "decide" that they are gay or transgender because they heard about it in a school class. If anything, gay and transgender kids who have never had vocabulary to explain their identity learn the vocabulary and are able to communicate about their identity. Is it true that children experiment with identity and sexuality? Absolutely. Is it also true that that experimentation is happening earlier? Absolutely. Is that because it's being taught in school? No, it's a broader societal thing in which children are being exposed to more adult content and themes earlier. We can agree to disagree about whether it's appropriate for those things to be taught in school, but I personally feel that sex education needs to be comprehensive (so, including the stuff you're concerned about) and also start in early middle school at the very latest. If you wait until high school (as was the case in my school system 20 years ago), for many children, it is already too late. That principle certainly holds true now that children are experimenting and considering these issues earlier.

I'm a counselor and I sometimes work with middle school-aged children. What I will say is that from my experience in working with both adults and children is that neither are quite as suggestible as you seem to think. A lot of counselors have a really hard time asking about trauma, suicidality, sexual abuse, etc. because they are concerned that simply by asking, they will trigger their client or cause them to feel suicidal when they were not. It doesn't work that way. I think you are right to be attentive to the things your child is learning. As she gets older, she will continue to learn about controversial topics and one of your jobs as a parent is to guide her through that learning process using whatever values are appropriate to your family. If, for example, it is very much outside your family's values for your child to experiment sexually at all until a certain age, then the messages you would be enforcing is that some kids do X or Y, but in our family, we do not do X or Y until Z age. I understand that many of these conversations may be uncomfortable for you to have as well, but I promise you that eliminating the conversations is not going to stop your child from learning about these topics. It's really just a matter of whether that learning happens from media and friends or whether it happens at school and at home.

Just my $0.03.[/quote]

OP here. Thanks for this thoughtful reply. It's the perspective I was seeking. I understood and support the goals. But I guess I was alarmed when my friend's daughter decided to start cutting herself after being assigned a project on self-harm.

The sexual identity thing -- I do think kids try that on a little more these days in middle schools and think it's harmless.

The anxiety thing bothers me a bit since you're right that it's about the vocabulary and they're giving them the wrong vocabulary. Especially when getting kids worked up and thinking they have anxiety leads to cutting or self-harm behaviors. Finding a way to validate their feelings, as you suggest, without playing along with the more dramatic diagnosis (stress and anxiety are different things and have different solutions) is the tricky part.

Thanks for what you do.[/quote]

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