Calm is Contagious

In her new book, Under Pressure, Dr. Lisa Damour cites research done by the American Psychological Association and others that show the percentage of girls who report feeling “worried, anxious, or fearful jumped 55% from 2009-2014 while the comparable number for boys has remained unchanged.” The state of the world weighs heavily on our children; they are conscious of issues that, generally speaking, we did not have to grapple with as kids, such as gun violence, climate change, and unprecedented levels of political turmoil. Add to this the stressful impacts of social media and screen addiction, and it’s easy to see why our daughters in particular strain under the weight of it all. Girls are socialized to care about others, and they often gravitate toward interests that have an altruistic purpose. It’s not surprising, therefore, that the face of climate crisis activism is 16-year-old Greta Thunberg. 

As parents, we can feel helpless to protect our children from sources of stress over which we have little to no control. There are, however, two incredibly powerful things we can do to help inoculate our children against toxic stress: be a non-anxious presence, and have the courage and wisdom to give our children a healthy sense of control over their lives. Last year, we bought our entire community Dr. Bill Stixrud’s book The Self-Driven Child which I regard as among the most important books on parenting and mental health ever written. As a neuropsychologist in a high-achieving community in the Washington, D.C. area, Dr. Stixrud began noticing that even high-performing students were coming to him for acute anxiety, lacking intrinsic motivation and complaining that they had no real control over their lives. Through his research and practice, he's discovered that the single most important thing for a child to thrive is to feel that they are in charge of their lives. What’s more, Dr. Stixrud and I agree that in addition to honoring our children’s need for self-determination, we must remember that parents make the weather in a child’s life and that calm is contagious. 

Through studying his work and hearing from Dr. Stixrud directly, we learned that as educators and parents we can actively help our children sculpt brains that are resilient, stress-proof, and eager to take on new challenges. Over the last 60 years, study after study has found that a healthy sense of control goes hand in hand with virtually all the positive outcomes we want for our children. Perceived control—the confidence that we can direct the course of our life through our own efforts—is associated with better physical health, less use of drugs and alcohol, and greater longevity, as well as with lower stress, positive emotional well-being, greater internal motivation and ability to control one’s behavior, improved academic performance, and enhanced career success. Like exercise and sleep, it appears to be good for virtually everything, presumably because it represents a deep human need. This is really great news. So what can you do to put Dr. Stixrud’s research into action? Quite a lot, actually. These are some of the things we suggest to our parents about how to alleviate toxic stress for our daughters: