Depression in children can present in a number of ways. Here are some things Dr. Georgina Garcia, a psychiatrist in Behavioral Health Services at Franciscan Children’s, says parents should look for:
Loss of interest in regular or fun activities
A decline in grades
Changes in mood, such as increased irritability, tearfulness, or mood swings
Changes in behavior regarding sleep, appetite, or energy
Increased isolation; less social interaction with peers
Somatic complaints like stomach aches or headaches
Self-injury (scratching, cutting themselves)
Reporting thoughts of wanting to die or kill themselves, even humorously
The signs in children can be different from those in adults. “Children don’t always have the language to describe their emotions—instead of saying they are depressed, kids will often use the term ‘bored,’” Garcia says.
While adults do often have physical symptoms, sometimes children only present with physical symptoms like gastrointestinal discomfort and don’t seem as “sad” or moody as an adult with depression might.
What to do if you think your child has depression
If you suspect your child is in danger of killing or harming themselves, seek help immediately. In the U.S., you can dial “988” to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline and get 24/7 assistance via phone or chat. Or visit their website (previously the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline).
Or, “If there is an immediate concern for the child’s safety, the parent should take the child to the nearest emergency room for an assessment,” Garcia says. If you suspect your child is depressed but not in immediate danger, Garcia says, “Parents should first seek a professional assessment and support from their child’s pediatrician.
The pediatrician will know what questions to ask and signs to look for, and if necessary, the pediatrician can recommend a good pediatric psychiatrist or psychologist for the child.” You can also try to get a mental health care provider directly, though there are often long wait lists. It is still worth pursuing for the sake of your child’s mental well-being, though.
“While it is important to bring your child to a professional, parents need to know that they know their child best,” Garcia says. “If their child has had changes in their mood, interests, and behaviors, the parents are crucial to early identification of these symptoms and can help engage their child in mental health care.”
Sometimes a teacher or other trusted adult notices these changes, but most often, it is a parent who can track these patterns in their own children and get them the help they need as soon as possible.
What to do if you child is diagnosed with depression
In order to pursue official depression treatment, your child will need to be diagnosed by a health professional, such as their doctor or a psychologist. From there, Garcia says, “Talk therapy is usually the first line of intervention.” What that often looks like is the child meeting about once a week with a psychologist or a social worker and talk about how they are feeling and help develop coping skills.
Sometimes therapy is done in conjunction with the school, on campus, or it may be in a private facility. Many insurance plans and Medicaid cover therapy, but you should always check with your plan. If the depression continues even with therapy, “the clinician or pediatrician may recommend medications and/or a referral to a child and adolescent psychiatrist to see if medicine is appropriate for the child,” Garcia says.
Often depression is treated with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, such as Prozac or Zoloft. Some children respond very well to these medications while others have issues with side effects or cannot take them due to other health considerations. You and your child’s medical team will need to discuss the best course of treatment for your child.
Will a child who is diagnosed struggle with depression their whole life?
If you’ve experienced depression, it may have been for a short time, or it may have been something you’ve dealt with your entire life. For your child, Garcia says it is not a lifelong diagnosis. “The good news is depression can improve with treatment, and the child may no longer need therapy or medication,” she says.
“Although it can sometimes reoccur, studies show that treatment of depressive episodes reduces the risk of future episodes of depression.” So by helping your child acknowledge their feelings and treat them now, you are setting them up for more resilient and successful mental health patterns in the future.
A spoiled kid is one who thinks and acts like the world revolves around them. They’re used to getting what they want, when they want it — and if they don’t, they’ll throw a fit until they do. They show little to no appreciation for what they have and expect others to cater to them, often without contributing anything in return.
Some parenting experts don’t like to use the word “spoiled” to describe a child because it implies they’re somehow “ruined.” Some prefer the word “entitled,” with a focus on labeling the negative behavior, not the kid’s character.
According to parenting coach Amy McCready, founder of Positive Parenting Solutions, examples of entitled behavior might include “the expectation that things will be done for them, like the household chores, or awarded to them unnecessarily, like getting candy for trying one bite of broccoli or getting paid to do homework.”
“Entitled kids may also believe they are the center of the universe and that rules don’t apply to them,” McCready said. “They usually get their way and fail to show gratitude.”
Parenting coach Traci Baxley, author of “Social Justice Parenting,” told HuffPost that in her work, she focuses less on the kid’s behavior and more on the parents’ habits and approach. Caregivers rarely set out to raise a spoiled child, but they may end up indulging their kids anyway for a number of reasons.
“Parents show up using the limited tools they were taught, or attempt to overcompensate for lack in their own childhood,” Baxley said. “Parents are humans first, with lived experiences and possible traumas from the past that show up as fear, protection, and misguided, but well-intended, love.”
One quick thing to clear up: Spoiling a kid has nothing to do with “over-loving” them, said Aliza Pressman, co-founder of the Mount Sinai Parenting Center and host of the “Raising Good Humans” podcast.
“There is never a limit to how much love you have and show children,” she said. “This does not contribute to that sense of entitlement.”But if your way of showing love to your child is “tending to their every wish and need without teaching them there are limits, and that they can do and work towards things themselves,” then your kids are more likely to be entitled, McCready said.
No child is born “spoiled”— it’s a learned behavior, Baxley said. So the good news is that we can help our kids become less entitled by modifying our parenting approaches and helping them change their behavior in turn. Here’s how to “un-spoil” a child, according to experts.
Do some self-reflection.
Take time to think about why you make some of the parenting decisions you do. Ask yourself: “Why do I need to over-purchase for my child? Why do I find it too difficult to say no? How does it make me feel after I’ve bought something or said yes when I really wanted to say no?” Baxley said.
“See what bubbles up for you,” she said. “See if you can connect something in the past to your current parenting practices and engage in small intentional steps to make changes.” Be aware that this kind of reflection can be difficult for some parents, because it may bring up painful memories from their own childhood.
“Please know that this process may include getting professional support, great patience and giving yourself grace along the way,” Baxley said.
Encourage autonomy.
“This means not doing for your child what they can already do for themselves, guiding and encouraging them to do what they can almost do, and teaching and modeling things they are not yet ready to do,” Pressman said. Examples might include things like getting dressed, putting on their shoes or making a snack.
Set and enforce boundaries consistently.
You may hate setting limits or saying “no” to your kid because it’s exhausting or distressing to watch them have a meltdown. But kids want and need consistent boundaries, Baxley said. Nevertheless, they’ll push back — “and push back hard if they aren’t used to boundaries from their parents,” she said.
“During their breakdowns or lack of emotional regulation, acknowledge the feelings instead of rewarding the temper tantrum or negative behavior,” she said.
How do you do this? Say something like: “‘I see you are disappointed you couldn’t get that toy today’ or ‘I know not being allowed to have a sleepover with your friends makes you angry,’” Baxley suggested. “This demonstrates that you have empathy and compassion for them in this situation, but you’re enforcing boundaries.”
Give them responsibilities at home.
When you kid is accustomed to you catering to their needs, it’s not easy getting them to meet your new expectations to do more at home. It can help to use what McCready calls “when-then routines.”
“You can use a when-then routine for anything from getting household work done —‘When the dog is walked, then you can see your friend’ — to bedtime — ’When your teeth are brushed and you’re in your pajamas, then we can read your book. But remember, lights out at 8 p.m.,’” she said. “Please note that the ’thens’ are regularly occurring events and activities and not rewards!”
Ditch rewards for everyday tasks.
Rewarding your kids with money, treats or toys to motivate them to do their homework or brush their teeth may work in the moment — “but in real life, prizes for basic tasks are few or nonexistent,” McCready said.
“That’s why it’s important to nurture long-term motivation — the capacity for hard work and self-achievement — and the benefits that come from that effort alone,” she said.
Don’t rescue your kid when they make mistakes or experience setbacks.
Parents have a tendency to want to rush in, fix things and save the day, often unnecessarily. It’s OK — good, even — to allow kids to fail and experience consequences for their actions.
“If a child did not get the part in the play or picked for the soccer team, support them through their challenging feelings, but don’t offer to speak to the coach and change the situation,” Pressman said. “If they forget their homework, allow them to experience the discomfort of owning up to it rather than having you explain it to the teacher. That helps kids grow up knowing what it feels like to be disappointed and to seek emotional support and move forward.”
Expect — and accept — that your child will be upset with you.
It’s inevitable: Your kid is going to get angry or disappointed with you at times. They might even say they don’t like you or need you. But parenting isn’t about being popular or well-liked all the time, Baxley said.
“Don’t let their behavior and words determine your family’s values and boundaries,” she said. “As part of a child’s development, from toddler to teenager, they test the power of using their voice. They are caught between two ways of being — to be independent and take care of themselves and the need to be loved and nurtured by their parents.”
You can give your child space to voice their feelings and frustrations without giving in to them all the time.
“Listen attentively and lovingly,” Baxley said. “We want them to know their voice and opinions matter. Stay consistent with your established values, so they know what your family’s guideposts are and they learn how to be accountable for their words and actions.”
Reinforce values like community and teamwork.
Entitled kids may struggle to think about other people’s needs. Having them contribute to the household by assisting with chores, or having them participate in community volunteer work, can help reinforce this.
“When we participate in acts of kindness, we experience a sense of joy,” Baxley said. “Each time our children get an opportunity to do for others, we build these habits of kindness. Over time, these habits will become the learned behaviors that we desire for our children.”
Help them be more considerate of others, shifting their focus from “me, me, me” to “we, we, we.”
“Look for those everyday moments to do so,” educational psychologist Michele Borba previously told HuffPost. “Like, ‘Let’s ask Alice what she would like to do,’ ‘How do you think Daddy feels?’ ‘Ask your friend what he would like to play’ or ‘Let’s go volunteer at the soup kitchen.’”
Refrain from shaming them.
Making your kid feel ashamed over their entitled behavior isn’t going to be productive for them or for you.
“Shaming does not help kids get unspoiled,” Pressman said. “Avoid saying, ‘You’re spoiled because…’ Instead, focus on helping kids understand that their behavior may need some fine-tuning, but who they are as a person is someone you love unconditionally.”
If you are a parent, your greatest fear in life is likely something happening to one of your kids. According to one 2018 poll from OnePoll and the Lice Clinics of America (not my usual data source, but no one else seems to measure this), parents spend an average of 37 hours a week worrying about their children; the No. 1 back-to-school concern is about their safety. And this makes sense, if you believe that safety is a foundation that has to be established before dealing with other concerns.
You can see the effects of all this worrying in modern parenting behavior. According to a 2015 report from the Pew Research Center, on average, parents say children should be at least 10 years old to play unsupervised in their own front yard, 12 years old to stay home alone for an hour, and 14 to be unsupervised at a public park. It also shows up in what parents teach their kids about the world: Writing in TheJournal of Positive Psychology in 2021, the psychologists Jeremy D. W. Clifton and Peter Meindl found that 53 percent of respondents preferred “dangerous world” beliefs for their children.
No doubt these beliefs come from the best of intentions. If you want children to be safe (and thus, happy), you should teach them that the world is dangerous—that way, they will be more vigilant and careful. But in fact, teaching them that the world is dangerous is bad for their health, happiness, and success.The contention that the world is mostly safe or mostly dangerous is what some psychologists call a “primal world belief,” one about life’s basic essence.
Specifically, it’s a negative primal in which the fundamental character of the world is assumed to be threatening. Primal beliefs are different from more specific beliefs—say, about sports or politics—insofar as they color our whole worldview. If I believe that the Red Sox are a great baseball team, it generally will not affect my unrelated attitudes and decisions. But according to Clifton and Meindl, if I believe that the world is dangerous, it will affect the way I see many other parts of my life, relationships, and work.
I will be more suspicious of other people’s motives, for example, and less likely to do things that might put me or my loved ones in harm’s way, such as going out at night. As much as we hope the dangerous-world belief will help our kids, the evidence indicates that it does exactly the opposite. In the same paper, Clifton and Meindl show that people holding negative primals are less healthy than their peers, more often sad, more likely to be depressed, and less satisfied with their lives.
They also tend to dislike their jobs and perform worse than their more positive counterparts. One explanation for this is that people under bad circumstances (poverty, illness, etc.) have both bad outcomes and a lot to fear. However, as Clifton and Meindl argue, primals can also interact with life outcomes—you likely suffer a lot more when you are always looking for danger and avoiding risk.
Teaching your kids that the world is dangerous can also make them less tolerant of others. In one 2018 study, researchers subjected a sample of adults to a measure called the “Belief in a Dangerous World Scale,” which asked them to agree or disagree with statements such as “Any day now chaos and anarchy could erupt around us” and “There are many dangerous people in our society who will attack someone out of pure meanness, for no reason at all.”
They found that people scoring high on this scale also showed heightened prejudice and hostility toward groups such as undocumented immigrants, whom they stereotypically considered a threat to their safety. This study was conducted among adults, but it is easy to see how these attitudes would migrate to their kids. This is similar to the argument made by the writers Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt in The Atlantic in 2015, and in their subsequent book, The Coddling of the American Mind.
Lukianoff and Haidt contend that when parents (or professors) teach young people that ordinary interactions are dangerous—for example, that speech is a form of violence—it hinders their intellectual and emotional growth. It also leads them to adopt black-and-white views (for example, that the world is made up of people who are either good or evil), and makes them more anxious in the face of minor stressors such as political disagreement.
And to top it all off, negative primals don’t even help keep people safe. Researchers writing in the journal Psychology & Health in 2001 showed that a general state of fear can actually make a person less likely to take threats seriously (a self-defense mechanism to control our fear) and undermine precautionary behavior (by degrading the ability to address danger rationally).
It is not in young people’s interest that we instill in them negative primals. In so doing, we might harm them by making them less happy, less healthy, and more bigoted toward others. To break this pattern, parents—and anyone who interacts with children—should instead work to cultivate a sense of safety. Here are three rules to help you get started.
1. Heal thyself.
Parents might feed their kids negative primals because they hold such views themselves. This is easy to do in a world where we are bombarded with news and information, which studies have linked to distress, anxiety, and depression—even when the news is not specifically negative. And research shows that many parents pass on their anxiety to their children. One way to allay our own fears is simply to look at the facts.
Being a kid in America has never been safer. Since 1935, the number of childhood deaths between the ages of 1 and 4 fell from 450 to 30 per 100,000. It has fallen by nearly half just since 1990, and the decreases in other age groups are similarly impressive. Use this knowledge to counteract the media’s relentless focus on fear and danger. You might even print out a chart on declining childhood mortality (such as the one linked above) and put it on the fridge as a reminder of how good your kids have it.
2. Be specific and proportional.
Grown-ups want to teach young people how to stay safe in the face of threats. However, the research is clear that a blanket attitude of fear can actually make them less able to do so. If you want to offer a child a warning to make them better prepared, focus on one specific danger they might face and how to deal with it. Instead of saying, “People will try to take advantage of you at college,” say, “If someone is trying to get you to drink too much, avoid that person.”
When you do need to bring up a threat, make sure you keep it in proportion. For example, I don’t want anyone to be mean to my kids any more than the next parent. They know this. But it doesn’t help them for me to say that hostile words inherently make them unsafe. Social conflict is unavoidable, and making them fear it as an existential threat amounts to giving them a negative primal, rendering them less resilient.
3. Counteract negative primals from outside.
Almost every day that my daughter was in high school, she was taught about the dangerous world—about bad people, dangerous forces in nature, and a bleak future for our country. She told us about the gloom and doom each evening at dinner, and my wife and I could see her growing pessimism. So we set about deliberately countering the scary narrative. We didn’t sugarcoat the threats; we simply tried to be specific about the kind behaviors we witnessed, and ways that the world was safer and more prosperous today than in the past.
It was our way of sharing our genuine belief that on the whole, most people are good and things are getting better. Working hard to avoid instilling a fear-based primal belief in kids is good. But really, we should all be able to do better than that, and try to cultivate a positive primal belief that can truly improve their lives. For that, I turn to the words of the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu. “Through Love, one has no fear,” he wrote in the Tao Te Ching.
Instead of teaching our kids fear primals, let’s teach them love primals, which neutralize fear and put something good in its place. Let them know that people are made for love—we all crave it, and we can find something lovable in just about everyone we meet. We don’t always give it or accept it, because we make a lot of mistakes, but love is what all our hearts desire. If you want to give your children a rule to live by, this one is a much safer bet.
There comes a time in some people’s lives when their aspirations for their children begin to rival or even exceed their aspirations for themselves. It’s happened to me since I’ve become a parent myself. As a result, I’ve been on a years-long mission to collect as much science-based advice as possible regarding how to raise successful kids.
Here are five of the most interesting and useful strategies I’ve found and highlighted recently. The science suggests that if you want to do right by your kids, you should probably do these things.
1. Make them do chores.
Researchers at La Trobe University in Australia recently set out to determine whether children who do chores at home would develop better working memory, inhibition, and other success-predicting behaviors.
They broke chores into three categories: self-care, other care, and pet care. Writing in the peer-reviewed Australian Occupational Therapy Journal, they said their studies showed that kids who did self-care and other-care chores were in fact more likely to exhibit better academic performances and problem-solving skills.
But pet-care chores did nothing either way for the kids’ later development. Why not? Maybe it’s because pet care chores aren’t as strenuous as other chores, or maybe because the kids didn’t really view the kinds of things you have to do to take care of a pet dog (walk it, feed it, etc.) to be work. The bottom line, however? Make your kids do chores. They might not love the idea to start with, but you’ve got science on your side.
2. Teach them to be polite.
This one focuses on three specific words: please, thank you, and you’re welcome. Teaching kids to say “please” when they ask for something can reinforce their tendency to be polite, which makes them more persuasive when they’re older. Teaching them to say “thank you” habitually encourages gratitude, which stimulates happiness and makes stress easier to deal with.
And teaching them to say “you’re welcome” reinforces confidence by emphasizing that the things they do for others are worthy of thanks. (This is especially true when you juxtapose “you’re welcome” with other things people say in response to “thank you,” like “no worries!” or “no problem!”)
3. Work on their emotional intelligence.
Children who develop emotional intelligence also develop “a higher chance of graduating, getting a good job, and just being happy,” according to Rachael Katz and Helen Shwe Hadani, authors of The Emotionally Intelligent Child: Effective Strategies for Parenting Self-Aware, Cooperative, and Well-Balanced Kids.
There are many things you can do to develop emotional intelligence (many more listed here), but at the outset, model your good thinking and use of emotions for them, ask them for their ideas, and try not to judge. Oh, and remember that kids are just that: kids. It’s unfair often to expect them to react and respond to things like adults would (or at least, should!).
4. Steer them toward video games.
Wait, what? Tell them to play video games? Yes, indeed. A new study out of Europe that used a “massive” amount of data determined that kids who spend an above-average amount of time playing them wind up with higher IQs than kids who spend their screen time watching videos or scrolling through social media.
Kids today spent a massive amount of time glued to screens, on average. This study of 5,000 children at least suggests that if they’re going to be using screens that much, the higher the percentage of that time they spend on video games, the better.
In short, passion turned out to be far more predictive of whether kids were successful; while mindset and grit might have predicted that young people would continue attempting to succeed, it was passion that best predicted whether they actually would. “For people who are the best of the best in their field, passion is absolutely the biggest factor. It’s the essential key to success,” one researcher said.
So, when kids are kids, let them explore different things to determine the ones that they’re truly passionate about. That’s where they’re most likely to become the absolute best in their field. Look, no matter what any of us does as entrepreneurs, chances are our kids will be a very big part of our legacies.
That’s why I’m so drawn into these little hacks, and it’s why I’ve compiled an entire free e-book full of similar tips and tricks: How to Raise Successful Kids (7th Edition). There’s always another study with another interesting bit of information to consider. I read and share as many as I can, so you don’t have to look for them.
You may have heard people use phrases like “out of control” or “wild” to describe kids who have a hard time controlling their emotions and impulsive behavior. If they’re talking about your child, you might wonder if your child has a disruptive behavior disorder or ADHD. You might even think disruptive behavior disorders and ADHD are the same thing. Disruptive behavior disorders and ADHD have some things in common, such as trouble keeping emotions in check and doing risky, impulsive things. But there are big differences between the two that can affect the strategies used to help your child………..
Photo: Iren_Geo (Shutterstock)
