Strong Relationships Are Vital for Living Healthy and Happy Lives

This week we held the last round of parent interviews for 2018. The interviews provide opportunities for students, parents and teachers to engage in conversations. Apart from enabling teachers to highlight strengths and weaknesses in a student’s learning and suggest strategies for improvement, an important function of these interviews is to build relationships which assist in developing and sustaining the community of our School.

I was reminded of how important relationships are in life by some other matters that caught my eye in the media recently. Strong, respectful relationships are vital for all of us in living healthy and happy lives. Like many others, I saw the on-court behaviour of tennis champion Serena Williams during the US Open Final. It was surprising to see a seasoned and experienced professional such as Williams succumb to the stress and strain during the match, which she eventually lost. The emotional outburst was covered worldwide by an ever voracious media. The follow up to the Serena Williams event has been the cartoon drawn by well-known Melbourne tabloid cartoonist Mark Knight. His cartoon of Williams has polarised opinion not only here in Australia, but especially in America. Wherever you might sit in terms of holding an opinion, either about Williams’s behaviour or the appropriateness of Knight’s cartoon, it has been a hotly debated issue.

I also noticed a fascinating article in The Weekend Australian, titled The Rise of Generation Snowflake. The article was referring to the fairly recent term which is said to characterise young adults as “being more prone to taking offence and being less resilient than previous generations, or as being too emotionally vulnerable to cope with views that challenge their own.” In the article, American authors Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff discuss the increasing behaviour of ‘catastrophising’- the act of turning bad or unwelcome events into disastrous ones. They argue that an entire generation of students are being brought up as frail and coddled, allergic to opinions and events that diverge from their sanctioned world view, notable for their intolerance and fragility. While the authors are largely referring to university students, they claim that many of today’s kids just cannot cope with the real world. Further, they state that “anxiety, depression and suicide among young people have all rocketed in recent years, particularly for girls.” In attempting to understand what is driving this trend, psychologist Jean Twenge attributes the rise in digital culture and social media.

“The surge in youth mental health issues is directly linked to the rise of smart phones and excessive screen time, which have made deep inroads into the amount of time children spend playing sport, reading books or talking face-to-face.”

Haidt and Lukianoff also suggest that apart from education institutions which appease fragile post-adolescents, overprotective parenting fails to equip children to deal properly with confusion and adversity. They suggest that if we wish children to develop great mental strength,

“this is unlikely to occur when young people are living protected, screen based lives with no exposure to risk or danger, no fear or freedom. Their first exposure to reality, even in the relative safe space of a university campus (or a school!) can be traumatic.”

Strong relationships are important if we wish to be healthy and resilient. Serena Williams displayed an inability to be resilient in a difficult situation. All adults know the lessons learnt in life, through good times and adversity, are those that make us strong and capable for whatever the world throws at us. At St Catherine’s School, holding respectful, caring conversations but also ones that are strong and robust, are all part of the equation in building healthy relationships. This is one of the reasons we have the parent teacher interviews.

When was the last time you had a good discussion with your daughter that went for more than a few minutes and was free of distractions from a smartphone or some other electronic device? Here is an idea, go to the nearest park with your daughter, leave the phone at home and go for a walk. I guarantee that when you go for a walk with a teenager, you will have a great conversation!