We all teach our kids to be kind and caring, right? Well, not according to a big 2014 Harvard study that reviewed the literature on parental transmission of values and then surveyed over 10,000 students, asking them about their own values and what values their parents promoted to them. Here psychotherapist writer Louis Weinstock shares research and his own stories on why our worlds ideas of success are driving our children mad.

While most parents and teachers say that developing caring children is a top priority for them, this was not the experience of the young people interviewed in this study. Around 80 per cent said their parents and teachers cared more about them having individual success.

And in an analysis of day-to-day conversations, there was a much higher frequency of messages from parents to their kids promoting individual success than promoting caring for others. The authors of the report called this the ‘rhetoric/reality gap’. Although parents thought ‘caring’ was important, they weren’t actually living or relaying that value to their kids.

We want our children to grow up in a world where people take care of each other. But we may not be preparing our children to help build this world. It’s not that we do this on purpose. We are usually not fully aware of how we are conditioned by the world around us. The truth is, we live in an achievement society. We are primed from the earliest age to believe we can be and do anything we want to.

On social media, we scroll we scroll through a catwalk of models of success, each post drip-feeding our nervous systems with a toxic mix of envy, anxiety, and not-enoughness. We destroy our habitat chasing infinite growth. We destroy our minds and bodies chasing infinite potential.

As we compulsively chase success, ramping up our productivity, we can negatively impact those around us.

We surround ourselves with successful people, and lose touch with old friends.
We are so busy trying to scale our business, we don’t notice our child has been self-harming.
We are so focused on ‘growing our community’, we don’t help the elderly neighbour next door.
We grow our personal brand, and lose touch with our true self.

Enough is enough, I say! So what can we do about it?

In my book, How The World Is Making Our Children Mad, And What To Do About It, I explore this in some depth, and here are some answers. For one, when your child achieves something, whether it’s a school exam or some sporting competition, ask them to think more widely about who or what helped them to achieve that goal. This will help them honour the natural and human networks that underpin everything we achieve. As the Native American Hopi prophesy says, the time for the lone wolf is over.

Second, and this is really good news: you are 100 per cent free to define ‘success’ for yourself and your family in a way that feels authentic and meaningful to you.

And it begins with getting super clear on our values. I worked with a family where the parents were very high-powered, financially ‘successful’ people. But Parul, their 17-year-old daughter, was depressed. And nobody in the family was talking. Time at home was spent mostly in their own rooms, on their own devices. The goal they set in our first session was to feel closer to one another.

One way of thinking about depression is that it signals when we are not living in accordance with our values. So, as an early task, I gave the family a list of core values and I set them the challenge of agreeing on five for the family. I asked them to think when choosing their values about what kind of a world they wanted to live in. First, they picked ten each, then looked for those that were shared between them. These would become the north star for their family, the basis of their new definition of success.

When they returned the next week, they told me they’d found the exercise both surprisingly easy and clarifying. Together, they’d chosen kindness, creativity, gratitude, honesty, loyalty. They then agreed they’d hold each other accountable to these values. For example, they decided to discuss the weekly value over dinner. Honesty week was challenging, as Parul said she felt her parents worked too hard and didn’t have enough time for the family. But the family had all chosen this value, so it kept them connected – a kind of emotional glue.

Over the next few weeks, the family really talked about what mattered most to them and it made them feel closer. And gradually, as they bonded around their shared values, the family’s focus shifted outwards to what kind acts they could do in the world. Parul and her father began volunteering once a week at an animal shelter. Just getting clear on your definition of success and having a shared framework to implement it has a tangible impact.

How the World is Making Our Children Mad and What to Do About It by Louis Weinstock. Published by Vermilion in paperback 18 th April, £12.99

Louis Weinstock is a child psychotherapist and social entrepreneur. He has worked with vulnerable children as a drugs counsellor, a child protection social worker and a psychotherapist running a therapeutic school for teenagers with complex trauma. He helps people find a light in the darkness, especially in grief, in the shadow, in the things that are unseen, unheard, unspoken. For over 20 years, he has expertly guided children and grown-ups through some of the toughest challenges life can throw at us – loss, trauma, divorce, burnout, and breakdowns. He is also co-founder of Apart of Me, a multi-award-winning charity that helps young people transform their grief into compassion. His work has been featured on the BBC, ITV, and in the Guardian newspaper.

He lives in Manchester with his wife and daughter. https://louisweinstock.com/

Why ideas of success are driving our children mad.