At the start of 2025, after two wonderful years of maternity leave, I returned to my job as a primary school teacher.

I was thrilled at the prospect of once again spending time with some hilarious, energetic kids, and partaking in the gift of education. However, it didn’t take me very long to notice a significant shift in the behaviours, emotional capacity, and academic ability of our children during the short time I had been away.

What could possibly have changed these kids so drastically over the last few years? They had gone from enthusiastic, curious, and kind souls to anxiety-ridden, rage-filled, exorbitantly below-level grade 5/6’s. Not to mention increasingly rude and hostile.

The first answer is, of course, the Covid lockdowns.

The students reaching the final years of their primary education, and about to embark on the great challenge of high school, were wee little grade 1s and 2s throughout Covid. The impact of online learning and the limited social interaction this cohort was exposed to is wildly evident in their behaviours and expounded upon at length elsewhere.

However, in the face of such adversity and with teachers unable to do much, surely the parents of these children are obliged to help their children to not only survive said lockdowns, but to transition back into the real world – a world in which you must attend school?

The answer to this question is unfortunately the primary reason for the increased anxiety, lack of emotional regulation, and limited social skills my students are displaying – no, they are not.

The rates of ‘part-time’ students and those who simply just do not turn up half the time, is astonishing. In my small country school around a quarter of them do not attend school full time due to ‘anxiety’.

According to their parents, many students are having panic attacks before coming to school, begging and crying that they may be kept at home and being allowed to do so. Rather than doing what parents were once expected to do – which is to parent, be the villain, push your child to exist in the world, and stand strong in the face of difficulty – parents are instead allowing their children to stay home for weeks at a time.

Jordan Peterson uses the term ‘narcissistic compassion’ to describe those who desire appearing compassionate for selfish gain. Parents, of course, truly love their children and want what’s best for them. However, in a world where wellbeing is the number one priority, gentle parenting is the only ‘good’ form of parenting, and we all require ‘mental health days’, the expected response is to take these breakdowns as seriously as if their children were fully-developed adults with normal coping skills, rather than a child trying to navigate their emotions on the brink of puberty, and give the child what they want. I, as a parent myself, also believe it is lazy because it’s the easy option. Shall I argue for hours with this child? Watch my child cry and scream? Or shall I just keep them home and keep everyone happy (for now) – it’s for their mental health anyway, right? ‘Not my fault.’

When I observe these children, I also think about Munchhausen Syndrome, wherein mothers love their children so immensely that they want to ensure their child needs them as much as they themselves need their child. In this case, parents are buying into their children’s emotional dysregulation as an opportunity for them to be their child’s only source of comfort and support. At this age, on the brink of adolescence, children need to be lovingly let go rather than increasingly swaddled by their parents.

When students started having these issues, I, at first, responded with love and support for them and their families – offering any adjustments or extra supports I could to ensure they could make it to school and feel emotionally regulated when they arrived there. However, as the sheer number of these students needing ‘special adjustments’ rapidly increased, and as I continued to notice how in every single case the kids were entirely fine and happy once their families let them go and they could stand strong in the knowledge that they were going to school that day, I started to feel not just suspicious of the legitimacy of these concerns, but angry that these kids are being allowed to freely dive head-first into life-long mental health problems rather than building any tolerance, patience, or resilience at this crucial point in their lives.

My children have emotional breakdowns and I respond calmly and with love, but my expectations don’t change. You still have to go in the bath. You still can’t eat my toast.

These children are having the same breakdowns, but what they need is not the bath or the toast, but the boundaries. Within firm boundaries comes emotional and social security where students can experiment, learn, and grow into functional adults.

By allowing our children to flail around in an emotional pit of despair, we are allowing – even encouraging – them to use this as a coping tool, and their ‘anxiety’ as an excuse for not participating in life.

These are children and, as adults, it’s up to us to guide them and push them in the right direction so that they may hold a job, handle a relationship break up and raise a family of their own one day.

If we don’t, we will have an epidemic of toddler meltdowns that live on through to adulthood, and that sounds like a nightmare.