Happy St. Nicholas Day
December 2011
St. Nicholas Day - December 6th
This was predominantly a Dutch tradition that is now celebrated all over Europe. When the Dutch settlers moved to the United States, Sinterklass became Santa Claus or Father Chrtistmas.
Traditionally, this celebration differs from Christmas Day. The story tells us that in the Middle of the 4th Century, an Abbot called Nicholas was born in Turkey. Nicholas was well known for his piety and benevolence. Abbot Nicholas was especially remembered for his care and protection of young children.
One such tale of his kindness tells of a father with three daughters who was very worried that he would not be able to provide them with a dowry when they became married. Nicholas heard of this man and went to his house. He stood by the man's widow and when a moonbeam shone into the room, Nicholas tossed in a bag of gold. He did this each night until the man had three bags of gold - one for each of his daughters.
From this legend came the placing of gold coins, small gifts and fruit in the shoes and stockings of children during the night before the feast of St. Nicholas. In some homes across Europe, St. Nicholas may appear with his companion, Zwarte Piete, also known as Black Peter. He carries a big red book, where he reads reports about the children's behaviour. If the child has been good, they may receive a small gift. However, if the report is not so good they may find twigs or even coal left in their shoes!
This was predominantly a Dutch tradition that is now celebrated all over Europe. When the Dutch settlers moved to the United States, Sinterklass became Santa Claus or Father Chrtistmas.
Traditionally, this celebration differs from Christmas Day. The story tells us that in the Middle of the 4th Century, an Abbot called Nicholas was born in Turkey. Nicholas was well known for his piety and benevolence. Abbot Nicholas was especially remembered for his care and protection of young children.
One such tale of his kindness tells of a father with three daughters who was very worried that he would not be able to provide them with a dowry when they became married. Nicholas heard of this man and went to his house. He stood by the man's widow and when a moonbeam shone into the room, Nicholas tossed in a bag of gold. He did this each night until the man had three bags of gold - one for each of his daughters.
From this legend came the placing of gold coins, small gifts and fruit in the shoes and stockings of children during the night before the feast of St. Nicholas. In some homes across Europe, St. Nicholas may appear with his companion, Zwarte Piete, also known as Black Peter. He carries a big red book, where he reads reports about the children's behaviour. If the child has been good, they may receive a small gift. However, if the report is not so good they may find twigs or even coal left in their shoes!
Are our children growing up too early?
April 2011
A Government funded survey has found that almost nine out of every 10 UK parents believe children are having to grow up too early, with nearly half unhappy with pre-watershed TV. The research is part of a government-commissioned review into the sexualisation of children. Most parents said music videos and the celebrity culture were encouraging children to act older than they were.
Of the 1,025 parents of five- to 16-year-olds surveyed, 40% said they had seen things in public places, such as shop window displays and advertising hoardings, that they felt were inappropriate for children to see because of their sexual content. And 41% of parents said they had seen programmes or adverts on television before 9pm that they felt were unsuitable for similar reasons.
The survey also said that parents were "struggling against the slow creep of an increasingly commercial and sexualised culture and behaviour, which they say prevents them from parenting the way they want".
The review is exploring whether there should be restrictions on retailers selling sexualised products aimed at children - such as "Porn star" T-shirts or padded bras.
A code of conduct on "age appropriate" marketing and a new watchdog are among plans being considered by the review. Items that have been criticised include pencil cases and other products with the Playboy logo.
The Great Outdoors
January 2011
Not so long ago, I read an interview, in a Sunday newspaper, with a member of the Kogi people - an indigenous Colombian tribe. They have maintained a very simple lifestyle, resisting influences from Spanish conquistadors and Christian missionaries to modern eco-tourists, militias and heavy industry. Like many native people, the Kogi believe in the importance of maintaining a balance between people and nature. |
Are middle class families driving their children to depression?
October 2010
Reported on 22nd October 2010 by a national newspaper
By Penny Marshall
Stressed: More and more very young children in Britain are suffering from depressive symptoms.
Janine has just celebrated her fourth birthday and shouldn’t have a care in the world. She lives in a comfortable home with a large sheltered garden to run around in, has more toys than she could ever manage to play with in a single afternoon, and parents who love her. Yet I’ve seen happier children playing with pebbles in the dust of a refugee camp in Africa.
Welcome to the new world of toddler depression. It’s a world where our bundles of joy are being made miserable by exposure to a world full of adult stress.
‘I know it sounds silly because she’s so young, but Janine is depressed,’ her mother told me in her state-of-the-art kitchen, as Janine sat on her lap, buried her face in her mother’s chest and whined.
Janine’s mother took her to the GP in April of this year, after the problems — bed-wetting, clinginess and unexplained headaches and listlessness — had persisted for a few months. The doctor suggested that she went to a psychiatrist who diagnosed Janine with depression.
At first sight, Janine’s case may seem like a classic case of middleclass over-reaction and over-diagnosis.
My grandmother would certainly have thought so. Her mantra was simply that ‘the good times and the bad times all pass over’. If I’d clung excessively to my mother, it would have been my grandmother and not a psychiatrist who would have been approached for help and advice.
But times have changed, as has the awareness of the importance of a child’s mental health, and there is significant agreement between psychiatrists, teachers and specialist children’s charities that depressive symptoms are increasingly affecting very young children in Britain.
This discovery comes just as the wider international scientific community debates how best to treat depression in young children and whether their condition is triggered by environmental factors or a biological imbalance in the brain.
In Britain, medical opinion largely holds that the rise in pre-school depression is the result of raised awareness and poor emotional support given to toddlers — both in some of the poorest and most deprived homes in Britain as well as in some of the richest and most privileged.
If you dig deeper into Janine’s story, for example, you do find reasons for her to be stressed or even depressed: you find a mother who is recovering from post-natal depression after the birth of a second baby last year, you find a baby brother who has usurped Janine’s position in the family and a new au-pair who doesn’t speak very good English who has come in to help because ‘mum is so exhausted after a day at work she can’t cope with the children’.
Janine doesn’t see her father at all from Monday to Friday, because he comes home from his work in the City after she’s gone to bed.
'We are living in times of great anxiety and that's not always conducive to providing the best for our youngest children,' says Peter Wilson, co-founder of the mental health charity Young Minds
‘We are living in times of great anxiety and that’s not always conducive to providing the best for our youngest children,’ says Peter Wilson, a former director and co-founder of the mental health charity Young Minds and a clinical director of the children’s charity Place2Be.
‘Parents do their best, but I’m very anxious that with all the unprecedented pressures of modern life we are letting our youngestand most vulnerable down. The pressure on their mental health is unprecedented.’
It was that pressure that led Unesco in 2007, in an international report on children’s wellbeing, to conclude that Britain had the unhappiest children in the developed world. Now it seems we have some of the youngest unhappy children, too.
For the evidence shows that the anxieties and troubles that make our children miserable are affecting them at a younger and younger age. For example, the charity Child Line reported this year that it has seen an increase in calls from very young children with some, aged just five, contacting counsellors at the organisation to say they feel suicidal.
And the Royal College of GPs says depression in the very young is a ‘big and largely undiagnosed problem’. A spokesman told me that the earlier we can reach the children showing signs of depression the better we can help them.
Claire Usiskin is the policy and communications officer for the parents’ helpline of charity Young Minds, which expects to take 7,000 calls from children and their parents this year — 2,000 up on last year.
‘Children that young don’t know they are depressed or often how to express themselves through language,’ she says. ‘What we say to their parents is that their behaviour speaks for them.
'If they are being disruptive or difficult or having difficulties eating or sleeping, it might mean they are depressed.’
Amongst the health experts I spoke to, I found widespread concern about the quality and consistency of early-year care, something every working mother worries about.
Leading psychologist Jacqui Marsden says: 'It's fundamental that young children have consistent, loving care in their first few years so they can develop their own emotional security.
Cry for help: Many children call Child Line suffering from depression and feel suicidal. (Posed by model)
'Much research has shown that if this does not happen, then a child has insecure attachments which can affect how they feel about themselves and how they relate to others throughout their lives.’
Indeed, new research from Harvard University suggests that the prevalence of depression among very young children is increasing by as much as 20 per cent a year.
Dr Paul Bain is a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Priory Group. His patients are mainly from affluent families, and he has no doubt the incidence of depression in the very young is increasing:
‘In my private practice, what I often see are parents overwhelmed with their jobs and totally absorbed with all the pressure they find themselves under. It obviously affects the way they parent.’
Depression, he says, knows no class or age barriers and he believes many problems occur when parents have mental health issues themselves. ‘The younger the child is, the more dependent they are on their family for their wellbeing,’ he says.
He has also identified, among many other problems, reluctance among some parents to put in place firm boundaries.
‘There is huge value in the word “No” if it is said with consistency, fairness and warmth by a parent. But some parents don’t say it because they are unable or unwilling to cope with the short-term upset it causes.’
None of this will surprise our teachers who daily encounter little children in their classrooms with symptoms of depression. Indeed, depression in children is becoming so common that primary schools are increasingly employing on-site counselling services — and expanding that service to help pre-schoolers.
One such initiative in South London has been set up by the charity Place2Be. There they talk to mothers and toddlers, some of whom are in the depths of depression. It is a place of warmth, where children are valued and listened to.
Unlike the toddler I see every afternoon on the bus. He is a blond little boy of about two and I assume he is returning from nursery. He sits in his pushchair staring blankly at cartoons on a small portable DVD player given to him by the girl I assume to be his au pair.
The toddler is isolated, cocooned from the world by large noise-reducing earphones. Just like his au pair who is cocooned in her world — talking manically into her mobile phone. I’ve never seen her talk to him. If the poor little boy has had any wonderful experiences to share, or any confusing experiences to ponder, the girl looking after him will never know.
But the professionals at Place2Be don’t want to point the finger of blame, whatever others may say. As an organisation, they accept that most parents try to do their best in difficult times. They also believe that to help the children, they need to support the parents, too.
Matthew Audley, Place2Be’s parenting development manager, gave me a fascinating insight: ‘The percentage of depressed parents we see at the children’s centre is very high — over 65 per cent.
‘We see children as young as one or two showing symptoms of depression. And we generally hold the belief that if you look at the relationship with the parent, you can understand the problems the child is experiencing.’
Early intervention and increased awareness of mental health issues is certainly pushing depression in children up the political agenda. But some experts caution that by labelling unhappiness as depression we are failing the child.
‘I’m very wary of “medicalising” children who are unhappy. I think it is simply inappropriate to send them off to psychiatrists for diagnosis,’ says Peter Wilson, the clinical director of Place2Be. ‘For the majority of children it is an unhelpful and even damaging approach which has risks of its own.’
Not least the risk that if a child has an identifiable medical condition, they can be treated with drugs, and pharmaceutical companies are ready and waiting in the wings. Prozac is already sold worldwide as a mint-flavoured cordial.
'I have found in children as young as three the same depressive disorders that are seen in adults,' says Dr Joan Luby from Washington University School
There are no figures available in this country to show the numbers of children or very small children taking anti-depressants. All we can access in the UK is the number of anti-depressants dispensed on NHS prescriptions to under 16-year-olds in general.
This has more than doubled, according to the latest figures, from 48,952 in 1995 to 107,408 in 2006. All of the psychiatrists to whom I spoke agreed that it was extremely rare to prescribe anti-depressants to children under ten and would only be done as a last resort after extensive therapy.
But in the U.S. and New Zealand where statistics are available, the numbers, although small, are rising. In New Zealand for example, the government sent me official figures showing that 16 children under four were given anti-depressants last year, as were more than 300 children between the ages of five and nine.
For the year 2006-7, the figures were further broken down, showing that four two-year-olds, 15 three-year-olds, and 19 four-year-olds were prescribed anti-depressants.
In the U.S., a study this year into the drug use of privately insured children aged between two and five showed that the use of anti-psychotic drugs was increasing rapidly — reflecting the fact that in the U.S., toddler depression is increasingly seen as a medical and not an environmentally triggered condition.
Dr Joan Luby from the Washington University School in St Louis runs a research programme into the early emotional development and has been studying pre-school depression for 20 years.
She believes that as many as two per cent of toddlers could suffer from undiagnosed depression. ‘People can accept that a young child who has been abused or neglected might be depressed,’ she told me from her university campus.
‘But our study shows that children who haven’t experienced trauma, neglect or adversity can also suffer from depression — just like in the adult world. I have found in children as young as three the same depressive disorders that are seen in adults.’
Luby believes that depression in toddlers can be triggered by factors in their environment as well as by a chemical imbalance in the brain. ‘A genetic pre-disposition is also a key factor,’ she tells me.
Although Dr Luby is seen by some as a pioneer in her field, many are concerned that her work could be misunderstood and encourage people to view all early childhood depression as an inevitable illness rather than a preventable condition.
‘I’m afraid that feeling depressed sometimes is part of the human condition,’ says Peter Wilson. ‘We can’t eradicate it with pills. What we must do is better support our youngest children, and provide them with the comfort, security and reassuring environment that helps them thrive.’
And surely for the majority of children, like Janine, if we ‘medicalise’ any upset or anxiety they feel, if we take them to professionals and call their unhappiness depression, we are further betraying the most vulnerable among us, having probably caused the problem in the first place.
Among the health experts I spoke to I found widespread concern about the quality and consistency of early-year care, something every working mother worries about.
By Penny Marshall
Stressed: More and more very young children in Britain are suffering from depressive symptoms.
Janine has just celebrated her fourth birthday and shouldn’t have a care in the world. She lives in a comfortable home with a large sheltered garden to run around in, has more toys than she could ever manage to play with in a single afternoon, and parents who love her. Yet I’ve seen happier children playing with pebbles in the dust of a refugee camp in Africa.
Welcome to the new world of toddler depression. It’s a world where our bundles of joy are being made miserable by exposure to a world full of adult stress.
‘I know it sounds silly because she’s so young, but Janine is depressed,’ her mother told me in her state-of-the-art kitchen, as Janine sat on her lap, buried her face in her mother’s chest and whined.
Janine’s mother took her to the GP in April of this year, after the problems — bed-wetting, clinginess and unexplained headaches and listlessness — had persisted for a few months. The doctor suggested that she went to a psychiatrist who diagnosed Janine with depression.
At first sight, Janine’s case may seem like a classic case of middleclass over-reaction and over-diagnosis.
My grandmother would certainly have thought so. Her mantra was simply that ‘the good times and the bad times all pass over’. If I’d clung excessively to my mother, it would have been my grandmother and not a psychiatrist who would have been approached for help and advice.
But times have changed, as has the awareness of the importance of a child’s mental health, and there is significant agreement between psychiatrists, teachers and specialist children’s charities that depressive symptoms are increasingly affecting very young children in Britain.
This discovery comes just as the wider international scientific community debates how best to treat depression in young children and whether their condition is triggered by environmental factors or a biological imbalance in the brain.
In Britain, medical opinion largely holds that the rise in pre-school depression is the result of raised awareness and poor emotional support given to toddlers — both in some of the poorest and most deprived homes in Britain as well as in some of the richest and most privileged.
If you dig deeper into Janine’s story, for example, you do find reasons for her to be stressed or even depressed: you find a mother who is recovering from post-natal depression after the birth of a second baby last year, you find a baby brother who has usurped Janine’s position in the family and a new au-pair who doesn’t speak very good English who has come in to help because ‘mum is so exhausted after a day at work she can’t cope with the children’.
Janine doesn’t see her father at all from Monday to Friday, because he comes home from his work in the City after she’s gone to bed.
'We are living in times of great anxiety and that's not always conducive to providing the best for our youngest children,' says Peter Wilson, co-founder of the mental health charity Young Minds
‘We are living in times of great anxiety and that’s not always conducive to providing the best for our youngest children,’ says Peter Wilson, a former director and co-founder of the mental health charity Young Minds and a clinical director of the children’s charity Place2Be.
‘Parents do their best, but I’m very anxious that with all the unprecedented pressures of modern life we are letting our youngestand most vulnerable down. The pressure on their mental health is unprecedented.’
It was that pressure that led Unesco in 2007, in an international report on children’s wellbeing, to conclude that Britain had the unhappiest children in the developed world. Now it seems we have some of the youngest unhappy children, too.
For the evidence shows that the anxieties and troubles that make our children miserable are affecting them at a younger and younger age. For example, the charity Child Line reported this year that it has seen an increase in calls from very young children with some, aged just five, contacting counsellors at the organisation to say they feel suicidal.
And the Royal College of GPs says depression in the very young is a ‘big and largely undiagnosed problem’. A spokesman told me that the earlier we can reach the children showing signs of depression the better we can help them.
Claire Usiskin is the policy and communications officer for the parents’ helpline of charity Young Minds, which expects to take 7,000 calls from children and their parents this year — 2,000 up on last year.
‘Children that young don’t know they are depressed or often how to express themselves through language,’ she says. ‘What we say to their parents is that their behaviour speaks for them.
'If they are being disruptive or difficult or having difficulties eating or sleeping, it might mean they are depressed.’
Amongst the health experts I spoke to, I found widespread concern about the quality and consistency of early-year care, something every working mother worries about.
Leading psychologist Jacqui Marsden says: 'It's fundamental that young children have consistent, loving care in their first few years so they can develop their own emotional security.
Cry for help: Many children call Child Line suffering from depression and feel suicidal. (Posed by model)
'Much research has shown that if this does not happen, then a child has insecure attachments which can affect how they feel about themselves and how they relate to others throughout their lives.’
Indeed, new research from Harvard University suggests that the prevalence of depression among very young children is increasing by as much as 20 per cent a year.
Dr Paul Bain is a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Priory Group. His patients are mainly from affluent families, and he has no doubt the incidence of depression in the very young is increasing:
‘In my private practice, what I often see are parents overwhelmed with their jobs and totally absorbed with all the pressure they find themselves under. It obviously affects the way they parent.’
Depression, he says, knows no class or age barriers and he believes many problems occur when parents have mental health issues themselves. ‘The younger the child is, the more dependent they are on their family for their wellbeing,’ he says.
He has also identified, among many other problems, reluctance among some parents to put in place firm boundaries.
‘There is huge value in the word “No” if it is said with consistency, fairness and warmth by a parent. But some parents don’t say it because they are unable or unwilling to cope with the short-term upset it causes.’
None of this will surprise our teachers who daily encounter little children in their classrooms with symptoms of depression. Indeed, depression in children is becoming so common that primary schools are increasingly employing on-site counselling services — and expanding that service to help pre-schoolers.
One such initiative in South London has been set up by the charity Place2Be. There they talk to mothers and toddlers, some of whom are in the depths of depression. It is a place of warmth, where children are valued and listened to.
Unlike the toddler I see every afternoon on the bus. He is a blond little boy of about two and I assume he is returning from nursery. He sits in his pushchair staring blankly at cartoons on a small portable DVD player given to him by the girl I assume to be his au pair.
The toddler is isolated, cocooned from the world by large noise-reducing earphones. Just like his au pair who is cocooned in her world — talking manically into her mobile phone. I’ve never seen her talk to him. If the poor little boy has had any wonderful experiences to share, or any confusing experiences to ponder, the girl looking after him will never know.
But the professionals at Place2Be don’t want to point the finger of blame, whatever others may say. As an organisation, they accept that most parents try to do their best in difficult times. They also believe that to help the children, they need to support the parents, too.
Matthew Audley, Place2Be’s parenting development manager, gave me a fascinating insight: ‘The percentage of depressed parents we see at the children’s centre is very high — over 65 per cent.
‘We see children as young as one or two showing symptoms of depression. And we generally hold the belief that if you look at the relationship with the parent, you can understand the problems the child is experiencing.’
Early intervention and increased awareness of mental health issues is certainly pushing depression in children up the political agenda. But some experts caution that by labelling unhappiness as depression we are failing the child.
‘I’m very wary of “medicalising” children who are unhappy. I think it is simply inappropriate to send them off to psychiatrists for diagnosis,’ says Peter Wilson, the clinical director of Place2Be. ‘For the majority of children it is an unhelpful and even damaging approach which has risks of its own.’
Not least the risk that if a child has an identifiable medical condition, they can be treated with drugs, and pharmaceutical companies are ready and waiting in the wings. Prozac is already sold worldwide as a mint-flavoured cordial.
'I have found in children as young as three the same depressive disorders that are seen in adults,' says Dr Joan Luby from Washington University School
There are no figures available in this country to show the numbers of children or very small children taking anti-depressants. All we can access in the UK is the number of anti-depressants dispensed on NHS prescriptions to under 16-year-olds in general.
This has more than doubled, according to the latest figures, from 48,952 in 1995 to 107,408 in 2006. All of the psychiatrists to whom I spoke agreed that it was extremely rare to prescribe anti-depressants to children under ten and would only be done as a last resort after extensive therapy.
But in the U.S. and New Zealand where statistics are available, the numbers, although small, are rising. In New Zealand for example, the government sent me official figures showing that 16 children under four were given anti-depressants last year, as were more than 300 children between the ages of five and nine.
For the year 2006-7, the figures were further broken down, showing that four two-year-olds, 15 three-year-olds, and 19 four-year-olds were prescribed anti-depressants.
In the U.S., a study this year into the drug use of privately insured children aged between two and five showed that the use of anti-psychotic drugs was increasing rapidly — reflecting the fact that in the U.S., toddler depression is increasingly seen as a medical and not an environmentally triggered condition.
Dr Joan Luby from the Washington University School in St Louis runs a research programme into the early emotional development and has been studying pre-school depression for 20 years.
She believes that as many as two per cent of toddlers could suffer from undiagnosed depression. ‘People can accept that a young child who has been abused or neglected might be depressed,’ she told me from her university campus.
‘But our study shows that children who haven’t experienced trauma, neglect or adversity can also suffer from depression — just like in the adult world. I have found in children as young as three the same depressive disorders that are seen in adults.’
Luby believes that depression in toddlers can be triggered by factors in their environment as well as by a chemical imbalance in the brain. ‘A genetic pre-disposition is also a key factor,’ she tells me.
Although Dr Luby is seen by some as a pioneer in her field, many are concerned that her work could be misunderstood and encourage people to view all early childhood depression as an inevitable illness rather than a preventable condition.
‘I’m afraid that feeling depressed sometimes is part of the human condition,’ says Peter Wilson. ‘We can’t eradicate it with pills. What we must do is better support our youngest children, and provide them with the comfort, security and reassuring environment that helps them thrive.’
And surely for the majority of children, like Janine, if we ‘medicalise’ any upset or anxiety they feel, if we take them to professionals and call their unhappiness depression, we are further betraying the most vulnerable among us, having probably caused the problem in the first place.
Among the health experts I spoke to I found widespread concern about the quality and consistency of early-year care, something every working mother worries about.
Childhood outdoor pursuits in decline
October 2010
Traditional childhood pastimes of climbing trees and playing conkers are in decline, according to the RSPB. People under 34 recall far fewer such childhood outdoor experiences than their counterparts over 55, according to a survey by Ipsos Mori for RSPB.
The RSPB's Every Child Outdoors report also highlights how poorer children experience less of nature. The charity is to meet MPs to promote more teaching of nature for children.
Ipsos Mori asked the public which of 12 outdoor experiences they remembered having as a child. These included making dens, daisy chains, climbing trees, playing conkers and feeding birds.
Dr Mike Clark, RSPB’s Chief Executive commented, “we believe that all children should have equal opportunity to experience nature and a family's ability to pay should not be a deterrent to schools offering these experiences”
Four out of five boys climbed trees and the same number of girls made daisy chains. But the survey showed the numbers declining among the newer generations. Some 15% more of those aged over 55 had these outdoor experiences in their childhood, compared with those between 15-34 years old. Some 92% of the public agreed that experiences of nature were still important to children, and 82% agreed that schools should play a role in providing them to all children.
Research has highlighted the positive impacts of contact with nature on a child's education, health, wellbeing and social skills.
At the same time there has been a decline in these opportunities, with negative consequences for children, families and society - a condition now known as nature deficit disorder.
Mike Clarke will meet MPs on Tuesday to urge the government to join other organisations in providing children with first-hand experiences of the natural environment.
"It has said it will help schools to decide how best they can use this money to raise pupil attainment. "We believe this guidance should include the many positive impacts to children of having contact with nature and learning outside the classroom."
A recent study by Ofsted found that schools relied heavily on financial contributions from parents and carers to meet the costs of school trips and visits.
The RSPB's research shows that 10% more people on the lowest incomes believed that schools should play a role in ensuring that all children had these outdoor experiences, compared with those earning more than £25,000. “We believe that all children should have equal opportunity to experience nature and a family's ability to pay should not be a deterrent to schools offering these experiences," said Dr Clarke.
More than 290,000 people have signed the RSPB's Letter to the Future, which calls on greater investment in nature and inspiring children to protect it.
Ipsos Mori interviewed 1,012 people face-to-face for the survey in July.