Surgeon General: PARENTAL STRESS is a Public Health CRISIS | Are Teachers Part of the Problem?

The Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released an advisory on High Parental Stress in the United States. Parenting has become harder in the modern age to the point it it impacting parents' mental and physical health and overall well being. Natalie breaks down the advisory and how schools can support parents better. Schools are on a team with families and it's about more than just the kids children!

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Read the Report Parents Under Pressure: The U.S. Surgeon General Advisory on the Mental Health and Well-Being of Parents https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/priorities/parents/index.html

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Clips from PBS News Hour interview Geoff Bennett and Vivek Murthy. Thank you for such excellent reporting! https://youtu.be/xE4-T-EajjE?si=4WYZLz3NvlFaOZlt

Video Transcript:

Hey, it's Natalie, and welcome back to Primary Focus, the parent's guide to elementary school. Yesterday, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued an advisory that validated what so many parents and caretakers know and live every day. Parenting is hard, parenting is expensive, and for so many, parenting can be an incredibly isolating experience.

Parenting is not supposed to be a one or two person experience. Your most basic parts of parenting, supervision, feeding, hygiene, requires an enormous amount of time, funds, and energy.

And that comes with just the basics. If you want to be an involved parent, you want to help your child grow up to be the best person that they can be, provide them with fun experiences, it can become so time consuming and costly. This is, of course, what everybody wants.

We want children to have the best life they can growing up. But the way the United States has evolved, this is not reflected. Parental leave is abysmal. Daycares are at capacity and parenting costs keep rising while salaries stay stagnant.

Some parents will feel some relief once they can get their kids into elementary school, and I'm sure for some parents who are sending a mortgage payment to their daycares each month, well, especially for those parents that are sending a mortgage payment to their daycare every month.

But having kids that are school age doesn't mean things get easier. This report shares that parents are terrified of school shootings and other forms of violence, and I've seen this myself personally when I was working in the classrooms. And I've seen this myself when I was working in classrooms and felt that fear myself as well.

It's consuming and it's terrifying when you wake up to see school violence happening year after year I also see this personally when I reach out to people for primary focus asking about their top worries about sending their children to school Probably about a third of parents will just bluntly tell me school violence is their biggest concern

Though i've lived through some scary school experiences myself I haven't had one that even comes close to massacres like what happened in uvalde, texas or in sandy hook Working in a school But I can tell you being at work at an elementary school and looking at your phone for a second to see a news alert telling you about a massacre happening hours away will absolutely take your breath away.

And on that same day getting a flood of parents asking me for reassurance that their child is safe, a picture of their child,

honestly, this report about how difficult parenting is, is not a surprise. In the past few years, we've seen reports issued about gun violence in this country from the surgeon general, loneliness and mental health concerns.

Of course, these things would be compounded in so much more serious if you are in the role of a parent or a caregiver. I could go on and on about the pressures that parents face in this country, but I think you already know, and for many of you, you're living this every single day. I would love if you shared some of your experiences down in the comments below so we can start a conversation about this.

While you're down there, I will link the full report from the Surgeon General. It's worth a read and is very interesting. It's interesting. It's worth a read and honestly lays out what everybody knows about parenting so clearly, but it's interesting to see it as a government document warning people about how stressful and scary it can be to parent in the modern age.

I have to say though, this report thrills me because in an election year where we're hearing millionaire politicians arguing about taxes that won't impact them either way, I see somebody in the government is listening and watching and validating what actual American citizens are going through. The report doesn't just say that there's a warning, there's a huge call to action at the end of it.

The advisory specifically calls out federal, state, and local governments to improve funding and programming.

It acknowledges how many families are living in poverty due to the cost of raising children in this country. And it acknowledges that our government should be helping people out.

I'm not sure how much will actually change

this doesn't put a law in place or make anything happen instantly. However, it will get people talking. So it's on us now to vote for people that align with these suggestions and values, to support nonprofits through volunteering and donating, and of course, look around us at the families that we know and regularly support them.

Not just check in, ask if they're okay, but actually take some action to support. And since primary focus is the parent's guide to elementary school, I want to zoom in on the school element here.

One huge form of stress on parents can be extra asks from the elementary school. We're talking Spirit Day, field trips, holidays, projects, which all rack up extra time and money that you have to spend to prepare for these. Because let's be honest, your child probably can't complete the project on their own, and you probably don't own the special clothing or hair dye needed for Spirit Day.

Things that seem cute and fun from the elementary school. Things that seem cute and fun from the elementary school perspective can end up being a huge extra load of stress with the compounded pressure that your child might be disappointed in you or you might receive judgment from the school. I want to alleviate some of this from you.

Having worked in schools where I've seen kids come up with Where I've seen kids come in and clearly the parents went out and spent a hundred dollars at Michaels to get all the supplies versus the kid that came in with it scribbled down on a piece of loose leaf paper. Kids are happy to be here.

Yes, humans are always judging and comparing different things. That's how the human brain works. But real things like love, support, and interest from parents go a lot farther than you would think than having a project that looks super cool. So if you're a parent watching this, take a look from above when these projects and extra asks come home and ask yourself how this can be done in a low effort way.

You don't have to jump to the coolest version of the project. Don't worry about impressing the teacher. The kid that walks into kindergarten with the best project never impressed me because I could tell the child didn't do it. In fact, when I sent assignments home, I often tried to really push parents to say it should look like a kindergartner did this.

And when the project is done, we know that this is done and it will probably end up sitting in your attic or going in the dumpster,. A lot of schools have tapered back on grading homework and projects. If it's graded at all, it's more about completion or the child's ability to public speak and present.

What skills are being focused on here? Pull those out and focused on the skill and not making something super magical. Remember, a lot of these things culminate in one afternoon, and the school will be making a lot of magic for your child as well.

Now, if you happen to be a teacher or somebody that works in a school watching this, balance out how many things are being sent home and when. For example, hated the most when I was teaching.

And this was February. If you think about the month of February here, we have the coldest, worst weather time of year in the country. Cold and flu season and a ton of small holidays and events that all add up. You've got groundhogs day, Valentine's day, president's day weekend, read across America ending that month.

and it's week after week, after week of special mini projects. I was exhausted teaching during that time. And as a parent, I can't imagine how exhausting it was to be asked to complete all these mini projects. I mean, just getting Valentine's day. done alone is already an extra time and expense.

if you are a teacher assigning projects, take a look around and remind yourself that you can create magic every day in your classroom, but you can also take pressure off yourself with your lesson planning and families. Remember the kids are the one who are bringing the magic in every single day.

And as the adults in the room, all we have to do is a little push, a little facilitation, and the kids will take care of the rest.

If you are a parent, if you're a parent or caregiver and things are coming home, they're piling up, you should tell the teacher that you are overwhelmed. I always had a couple of smart parents that were explaining that things were piling up for them. Teachers have no context of what your home life is like.

we might have an understanding of a few basic things like maybe you have other children that are \ maybe we know that you're working full time, but we need reminders we don't know that your child in fourth grade also has an enormous project that's doing Do the same day as your kindergartner's project.

And I'll tell you what, I, and I'll tell you what, a lot of these things just weren't that serious. We know that your child is going to be learning day after day. So if your child needs to turn it in on a different day, if you let us know, it was honestly fine that we had kids show up all the time that just didn't do the project and weren't going to do the project.

What am I going to do about that? It's elementary school. It's not college. It's not high school we know your child can't complete this without your help, especially in the lower elementary grades. The teacher will work with you and is flexible, but they don't know what they don't know.

This is the same thing with homework. If you know that getting homework done on a daily basis is really hard for you, maybe you can work out a deal where you're turning it in once a week, or your teacher is drastically reducing the load. If the goal is teaching responsibility, you can work to figure out how this will look in your home.

Wrapping up here, as always, I want to remind you that schools are a touchpoint for support.

This Surgeon General's advisory talked about some pretty serious issues, like how many families are living in poverty or don't have a support system when things start to go wrong. If your child is enrolled in public school, the public school is an incredible resource for you.

They have connections with the food bank, they have connections with people that can help with rent assistance, they have connections with people that can help your child process grief and loss, emergency funds, you You have to ask though, never be afraid to shoot an email and put the guidance counselor, maybe a school administrator and the teacher on it and say, look, we have hit a rough time.

We are scared. Can you help connect us with some community services here? But you have to advocate for yourself. The school is dealing with hundreds, if not thousands of families, and they don't know what they don't know. But if you let them know the school will do their best to be there for you.

I'm curious what you think about this advisory from the Surgeon General. Do you agree with it? do you have experiences you want to share? And I also encourage you to go in the link below and actually take a scan through it.

I felt incredibly validated when I was reading it because these are issues that I think parents and teachers have known about for a long time and finally shining some light on it and saying, I don't think it has to be this way.

if you like education news and tips to support your kids in school, I encourage you to also sign up for my newsletter below and subscribe to Primary Focus YouTube channel. out a couple more videos I hope you watch them. Thanks for watching Primary Focus.

My name's Natalie. I'll see you next time.