Understand Key Lessons from Dr. Bolton
Dr. Doug Bolton, clinical psychologist and author of Untethered, led an in-person discussion with the CATCH community at the Northbrook United Methodist Church on May 1, 2025.
Introduction
There is a mental health crisis surrounding children and parents today, as evidenced by:
- Depression has risen more than 60% in the last 15 years.
- The number of teenagers seen in emergency rooms with suicidal thoughts has more than doubled.
- The suicide rate for children is 2x higher when school is in session.
- Attending a high-achieving high school puts kids at higher risk of anxiety, depression and substance abuse.
- Parental stress is now considered a public health crisis.
4 Myths Contributing to Stress
Myth #1: Money makes us happy.
There is a happiness conspiracy that says that if we have a good income and are wealthy, then we’re going to be happy. Many parents believe that we have to send our kids to good schools, get them involved in activities/programs, so they can get good jobs, etc., all of which increases pressure and stress on the family.
Studies show that happiness does not increase exponentially once a family’s basic needs are met, and having more income does not improve people’s emotional wellbeing or protect their mental health. In fact, it may cause even moremental health suffering.
What makes people happy is having relationships with satisfying levels of quality and warmth; working long hours and pursuing income may prevent us from being at home with our kids and building those strong relationships.
Myth #2: Selective Schools Lead to Happiness and Success
Many believe that going to a selective college is required to succeed, but that has not been proven to be true. To improve their ranking as an elite school, many colleges use a strategy of ‘attract to reject’ — they encourage students to apply and then reject them to reduce their admissions rates. As a result, kids are working harder to get into schools that are making it harder to be admitted, and when they are rejected, they feel like failures. Those kids that do get into these selective schools have never experienced anything but success, which can lead to an aversion to risk.
Job satisfaction, general well-being, learning and income are all important outcomes of college, but research shows no relationship between selectivity and learning, job satisfaction or general well-being.
Myth #3: High achievement in high school is essential for success.
The 2002 No Child Left Behind Act required that schools, teachers, test scores, etc. be rated to measure student success which led to an increase in academic rigor. Many kids’ executive functioning skills are not developed enough yet to meet these increased academic demands, making school much more stressful. As kids struggle more, they become more anxious.
This has created an “Achievement Addiction” for kids – they feel they constantly have to work hard, and there is no end to achieving the “next big thing”. This feeling that they always have to achieve more undermines students’ mental health.
Myth #4: Self-esteem is the key to wellness.
Parents have tried to protect our kids’ self-esteem by helping them to avoid any kind of distress. We engage in “intensive parenting”, which is defined as: when parents overextend their time and money curating their child’s life in hopes of maximizing the child’s future.
We believe “more must mean better” so we add classes, activities and programs to our kids’ schedules, creating unintended consequences:
- We as parents become more overwhelmed and anxious.
- We deprive kids of being able to tolerate discomfort.
- We prevent kids from developing a sense of personal competence.
- We deprive kids of the belief they can solve their own problems.
When we save our kids from discomfort, they don’t want to learn how to resolve their own discomfort. But to build resilience, kids need to experience some stress. It’s okay for them to be uncomfortable. They may need help when stress becomes unmanageable.
Modeling our own weaknesses for our kids helps them to understand it’s okay to talk about these things.
Parenting Tips
Do more:
- Displaying love
- Validating feelings
- Consistently spending quality time together as a family (e.g., family dinner)
Do less:
- Doing their homework
- Rescuing them from their distress
- Feeling responsible for their boredom
- Solving their problems for them
- Becoming overinvolved in their social lives
Adjust:
- Supporting their hard times
- Enrichment activities
- Tutoring programs
- Recreational activities
