Commentary: Let’s Take More Interest in Our Kids

THE current COVID-19 pandemic has shown that new pressures can develop and rapidly increase anxiety and stress levels in everyone especially our students under this unsure system that is going on in our nation’s schools. While we have no way to avoid unexpected events from occurring, we can learn skills for coping with anxiety in these stressful times. These skills need to be taught to our children in our educational system. The Ministry of Education under its Minister Dr the Honourable Nyan Gadsby-Dolly has done little to ensure our children, our teenagers are better prepared for future stressful events in the schools under this pandemic.

While our teen sons or daughters are asked to navigate school and with increased pressures of social distancing, continued sanitization and wearing mask they need to be taught coping skills and ways to handle the increased stresses in this situation. The online programs have not helped them learn new skills for coping with anxiety, depression and loneliness resulting from the COVID-19 virus. The results of the Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) exam showed a decrease in performance in all areas in the exam between 2020 and 2021 and our children are faced with more stressors, and the Ministry has not done anything to provide them with the tools necessary to handle future stresses in this Covid-19 life.

Depression and mental issues are some of the main problems facing our children from all ages but especially from ages 14 to 17 years old. They feel hopeless in this system being forced on them during this period of the Covid-19 pandemic and have engaged in activities such as self-harm, with many having suicide tendencies in recent times. We have seen a greater risk of teenagers attempting suicidal behavior and self harming.

The pandemic has caused its own stresses in adults and parents far less for our young people trying to cope with existing problems and such as self esteem, social anxiety and their ability to interact with their peers. This on top of academic performance issues have put so much pressures on our young adults that they are not coping very well.

The Ministry of education and the whole system under this Government is lacking the support required at this time. Where they don’t seem to know if they are coming or going. the Minister is clueless and does not seem to have the proper school mechanism in place or the resources to oversee the secondary schools and see where our students are going off track and where they can pull them back in to line.

Why under the Minister’s guide that they didn’t realize that students did not have sufficient devices to keep up with their studies online? That is major failure under this administration. The Minister missed the boat on this one, further never devised a proper training program for teachers, principals and schools across the board to effectively bring the syllabus and curriculum to students. This was handled very poorly indeed.

In reality what do our youths have to look forward to under the current system. It seems in their under developed brains their lives are really hard to cope with and they don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel in many cases. This is where depression and anxiety hit them the hardest.

We as parents have to look out for signs that our teenage kids may be showing, that they are not coping well, that they are particularly vulnerable to mental problems, depression and panic attacks during this time. We must take more interest in their lives and really get to know our children, as best as we can, so we can detect if they are going off the rails and understand that we are there for them to help guide and nurture them. If we can not get through to them, we need to seek professional help for them. This is very important before they do something to hurt themselves. Let’s all try to take more interest in our kids for they are our future and demand better from our Government to provide the support systems that are required for all citizens.