Girls:
Kim Kardashian in glitz and glam, trying the next chemical peel. Botox shots and lip fillers because everybody “needs” enhancements, or they won’t be pretty enough. Rich people are talking about how oppressed they are. Women’s rights are plastered on kids’ t-shirts with no real understanding of their meaning. Fear of being snatched by a man at the mall because your parents tell you about the movie Taken and sex trafficking is a reality, but that’s not usually how it works. Braces. Leg hair. Awkwardness. Catty girls are judging and bullying each other just to make themselves look good.
Boys:
Are you being bullied online? Or are you the bully? Do you know someone being bullied but isn’t doing anything about it? So many questions, such hard decisions, and so many consequences will go with any of them. Pornography – naked pictures of girls or revealing photos of girls in your school that have been passed around through Snapchat. It’s tempting to look, but you know it’s wrong. Fear of school shootings. Drug use, but it’s only weed, right? Not right. Video games galore. Mental illness, and a general fear of talking about it because you’re a “man” and “men don’t cry.” This is one of the biggest lies you’ve been told. Awkwardness and braces (just like the girls). Squeaky voices. Doing whatever it takes not to be picked on and not to be picked last.
Puberty. Depression. Anxiety. Fear. Loneliness. Thought of suicide. Anger. Rage. All of it makes us want to scream, and that’s just the start of it.
It’s hard to be a kid. In today’s world, there are many mixed messages– from social media, the news, our peers, our schools, and sometimes even our parents and churches. Everyone has their own opinion, and those opinions don’t seem to align with one another. People and institutions themselves say one thing and do another. So much hypocrisy makes it difficult to know right from wrong, up from down, front from back.
I can say that many of our counselors that NuWell understand and remember what it was like to be a kid, and they can help you navigate those deep waters. If you’re a parent, NuWell can help your kids on a plane they can understand, relating to them in today’s language with today’s problems. Their problems are not the same as Beaver Cleavers or Breakfast Clubs’. They are much more complex with the introduction of the internet, and the suicide rate in kids is sky high. Please allow us to help your children with their depression, anxiety, fear, loneliness, thoughts of suicide, and beyond.
