There is a reason so many parents find themselves Googling parenting questions at 2am. Raising children has always been one of the most demanding jobs in human history, but something has shifted in recent years. Anxiety, depression, emotional dysregulation, and a deep sense of disconnection are showing up in children younger and younger, and parents are feeling the weight of it.
Dr. Gloria Vanderhorst, a psychologist with over five decades of clinical experience working with children, families, and couples, has watched this shift unfold in real time. The founder of a private practice dedicated to emotional health and family wellbeing, Dr. Vanderhorst also shares her insights through her Substack newsletter, where she writes regularly on psychology, parenting, and personal growth. What she has observed, and what research increasingly supports, is that the crisis is real, it is accelerating, and most of its causes are things we can actually change.
The Crisis Is Real and It Is Starting Earlier
Two decades ago, emotional distress in children was largely an adolescent issue. Teenagers would show up in therapy. First graders did not.
That has changed dramatically. Children in preschool and early elementary school are now being treated for anxiety and depression at rates that would have been unthinkable a generation ago. The reasons are layered and interconnected, but at the core is a simple, uncomfortable truth: we have quietly raised the emotional bar for children far beyond what their developing brains can handle.
Developmental psychology has long established that children before puberty think in concrete terms: right and wrong, good and bad. They are not yet neurologically equipped to hold nuance, ambiguity, or complexity. When the world around them sends the message that every situation has one correct answer, and that finding it is the measure of their worth, the result is not motivation. It is distress.
The Hidden Cost of Always Having an Answer
The rise of AI and instant information access has added a new layer to this pressure. When adults habitually turn to a device for every answer in front of children, the unspoken lesson is powerful: there is always a right answer, and you should know it.
For a child still in the concrete-thinking stage of development, this is not empowering. It is overwhelming. It narrows the acceptable range of responses and quietly communicates that exploration, uncertainty, and the process of figuring things out are failures, not features.
“We are training an elementary school child to think that there is always an absolute direction to move in. And that is going to create a lot of distress.” — Dr. Gloria Vanderhorst
True learning and emotional resilience are built in the messy middle: in boredom, in wrong turns, in trying again. When we remove those experiences, we do not protect children from struggle. We strip away their capacity to handle it.
What you can do: Resist the urge to immediately solve, search, or explain. When a child faces a problem or question, ask them first: “What do you think?” Let the uncertainty sit. That pause is where resilience is built.
The Over-Scheduling Trap
One of the most well-intentioned, and quietly damaging, things modern parents do is fill every hour of their child’s day with structured activity. Sports, music, robotics, chess clubs. The schedule is full. The child is supervised. The parents feel reassured.
But children need unstructured time not as a luxury. It is a biological and psychological necessity.
Research on child development consistently shows that free, unstructured play is one of the primary ways children develop emotional regulation, creativity, problem-solving, and a stable sense of self. When that time is eliminated, children lose the opportunity for internal reflection: the quiet process of figuring out who they are, what they enjoy, and how they relate to the world around them.
The result is not resilient, well-rounded children. As Dr. Vanderhorst observes after decades of clinical work, over-scheduled children are often anxious, entitled, or emotionally depleted. They have been performing constantly but have never had the space to simply be.
What you can do: Build unstructured time into your child’s week intentionally. Not screen time, but genuinely unstructured time where they decide what to do, including the option to be bored. Boredom is not a problem to solve. It is the seedbed of creativity.
The Language We Use Matters More Than We Think
A small but powerful insight from child development research: praising children for being “smart” rather than for their effort has been shown to reduce resilience. Children praised for intelligence become more risk-averse, more afraid to fail, and less likely to persist when things get hard. Children praised for effort develop what psychologist Carol Dweck calls a growth mindset, the belief that ability can be developed through practice and persistence.
The language we use with children every day shapes the internal stories they tell about themselves, their capacity, and their worth. Saying “you worked really hard on that” instead of “you are so smart” is a small shift with a profound long-term impact.
What you can do: Focus praise on process: effort, persistence, creativity, problem-solving, rather than fixed traits. And when your child gets something wrong, resist the urge to fix it immediately. Ask: “What could you try differently?”
What Children Actually Need to Feel Safe
Genuine emotional safety in childhood does not come from a full schedule, the right activities, or the best schools. It comes from consistent, unhurried presence: from being in relationship with someone who is simply interested in them, with no agenda attached.
This is why grandparents often play a surprisingly powerful role in children’s emotional development. In the relationship with a grandparent, many children experience something increasingly rare: time with an adult who is not trying to optimize them. Someone who will take a walk and notice what catches the child’s eye. Who will let them pick what is for dinner. Who will be silly for no reason at all.
These low-pressure, playful, curiosity-led interactions are not supplementary to development. They are central to it. Humor, play, and genuine enjoyment of a child’s company are among the most powerful emotional regulators available to families.
What you can do: Create at least one regular pocket of time each week that is completely agenda-free with your child. No teaching, no screens, no correction. Just company. Let them lead. Follow their curiosity.
Meltdowns Are Communication, Not Manipulation
When children melt down in public, in airports, grocery stores, or crowded spaces, the instinct is often embarrassment or frustration. But as Dr. Vanderhorst explains, those meltdowns are something else entirely: they are communication.
Children who are already operating at or near their stress threshold will hit overload in high-pressure environments. An airport is not just an airport for a child who has been over-scheduled, under-rested, and given no tools to regulate emotion. It is the final straw in a long chain of demands.
Understanding this reframes the goal. The question is not “how do I stop the meltdown?” It is “what is my child’s stress load, and where can I reduce it?”
What you can do: Before high-stress situations such as travel, large gatherings, or transitions, give children a preview of what to expect and build in buffer time. Rushing amplifies dysregulation. Margin creates safety.
The Cycle Keeps Going, and That Is Okay
One of the most grounding insights in developmental psychology is that human growth is not linear. It is cyclical. The emotional tasks of toddlerhood, asking who am I, am I safe, where do I belong, repeat in new forms at every major life stage: elementary school, adolescence, early adulthood, and parenthood itself.
This means that every adult is, in some sense, still working through earlier versions of these questions. Every parent brings their own unresolved history into the room. The goal is not to be a perfect parent. It is to be a present one, and to keep growing alongside your children.
The parents who make the most difference are not the ones who have it all figured out. They are the ones willing to reflect, seek support, and stay curious about both themselves and their children.
Where to Start: A Simple Action Plan
1. Get support in whatever form works for you. This might be therapy, a parenting group, a trusted friend, or a good book. For men especially, men’s groups have become an increasingly valuable resource for emotional development and peer support. They offer spaces to speak openly about parenting struggles and personal growth in a way that many men have not previously been given permission to do.
2. Give your child unstructured time every week. Schedule it if you have to. Protect it. The return on boredom and free play is enormous.
3. Shift from outcome praise to process praise. What you say after a success, or a failure, shapes your child’s relationship with effort for years to come.
4. Create one low-stakes, agenda-free ritual. A walk, a meal, a game. Something that exists purely for connection and enjoyment, with no performance attached.
5. Tend to your own emotional life. Your regulated nervous system is the single most powerful calming tool your child has access to. When you are grounded, they are more likely to be too.
A Final Reflection
Raising children in this moment in history is genuinely hard. The pressures are real: economic, social, technological, and cultural. Most parents are not failing their children. They are doing their best in a system that was not designed to support them.
But small, consistent shifts in how we relate to our children, in how we use our time, our language, and our presence, compound over years into something profound. You do not have to get it all right. You just have to keep showing up, stay curious, and be willing to grow. That, more than any activity, any school, or any device, is what children need most.
This article draws on insights shared by Dr. Gloria Vanderhorst in conversation with host Lisa Urbanski. It is intended for general educational purposes and does not constitute clinical advice. If you or your child are struggling, please consider reaching out to a qualified mental health professional.