Children only ask to be heard

There is the table around which we gather for dinner, for those who still do. Or the kitchen through which we all pass, the car journey, the crossroads in a corridor, in a room, in a living room. And there is, in all this, a silence that adults are unable to shake.

According to a survey by Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation, conducted last year on 1,675 parent-child pairs between the ages of 10 and 18, at least 80 per cent of Generation Z kids say it is helpful when their parents talk to them about mental health, school experiences and social media. Yet many of those parents systematically avoid these topics. We worry about our children, more than parents of any era ever did, but we struggle to talk about what matters most. Eight out of ten parents say they often worry about at least one aspect of their child's life, and 41% do so for five or more issues at the same time. The main sources of anxiety are children's future, mental health and social media use. But these worries rarely become conversations, which instead focus on grades, friendships, perhaps sports activities.

Between 80% and 93% of children say that conversations with parents are useful, even on difficult topics. 83% find it important to talk about social media with their mother or father; 92% say the same about mental health. Kids, in other words, expect to be talked about, but they also have a clear idea of what the tone should be, how this dialogue should be set. What do you want your mother or father to do? 62% answer: listen. Not offer solutions, or at least not necessarily. It is precisely the lack of solutions, however, that blocks parents, that makes them reluctant to tackle certain topics. Twenty-two per cent find their children's emotions too intense, difficult to handle, a source of a sense of helplessness: nothing I say or do, the interviewers answer, seems to bring relief. And this parental performance anxiety drags them into a vicious circle because it affects them emotionally and further reduces the space for conversation. Finally, the fear of interfering in their children's autonomous development also enters in.

It is often said that parenting is the most difficult job in the world. If it is, it is because of the difficulty of finding a balance between the rules to be dictated, the advice to be given, the solutions to be offered and the pure listening and acceptance of even something as uncomfortable as a teenager's pain. All research says that communication within the family is a protective factor against the development of mental disorders in teenagers. All that remains is to take note of it and make it one of our priorities.