17 February

Teach your children to be brave. We could start by not always telling them how scary the HSC is. Or how scary being online is, or that scary perverts are trying to kidnap them, etc. Some of this stuff was scarier in my day, and no adult ever told us it was, so we all just got on with it. In my experience adults are as bad as kids with resilience, we all tell ourselves society and life are scary, and every challenge sends us off to a counsellor. Or we vote for politicians that tap into our fear. “Somehow a misunderstanding has grown up about stress and anxiety where our culture now sees both as pathological,” said Damour. “The upshot of that is that we have adults and young people who are stressed about being stressed and anxious about being anxious.”