Addressing Sad-Child Syndrome

Source: Pixabay, CC0 Public Domain

Sometimes, a child is serious and quiet by nature. It can be a mistake to try to make that child more upbeat--It suggests that their essence, a not-malevolent essence, is unacceptable.

Although it may seem that way in America, there's no rule that a person must default to chipper. Many people prefer or have no choice but to obey their natural tendency to be more restrained.

But sometimes, pervasive sadness is not foundational, immutable, but a yoke the person wants to shed, the result of environmental events, for example, academic or social failure, living in poverty, or a family members' malaise. These are both more ameliorable and worthy of parents' efforts toward amelioration.

Of course, moving anyone from sad to content isn't easy. Certainly, an adequate amount of advice cannot be compressed into a single blog post or even a book. But distillation, essentialization can be useful. So for each of the aforemenitioned causes of what I call Sad Child Syndrome, I offer a suggestion or two,

Academic lack of success. Even high achievers worry they're not good enough. Few kids can be the best in their class in even one thing, let alone everything. And half of students, by definition, are below average.

Some suppress feelings about that, which may be healthy given the difficulty of rising from academically below-average to above-average. But for the child who is continually plagued by their academic inferiority despite effort, a parent's best approach might be to offer modest help with homework, perhaps a tutor, and trying to ensure the child's teacher each year is kind and good with struggling kids. It may also help for the parent to consistently tell the child such things as,

Of course, as a child, your worth seems to depend so much on how well you do in school. But now, and especially as you get older, what will count more is whether you try reasonably hard and are a kind and trustworthy person. And those you can be and if you want to get even better at those, I know you can. I'll help if I can. And of course, as long as you put in reasonable effort, I will love and respect you for that, no matter what grade you get.

Social lack of success. Many kids are more unhappy about a lack of friends than a lack of academic success.

The wise parent will observe the child, for example, during recess, to see why s/he is not making good friends. The parent might even query popular, kind-hearted kids in the class to get candid feedback about the child with a question such as, "What do kids think of Johnny? Any suggestions on how he could make friends with some of the good kids?"

Let's say that Johnny tends to tease other kids. The parent (or teacher) might try to catch him in the act and gently offer feedback such as, "Kids will like you more if you compliment rather than tease them."

Of course, parents should try to encourage good friendships by inviting desirable kids home and on family outings.

Some kids' social and academic problems are the result of ADD, and a consultation with an ADD specialist and perhaps a trial on ADD medication may be worth considering.

Living in poverty. This tends to be a particular problem when a child from a low-income family attends a school with many wealthier students. It may help to remind the child that most of the things wealthier people buy their kids are trivial in importance: Does a designer label on your jeans' butt really matter? Really worth $100 versus a $20 pair?" That can teach values that many wealthy parents only wish they had taught their children who grew up to be obscenely materialistic, valuing the showy over the substantive, the pecuniary over the human.

Family member's malaise. Many kids are sad because their parents fight, divorce, or are chronically ill. Some kids blame themselves for the problem. Key is in the obvious: persistently but lovingly reminding the child that it is not his/her fault.

Again, I am well aware that attempting to offer advice on ameliorating childhood malaise within the space of a blog post is unrealistic given the many sources of and remedies for malaise. But I'm hoping there's enough of value here to be worth the few minutes of reading time.