I am regularly asked: Can anyone explain why so many children cannot behave properly today? The short answer is: The framework has changed – radically. And our children feel it in their nervous system before we even discover it in the statistics.
Today, VIVE’s 2023 analysis shows that a child in daycare, on average, meets far more different adults in one year than they can tolerate, considering attachment needs. This means repeated changes, new relationships, and a constant demand for adaptation. Every time a child has to attune themselves to a new adult, they expend energy on security.
Overall, about 15% of children and young people in Denmark receive a psychiatric diagnosis before they turn 18 – and the number continues to rise. Pace, stimuli, and demands exceed the child’s capacity. VIVE and EVA document that teachers and pedagogues have less time for relationships because everyday life is filled with documentation requirements, firefighting, and shifts.
We live in a culture where the pace is high everywhere – not just in school, but in the entire rhythm of life. Children grow up in environments with far more impressions than previous generations. And where there used to be natural pockets of calm – such as slow meals, unsupervised outdoor play, and evenings without interruptions – everyday life today is wrapped in activity. This means that breaks have somewhat disappeared for all of us. Also for adults.
Statens Institut for Folkesundhed shows that the number of children with stress symptoms has increased significantly over the last ten years – more children have headaches, sleep difficulties, and stomachaches without physical explanation. These are signs of a nervous system that has been under pressure for a longer period.
But there is still hope. Not a quick hope – but a living hope. For what we ourselves have created, we can also begin to change, slowly, together, and with an eye for reality.
So maybe we should not blame each other, but start helping each other create small pockets of calm – wherever it is possible. Sometimes it’s not the big changes, but the small ones – the quiet moments of micro-attunement, where we adjust our tone of voice, our gaze, and our rhythm, so we feel understood, mirrored, and in contact. A moment during the day where we don’t have to do anything.
To create familiarity – the small routines that allow the body to know when the day begins and ends. A small ritual in the evening, a calm meal, a recognizable voice.
When I say that children “cannot cope with the framework,” I don’t mean that they are fragile. I mean that they are reacting healthily to something unhealthy.
When we see them, the children, listen to them and stay with them, they learn to cope with the world – because the world holds them. We just need to be enough adults around the children, as a counterweight to the zeitgeist that has diminished the quality of presence.
