Keith McCurdy has counseled more than 75,000 people in the last 25 years. From his unique perspective as a counselor, he sees a mysterious trend unfolding. While the quality of life and opportunities are improving for most first-world Americans and their kids, the level of anxiety and depression rates are spiking. Keith gives some really practical advice on what parents can and should do in light of his findings. Stay tuned for this episode of Base Camp Live. We all face them. Base Camp Live will equip you to conquer the biggest mountains when raising the next generation. Each week you'll hear from culture watchers, thought leaders and storytellers who know the tools you'll need to summit the peak and shape exceptionally thoughtful, compassionate and flourishing human beings. Welcome to Base Camp Live and now your host, Davies O'Hines. Well, here in the studio today on the line with Dr. Keith McCurdy, Keith, welcome to Base Camp Live. Thank you. Glad to be here with you. It's really, it's so good to have you here. You are at a really interesting vantage point on a number of levels. You've been 25 years in the field of mental health. Not that you have mental health issues for 25 years, but you're helping people in that area and 70,000 clinical hours of experience. And yet you're also your dad, two teenagers, six years as a head of a board of a classical Christian school. So really interesting to kind of get your take in 25 years at more than two decades of counseling. What's the landscape like? We all tend to see our own kids, but what are you seeing kind of globally happening in the world of raising the next generation? Well, I think it's a great question and it's funny because what I see in the classical Christian world, dealing with the school is also what I see professionally when we look at the population of children and teenagers that we're dealing with. One of the biggest changes I've seen in 25 years is the rise in really diagnosis of anxiety and depression among kids. If we think back 50, 60 years ago, we had very low rates of anxiety and depression with children. And yet today it's the, I mean, really the number one diagnostic category we have. And then you compare that though with looking back 50, 60, 70, 100 years when life was harder, but simpler. And life today is really easier. So why on earth are we having so many children diagnosed with anxiety? It absolutely doesn't make any sense. And these are not kids living in some war torn area. These are kids that are upset because Target didn't have the game they wanted or something. I mean, this is, this is almost laughable to the rest of the world. It's clearly a first world problem, but it is a real problem. And so it is. So yeah, go ahead. Well, I say one of the things I deal with all the time, I make a little bit of fun of my own profession because in psychology we would think that if there are more of us as there really are since 1970, you know, my profession has been climbing and climbing and climbing. And yet what's been climbing with it is the rate of diagnosis. You would think that there's more of us getting better. You guys that work yourself out of a job, but you keep, yeah. Yeah, really, it's like we're creating more of a problem. And one of the things that happens with that is parents have gone from looking at teaching truth and teaching what is right, what is good, what is beautiful to really trying to keep their children happy. And that a lot, that has a lot to do with my profession because my profession has taught parents to think more psychologically. And in essence, really focus more on their children's feelings. Yeah. And say that's, you know, that's be interesting to record or might be scary, you know, typical car rides home from school when the first question they ask is, hey, did you have fun today? And they're, yeah, right, right. I had to take a test and my teacher made me do, yeah, I know all of a sudden, yeah. We've lost the perspective that life at times as hard is difficult, can be a struggle. We've lost that. We've supplanted in the notion that life should always feel good and be easy. And it, I mean, in a face value, I mean, I think that sounds like a reasonable thing to want. I mean, we don't want our kids to be miserable and struggling all the time. And yet, I wonder how much of it is also us trying to live vicariously through our kids, like maybe things we didn't have or we wanted or expectations we didn't meet on ourselves that we're pushing down, even unaware that we're doing so in our kids. Yeah. And it's interesting because it's the expectations of change where our parents may have expectations of us growing up and being of good character, being, you know, honorable people. The expectations we have for our kids is we want them to have a great time. We want them to have tons of friends. We want them to be happy all the time. Right. So we've shifted what that target is. Yeah. And you're practically speaking. I mean, you're seeing things and I've seen some of your writings you're talking about just like the rise of team sports. I mean, things where, you know, the average parent, I think you said, is spending like $10,000 and, you know, 20 weekends a year, you know, chasing what they think. It's going to be the next Olympic gymnast or something around the country. And maybe it's not always to the benefit that they think. Well, yeah, because what happens with that, and I, you know, I've been in athletics for years, I've coached for years, I currently am an assistant coach on a varsity team, but we have taken athletics and put it on a pedestal. And so we have families that literally put their family life on hold to go chase a basketball or to go to a soccer ball. And so we've got to ask the question, what's it doing to the family? Because what we've missed is we no longer give our children an identity. And, you know, if we think about Deuteronomy, it says we're, we are to impress truth. We actually have a job to tell our children who they are, who's they are. You know, what their identity is, rather than what character does go figure yourself out. Yeah, yeah. So how do you keep, yeah, no, go ahead. Go ahead. Well, I'm just here, I'm, I'm trying to just kind of lay out a list here of what are all these, what's changed in 50 years. I mean, I don't think we had, you know, we talked about a little bit about the athletic urgency. And there's a, in fact, I'm planning on doing an upcoming podcast on that again, not to knock athletics, but I mean, it's just sort of gone off the charts in terms of the money and effort that's being spent and the impact it's making on the families. I'm sure technology plays a role in that. Tell us a little bit. What do you see there? I mean, this again, oh, absolutely. I mean, we think about, I guess this year was the anniversary of a smartphone. Yeah. It's a 10 year anniversary. And it's interesting that we know across the board, regardless of your age, children and adults, the more you're involved with social media, the higher the incidence of depression and anxiety. Wow. That's not a great statistic. Yeah. You know, it's just read a report the other day that the Waldoer School, I believe it's somewhere in Silicon Valley, we're all of the tech giant families are, doesn't have computers. You're not crazy after that before. Yeah. The folks in the business know this is not healthy. And our statistics tell us it's not healthy. And so we see a decline in social skill development. We see a decline in a sense of, I guess, confidence in children because everything they do is so technology based. And it's for them to establish who they are. Well, and I think a lot of parents would say that, I mean, I don't think anybody would wish, you know, nobody hands their kids a snake in a box as a pet. I mean, we don't think of, we wouldn't willfully do that, but we'd think in terms of, well, we wanted to be, quote, ready for the real world, we wanted to be technically, you know, a stewed. But it is amazing. I pulled up the intersection couple last weekend and both are my right and left, left were SUVs with the screens down in the back. And I'm thinking, okay, what is this like a four hour trip you're on? I think you're probably just going for the grocery store. I mean, there's a constant visual distraction there. And that again, yeah, it's so, it's the stuff that seems innocent. It cumulative, it adds up. And before you know it, it's affecting our kids. So when you, these kids are coming to your office and the first complaint is, I'm anxious, I mean, is that what typical complaint? Yeah, the majority of children that come into my office, children and teenagers, is they are either struggling with significant levels of anxiety or significant levels of depression. And what we do is we look at picking apart how their life has been lived. And typically I end up meeting a lot with the parents and saying, you know, you've got to redesign some things in your family, because your family structure in many cases is allowing this to grow and flourish. And in some cases, calls of these things. Well, and I love that, you know, maybe some listening are like, okay, wait, you got a psychologist on there. That guy's, you know, friends with, you know, Freud and Skinner and these guys. And you are, I confident, Christ follower. And this is a biblical worldview you're bringing to bear. So a lot of it is not, let's prescribe medicine. And I'd love to hear your take on that. I know the statistics, we don't recognize it, but it is mind blowing the numbers. Yeah. Yeah, I'll give you a quick look at some statistics. Okay. Think about 1986. Think about where you were. And I was, I was, I went to tell them controlled. All right, go ahead. Yep. Right. The ratio, the number of, the ratio of students on psychiatric meds, this is a, basically five to 18 year olds. Okay. 18, six, one in four hundred. Wow. So basically one in a school. And in the year 2000, it was one in 40. Oh, wow. That's like a, that's like a thousand percentile increase. Yeah. In 2013, it was one in 13. And we're, we're getting to a point now where about one in eight, one in seven. So we've gone from 86 to now from one in four hundred, basically one in a school to several in a classroom on psychiatric meds. And yet, if we look at the lives of children, we have made them easier. And we've decreased the amount of bad things that occur in their life while on earth, are we prescribing so many psychiatric meds? That is a, that's unbelievable. And I, and I think if we look globally and the rest of the world doesn't prescribe at that rate, even with not to that rate, not to that rate. So we are the world leader.
prescription medications for kids. That's exactly right. So any given any given soccer team you know two thirds of the players are on medication. I mean this is or you know it's just a study. If you walked in a crowd of you know everybody with a taking a pill put a hat on it'd be like it would be unimaginable that this is where we really are today. Yeah it's amazing when I go to different schools around the country and speak I'll speak to parents I'll speak to faculty administration I'll speak to students and inevitably when I've done speaking to students I will have groups of students come to me to ask questions because they're on medication. Yeah and it's funny because many of them aren't sure why they're on medication. Yeah. Yeah. Well they've been told they need it but they're not sure what? Right and certainly somebody listening is like well is it you know again we're not condemning it there are certainly cases where it's absolutely the right answer. But it becomes the easy way out and I think that you know if you think about so much of psychology today is not publicly oriented and it's a lot easier for a counselor just to let's basically just drug our kids and then they'll be more passive and the problems will seem less severe and what are we doing I mean think about where this is going to lead us it's just unbelievable. Yeah and we've really changed the target if you think about it you know today in psychology too many times and there are great people in the profession but the field the overall field of psychology too many times sets the target as the removal of negative feelings. Right. Yeah. So the idea is if I can remove your negative feeling I'm helping you. Well the problem with that is that doesn't really reach the correct target. The target is how can I live healthy. Yeah exactly. And and if all we do is remove a negative feeling but we actually don't help individuals to live healthy then we're not helping now. But we are talking about. Yeah. I tell you all the time psychology doesn't hold truth with the capital T. Yeah. It's just it's a field it's strategy it's theory but it is not the source of real truth. Yeah. Well we're going to take a break here with Dr. Keith McCurdy talking about his practice 25 years of just interfacing with kids and families and just this epidemic we're facing right now. If kids facing anxiety depression and sort of the knee jerk reactions to Medicaid them or not really dig down to the hard issues and I want to shift after the break and talk a little bit about your your work and involvement in a classical Christian school and just sort of how does that school environment also play in they're kind of setting kids up for success especially late to anxiety so we'll be right back with base camp life. Welcome back here with Dr. Keith McCurdy talking about the epidemic of kids today that have anxieties and yet there's good news there and I surely appreciate Keith your work and I love the fact that it's not just meet with the kid but you work with families and I just jump right right in if you give us some practical tips what do you tell families and lighted that all of these unique pressures that we face living in this day and time. Oh sure you know when I start with a family one of the key things we have to address is that we have gotten to a point where we don't allow our children to struggle. We have made a friend of mine said we become snowplow parents clearing the road in front of them. Yeah I heard that was like helicopter parents parked the helicopter and got in the snow plow like we're down there. Oh that's right. I think the helicopter could at least they were away from the immediate but now they're literally pushing their kid down the road. Okay yeah that's good. Keep going. And when we do that problem in our children are not learning to overcome things for themselves so they are not being equipped to handle the regular rigors of life. So what I tell folks is you know we've got to get across that hurdle we've got to begin allowing our children to struggle with healthy things because healthy struggle is really the engine to growth and maturity in this life and so I give them four categories to a to begin evaluate. The first is you know the idea of boundaries and not the psycho-bable idea of boundaries but more or less what do they say yes to and what do they say no to in their family. And I challenge families to look at the actual nature of things because nothing is neutral. So they actually look at the idea of you know a cell phone for instance instead of a family saying at what age should my child have a cell phone I get them to ask the question well is a cell phone a healthy thing for each child. It's a really evaluate the nature you know what do I allow with movies what do I allow with music you know Emma what am I saying is a part of who we are as a family yeah at this age that we claim our family identity. Yeah this is who we are this is who we are not. The second thing I talk to families about is doing less and requiring more of the children you know we are the generation where children do not have chores of almost any kind. Sure. The Harvard Grant study that tracked millennials I guess they're not millennials baby boomers and they're now in their 60s and 70s last year spit out some information and it said the highest rated thing they could find in childhood that related to peace and life when they're old it was whether or not they had chores that's the thing they found that is fascinating. It's highly correlated. Yeah they would have said that they were 12 but yeah it was yeah exactly. Yeah and so I tell parents you know do less and start requiring more of your children you know if if we're doing something for the function of our home every day then really our children should too. Yeah and that's really where we begin teaching selflessness and the servanhood of others. Yeah. Third thing I tell folks is learning to connect calls and effect instead of monkey and around with rewards and consequences all the time put things more in a routine an example with an elementary school student is when the student comes home saying hey I really don't care when you do your homework because I can really can't control that but you can't do anything else till it's done. Right and when your homework's done great I don't really care when you do this chore but you really can't do anything else to the chores done. Yeah and so we put in a correct order of life they need to handle their responsibilities but they get the items and privileges and unfortunately we often get it reversed we give tons of things to our children and then we're constantly saying don't you see what I do for you. Right you'd be doing this and then the fourth thing really is limiting technology. We know that technology interferes with the parenting and development process of kids in numerous numerous ways. There are so many studies out you know parents ask me which study do you cite? I say go go go. There are so many studies. Yeah one example of that is attention. If we look at the online gaming phenomenon right now that we have we know that that builds a certain type of attention. It's the ability to pay attention to random stimulus because you need to. Somebody's going to shoot at you from a building or throw something at you from behind a garbage can you got to be able to pay attention to that. The problem is that doesn't translate to the academic world. While that attention grows another one falls and the one that falls is the ability to stay on task when bored. Yeah yeah. The ability to stay focused when it's hard which we need for our children to live. Absolutely yeah and so I really challenge parents that really make technology less a part of your life it does not cause a problem for your children to have less technology. So I usually tell them to start those four areas and very quickly parents say wow we're way out of sorts here. So do you see I mean in terms of students today practically speaking you know I think parents feel like well I and it's amazing how fast our parenting days are over and kids are out the door and off to school and you kind of want them to be quote real world ready. So you know I hear parents like well I'm only going to give them a flip phone and you know that'll protect them and you know at some point they've got to actually if we're talking about a third or fourth grader that seems obvious to me if you're talking about a sophomore junior senior probably not ideally going to flip phone it we probably want that just like we don't want them to really start dating till they're 30 all those things but I mean realistic right. How do you how do you kind of create a healthy on ramp to navigate that world because these kids are this is back to the Barnas statistic they go off to college 80% walk away and a lot of them are coming from very protected intentional Christian homes. Right well and I I change that from we shouldn't be looking at it as we are to protect our children it's we should equip them and that's a very different process you know if we're going to give our children's cell phones let's make sure we're giving it to them for a purpose that it's a tool yeah and we let them know this is the purpose for having this this is the tool and as you use the tool in a wise way we will expand that freehand privilege yeah rather than it's a right you get it when you're eight years old. Sure. Sure. Well and again it's sometimes very innocent I know parents that give even several schools I know of that it's done and certainly let's give you know technology is not a phone anymore it's this Swiss Army knife of all these things and it watches aren't watches watches are now self-ents you know have kids that show up in grammar school with a watch on and parents are texting little encouraging messages all day on their kids arm and it seems like a really wonderful intentional parenting thing to do but you're effectively back to distraction you're creating a constant interruption that kids focus so absolutely and we said all the time with home you know some of the things we talk about but even around homework a lot of times you know battle school you keep giving my kids so much homework but what parents don't often realize is that they're sitting there with that smartphone and and you can explain it's probably better than anybody but the parts of your brain that are focusing on algebra are a totally different part of your brain that's focusing on the little ding you just heard to make sure you just got liked and this is the emotional side of you so you're ping-ponging back and forth while you're doing your you know your 20 algebra problems that now take you four hours and the parents complain and it's really because you've been in a constant state of disruption yeah well and actually I'll even go a step further than that if they take their phone and they turn it on mute and turn it upside down on the table they still check it they buzzers they're worried they're gonna miss something right I know yeah yeah you know and so we have built a process of distraction in the lives of our children they're waiting for something to stimulate them and so they cannot settle and focus for long periods of time on anything well and and again it's easy to blame it generationally but I think you know those of us are older parents even grandparents are enough to
my wife and I talk about it. Sometimes it's the grandparents that are, you know, the most addicted to iPads, these days than anyone. So I mean, it's become our culture and sort of how do you step out of it? So, well, in a few minutes, we have just kind of, keep it related to this topic, but shift a little bit, put on your board member hat, your dad hat, have a classical Christian school. You guys are there at faith, Christian school in Roanoke. And just, what do you see in terms of, we often talk about the 16,000 hours of a kid's day or spent in school or between K and 12? It's a huge time influencer. How is that particular school environment, do you think helping to offset some of these depression anxiety and these other issues you see? - Well, I tell folks all the time two thirds of our children's school age lives are spent in or connected to their school. So their school environment matters. It really does. It matters not just in the notion of who their teachers are, but really how do we approach education and what's the foundation? Is there a foundation of truth there? My children have been educated in a Christian classical school. I have a daughter in college, I have a son that's a junior in high school. And one of the great things about it is it allows our children in an environment that has truth to struggle. You know, we call it contemplation, the idea of mentally struggling with the ideas. - Yeah. - You know, I heard a great analogy years ago, a friend of mine said, it's not about how many wells can we dig. It's making sure that when we dig a well, we dig it deep. And that's a lot of what I have experienced in a Christian classical school. We allow kids to really face some challenges, really think hard about things to wrestle with ideas in an environment that can speak truth into that. And what I have seen coming out of that is children that are more equipped when they go to college to deal with a broken world rather than children that are sheltered. - Yeah. And we hear a lot of contemporary educators talk about introducing this concept of grit. And we're like, well, that's called fortitude. It's a virtue it's been around for a long time. - There you go, that's right. You know, my version of that is what I call sturdiness. - Yeah. - I ask kids in my office all the time, when you grow up, you wanna be fragile and they're like, heck no. And I say, okay, I say, well, you're living fragile. - Yeah. - And then they get all offended and we talk about how they can become more sturdy. - Yeah. - But I think the Christian classical world really helps a child to build that in a healthy well. - And what I've also seen in my headmaster days, it was not uncommon to have a parent, bring a kid transitioning in later in elementary or middle school, coming from an environment that wasn't classical Christian and the parent's biggest concern was them sort of sheepishly admitting to me that their kids were a medication because of diagnosed, ADD or ADHD. Only to find out a couple of months into it or a couple of weeks into it, their kids were able to drop the medication because it was actually, it wasn't trying to get a school in the middle of the circus and it was actually focused and it was intentional. - Yeah, I would agree and that's something I have experienced many, many different times. And not only with relationships is something like attention deficit, but even with anxiety and depression because again, that's where we look at the overall health of the environment. - Yeah. - I deal with every manner of school that's in existence, whether it's public, private, faith-based, classical, you know, all different models. And to me, the Christian classical model from what I have seen is the healthiest model that meets kids where they are and allows them to develop along the lines that we believe are healthy. - Yeah. - Which is, yeah. - It is amazing. - It is amazing. - Compared to many other indications. - It is, right. And it's a tricky thing because we talk in local print is we want parents to be involved and this is where we don't need them in the snow plow. We just need them encouraging. (laughing) - Well, we do, yeah. When I go speak to faculty administration and then I speak the parents in the evening, one of the things I try to connect is a common language. And the common language with the faculty is you want these children to struggle with developmentally appropriate tasks in your classroom. And then I tell parents, your job is to, it's not about the school partnering with you. It's about you partnering with the school. So when your child comes home and complains that they have more Latin to do, you as a parent say, great, that means you need to work a little harder, right? This is not a bad endeavor. And when we have parents that step up to the plate in that way, it's amazing how well the school functions. - Well, and to some of our other conversation, it's the questions shouldn't be, did you have fun? And the questions shouldn't be, how well did you do on that Latin test? But it should be more, how hard did you work? Or if you get an A, it's not great, you got the A, it's you worked hard. So associating it back to that hard work ethic that you're talking about. - Yeah, so. - I tell parents, instead of focusing on outcome, you need to focus on input, what was the effort? - Yeah, that's really good. Well Keith, we're running out of time here. I know folks are intrigued when you're talking about it. I know you have, you regularly offer parenting retreats on raising sturdy kids. I don't know if any of those are beyond the RONO area, but it sounds like you've got that available. How can folks find out more about what you're doing and learn from you? You've got, well. - The one bad thing about what I do is I'm a horrible at marketing. (laughing) Okay. But I've done a couple podcasts for Cersei, appreciate being on with you guys. So I, this coming summer, I'm gonna be doing some pre-conference, I have a pre-conference state, SCL. - Yeah. - But they can look me up at my practice website, total life counseling, ink.com. - Okay. - And slowly we're building more resources based on sturdy kids that we're gonna link to that. - Yeah, make it really get book title. Have you thought about that? - Yeah. (laughing) - Actually, the crazy thing is I've had that outline for years. - I've ever had to do a retreat. - Yeah. - My outline for my retreat. And that's the book, but it's, - There you go. - I've gotta have the time to do the, - I understand. Well, thanks for making time to be a part of Basecamp Live at Q. - Sure. - I think really appreciate your practical encouragement today to us. I think we're all living very much in the same crazy, frantic world. And it's good to have folks like you out there getting us to the right direction. So thanks so much. - Well, thank you very much for having me. - All right, we'll have you on again. Thanks Keith. You've been listening to Basecamp Live with Davies Owens. You know, raising the next generation isn't easy. So we hope you're refreshed and encouraged by what you've heard today. And if so, please invite others to listen. You can subscribe at basecamplive.com. And we would invite you to join the conversation about ancient future education.
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