Transcriber: Phuong Anh Lai Reviewer: Sebastian Betti
To start off, raise your hand if you feel like you’ve had a childhood
that was so good, nothing could be improved.
For those that just raised their hand, you’re all lucky.
I myself wasn’t, but we’ll get to that later.
Out of all stages you go through in life,
your childhood is probably the most important one.
It is when you start to get to know the world
and learn countless important things
that determine the way you see life more than anything else.
You start from knowing absolutely nothing and eventually become an adult.
I know that compared to other kids,
we’re all privileged growing up in an environment that provides us with
almost endless possibilities.
With that said, I still think there are things you can improve.
So let’s lay the foundation
and find a different types of experiences we go through
in our first,, let’s say, 15 years.
I think we can categorize them into three separate environments.
First, we have the home with our family.
Second, we’ve the school. Here, we encounter our teachers and peers.
And third, we have a group I call rest.
This can be many things like sports or church.
Let's start off with the home and ask ourselves,
what does an ideal home look like?
Many of you know this,
but it should be a place where the child is always the main priority,
a place where you’re loved no matter what
and where you never feel like you’re not welcome.
You should be able to express what’s on your mind
without the fear of being judged.
You should be motivated to grow into an independent person
that can handle things on their own,
but always has a safety net to fall back on.
Mistakes are encouraged.
You’re able to learn from them and you don’t let them define you.
As a famous author, Marvin J. Ashton, once said:
“Home should be an anchor,
a port in a storm, a refuge, a happy place in which to dwell,
a place where we are loved and where we can live.”
Sadly, a lot of things can go wrong,
no parent has a Ph.D. in being the best parent.
Most of them learn to be one along the way.
They might have very strict policies or beliefs that aren’t welcoming
towards the child.
Parents can also fight each other or even decide to get a divorce
suddenly leaving a child with two homes instead of one.
If the parent has any unresolved trauma from their youth,
it could influence the way they behave or react towards the child.
Possibly the worst thing that can happen is
if a child is being abused with either physical, mental or emotional harm.
Moving on from home life, we go into school,
this should be a free space where you get to learn about the world
from different perspectives,
regardless of the ones provided by your family or church.
It's a place where you get to find out what you like, what you dislike,
what you agree on and what you disagree on.
Over time, this helps you define who you are.
You also start to gain a social life
and learn how to behave around other people.
It's a place where you're not overwhelmed by work, stress or peer pressure,
a safe environment with an atmosphere of acceptance
where a bad grade is not considered total failure,
and where mistakes don't affect the rest of your life.
A variety of bad things can and do go wrong here as well.
To name a few examples,
you might be pressured by your parents to get good grades
or take a certain career path you don’t like.
A bad teacher might also push you away from a subject you enjoy,
bullying is also still an issue, whether it is online or in person.
A 2017 study on the state of bullying in Europe showed,
conducted by an Erasmus plus programme,
showed that 12 percent of boys and 10 percent of girls
were bullied at least two or three times a month.
Let’s also not forget about certain schools that exclude feelings
the child might have.
The last group I have is “the rest”.
This can be many things like sports, music, arts or something different,
like a religion or a youth group.
The only thing that really matters here
is that you enjoy the activity that you’re doing.
You shouldn’t be forced into following a religion with which you don’t identify
or play football when you actually want to join a band.
Environments like these can really help you
take your mind off things when it’s needed.
But they can also hold you back if they don’t accept you for who you are.
Now, most of us are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.
When we look at how the environment shaped us throughout our childhood.
It wasn’t the most perfect thing there could be, but there are --
We were also not living a personal hell.
If you feel like you are, then I’m sorry
and extremely proud of you for keeping on the fight.
In my opinion, it’s impossible to get all three of the parts perfectly right.
There will always be some form of hindrance.
However, we can at the very least try to prevent bad experiences
from ruining a childhood.
The worst cases start to happen when all three of the parts go wrong,
even if they are just a bit of,
it can already have a massive impact on your morale.
I’m talking from personal experience.
Two years ago, I was on an exchange program in Munich.
My home life consists of a host family, was very nice and welcoming people,
but still it wasn't a place I could call home.
Not only the home fell off, but the school did, too.
I didn't really connect with anyone, which left me quite lonely.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like everyone around me was mean
or that there weren’t people to connect with.
It just wasn’t the right fit.
Another issue was that the teachers didn't know me,
so when I wasn't in top shape, most of them assumed I was just a lazy student.
I wasn’t happy and I didn’t feel like myself.
To this day, I can’t pinpoint to a certain factor and say
that’s why I wasn’t happy.
This also reflected in my grades, my average drop down by a whole two points,
and people just assume that that’s who I was.
To illustrate this with an example, right after I received my first report,
I asked my geography teacher at the time what I could do to improve my grade.
It had been significantly lower than I had expected.
His answer was that I was too lazy and I should be more active in class,
which is probably the most demotivating answer you can get and you feel like
that’s what you’ve been doing all along.
By receiving that answer,
it actually made me more lazy than working harder.
In short, my time in Munich wasn't happy because my home didn't feel like a home.
I wasn’t connected with my school and there was no rest to distract me.
So how do we fix a bad situation like this?
Because once the damage is done, it’s hard to undo.
You have to know what the problem is
and that often requires professional help.
Oftentimes, the outside world thinks that everything is good,
meaning only the child can be the one to find out that something's off.
Let's say you're a child and you're dealing with an issue,
you first have to notice that something's that something's off,
then you have to find out what the problem is,
then you have to reassure yourself that you're not the one at fault,
which is really difficult.
And then you have to look for help while still dealing with that
and a myriad of other issues.
Grownups themselves can hardly deal with these kinds of situations,
let alone a child.
If you feel like you’re in a similar situation like I was,
then my advice is to find something to take your mind off everything.
This might be a place or an activity that distract you from your normal issues.
For me, this was listening to music.
I would put on my headphones, play my playlist and just let my thoughts go wild.
It might sound crazy, but for me,
this really set my mind in a way so I could handle the world again.
What also helps is talking to people; you can talk to literally anyone,
whether it is your friends, family, teachers, parents, school psychologists.
I would often call or text with my friends at home, which really help me.
If I look back at the exchange, even with all bad experiences in mind,
I still think I learned a lot and I would do it again.
People with even a worse experience than I, said the same thing.
If we take a step back and look at the general issue,
then I think it really comes down to underestimating how vital mental health
is throughout our childhood.
I went on the website of the WHO and found the following facts:
half of all mental health conditions start by 14 years of age,
but most cases stay undetected and untreated.
Globally, depression is one of the leading causes of illness
and disability amongst adolescents.
And suicide is the third leading cause of death in 15 to 19 year olds.
With this in mind, you can’t call it a small issue anymore.
So, what do I want to achieve with this talk?
Well, I want everyone to realize how important
the environment is throughout our childhood.
Let’s not assume the worst in people.
Let’s instead regularly check up on them
and try to give everyone the best environment
they can possibly have.
If you look at everyone like a finished product
and not one that can change and evolve,
we’re stopping them from becoming the absolute best version of themselves.
A few things that might sound crazy, but just might work,
or it could be a semi-annual visit to a school psychologist
or obligatory lessons on how to deal with a mental health crisis.
Let’s be humble.
There’s still so much to learn
There’s still so much to improve.
And I think as a global society, we can do better.
Thank you.