Bonsai, Helicopter and Marshmallow Kids

What is a ‘Bonsai child’? It's a relatively new term to describe the child who has been over tended to, fussed over and over supervised. When something happens at school an enquiry is needed to get to the bottom of 'why Isabella fell out with her friend and what did the school do about it as she is such a sensitive child!' Is Isabella temporarily sad or is she depressed. Could be either, but it's important to know the difference.

Clinical psychologist and researcher Judith Locke writes in her book The Bonsai Child "A sense of melancholy is labelled depression; any trepidation is labelled anxiety. A friendship fight is bullying." The ‘bonsai child’ is her term for children who are over-nurtured.

Michael Carr-Gregg talks about marshmallow kids as a generation of children who are afraid to fail. Do they experience healthy disappointment when they don't achieve their goals and when their desires are not met, or do they feel unhealthily depressed and angry about not getting what they believe they must have? Are these children being conditioned to be so by overzealous parenting of the 'bonsai' and 'helicopter' kind?

President of the Australian Primary Principals Association Dennis Yarrington says, "We used to say they're a little bit nervous, now they're suffering from anxiety or depression. They're adult words.'' He goes on to say that ''students need to be taught strategies to deal with challenges, but sometimes parents' first reaction was to ship them off to a specialist "because that's what people do".

The above may be debatable but how does the classroom teacher and parent/carer determine when a situation warrants further investigation and whether indeed to leave children to their own devices, to sort the problem out for themselves?

The Victorian government is investing in children’s welfare by ensuring that every secondary school in the state will have access to mental health support services. The AEU, Victoria, endorses this initiative and advocates for teacher professional learning in schools to raise mental health awareness and teacher capability in addressing mental health issues. The added expert practitioner support will also help with general teachers work which, it is accepted, is already very demanding!

‘Every government secondary school will receive between one and five days a week of support from a mental health practitioner depending on its size, requirements and existing welfare programs.’ Mental Health Practitioners in Schools Initiative, Victoria.

As many as one in 10 children have mental health disorders according to a national survey published by the University of Western Australia. What can schools do? One effective tool in helping children learn how to survive challenge and to thrive despite it is to teach them about Albert Ellis' ABC Theory of Emotional Disturbance through Rational Emotive Behaviour Education (REBE). You can read more about REBE at www.rebtnetwork.org and for up-to-date news about the late Albert Ellis and Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy.

Parents, teachers and all adult mentors and supervisors of children would do well to acquaint themselves with counselling models that can explain how strength of emotion is driven by the beliefs and expectations a person has about life and living. Cognitive and Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapies are highly effective. As Dr Albert Ellis, creator of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy says: “If human emotions largely result from thinking, then one may appreciably control one’s feelings by controlling one’s thoughts – or by changing the internalized sentences, or self-talk, with which one largely created the feeling in the first place.”

Some schools have already put in place counselling-based behaviour education systems designed to help children better manage how they feel and behave. Para Hills School in South Australia is a case in point. It is in its eighth year of applying Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy principles in daily teaching practice through Rational Emotive Behaviour Education from preschool to year 6. Children generally understand that their strength of emotion and the behaviours they choose are linked to how they think about situations.

When the inevitable happens and things don’t go our way we can ask, ‘is my extreme sadness and/or anger caused entirely by what happened or is it because I believe things should go my way and that it’s a catastrophe that it didn’t!’ Yes, what happens has something to do with our behavioural and emotional discomfort but is our assessment of what happened reasonable and self-helpful? We can teach our children to ask themselves these questions so that they can learn to be effective self-regulators of their emotions and behaviour.

Rational Emotive Behaviour Education teaches children from early childhood to high school (and beyond) that as constructivists, they have ingrained and well-practiced beliefs about themselves, others, and life. What are they? Are they helpful or unhelpful i.e., Rational or irrational? How are they linked to how they feel and act? What can they do when things don't go their way? Can they learn to reconfigure their personal 'habits of believing' and use new thinking to help them deal with challenge and disappointment?

I’m reminded as we draw this to a conclusion that Alfred Korzybski, the creator of General Semantic Theory, said ‘the word is not the thing,’ or in the case of the above, ‘the word is not the person.’ Rather than refer to the child as a ‘bonsai’ or ‘helicopter’ or ‘marshmallow’ child, better to tell it like it is, that the child is a person who struggles to control how they feel and behave. Perhaps such terms are derogatory and discount that we are all complex identities and one negative or positive trait cannot define our total personhood as being totally good or bad!

So, a new heading could be: Children Who Struggle with Their Emotions – what can teachers and their carers do to help them?

References
The Bonsai Child by Judith Locke.

Marianne Betts and Susie O’Brien - ‘Major investigation into 'the marshmallow generation,' 2011.

Dennis Yarrington , Australian Primary Principals Association on mental health in schools https://www.ccyp.wa.gov.au/our-work/resources/mental-health/

Media release: AEU welcomes Andrews government announcement of mental health support in schools, AEU Victoria Branch.

Giulio is an ED.D. candidate at the University of South Australia. He is a student counsellor in the public school system and specialises in Rational Emotive Behaviour Education. He is also a consultant to schools in counselling-based behaviour education systems in school. He is the author of two self-published teacher/counsellor resources; People and Emotions and Have a Go Spaghettio! both endorsed by Dr. Albert Ellis, creator of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy. He is a member of the International Committee for The Advancement of Rational Emotive Education.