School Burnout. More and more students are psychically yielding because of pressure: “My 7th grade daughter has gastritis”

With tens of hours teaching at school and many more dedicated to homework and meditations, Romanian high school students get to work in a week more than an adult with a full time job. “Children must have time to get bored,” says psychologists.

“My child is in the 7th grade, in intensive mathematics profile and has 33 hours in the schedule. Some days, after the six hours of course, there is also a math circle, which means 34 hours a week. He arrives at 4:00, followed by the themes and learning. That’s just one of the dozens of messages on an online group of parents, where such discussions are frequent.

Parents even talk about health problems that have arisen because of exhaustion.

“She was diagnosed a year ago with gastritis on stress, and the school unfortunately was her main stress. The meditations are needed, not to fill her time”says the mother of a 7th grade student.

Another parent emphasizes: “Because of the super loaded schedule and the meditations (we have to do them-it is in the 7th grade) the child is very tired. Almost every day he has hours from 8 to 15 and then meditations. So he must be focused nine a day and then to do his homework..

“For years we have faced this problem. And I have noticed something, all the teachers give tests in the same period, you say that they are in session the poor children, only it does not last a month, but a week“, Someone says.

Psychologist: Burnout is emotional and physical exhaustion

Burnout in children is a phenomenon as real as possible, says psychologists. And it comes in package with more than physical fatigue.

“Burnout is not something specific to adults only. It is indeed a new term. Before I said <>. Now we call it Burnout, because it is emotional and physical exhaustion, the inability to manage with the resources you have what comes to both the outside and inside – the pressure to be successful or to be with others “, explain Sabina Isdrailă, a psychologist specialized in children’s psychotherapy.

The school pressure and parents’ expectations can be a heavy burden for the children of the 21st century, more emotionally intelligent than those of past generations.

Even though it is more common among students, the burn can occur even from kindergarten.

“I remember working with a little boy who vomited every morning when he went to kindergarten, so intense was for him what was going on there, because he was going to a kindergarten that they were doing all the time, and he was very shy and with a very slow process of integrating the information, he needed more time,” He remembers the psychotherapist.

What are the signs of burnout

Parents are the most able to observe the signs of burnout and it is important not to minimize the child’s emotions.

“” When you talk about a child, the child refuses to do a theme, or choose something easier than what he has to do. Once, twice. But if we talk about exhaustion, we are not talking about a bad day of a child. We notice that the weeks pass, the days, maybe the months, unfortunately, to do it, Sleep, difficulty falling asleep or panic attacks.explains the psychitorapeuta.

Emotions are often manifested by physical symptoms.

“The first thing I would be careful about as a parent, would be the level of apathy. They can complain of muscle pain, belly pain, threat, weakness. You see them dragging their feet, that they are just going. Everything you can think of an adult, but much more visible to a child, if you have much less resources. Or something else has appeared in his calendar.warns Sabina Isdrailă.

Advice to parents: “children must have time to get bored”

Less can mean many times more. It is the lesson that adults around the children must first learn, so that they can then teach it.

“There are children with a higher capacity or resistance, to say, for which intense activity is a benefit. But these are the exceptions. For most growing children, their brain needs disconnection, relaxation, boredom – to leave room for creativity, imagination, problem solving.

It seems to us that boredom is a waste of time. Very wrong! I advocate a lot for boredom, which is actually this space where nothing programmed happens, you have nothing planned and allow the child to discover. ” says the psychotherapist.

The free, unconditional time of any program should not be considered a moft for anyone.

“If in the past the children had a lot of freedom, even for negligence – you did not know where they are – now children have something to do, as if we didn’t trust that they could discover a way or do some things. But at the same time we expect it to be extraordinarily good at certain things“.

Equally important, psychologists advise adults to reduce pressure on children.

“This terminology of <>, this fear of the parents that what will be chosen as a child if he does not arrive I do not know where; fear transmitted to children. I have socially built this idea that only if you do a certain thing you can get to be successful, when the reality in the market says it is not true, that these things are no longer relevant in the world we live in, where you have the ability to observe some things, to solve some problems, to create and to be successful and to do not have some parents. We do not transmit this to children many times, we do not allow them to explore outside a frame fastened for them. (…) We look like if we don’t tick everything, we don’t have a chance in this world. But the world is a very big place, with place for each of us“.

Romania vs. Netherlands. Education systems that cannot be different. Performance, greater to them

In other countries in Europe, both parents and society have adapted to the changing world. And this is also seen through the school syllabus.

Ioana Chicet Macoveiciuc, who has a blog dedicated to parenting, moved to the Netherlands in early 2022. And found a different education system from Romania. Even if the number of hours spent at school is higher, the effort made is lower. And the themes appear later in the lives of children.

“Sofia is in the year 1 secondary (he is 13 years old), Ivan is in the year 7 years (he is 11 years old). Ivan stays at school 30 hours a week, Sofia around 45. Ivan has about an hour a week, he does them on the weekend, it is the first year they have themes. He has math, spelling and grammar. At the secondary, Sofia is doing about 2 hours of themes a day, including projects and learned. ” Joana tells.

At school, the program is different from the one in Romania. And there is no emphasis on theory.

“All the matter is very practical, in the mayor they have main themes (one per month), in which all the subjects approach, besides mathematics, sports and art. For example, the theme is rebirth and do history, geography, biology, social studies, all on this topic. They discuss a lot about emotions, they make presentations in front of the class, how to have a graph, how to have a graph, how to have a graph. indicators) and understanding reading.explains Ioana.

At the PISA tests, which measures the skills of 15-year-old students in reading, mathematics and sciences, focusing on their ability to apply knowledge in complex issues and to think critically, the Netherlands obtained 493 points and went out 10th in the European standings. Romania obtained an average score of 428 points, which places us on the penultimate place in the European Union.