When writer and teacher Sue Palmer first released her research on ‘toxic childhood syndrome' earlier this year, it was to rapturous applause from educationalists at every level - from teaching assistant to headteacher, playground supervisor to union leader. They were all aware of the alarming escalation of ‘developmental disorders' damaging children's ability to think, learn and behave, but up until then no research had come so close to an explanation.
Many of these disorders had not even entered the public consciousness until the late twentieth century. First there is attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD), the lack of ability to concentrate and control behaviour. It is now the most common psychiatric disorder affecting children in the USA - up to 12 per cent, and rates are soaring across the developed world.
Then there is the ‘dyslexic cluster'. Around 10 per cent of children in the USA and UK suffer from dyslexia (difficulty in reading). Other countries such as Japan are reporting increasing numbers of cases, too. Dyslexia's close cousins - dysgraphia, dyscalculia and dyspraxia (difficulties respectively in writing, maths and physical coordination) - are also significantly on the rise.
Autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) are the most recent - and extremely worrying - increase. Autism affects children in many different ways - hence the term ‘spectrum'. At one end are high functioning Aspergers Syndrome children - often academic high achievers but socially inept - and at the other are very severely autistic children completely cut off by the disability and unable to communicate with the rest of the world.
Even among those without any diagnosed disorders there still is a noticeable rise in behavioural difficulties, poor communication, lack of attention, manners and respect.
Western society seems to be producing distractible, impulsive, self-obsessed children who become less able to learn and to thrive socially as the years go by.
For those who think this is overstating the case Sue says: ‘Janet Street-Porter, a British writer and broadcaster, used to feel that way - until she agreed to spend two weeks teaching eight-year-olds in a primary school. Ms Street-Porter, renowned as a forceful woman, capable of withering hardened BBC executives with a glance, often found herself leaving school at the end of each day "weeping with frustration".'
So what's gone wrong? Sue confesses that her first instinct was to lay the blame on television. Then one day while looking into reports that Ritalin prescriptions in the UK has increased tenfold in a single decade, she bumped into an expert on children's play who put the problem down to the fact that many parents are too frightened to let their children go outside and run off excess energy.
‘I suddenly noticed how many other experts seem to be digging away at this issue,' she said. ‘Some said it was diet or lack of exercise; others chose working mothers, marriage breakdown, defects in the education system, excessive consumerism or other effects of technological or social change.
‘The world is full of experts on children's behaviour and each of them seem oblivious of all the others, trapped in their own disciplines and knowing more and more about less and less.'
But there isn't one simple answer. We can't blame the parents, or the teachers, or the junk food manufacturers, or anyone else. ‘This is a complex cultural problem linked to the incredible speed of human progress. In a nutshell our culture has evolved faster than our biology.
‘It isn't that technology is bad,' adds Sue, ‘but that as parents we need to re-establish what is good for our children in the right doses.
‘When you get so much stuff day in and out, there is a bit of - well, I just try to protect my child best I can. But your child has to go out in that playground and be part of society growing up. Parents have got to get together - we need to be turning the technology to the benefit of our families and children. We are far too atomised, a major reason for the problem, the world doesn't get any better if we don't talk to each anymore. It takes a village, the whole of society.'
Detoxing your child
Sue Palmer published her book, Toxic Childhood, to offer parents a range of suggestions on ‘detoxifying' children. The book is unique in that it draws on research from a variety of disciplines to look at modern life in a range of contexts, such as play, diet, sleeping habits, family life, school and community life.
On the topic of play, for example, Sue says: ‘Many don't see what they have lost, that for small children the big thing is interaction and doing things that come natural to them, to play. ‘If they don't play there is an enormous amount they won't learn as their neural networks won't develop.
‘Someone said to me recently, "What you're saying is that science has caught up with what your granny used to say." That's a good way to put it: research evidence makes it clear that many things done throughout generations with children are important to their emotional and cognitive development. Children are not going to be able to learn and behave in a civilised way unless these natural development abilities are triggered.'
The big thing is that it has to be the parents who do it, says Sue. ‘Parents must talk to each other and re-establish what is good for their children; they've got to meet in person too. They've got to establish the adult alliance where grown ups put up an authoritative alliance about what is good for children, recreating real human villages. ‘People love their children and if they know what is important for their children, of the need to make a few minor lifestyle changes, they will. And it's nice for parents too, slowing down, smelling the roses; it's an opportunity to truly enjoy our children.'
