2019 Parenting Trends

What Teachers Need to Know

Want richer engagement with parents and families? Then you need to be aware of what’s trending with parents. Parenting Ideas always keeps a close eye on parenting hotspots so we can help keep you ahead of the curve. With this in mind Parenting Ideas founder Michael Grose will guide you through eight new parenting trends for 2019.

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1. The Normalisation of Anxiety

Amazingly, when Australia conducted the first Child and Adolescent Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing in 1998, anxiety wasn’t listed in the list of disorders that impacted kids. It simply wasn’t on the radar in the same way major depressive disorders and ADHD were. It’s fair to say it’s on the radar now. The last few years have seen the rise in the normalisation of anxiousness across all strands of the community. There’s been a vocabulary built around the term. People from all walks of life are talking about it and there’s more knowledge about its management.

This year we predict that anxiety management will overtake resilience promotion as the go to topic for parents and families.

2. Unearthing Kids Strengths

The Positive Psychology movement has been a strong influencer on school wellbeing practices for many years, but it’s struggled to have cut through with parents, until now. The huge success
of Professor Lea Waters’ book, ‘The Strength Switch,’ has seen parents start to embrace the strength based approach with families.

The holistic nature of this approach appeals to parents as they can use knowledge of their children’s strengths to motivate, boost confidence and better manage them. This year, we predict that strength-based parenting will explode into the consciousness of parents.

3. Integrating Digital Technology Into Family Life

If you’re still talking to parents about ‘bad old digital technology,’ then you will be missing the mark with most families. The rise of digital technology has been biggest game changer in my three decades in parenting, bringing problems to families such as cyberbullying, online safety and overuse. The resultant response to parents from the education scene has been to monitor, stop or limit its use by kids.

For some time, parents have been signalling that they want more knowledge and information about children’s digital technology use beyond mere cease and desist tactics. Successful integration of children’s technology use into family life so that kids can experience the benefits, while staying safe and also enriching family life is the digital technology approach parents want. With that in mind, integration should be the buzzword for kids’ digital technology use in 2019.

4. Wellbeing as a way of Life, Not Merely a Fad

The wellness industry has been thriving for years now and it’s beginning to make its mark on families. ‘Find a balance,’ ‘don’t over do your studies,’ ‘make sure you choose at least one subject you enjoy.’ The language kids hear is beginning to reflect the move toward mental health practices as a normal part of life, for happiness and wellbeing and not just for optimal school success. Parents will continue this year to look for the latest research, information and strategies to support the mental health and wellbeing of their families. Schools, as a trusted source of information, have a significant role to play.

5. Balancing Extracurricular Activities

Has the student extracurricular activity trend reached its nadir? Has kids’ busyness peaked? For many years, the benefits of kids being involved in extracurricular activities has been spiked, while ignoring the cost in terms of overworked kids, frantic parents and stretched family time.

Now get ready to hear the word ‘balance’ replace the terms ‘benefits’ when extracurricular activities are considered. The potential stresses that student overload can cause on family life and parent wellbeing is now a common concern. In this increasingly competitive educational climate parents are yearning for more balance.

6. Healthy Rites of Passage

The recent rise in rites of passage programs that many secondary schools are incorporating into their annual programs is no accident. It comes about due to the slow demise of adult initiated rites of passage activities over the last thirty years. As a community, we’ve struggled for many years to create rites of passage for young people. Once a young person’s first job, or their twenty-first birthday were significant markers of maturity, offering a sense that they were entering into the adult world. Community changes have largely eradicated these traditional markers, which makes it harder for a young person to know when they’ve become an adult.

There are many healthy ways to recognise a young person’s growing maturity and mark their journey into adulthood. Many families are now creating their own to mark events such as the end of primary school, the move into the teenage years, and mark different stages of adolescence. This is a hot topic for many parents today.

7. Understanding the Body Clock

Sleep has been high on most school’s ‘must reinforce with parents’ lists for the last few years. And rightfully so, as Australian kids haven’t been getting enough of this performance enhancing, mental health boosting activity. Most sleep messages provided to parents have focused on the development of good sleep habits, with regularity and routine being the major strategies. These are slim picking indeed in the light of recent sleep findings from the world of neuroscience.

The 24-hour body clock (circadian rhythm) until now has been thought to regulate feelings of sleepiness and wakefulness over a 24-hour period. Recent findings show that the body clock drives the timing for so much of our bodily and brain functions as well. Working with the body clock means not only does a child or teen get a good night’s sleep, but it also helps them maintain optimum body and mental performance. Work against it and not only is their mental health affected but daily tasks are more difficult to perform. The most remarkable finding though, is that we can reset our body clocks every day. That’s exciting as it’s easier than we first thought for kids to get the proverbial good night’s sleep. It’s a matter of making the body clock work with them, rather than against them.

8. Conversations That Really Influence

A decade ago, the British did something simple yet profound. Realising that parents needed to converse with their kids if they were to influence their behaviour and thinking, they conducted a nationwide campaign to encourage parents to regularly share meal times with their children. So successful was this campaign, that it saw a significant increase in shared mealtimes, and has been attributed to giving back to parents the ability to have influence, which was previously considered to be lost, over their children’s behaviour.

In Australia, parent-child conversations have been promoted as a relationship builders, rather than ways to impact on children’s and young people’s behaviour and thinking. As our world is becoming increasingly chaotic and fast changing, parents are once more seeing the benefits of two-way exchanges with children about a range of issues. The meal table, something so central to traditional Australian parenting, and in later years somewhat neglected, is now making a comeback. And we’re thrilled about that!

Be mindful of these parenting trends as you build your engagement strategy and look for ways to support parents. Understanding these trends can influence the language you use with parents, the topics you choose for articles and parenting education and even the way you frame your communications with families.

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Michael Grose


Author, columnist and presenter Michael Grose currently supports over 1,100 schools in Australia, New Zealand and England in engaging and supporting their parent communities. He is also the director of Parentingideas, Australia’s leader in parenting education resources and support for schools. In 2010 Michael spoke at the prestigious Headmaster’s Conference in England, the British International Schools Conference in Madrid, and the Heads of Independent Schools Conference in Australia, showing school leadership teams how to move beyond partnership-building to create real parent-school communities. For bookings, parenting resources for schools and Michael’s famous Free Chores & Responsibilities Guide for Kids, go to www. parentingideas.com.au.