"You are enough, a thousand times enough."

~ Atticus

Heightened and growing anxiety, particularly among teenage girls, has been a concern for many years and is currently at deeply worrying levels.

Anxiety is a normal and healthy emotion. When we are anxious our brain chemistry adjusts to promote our safety, awakening the 'fight or flight' response. It is in learning to manage our responses that anxiety becomes a healthy rather than a debilitating emotion.

It is right that we should become anxious before delivering a presentation or writing an important examination. The feeling energizes us and primes us to perform. However, framing the response correctly must be learned so that we do not overestimate our fears and underestimate our ability to perform.

The reality is that girls are struggling to respond appropriately to this emotion, and it is standing in their way of living happy and fulfilling lives.

This description written by Rachel Simmons in her book Enough As She Is, is all too familiar. "There are the girls who cluster after finishing an exam, each competing to tell the other how badly they just failed, because it makes them feel better to anticipate failure - and who collapse, inconsolable, when they score less than an A. There is the girl who posts a selfie, then refreshes her screen repeatedly, only to delete her post for fear it hasn't gotten enough attention. For many girls today, the drive to achieve is fuelled by brutal self-criticism and anxiety that they will fail. We are raising a generation of girls who may look exceptional on paper but are often anxious and overwhelmed in life." Later in the book she goes on to say "They live in a persistent state of self-criticism, beating themselves up for failing to achieve some mythical state of achievement. No matter what they do, they feel like they've fallen short."

This topic is complex with too many aspects to consider in just a fortnightly newsletter. Something that each adult can do is to reformulate the conversations that are had with our girls. Rethink the questions that you ask them so that our girls realize that they are enough.

Do your conversations carry a subtext that values marks, achievement, and perfection? I am not suggesting that we advocate for mediocrity but let us adjust our narrative so that our girls can define themselves differently. Ask them why they are enough as they are.

Rachel Simmons includes a response from an eighteen-year-old girl who said:

I am enough because…

I have friends who love me.

I try to face the challenges I have.

Learning new things fills my spirit with joy.

PENNY MULLAN

Head of School

Last Friday, 5 June, was known as International Day of Innocent Children who are Victims of Aggression. The purpose of the day is to acknowledge the pain suffered by children throughout the world who are the victims of physical, mental and emotional abuse. This day affirms the United Nations’ commitment to protect the rights of children. Its work is guided by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most rapidly and widely ratified international human rights treaty in history.

Unfortunately, in our world today, it is a sad reality that in situations where armed conflict breaks out, it is the most vulnerable members of societies – namely children - who are most affected by the consequences of war. The six most common violations are recruitment and use of children in war, killing, sexual violence, abduction, attacks on schools and hospitals, and denial of humanitarian access. Millions of children around the world are caught up in conflicts in which they are not merely bystanders, but targets.

But this is not a day to just look outwards, it is a time for us to look inwards as well – to our country, our communities, our schools, our families and our children. We need to ask ourselves: how many children do we encounter every day who could very easily be the victims of aggression? It is always closer to home than we think. I ask you to join me in prayer this week for children whose lives are affected daily by aggression, by alcohol and substance abuse, by depression and anxiety, by racial and gender abuse, and by neglect and physical abuse. May we pray that the children who touch our lives every day here at Springfield may never experience such treatment. Let us keep in our prayers, too, the “invisible” children who are suffering right now from such abuse. May the Holy Spirit give us the courage to make a difference in those children’s lives.

“History will judge us by the difference we make in the everyday lives of children.”

~Nelson Mandela

ALISON DUNN

Principal of the Junior School