I had some news this week that my sister was on her way to the emergency room at our local hospital, after having a fit during her English GCSE exam.
My sister is young, athletic and in all other accounts a healthy child, after speaking to doctors and counselors throughout this week they have told us that they believe the fit was brought on due to stress. I then decided to look further into what stress she may be undergoing, that is when I came across the statistics of childhood depression, the further I looked into these statistics the more agitated I became about the pressures being put on my sisters and other children.
In my previous blog I mentioned how siblings may have an effect on each others mental health, my sister is the youngest of three, Myself being the oldest and my younger sister Courtney who is in the same year of education as the youngest.
My mother become a single parent when I was 14, my father was never around much due to working long hours, it was my mother who sat us down and helped us with our homework despite upholding a stressful job herself, after the divorce my mother put in longer hours at work so that we could afford to get nice clothing, be able to go on school trips, to take part in the many sporting teams that we were involved in as well as extra activity's. I could see the strain it was putting on her and it was then that I made it my target to make her proud I pushed myself to all I could in order to get the GCSEs and diploma to allow me to get into University and once I was accepted the thrilled look and attitude she had made it all worth it.
Unknowingly I had set a bar for my younger siblings to reach, they are now thriving to get the same reaction from my mother.
Courtney has always been a bright child and has always been educationally gifted, knowledge seems to be absorbed easily to her, and she hit top of her class on many occasions.
The youngest Ellie has always been a sport enthusiast and played netball for the district county as well as the country until an injury to her foot made it painful for her to play professionally any longer, shes bubbly and tends to get along with everyone she meets, yet educationally she's a lot like me, she has to work hard to get what she needs to get into university as she would like to become a teacher, this alongside the pressure of having Courtney sitting her exams at the same time as well as all the other pressures of society seemed to be to much.
My sister had a fit due to the stress she was being put under yet other children all around the world are feeling that there is no escape from these pressures.
I could not help but think of how a simple word of assurance would take some of the stress away so I then decided to write the blog to inform others about the stress children and teenagers are going through in hope that they take this knowledge and reassure the child that it is OK, because it is OK.
Follow the link below if you would like to read the blog post that I have reviewed
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