Magazine: Can you get the burnout syndrome at an early age?

Does someone have to live 30, 40 or 50 years to get the burnout syndrome? When a baby is born all they want is to be loved and this feeling only grows as they are getting older. In the meantime parental expectations start to appear in children’s lives (e.g. When does he/she start to walk?, etc.). Which is the point where children become so exposed to stress that they start to suffer physically, emotionally or mentally, to the extent that they might burn out? In my view this point isn’t a specific moment in time: rather it is related to the time when they have to face challenges (from parents or teachers) they can’t live up to. At first children see challenges as a game they have to play and if they don’t succeed after a couple of times, they simply give up – there is nothing wrong with this. The problem comes when parents or teachers don’t let them give up. Children simply must do the given task again and again until they get tired both physically and emotionally, and they can’t escape the stressful situation. This is exactly what happened to 8-year-old Lacika, a talented swimmer whose father decided to train him 3 times a week in addition to the 2 trainings in his club. The father was impatient, he wanted his son to break records all the time and with this behaviour he took the fun out of the whole thing for Lacika. After a while the child became very tired from the too much physical exercise and the pressure on him to perform. Because of this he started to show signs of aggression in his class, which turned his classmates away from him. It is needless to say that the parents didn’t understand what was happening to him. He simply burned out. My question to you is very simple: Do you give your children enough care?