WE are in very great danger of breeding generations of children who cannot cope with the stresses of normal life.

And there will be plenty of Bolton households currently who know all about stress because their youngsters will be in the midst of half-term revision for exams and we all know what damage a combination of hormones and exams can wreak.

Parents react with a kind of supported realism about now. They want their children to do as well as possible and so need them to work hard. At the same time, though, they don’t want them to crumble under too much stress and so try to strike a balance.

This particular time will pass and many youngsters actually deal with revision and exams in a far more adult and practical way than their parents.

No. What I really mean is the everyday situations which offer natural opportunities for stress and concern and the fact that some parents’ over-emphasis on wellbeing is actually making children less able to cope with life, not more able.

This isn’t just a feeling I’ve had for a while. Apparently, increasing numbers of experts are questioning wellbeing courses that make children believe that the normal emotional reactions to stress are a sign of mental illness.

Kathryn Ecclestone is visiting professor of education at the University of Sheffield and she has researched how this preoccupation is changing school-life. She told the Times Educational Supplement: “Feeling stressed and anxious is being presented as a mental health problem, and the slip from ‘I’m stressed’ to ‘I have a mental health problem’ is very easy now. That’s dangerous.”

Children need to be able to equip themselves to cope with what life throws at them. There will be pitfalls, disappointments, disillusionment and, yes, stress. That is how life is and we learn and develop by coping with them and finding a positive way forward.

Much as parents would like to for their children, they cannot totally smooth life’s path for their offspring. They have to let them experience the rocky parts as well. Of course we all want to be there to care and look after our children, to help them on their way, but we cannot prevent them from experiencing negatives.

What we can do is to help them to cope by teaching them to be strong and practical and take life as it comes. That way reality lies.