Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday.FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images
I’m a child psychiatrist. But before that, I’m a parent.
And most days, the hardest part of my work isn’t diagnosing anxiety or treating depression. It’s sitting with a parent who says, softly, “I didn’t know it was this bad.”
A 12-year-old girl is called “fat” again and again by boys at school. Not once, in the heat of an argument, but casually and steadily. It starts in the hallway, then it follows her online. She stops eating lunch at school; soon dinner feels unsafe. Months later, she’s in my office with an eating disorder that didn’t begin with food. It began with humiliation.
A teenage boy is told he’s worthless so often that he starts to believe it. His grades slip. Anxiety settles in, then depression. His parents sense something is wrong, but don’t know what.
Parents of children who have been bullied often ask me the same question: How do we protect our kids when we can’t be everywhere at once? When so much of this happens quietly, after bedtime or on a phone we don’t always see?
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Bullying today doesn’t stay at school. It comes home in pockets. It waits on screens and shows up when kids are supposed to be relaxing, or falling asleep. It feeds on power and silence. On the hope that if no one names it, it might fade.
That’s why Mark Carney’s speech at Davos this week left me thinking not about geopolitics, but about children.
Watching a prime minister talk about how a country responds when the rules no longer protect the vulnerable made me think about how early we ask children to navigate that same reality, often without much guidance. Often alone.
Carney described a world where pressure from the powerful replaces co-operation – where pretending old rules and systems still work, when they don’t, leaves people exposed.
If you’ve watched a child being bullied, it’s a familiar picture.
Bullies depend on others looking away. On targets being told to ignore it. On adults hoping it will stop. On everyone doing just enough to get through the day – or, as Carney said, referencing the Czech dissident and later president Vaclav Havel, “living within a lie”
What stayed with me about Carney’s speech is that he didn’t deny or minimize the current reality. He didn’t rush past it. He named it.
Read and watch Mark Carney's Davos speech at the World Economic Forum
Children don’t need us to solve everything for them. But they do need to know when something is real, and when it isn’t okay. They need someone to notice. This could be as simple as a parent saying, “I see what’s been happening. I’m glad you told me.” Often, that’s enough to change how alone a child feels.
Carney also emphasized the importance of co-operation, rather than going it alone. Anyone who has worked with children knows that bullying thrives in isolation. It loses its grip when other people come into the picture. When the environment shifts. When silence breaks.
Our kids are already living with versions of the world Carney described. Public shaming. Power without accountability. Harm that happens quietly, then again, then again. These aren’t abstract ideas to them. They’re daily experiences.
And yet we sometimes ask children to manage the effects of bullying with less support than we would expect for ourselves. I’ve watched children carry this on their own longer than they should. I’ve also seen what happens when an adult finally stands beside them. Not to fix everything. Just to stay.
What Mark Carney modelled wasn’t anger or certainty. It was something steadier. A willingness to see things clearly. To stop pretending. To stay present without looking away.
That’s what our kids need from us.
Dr. Jamil Jivraj is a child and adolescent psychiatrist, and Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of Calgary.