Supporting Your Child’s Mental Health

With Children’s Mental Health week upon us from May 1 to 7, I wanted to dedicate this week’s blog article to some ways parents can support their child’s mental health and wellbeing. Of course, it takes a community to raise a child, however the pandemic left many parents to do it alone with shutdowns, social distancing, homeschooling, and no afterschool programs. Even though we are in the post pandemic time, the impacts are very visible including for children. Children’s Mental Health Ontario’s article spoke to mid-pandemic hospital data showing the top 10 reasons children and youth ages five to 17 were hospitalized was due to mental health issues which took the number one, two, four and 10 spots. This article is intended to provide a few suggestions to consider to support mental health and wellbeing, if your child is experiencing mental health challenges please reach out to your doctor or a mental health professional. Please find below 3 considerations for parents to do to support their child’s wellbeing:

1. Provide a Safe Space for Feelings. It is important for kids to feel like they have safe spaces to share their feelings and experiences with a caring adult. Parents can provide this for kids with parental self-regulation, active listening, curiosity rather than judgement, and tuning into what your child may need or asking them what they may need depending on the situation.
2. Acknowledge Strengths/Capabilities. When discussing the above you can weave in how well your child did at identifying and expressing their emotions, or how they problem-solved situation with a friend. It can be helpful for a child to receive meaningful and specific feedback on a regular basis as this helps them feel seen, feel valued, and helps build their sense of self. An example of non-specific versus specific feedback is “You are so smart (non-specific)”, versus “I saw how concentrated you were in figuring out that math problem, and how you used your own strategy of problem-solving to figure it out, good job”.
3. Support Your Child’s Coping. With the above two this one becomes easier to achieve. Why is that you may ask, this is because when a child has the opportunity to share their feelings and experiences they have “unloaded their emotional backpacks” allowing them space to internally resource what they may need in that moment. And as they build the capacity to do this, they are building their ability to self-regulate with your support today and one day on their own. Secondly, when children feel seen and valued through being acknowledged many of their emotional needs are being met, and they have more capacity to try and be open to expanding their coping tools.

​If you need additional support reach out to me, I am Nicole Levy, and I am here as your helping hand, let’s get started, book your complimentary initial consult today https://www.mindfulhealingjourney.ca/#/