Above all, a child’s wellbeing is more important than the curriculum or anything else for that matter. Therefore, it’s important to teach our children about mental health. In the past, there’s been an emphasis on physical wellbeing in regards to mental health. For example, having your child participate in different sports or playing a musical instrument was seen as the best way to help a child develop their physical or inner strength.
While this is important, mental health was rarely taught as a topic on its own, until recently. It can no longer be seen as an afterthought because it’s essential to a child’s development.
Mental health issues are on the rise. We are being faced with a rise in issues like anxiety, bullying, depression and so forth. When this escalates, it can be incredibly difficult to manage.
Additionally, when a child is young, if they feel safe, they are comfortable enough to go to a parent or teacher for guidance. However, as they get older, most children and even adults, step away from this and try to process their thoughts and emotions either on their own, or with a trusted peer. So, it’s important for us to teach our children about managing their mental health from the time that they’re very young so that they are equipped to make big decisions when they’re older.
Teaching your child about how to manage their mental health in a healthy way will set them up for life.
As National Children’s Mental Health Day is on May 9th, let’s bring this topic to life by starting the discussion that day and integrating it into our curriculum or daily life.
What is Mental Health?
When it comes to physical health, we focus on taking care of our physical body. With mental health, we’re working on our thoughts and emotions.
Taking care of our mental health is just as important and our physical health. In many ways, they are interconnected. If one is hurting, the other will eventually start to hurt as well if we don’t take the necessary steps to take care of it.
Mental health can be thought of as a spectrum. We’re not always elated but can be happy with one aspect of our life and saddened by another. Our emotions and thoughts will vary at different times of the day and during different circumstances.
The goal is to learn how to recognize what we’re feeling, when it occurs, and what triggered that emotion. This will help us cope instead of feeling overwhelmed and defeated.
The emphasis for this article is to teach our children about not only the above statement but to help them hone in on their negative feelings, such as the feelings or stress or sadness before it begins to affect their mental health and starts to feel overwhelming as this can lead to depression and anxiety.
Mental Health Actionable Steps:
#1. Model Healthy Habits
As mentioned above, mental health is a spectrum, so each child will experience a wide range of emotions in a day. They may feel really excited, upset, or grief, but depending on the age, mental wellbeing and life experience, a child may or may not have the ability to vocalize their feelings.
Regardless, a child will communicate it to the people around them by throwing a tantrum or hugging someone without asking for permission first. Therefore, it’s important to remain calm and show your children how to express their emotions appropriately. You can do this by saying an emotion that your feeling, letting them know why you’re feeling that way and how you’re going to manage it.
If you teach these mental health strategies all year round, your children will pick up on the words and actions over time.
If you’d like some support with this, check out the following resources. They also provide you with ways to teach you children specific coping skills as well.
#2. Discuss Self Image
Have your children journal about what they think about themselves: their mind, their body, and their abilities. It’s important give them a safe place to voice their opinions and to get them to start thinking about their self image.
Remind your children that we all go through waves of feelings about ourselves. For example, I may feel great about my ability to sing today but horrible tomorrow. This is normal. How we manage our thoughts about our self image is important because if we constantly feel bad about ourselves and we let it fester on within ourselves, it can get out of hand and lead to some serious issues in the future.
Remind your children that no one is perfect. There is no individual in this world who has the perfect mind, body or abilities. It may be a good idea to remind children about all of the different parts of our body and what they can do because there’s so many people in the world who are missing specific parts and aren’t as capable as them. Teach them how to be grateful for each of their body parts, their abilities and their beautiful thoughts. Help them live in this space of gratitude as it will teach them how to reframe their way of thinking over time.
#3. Integrate it into the Learning
If you’re a teacher, embed this into your physical education, daily physical activity, health, writing and art lessons so that it’s not a stand-alone activity.
If you’re a parent, take your kids out to play or enroll them in physical activities, teach them about healthy eating, dressing, hygiene and emotional regulation.
Whether you’re in the classroom or at home, set some time every day or every couple of days to check in with your children so that they know that you care about their wellbeing. Even if they’re not ready to talk to you right away, they’ll know that you’re there for them when they really need you.
#4. Start a Conversation Circle
Have your children sit in a circle for this discussion. For younger ones, if you have a carpet, have them sit on that. For older children, they can form a circle and sit on their chairs. Use this as an opportunity to do the following:
- Discuss steps #1 and #2;
- Talk about your views and experiences and then ask students about theirs;
- Review coping strategies that are outlined in the resource in step #1. Make it a habit to practice at least one of them during each of your conversation circles.
Engage in conversation circles at least once a week for older children and every few days if not every day for younger ones. You can call them conversation circles, morning meeting – if you’re meeting in the morning, or afternoon meeting- if you’re meeting in the afternoon.
In my class, we meet every morning so that we can start are day off strong by focusing on healthy habits. I call it our morning meeting.
Mental Health Recap:
Let’s recap really quickly. Today, we looked at the following:
- What is mental health and the reasons we should be open to discussing it with our children.
- Four simple ways to teach kids about mental health: model healthy habits, discuss self image, integrate it into the learning, and start a conversation circle.
Free Resources:
If your children are struggling to hand in assignments on time, check out the following video training: 3 Steps to Teach Children How to Overcome Procrastination to Increase Productivity.
In the mean time, if you’re feeling stressed out, overwhelmed and burnout, then I encourage you to check out the following: FREE MASTERCLASS: Systematic Plan to Super Passionate.
Next Steps:
For calm down areas on a budget, for your students who have autism, CLICK HERE.
If you found this video beneficial, would you do me a favor? Share this with your family, your friends, your loved ones, your co-workers or someone who you think could benefit from this. Thank you!
I’ll see you next Friday at 5:30pm PST.
Until I see you next time, remember to create, experience & teach from the heart.
Take care,
Charlotte
Disclaimer: I’m a teacher and a parent. I’m not a medical professional, so please don’t take this as medical advice. The advice that I provide in my videos and online are strategies that I have used in my own class or at home that have worked beautifully. Since mental health is a spectrum, make sure to adapt these strategies for your individual child. Thank you!
