How to Teach Kids About Minority Mental Health - Colourful Teaching For You
How to Teach Kids About Minority Mental Health

https://youtu.be/4qrlecHMYos

July is the month of National Minority Mental Health Awareness. Even though this is mainly noted in the United States, it’s important to discuss this wherever you live or teach. Whether you’re a parent or teacher of minority background or not, raising awareness within ourselves and our kids about minority cultures and communities will enable us to better understand what affects their mental health. This will help us support those who need it and provide children with the mental health equity that they need.

Even though the point of this article is to raise awareness about minority mental health, mental illnesses affect kids of all ages and ethnicities. Let’s take some time to teach our kids about how to care for their mental health. This is can really help a child because typically, families of minority backgrounds have less access to mental health resources and many people don’t know what’s available to them.

Even if your child or a child you know is not struggling at this moment, arming them with this knowledge will allow them to seek support when and if they ever need it, especially if at some point they feel as though they can’t talk to the adults that are close to them.

Mental health impacts a person’s emotions and social well-being. It affects how a child may deal with stress, behave and the kinds of choices that they’ll make for themselves. Mental illnesses can affect a person for a short or a long period of time and can be caused by a variety of factors, such as isolation, substance addictions, abuse, medical illnesses and so much more.

Minority Mental Health Actionable Steps:

#1. Raise Awareness

Teach children about different cultures and the stigmas that are perpetuated about them.

You can’t teach your children about every single culture out there so start with a general concept of about the cultures in your community. Then get specific by talking about the cultures in your classroom. You can do this with the following resources.

There’s no prep required on your part. You just need print the resource for each of your children and put them in a binder or folder. This activity can be completed in a month of over the span of a term and can easily fit into your health, language arts, art, and social studies curriculum. It includes a step-by-step teaching guide. This activity puts the ball in your students’ court as they are required to do the work and then to teach the class.

Click on the images below to check out the resources.

#2. Provide Resources

This will change depending on where you live, but it’s important to ensure that students know about the different places that they can go to get some help whenever they need it. Reflect on the following questions before teaching this lesson.

  • 1. Are there phone numbers that they can call where they can remain anonymous so that they aren’t afraid of someone they know finding out about what they’re going through? If so, have your kids recite and memorize the numbers.
  • 2. Is there a place they can go to if they want to talk to someone in person? Find the address and some landmarks so that they can go there when and if they need it.
  • 3. Are there counselling locations that will do in-person and online consults. If so, provide your students with those phone numbers and addresses.
#3. Teach Self-Regulation

Teach your children how to safely self-regulate so that they can better manage their thoughts and emotions. This can help many children from developing low self-esteem or finding a need to harm themselves or others.

You can do this with the following resources. They also provide you with ways to teach you children specific coping skills and allows you to keep a record of their ongoing development.

Minority Mental Health Recap:

Let’s recap really quickly. Today, we looked at the following:

  1. The importance of raising awareness for minority mental health.
  2. How to teach kids about minority mental health: raise awareness, provide resources, and teach self-regulation.

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.

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!

How to Teach Kids About Minority Mental Health

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