Our mental health and overall well-being affect how we think, act, and feel. Our state of well-being also affects how we cope with stress, relate to others, make important life decisions, and how we engage with our family, friends, community, colleagues, work, and relationships. This is why we need to take care of our mental health and overall well-being.
This article explains, how mental health issues like stress, depression, childhood trauma, etc. can affect your child’s life and what you can do to help. We’ll also discuss some brilliant mental health activities for kids. So, stay tuned on BEaYOUtilicious, to learn more about your child’s mental health, common mental disorders in children, their treatments, preventions, and other public health research on children’s mental health.
(Related: Mindfulness for Stress Management: The Best Ways of Coping with Stress with Mindfulness)
Table of Contents
I. Managing, supporting, and practicing mental healthcare often:
1. Boost your well-being:
- Little things can make a big difference to your well-being. Such as: spending time with people who genuinely make you feel good about yourself, and with the ones you genuinely care about.
- Express your feelings through journaling. Start journaling and make a gratitude list, write daily about your day, etc.
2. Have a good night’s sleep:
- Lack of sleep or mental health problems like insomnia can also increase the risk of your child’s mental health with issues like stress, depression, lack of productivity, distractions, and anxiety, etc. So, aim for at least 7-9 hours of sleep per night and let them take naps throughout the day, if possible.
- Avoid looking at TV or phone screens one hour before going to bed.
3. Keep yourself busy and active throughout the day:
Exercise can help you relieve stress, improve memory, and boost your mood while improving your mood swings.
- Use your break time to get some fresh air and walk around after every meal for about 10 minutes
- Join gym or yoga lessons, etc.
II. How to Nurture your kid’s Mental Health?
- Actively listen before offering your advice
- Be patient
- Share your feelings and validate theirs
- Tell them the truth
- Model healthy behavior
- Make sure to be consistent and follow through with all the promises
- Believe them and in them
- Practice relaxation exercises together
- Recognize positive choices
- Set and respect boundaries
- Reach out and hug them
- Make play and exercise a requirement
- Limit electronic time for everyone
- View their behavior as a window to their needs and feelings
- Have some intimate family time and always have dinner together
- Have family scheduled time for fun activities
- Respond calmly when their emotions are elevated
- Be present and pay attention to your kids
- Model forgiveness
- Teach them how to handle rejection
- Use open-ended questions
- Teach them how to be safe
- Surround them healthy and wise adults
- Check their company and teach them the importance of a good company
- Never tell them your worries about money and other adult stuff, just yet, after all, they are just kids
- Always be there for them
III. Brilliant Mental Health Activity for Kids
1. Worry Time:
Set aside a time each day for your child’s worry and mindfully listen to them. Discuss with your child what is bothering them, or how they are feeling these days about their study or other personal stuff in general.
During this time, encourage them to write down their worries on a piece of paper, if they are facing difficulty in telling them. Then accordingly, discuss them with your partner and kid. Then you can take the corrective measures to solve the problem.
2. Activity Planning:
Create an activity planner or maybe a diary with your child and help them to schedule some find and pleasurable/achievement-related activities.
3. Talk About Feelings:
Create some time each week where your child can speak to you about their feelings, emotions, and thoughts, make them feel at ease. Listen to them mindfully while they are talking, and think about what you can do to help them.
4. Three God Things:
Before going to bed, spend some time with your child to identify and write down three good things they have achieved throughout the day.
5. Well-Being:
Support your child to look after their wellbeing. Cook healthy and fun meals with your kids. Exercise or play sport with them and make sure they are getting enough sleep.
6. Imagery:
Work with your child to imagine themselves in an imaginary future where everything has turned out positively.
7. Thought Testing:
Try setting out some time for simple and fun activities to help your child test out the validity of thought and feeling.
8. Thought Challenging:
Help and encourage your child to write down any unhelpful and negative thought that has been bothering them. Try to challenge your child with some thought-provoking queries, and come up with more realistic and helpful ones.
9. Being Present:
Help your child to be present and live in the moment without judgments. Go for a walk in nature, breathe in some fresh air, and see how many different things you can both take in with all your senses.
(Also Read: How to Build Self-Esteem?)
Also, check out this amazing book: Mindfulness Bookwork for Kids by Hannah Sherman