Did you know how much your support means to your child’s mental health? For children, parents are the people they trust and feel safe with. And as a parent, it’s your responsibility to ensure you give them the right parental support so that they grow up into fine adults. Learn what role parental support plays in your child’s mental health and strategies that you can use to provide good parental support to your child. Visit the best Mental Health Clinic in Brooklyn at Doral Health & Wellness or log on to www.doralhw.org
Importance of Parental Support for Child’s Mental Health
For a child to get good mental health, parental support plays a significant role in helping them to develop traits like self-confidence, building self-esteem, practice preserving, setting goals, making decisions, learning coping skills, managing difficult emotions, and creating a healthy emotional outlook to grow as a fine adult.
However, teaching these skills to a child is not an easy task, it takes practice and patience, especially if your child has a mental health issue like depression or anxiety. These mental health issues are not very uncommon. But left untreated, these mental health issues have a significant effect on a child’s life. Elementary school children with mental health issues may even miss school or get suspended or expelled.
Additionally, it also has long-term consequences as well like other mental disorders or chronic medical conditions. Also, early-life mental health issues can lead to mental health or substance abuse disorders in adulthood.
That’s why children need to be taught effective coping skills by their parents to avoid these kinds of behaviors later in life to manage emotions. According to the American Psychological Association, approximately 15 million young people in the US are diagnosed with a mental health disorder and many more are at risk of developing a disorder.
As a parent, you need to counteract these issues by not only supporting your children’s mental health but also ensuring that they are not facing any mental obstacles. So that, in their growing years they learn all the important skills to handle mental health or become a fine adult.
7 Strategies for dealing with your kid’s mental health
Here are some strategies you can use to deal with your kid’s mental health problems:
- Show unconditional love:
This is very essential for your child’s mental health to understand your love and support for them. If they know that they have support from you no matter whatever difficulty they are facing or dealing with, your love for them stays unconditional and you are there for them, this increases their feelings of security and safety in the home.
However, it doesn’t mean you should not scold them for their mistakes, instead, you need to tell them how they should learn from their mistakes and how they can avoid doing it again. It’s possible that sometimes you feel disappointment in your child which is okay, but don’t make them feel that the disappointment carries more weight than your love for them.
- Teach healthy coping skills:
Your child may have difficulty in dealing with their emotions, so you should teach them about healthy coping ways to handle their emotions. And you encourage them to use these skills often until they learn these skills properly, you need to keep teaching them. These skills include deep breathing, using stress balls, making art, listening to calming music, yoga, exercise, and walking in nature can be great strategies for them to cope with their feelings.
- Praise your character:
Encouragement, praise, and affirmations from you plays a very essential role in your child’s life in building self-confidence and self-esteem and also supporting their mental health. Research shows that low self-esteem is linked with anxiety, depression, and academic stress, which can deeply affect a child’s quality of life. Low self-esteem can also lead to suicidal ideation.
Praising your child can help to develop character traits more often than physical traits or achievement-oriented things. As children respond well to positive reinforcement, you need to apply these reinforcements repeatedly such as being kind, showing empathy, and helping others, so that they do the same.
- Spend time with them:
When you spend time with them as a family, it not only strengthens your bonds with them but also gives you facetime with your kids to learn about what they are struggling with, and what their dreams are. This also sends the message that your kids are important and that you care about what’s happening in their lives. You can also learn how to recognize issues in your child’s life if you are regularly spending time together. Parents can create family time with their children by doing things like having family meals, taking walks together, completing projects together, assisting with homework, or playing games with one another. You can also show care about the people your children care about. You can also tell them what unhealthy relationships or friendships are so that they know how to make healthy friendships with people.
- Communicate regularly:
When you talk with children, it will consistently help them with their problems and solve tricky situations. You allow them to talk about emotions and they’ll freely explore their feelings. As a parent, you are more likely to notice more things that you first missed if you talk with them consistently.
You can start this conversation with them by asking about their day after school, a party, or a special event. Getting your child to share these things, both the good and the bad, provides you with the opportunities to help them troubleshoot the issues they face.
- Build trust:
Building trust is one of the crucial foundations that your child needs to feel safe. When your child feels safe, they develop and learn properly. This also reduces the likelihood of mental health challenges and even if mental health problems do occur, they happen to possess the tools to deal with them. One way to build trust and foster the feeling of safety is to create an environment in your home where your kids feel safe to discuss their feelings and struggles. You can do that by being a good role model yourself.
Most children learn by example, if you set a good example by accepting and sharing your struggles and challenges, they will become better parents.
- Get professional help, if needed:
Sometimes as a parent, it is difficult to understand your child’s needs, and whenever it happens it’s overwhelming or frustrating to handle your child’s behaviors or respond to their emotions appropriately, you should seek professional help. Don’t feel afraid to get professional help, instead, it allows you and your child to open up and learn what better ways you can use to support your child. They can also teach you healthy coping strategies, build resilience, and teach you to manage difficult situations and emotions.
Parental support for children’s mental health is very crucial in their growing years to develop the skills and traits needed to become well-adjusted adults. It builds their self-esteem, self-confidence, perseverance, improving decision making skills, managing difficult emotions, and creating healthy outlooks. If your child has a mental health problem, you can use the above-mentioned tips to provide parental support for your child’s mental health.
If you need help with your child’s mental health, visit our mental health clinic in Brooklyn to get professional medical help. Book your appointment with the best mental health professionals in Brooklyn where doctors and staff ensure you get the best results. Call us on +1-347-384-5690 to get a consultation. If you need help learning coping methods, register your information and make direct contact with our doctors and psychiatrists to learn those methods, log on to www.doralhw.org. Visit us at 1797 Pitkin Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11212.
