For the Parents

There could be many reasons as to why you, the parent, are here looking at this page. For whatever reason, you are here I applaud you for taking the first step to help understand your child’s mental health or wanting to better their mental health.

Mental health can be brought up in a child’s life for many different reasons. There are three main factors that you as a parent should take into consideration: Environmental, hereditary, and risk factors. The factor that is the most common is environmental those included but not limited to trauma, child abuse, family/relationship problems, substance abuse/risk-taking, etc.

Starting from a young age a person’s mental health is essential. It doesn’t matter if the child is 5 or even 17 mental health in all children should be treated with the same amount of attention but with different techniques per age group. Positive reinforcement and the right kind of resources/support will not only strengthen your bond with your child but will help your child feel like they belong in a world where their brain tells them that they don’t.

Parents in their child’s Life

Having a full house, meaning, a father, and a mother are important to a child’s mental health. As minor as it is having a father and a mother in the household is important to the health of the child. Not only having a full house is important to a child’s mental health but also being supportive of your child. Starting from a young age children latch on to the mother or father figure. If that figure is to leave their life it can become detrimental for the child. Having the support from those parental figures that surround the child is very important. Whether the parents live together or not having their support and love is important to the mental health of the child.

Parents have a lot of effects on their child’s mental health. Studies have been made stating that parents with poor mental health are more likely to have children with poor health; mental, emotional, or developmental disabilities. Finding what fits your parenting skills is up to you but knowing how to do that is harder than you think. This is why I am going to tell you about a few ways that you can help your child with their mental health as someone who deals with mental health daily.

Ways to help

Some things that you could do to support your child is just listening to what they have to say. Some may think well that is easy enough to do. Yes, but you are probably not doing it the way that your child wants you to or is beneficial to them. When I say listen to your child what I mean is just stopping what you are doing while they are talking to you and just listening to listen. Take in what they are saying and really understand what they are going through. Don’t listen with the intent of trying to rebuttal their feelings or fix their problems. Unless you are a licensed psychologist you can’t fix their mental health problems. Trying to figure out how to rebuttal their feelings will just push them farther away from you and make them not want to tell you how they are feeling. If you just take the time to listen to what is really what’s going on inside their head. I bet you that your child will talk to you more about it and be more vulnerable to you because they are releasing those emotions that they have built up over the years. The most important thing is that you listen with empathy, not the intent of trying to fix their problem.

Be open about mental health. The awareness of mental health over the last few years has increasingly grown with people understanding what it is and who it really is affecting. There are resources out there to find psychologists with just a click of a button and the same with finding coping mechanisms (Both can be found on my resources page). Mental health does not care whether you were born a male or female, what your religion is, what your race is, how old you are or who you are in love with. Mental health can affect anyone around you. It is one of the most underlying health issues that is continually growing and the stigma around it is changing slowly. In past generations, it was horrible to come out saying that you had mental health problems. People were not open to talking about the issues surrounding mental health problems. They would try to ignore it and just send someone to a hospital and hope that they are fixed when they come out.

It takes time, acceptance, and effort to make the progress. A hospital stay can be a beginning, but it is not the fix it. Not everything can be fixed with the snap of the fingers it takes time, effort, and baby steps. The most important thing that you can do for your child is just be there for them. Some of them want to have that strong bond they used to have before with you guys but sometimes its hard for them because they feel that their feeling won’t be accepted by you, the parent, so the next time your child wants to talk to you about their emotions and their feelings be that supporting figure that they want you to be for them.