Nurturing Your Child's Well-Being: A Guide for Parents to Cultivate Hope and Resilience
With the challenges children face today, from academic pressures to social media’s influence, fostering their mental and emotional health has never been more important. Read on for some strategies and insights to help you in this enriching yet challenging endeavour.
In the whirlwind of modern parenting, nurturing a child’s well-being has taken on new dimensions. With the challenges children face today, from academic pressures to social media’s influence, fostering their mental and emotional health has never been more important. As a parent, you play a pivotal role in guiding and supporting your child on this journey towards well-being. Here are some strategies and insights to help you in this enriching yet sometimes challenging endeavour.
Encourage Open Communication
Communication is the cornerstone of understanding your child's world. Create an environment where your child feels safe to express their thoughts and emotions. Such an environment will give your child the liberty to talk freely and to feel that their opinions and ideas are valued. This environment places no judgement and is open to listen at all times
Foster a Supportive Environment
Children flourish when they feel supported. Whether it's a difficult maths problem or a problem with a friend, show your child that you're there to offer guidance and encouragement. Achievements are to be celebrated as much as the effort that is put into activities. Such a supportive environment is also one that makes a child feel safe being around reliable and trusted people.
Prioritise Mental and Physical Health
A healthy mind resides in a healthy body. Encourage regular physical activity, nutritious meals, and adequate sleep. There many ways to work on mental and physical health and your modelling is very important here. A child needs to see that you value your own good health and well being. Talk about healthy ideas and associate with environments that nourish positive thinking about eating well and living well.
Instil Resilience and Coping Skills
Life is full of ups and downs, and teaching your child to navigate these fluctuations is a priceless gift. Resilience is such a key catalyst in building emotional maturity. Teach your child how failure can be a positive growth curve and that we learn best by taking risks and having a go. Putting ourselves in challenging situations is also another way of learning resilience.
Set Realistic Expectations
While it's natural to want the best for your child, it's crucial to set realistic expectations. Each child is unique and has their own pace of development. It is most important to learn about balance and to recognise what is a realistic challenge for your child. Take care that they set goals that are within reach. Progressive success along the way is the best form of encouragement.
Lead by Example
Children often emulate the behaviours they observe in their parents. Show them how you handle stress, make decisions, and maintain a positive outlook. Being a model can be tiring and so your child simply wants your honest efforts put forward. Be authentic, when you make a mistake be honest about it but let your child know how you keep trying.
Well being is a life long journey of discovery about yourself. As a parent you have the joy of being such an important part of their early well being. You cannot be perfect in this area in fact if you try too hard you will wear yourself out and feel frustrated by your lack of achievements. Simply be yourself and take care to provide a climate that is inviting and welcoming to your growing child.
‘A happy home is full of grace and well being’
- Gail J Smith
Negative thoughts can get us down and drown us with worry
Have you ever felt overcome by negative feelings about a range of issues? In this case, I am referring to your child. Often it is the poor behaviour that you see and want to disassociate with as quickly as possible. In fact, when we see such behaviour, we can have all sorts of related feelings such as:
You love the child, you dislike the behaviour. Keep it separate in your thoughts.
I am a poor parent.
I don’t discipline enough. I should be harder.
I really try but they don’t listen.
Why are they so nasty?
I don’t like their personality.
So many feelings come up to the surface and can easily cause us to lose sight of what we are actually dealing with and that is a child.
I have heard parents say to me when things seemed gloomy that they felt like dissociating with their child. And of course, felt guilty because of these feelings. Oh, what an unsettled web we weave in our head when a series of bad behaviour seems to be all-consuming. I would say that it can become all-consuming and you become highly sensitive and on guard to what is the next challenge to your emotional stability. You almost wait for the next entourage of poor behaviour which keeps making you so unhappy.
My first thought is to remind yourself that too many negative thoughts just continue to feed off each other and the problem has by nature of your anxiety increased existentially. To help you put things into perspective, reflect on the following thoughts that come from many years of seeing children grow through their problems developing into well rounded young adults.
Keep in mind that the behaviour will pass. It is only a moment in time in the life of your child.
He or she is, after all, a child and this is a testing time to express themselves.
Accept that you will not like some of their behaviour but that is acceptable. It is natural to reject poor behaviour. It is natural to want to address the problem.
Take space. When you feel overwhelmed just take a walk. This can be a short moment away from the situation or a planned extended time to have a break from the issues that are becoming too hard to manage.
Remember that they are children’s problems and that is normal.
Don’t compare your child’s behaviour to others. This only builds resentment and further negative feelings.
When feelings are overwhelming and negative remind yourself how much you love that child. Think about happy times together. Could you live without them?
Try to be less affected when poor behaviour occurs. Take deep breaths and keep in mind that it will pass. You will not be having this problem in a year or two. Everything changes so quickly with children.
When you have a negative thought about your child look at some photos of your child which remind you of the beauty and sweetness of that child. They are a magnificent individual that will grow into a wonderful young adult.
Remind yourself that poor behaviour is exactly that. It is often driven by other factors and it not about the person of the child. You love the child, you dislike the behaviour. Keep it separate in your thoughts.
When you have negative feelings work harder to have happy times with your child. Keep up the cuddles, laughter and family activities.
Shorten activities and have some fun together. Short sharp bursts of fun together are very healing.
Talk to your child’s teacher about the wonderful things they have noticed about your child. Often this can be an eye-opener to parents.
There is nothing going for focussing on negative thoughts. They only inhibit your ability to move on and work through issues calmly and reasonably. The more we fill our head with negative feelings with regard to our children, the further we distance ourselves from developing a rich relationship. Every child deserves that with or without bad behaviour attached.
“We are imperfect humans growing imperfect humans in a world and that’s perfectly okay.”