Self-Care & Mental Wellness: Dr. Caroline Leaf On The Top Five Self-Care Practices That Improve Mental Wellness

An Interview With Maria Angelova

Teach your children boundaries from a young age. From the moment children are born, they are tied to their environment and the people within their environment. Children are all born into a community, which has a huge impact on their identity and growth. They develop a sense of who they are in relation to who they are with. This has a huge potential for growth and connection, but also a huge potential for harm.

Let’s face it. It seems that everyone is under a great deal of stress these days. This takes a toll on our mental wellness. What are some of the best self-care practices that we can use to help improve our mental wellness and mental well-being? In this interview series, we are talking to medical doctors, mental health professionals, health and wellness professionals, and experts about self-care or mental health who can share insights from their experience about How Each Of Us Can Use Self Care To Improve Our Mental Wellness. As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Dr. Caroline Leaf.

Dr. Caroline Leaf, author of How to Help Your Child Clean up Their Mental Mess [Baker; August 8] is a mental health expert, clinical neuroscientist and researcher, and mother of four. Her passion is to help people see the power of the mind to change the brain, control chaotic thinking, and find mental peace. Since the early 1980s, Dr. Leaf has researched the mind-brain-body (psychoneurobiology) connection, the nature of mental health, and the formation of memory and learning.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to hear a little about you. Inspire us with your backstory! What are some lessons you would share with your younger self if you had the opportunity?

I would love to tell my younger self it is okay to feel sad, overwhelmed, lost, or anxious at times, and that these are normal responses to life’s challenges, not a mental illness or signs that something is wrong with my brain. I would say that all the challenging experiences I am going through are building my mental resilience, and I will make it through the days that are hard. I would also advise my younger self to talk to someone, and share what I am going through with the people I trust so that I can see that I am not the only one facing challenges. I would also tell my younger self to see intrusive thoughts as my new best friend, because they are filled with all kinds of information about how I am thinking about myself, my life and relationships, and that I can use this information to help myself.

I would tell also tell my younger self to have more fun, eat more chocolate, act silly, spend time doing those little things that bring me joy, and be present! Life is not all about work; it is also about the moments of joy that we experience every day. I would also tell my younger self to go with the flow more and not try to control things all the time — to be grateful for special moments and people in my life because looking at life through a lens of gratitude helps us to be more accepting. Yes, it is good to learn from the past, and it’s good to plan for the future or think of goals or directions you want to head towards. But it is also important to not forget we are living in the present. Being intentional about the embracing the moment we are in can really put things in perspective! I would tell my younger self one of my favorite quotes (from the children’s movie, Kung Fu Panda, which has also been attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt): “Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why we call it ‘the present’.”

None of us are able to experience success without support along the way. Is there a particular person for whom you are grateful because of the support he/ she gave you to get where you are today? Can you share that story and why you are grateful for that person?

My husband is my biggest supporter and my biggest fan. We work together, are together 24/7 and almost never spend a day apart. We have been married for 35 years, and from the day I met Mac 37 years ago, he has encouraged me to pursue my passions. He’s the one I wake up at 3 in the morning to share what I am working on and what makes me excited; he’s the one who has attended every talk I have ever given (and I do a lot of speaking!); he’s the one who listens to me for hours and helps me put my ideas into logical action steps; he’s the one who watched our four kids and cooked dinner after a long day at work so I could work with patients in the evenings because that was the only time they were able to see me. Mac truly believes in what I do in the mental health space so much that he decided to give up his successful construction company to become the CEO of our company nearly twenty years ago. In fact, our adult children work with us (three full time and one on contract), following in Mac’s footsteps, and I really couldn’t do what I do without them!

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think it might help people?

Yes! I have been working on my new children’s book called How To Help Your Child Clean Up Their Mental Mess, which is a guide for parents to help their children build mental resilience and improve their mental wellbeing from young. The book is very practical, and includes tons of examples of different situations parents and guardians may face. We have also created a character called Brain-ee, who walks children through this mental health journey, and will help make talking about their mental struggles easier. We even have a Brain-ee and Friends coloring book and a toy that can be used alongside the guides I have included in the book. This book is scheduled for release on August 8, 2023.

I am also really excited about the pyschoneurobiological (mind-brain-body connection) research I am currently doing. I have been teaching and researching in this space as a clinician and scientist for nearly 38 years now, and I have a phenomenal team! They work tirelessly with me, and we have several exciting studies and peer-reviewed publications that we are in the process of publishing. We believe that the research we are doing on the time it takes to rewire the psychoneurobiological networks that are negatively impacting the mind, brain and body into healthy habits and thought patterns will help many people who are struggling with their mental health.

Ok, thank you. Let’s talk about raising emotionally and mentally healthy children. In the Western world, humans typically have their physical needs met. But what has led to the tremendous downgrade in emotional and mental health that we are seeing today, especially for children? What is lacking in the mental health arena? Why are so many of our children struggling today?

This has largely been attributed to things like social media and the COVID pandemic. Although these are major contributors to the current mental health crisis among children and adults, I believe we spend so much time arguing about the “why” and not enough time on what comes next.

Our world has changed, and continues to change with new developments such as A.I. technology. We need to teach children how to manage these changes, including recognizing and managing the impact they have on our lives and finding a healthy balance between technology and reality. For example, we should teach our children how to understand social media and A.I. technology as another tool in their life “toolbox”. This includes recognizing the positive and negative impact on themselves and their lives in general. If they are developing body image issues because of the curated posts they see on social media, we should create a safe space at home to help them embrace, process and reconceptualize what this feels like in their minds, brains and bodies, and how they are looking at life. We need to help them reflect on why this is impacting them and how they could see this in a different way, while helping them make a plan to practice this till it becomes a habit. This is mind-management and self-regulation in action, and is one of the best mental health skills we can teach our children (and ourselves!).

Mind-management is incredibly important, especially considering how the way we view mental health has changed over the past 50 years. We tend to overlook the individual within their complex environment, and focus on seeing emotions and behaviors as a list of symptoms of a disease, much like diabetes. This approach is called the biomedical model, which looks at a list of symptoms to make a diagnosis, and assumes an underlying biological cause that needs to be treated, most often with a medication, to “eliminate” the symptoms. This approach works well if you have something like diabetes type 1 or 2 or a physical ailment, but not if you have trauma of any kind — these complex experiences cannot be subsumed into simple label. There has been a shift away from a more holistic approach of considering a person’s narrative and how this has impacted them mentally and physically, which has dramatically impacted our ability to manage mental health issues as a society.

Adding the COVID pandemic to this mix hasn’t helped. It certainly has affected us all, including our children, both on a developmental and emotional level. This is why it is so important that we teach our children mind management skills from young, to help them process what they have been through as well as find practical solutions to deal with the effects of isolation and fear from the pandemic. A child with underdeveloped mind-management tends to be more vulnerable to intense feelings of confusion as they attempt to process what they are exposed to. This will not only affect how they feel emotionally, but also their ability to learn effectively, because they do not have the skills necessary to understand what is happening to them or to communicate what they are going through.

Calming techniques like breathing and meditation are powerful tools to prepare the brain, but they need to be paired with mind management techniques that teach children how to see the link between their emotions and the physical responses and how these play out into their behaviors and perspectives on life. We have to teach our children to go beyond mindfulness, to help them work out what to do with their emotions and thoughts, and guide them through the process of actually managing and changing their minds (this process is known as neuroplasticity). This is like flying the plane; if you know how to take off but don’t know how to fly or land the plane, you will crash.

This kind of mind management requires deliberate and guided practice over time. Rewiring the psychoneurobiological networks of the mind, brain and body is not a once-off process. It takes time, and is something we should all be practicing every day as long as we are alive. Mind-management is a lifestyle, one we need to instill in ourselves and our children. Considering the mind drives the brain and the body and is how we experience life, it is essential that we teach our children this skill as a way to combat the current mental health crisis.

How does technology play into the equation of mental and emotional well-being? What about social media?

Although mental health challenges aren’t new, they’re different for each generation. Take bullying — it isn’t a new phenomenon exclusive to the twenty-first century. Now, however, children take bullying home with them on their phone, tablet, or computer. No place seems safe. A great expanse of human social interactions has changed with the advent of the technological revolution. These changes have transformed the way many people, including children, perceive themselves and the world around them, which has contributed to increased feelings of loneliness and isolation among all age groups as we spend more and more time online and alone.

It is of course important to acknowledge that advances in technology have benefitted children in many ways, such as creating online learning platforms or communities where children can form connections with other people. But there are also downsides to this technology, including the negative impact it can have on a child’s mental health if unmanaged, as mentioned above.

This is especially the case with social media. It can quickly create a type of “comparing culture”, where children see what others are doing and start comparing their own lives and experiences to what they see on social media. This can quickly make them feel inadequate, isolated, depressed and even suicidal. Research has shown that it can also lead to long-term mental health issues such as body dysmorphia and food disorders. Although these issues are not unique to social media, this new technology has increased the scope and frequency of the problem.

However, if we create a safe space for children to process how they feel and give them the tools to manage how they use social media, using this technology can become a learning experience that develops their skill set, social connections and mental resilience. Indeed, for some children, the peer support they get from social media and texting is invaluable. They can share what they are going through and even advise each other; they realize that they aren’t alone and that other people are struggling as well.

Of course, another major problem with social media is that there are many predators that go after vulnerable children online. Even though it can be hard and uncomfortable to talk about with your children, it is imperative that you teach them how to safely use social media and let them know that they can talk to you if they feel like someone is bullying or harassing them online, or if someone is treating them inappropriately. Many children won’t realize they’re in danger online because the person they are talking to seems like a friend, so, even though it can be difficult, we need to talk to them about the different ways that predators act online and let them know what to look out for.

Obviously, this is a huge issue, and it seems to be growing. What are some small, practical tips, or tweaks, that parents and educators can easily implement to help their children who are struggling?

1. As mentioned above, one of the best things we can do as parents and guardians is to let our children know that they can talk to us. We need to create a safe space that is free of judgement or anger, where children are encouraged to be curious and work out why they are showing up in a certain way.

2. Talk to your children about what social media is like and your own experiences using social media. Modeling healthy ways of engaging with sites like Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook is incredibly important, because our children don’t just hear what we say to them, they also watch what we do. We all know that what we see on social media is not the whole picture of a person’s story, but it’s easy to go down a rabbit hole and think what we see is what their life is like. Discussing this and helping your children see another perspective is important and helps teach them how to manage how they use social media so it doesn’t negatively impact their mental health.

3. I would encourage parents to set up limitations around social media. For example, you could set restrictions for how long your child uses social media or what times of the day they can access it. And I would highly encourage you to put those same limitations on yourself! Maybe make a rule saying no phones during mealtimes and encourage your children to participate in the conversation. You could also take their phones at night (especially for younger children) and read a book with them before bed. There are many ways you can teach your children how to take a break from their phone so that they don’t become reliant on it 24/7 and learn how to use technology and social media in moderation.

4. Teachers and schools should create courses on internet safety that teaches children about online dangers, privacy settings, healthy social media use, and problems like cyberbullying. As a community, we need to de-stigmatize talking about these issues, and create a reporting and community support system for children who are struggling.

In your professional opinion, what are certain triggers or signs that the state of a child’s mental and emotional health is not at its best? What is the best way to be proactive and address these signs from the get-go?

We can group the way we show up into four signals: our emotions, our behaviors, our physical responses, and our perspective. If you feel that your child is acting differently, you should pay attention to these four signals, or how they are “showing up” and why. Does your child seem more angry than usual? Are they constantly complaining about a sore stomach? Do they feel like everything makes them sad? Are they throwing more tantrums? The key is to describe what you observe, and think about the “why” behind these changes. It helps to write all this down, including the date, to see if there is a pattern. If there is a pattern, ask yourself questions like when did it start, how often is it happens, and so on (the who, what, when, where, and why). These steps will start giving you insight into what is happening and guide you into an action step, such as talking to your child and encouraging them to share how they feel and what is going on in their life, talking to your partner or a therapist to understand what is happening and better help your child process what they are going through.

These steps are part of Neurocycle® mind management method I have developed and studied over the past three decades. You can find more details in my upcoming book on children and mental health, How to Help Your Child Clean Up Their Mental Mess, which is now available for preorder.

For example, if your child’s personality seems to change overnight, think deeply about what you see. If they don’t laugh as much or are eating significantly less or more, then this is a behavior signal telling you that something is possibly going on in their life. If they seem to cry more and have more random, then this is an emotional signal telling you that something is possibly going on in their life. If they are saying things like they don’t want to go to school or they hate doing something they used to love, this may be a sign that their perspective has changed and that something is going on in their life. If your child starts complaining that their stomach hurts a lot or they are getting a lot of headaches, this could be a physical signal telling you that something is possibly going on in their life. When you notice this change, try talking to your child and letting them know that they can talk to you about what is going on. Say something like “I notice you haven’t been as happy lately, and I just wanted to check in and see if everything is okay”. Work through the Neurocycle® process mentioned above, and talking to someone you trust about what you observe, or a child mental health professional if you feel like the issue is getting more serious as your action steps.

It is important to remember that sometimes children don’t always want to answer your questions though, or don’t know how to communicate how they feel. Be patient, and don’t try to force things out of them, which can further impact how they feel and their mental wellbeing. Let them know that no matter what they do you or say, you will always love them. Keep encouraging them and validating how they feel by saying something like, “I have a feeling that you’re going through something. I know you don’t want to talk about it right know, but I am here for you. Since you seem a little sad today, do you want to go get ice cream?”. This kind of response lets them know that they are safe, it is okay for them to be sad, and that you are there form them.

This is also a great opportunity for you as a parent to learn how to manage your own feelings and practice communicating with your child in a way that doesn’t make them feel guilty or ashamed. If you feel like you need a moment to calm down or manage how you feel, take some time to calm down before communicating with your child (the Neurocycle® process is really helpful in the moment if you need to manage your reactions and calm down). When you are in a better place mentally and physically, you will have the strength, patience and time to better care for your child and help them learn to regulate their thoughts, feelings and emotions.

Another great way to be proactive as a parent is to normalize talking about mental health and mental struggles. For instance, you can create a routine where, at the end of each day, you ask your children “What is something that made you sad today? Why? What is something that made you happy today? Why?”. You can even create a mental health scale where you have different smiley or sad faces, and ask your children which one they resonated most with during the day and why. I always recommend ending the activity by encouraging them to list three things they are grateful for. This will help create an environment at home where your children feel like talking about their emotions and their experiences is normal and healthy, so that when they are struggling they will be less likely to feel guilty or hide their feelings.

Do you think we can do a better job of educating our children about their emotional and mental health? What would that look like?

We can do a better job of helping our children learn about mental health and emotions, at home and at school. We have a generation of children who are growing up in a world that has pathologized childhood and medicalized misery. To counter this, we need to teach children about thoughts, what they mean, how they operate, and how our mind and thoughts are how we respond to life. We need to teach them that whatever we experience with the mind goes through the brain and the body, which is why mind management is so important. If we don’t manage the impact of our experiences, they can affect our mental and physical wellbeing.

This means teaching children how to manage their minds from young. Children are a lot more insightful than we realize. Having conversations with your children about the challenges they people face, how we can experience things like depression or anxiety because of what happens to us, how it will sometimes feel like the world is falling apart, and so on is not just important but necessary, because like us, our children are experiencing life all the time.

It is important not just to validate our child’s feelings as normal responses to adverse circumstances, but also tell them that there are solutions — there are ways of working through the hard times in life. It is important to give them lots of examples from your own life and the lives of people you know. One of the best ways to teach our children about mental health is by being authentic and showing them how we manage our own struggles. When we do this, we show our children that even though things may feel bad right now, they are not alone or powerless.

And, as mentioned above, schools and educators also need to develop better mental health programs. We need to go beyond just encouraging children to just talk about their feelings and teach them how to actively work through their mental health struggles and build healthy habits that will better prepare them for the world.

Okay, fantastic. Here is the main question of our interview: Can you share with our readers your “5 things parents can do to raise children who are emotionally and mentally healthy”?

1. One of the main things a parent can do to raise a child who is mentally and emotionally healthy is to actively pursue their own healing, mentally and emotionally. As parents and guardians, we are role models for our children. They look to us for guidance, reassurance, experience, and safety.

Parenting is not just about sacrificing yourself or becoming a robot. You cannot be a good parent if you feel drained, overwhelmed and stressed. As mentioned above, children pick up on our emotions and behaviors. If we are not feeling great, then neither will they. So, don’t feel guilty taking the time to focus on yourself when you feel you need it. When you are in a better place mentally and physically, you will have the strength, patience and time to better care for your child and help them learn to regulate their thoughts, feelings and emotions.

It is important to remember that our children pick up on our emotions and behaviors. If we are stressed out, overwhelmed or upset because we have not given ourselves enough time to rest and reboot, then this can affect our children’s mental health and performance. On the other hand, when we take the time to invest in our mental health as parents, and we explain to our children why this is important, we teach them an invaluable life-skill. This, in turn, will help them learn how to build and maintain their own resilience as both children and adults.

So, in a way that is age appropriate, be open to your child about your own feelings. For example, when you are having a bad day, be honest with your child and talk through your feelings while also encouraging them to express their own feelings. You could say something like, “I am not feeling so happy today and we all have days like that. Do you ever have days like that?” or “It is okay to not always feel happy, sometimes we have those moments where everything seems hard. But when I don’t feel happy I try to talk about it or write it down or do things that make me feel better. When you don’t feel happy, what do you like to do?”. When you do this, you are not only being honest with yourself and validating your own feelings, but you are also teaching your child to validate theirs and letting them know it is okay to talk about what you are going through. You are creating a safe space where uncomfortable emotions like anger and sadness are normal and part of life.

Another example letting your children know when you have made a mistake and how you are going to move forward. When you do this, you show them that failure doesn’t define who you are as an individual. Sitting down and explaining your actions creates a space where your child learns that, no matter where they are in life or what they have done, their failures don’t define who they are or their worth.

2. Teach your children boundaries from a young age. From the moment children are born, they are tied to their environment and the people within their environment. Children are all born into a community, which has a huge impact on their identity and growth. They develop a sense of who they are in relation to who they are with. This has a huge potential for growth and connection, but also a huge potential for harm.

Teaching your child how to develop healthy relationships through learning to understand and set boundaries and respect the boundaries of others from a young age is important for their mental wellbeing and social development. One of the best ways we can do this as parents is to respect our children’s space, time, privacy and emotions, even when they are young. If we want our children to be able to set healthy boundaries with others, they should be able to “practice” by setting boundaries with the people they feel the safest with — their parents.

We can do this by practicing listening to what our children say and observing how they react, and creating space to let them know that if they are uncomfortable with something, then that is okay and a boundary may help them. For example, if your child does not want to be hugged by other people (even a close family member like a grandmother), letting them know this is okay and that we respect their feelings teaches them how to navigate relationship challenges from young.

I want to stress this point because we usually hear about how important it is to set boundaries with your children and how to tell them no, but not enough about acknowledging and accepting our child’s own need for boundaries. Even though children may not fully grasp the concept of boundaries, they are very aware there are certain things that they do not enjoy or feel comfortable with. When we as parents and guardians acknowledge this, we give our children the confidence to voice their needs and desires, as well as teaching them from young the importance of saying “no” and the value of consent.

3. Show your children what it means to have empathy. At its core, empathy is the ability to sense the emotions of someone else. Encouraging empathy in our children means teaching them how to think beyond themselves and focus on what another person is feeling or experiencing.

Yet teaching our children empathy is not only important for social cognition and social interaction. It also helps children build their identity and develop a sense of their own personhood as they learn to interact with the world around them. In fact, empathy and identity work together and can help a child learn how to create and respect healthy boundaries in their relationships. Eventually, your child will learn to understand what they need and, in turn, recognize and respect what other people need as well.

Yes, we all can mirror the people we interact with, but to truly empathize, we must learn how to cultivate our understanding so we can truly connect with others. We must learn to “tune in” on a deeper level. We will never be able to fully understand what someone else’s perspective or experience is, but we can learn to draw a connection to our own experience and use this to get a sense of what someone else might be going through. And, the younger we learn how to do this, the better we will understand ourselves and connect with other people as we grow. Empathy means imagining, as close as we can get, what someone is experiencing, which helps us relate to and connect with others on a deeper level.

It is however important to remember that empathy takes time to develop, even for adults! First, it is important to help your child try to understand what empathy is. Here are ways you can explain empathy to your child and help them learn how to be more empathetic:

-You can say something like “sometimes something happens to someone else, but we feel sad for them even though it didn’t happen to us. Has your friend ever hurt themselves and started crying and you felt sad for them even though you didn’t hurt yourself? Empathy means you are trying to see how you would feel if those things happen to you and how you would want someone to respond to you.”

-Remember that a big part of trying to show your child how to be empathetic starts with you as parents practicing empathy — children watch what we do and learn from us.

-Cultivating empathy also means helping your child cultivate their unique identity. It is important to help them understand that they are different from other people and may experience the world in a different way and have different feelings. When you validate your child’s experience and show them empathy, they will begin to understand what it means to have empathy for others. For example, say your child is afraid of your cat. You can say something like, “Are you feeling scared of the cat? Cats can be scary. I can hold your hand while you are close to it.” This shows you are validating their fear — you are not telling them to not be scared. You are letting them know that you see them and what they are experiencing and that you will be by their side to support them even though you are not afraid of the cat. Or, say your children are fighting and one child makes the other one cry. Rather than forcing your child to say sorry (especially when they are younger and may not be able to grasp the full meaning behind an apology), try to teach them to feel empathy. Try to say something like “Look, James, Tina is really sad and is crying. She is very hurt because you took her favorite toy. Can we try to see if we can make her feel better?” Empathy generally comes when people connect through thoughts, emotions, and actions, so encouraging your child to try do this instead of just getting angry at them will help them understand why what they did was hurtful, not just that it was “wrong” or “bad”.

-An extremely important part of cultivating empathy in young children is to help them learn and appreciate diversity at a young age. This means exposing them to different ideas, worlds, and people, and showing them these differences are good and not something to be afraid of.

4. Practice mind management every day with your child. We can start doing this by encouraging our child to embrace their emotions instead of fearing them or suppressing them. As a parent or guardian, this means watching how we respond to our child when they are struggling, and avoiding saying things like “Don’t be so sensitive” or “It isn’t that bad.” We should encourage our children to embrace their emotions as messengers, telling them that something is going on in their lives that they need to look at and address. We should let them know that it is okay to feel things like sadness, anger, frustration, anxiety and so on, and that these are normal human reactions to life that we all experience (even us as parents!).

Once they feel like what they are going through has been heard and acknowledged, then you can walk them through the mind management Neurocycle® process mentioned above, so that they can learn how to better manage how you think, feel and choose in the moment (I discuss this in detail in my new book How to Help Your Child Clean Up Their Mental Mess, which is now available for preorder):

First, walk your child through Gathering Awareness of how they are feeling by observing their warning signals more deeply. For example:

- “I feel worried and frustrated.” (emotional warning signal)

- “I have an upset tummy.” (bodily sensation warning signal)

- “I want to cry and not talk to anyone.” (behavior warning signal)

- “I hate school.” (perspective warning signal)

Next, walk them through Reflecting and Writing/Playing/Drawing what they feel, which will help them better understand what their warning signals above are pointing to. You can encourage them to ask themselves questions like:

- Why do I feel sad and frustrated?

- Why is my tummy sore?

- Why do I want to cry and not talk to anyone?

The Recheck step will help your child work out how to make the situation better. In this step, encourage your child to explore their feelings and thoughts and try to find a way to make what happened to them better.

Lastly, the Active Reach step is like taking a “treatment” or “medicine” each day to help their thinking and feelings get better, which helps your child come up with ways they can respond when they are feeling overwhelmed or unwell. This step is characterized by actions your child can do that are pleasant and happy, which stabilizes what they have learned and anchors them in a peaceful place of acceptance. It is solution-based, that is what we are going to do to continue moving forward.

With the active reach, you are taking action to reinforce the new, reconceptualized pattern of thinking you want in your life (which is replacing the old, toxic cycle). It can be something as simple as setting a reminder to give yourself a compliment every few hours, or something as big as implementing boundaries in a relationship or starting a new hobby. The active reach is incredibly significant because it instills mental autonomy. It is a way of regaining the power over your life rather than being controlled by your mental health struggles.

For children, an example of an active reach could be something like this: imagine your child is feeling a lack of confidence in their abilities at school because they are having trouble focusing in class. This lack of confidence is upsetting them and they start developing a pattern of negative self-talk and have started calling themselves stupid. After you work through the first 4 steps of the Neurocycle® with them and unpack their thoughts and feelings, the active reach focuses on finding a solution to the problem. For example, maybe they’re having trouble focusing because they can’t concentrate if they sit too still, so a great active reach would be buying them fidget toy or ball to sit on, which may help them concentrate better at school.

This step is great at teaching children to try and look for solutions rather than get stuck in their emotions, which is an important part of building a child’s mental resilience. Teaching your children this kind of mind management, where they learn to not only validate what they feel but also look for ways forward, is truly one of the best things we can do to raise mentally and emotionally resilient children.

5. Teach your child how to validate how they feel and be present in the moment. Often, people struggle with their emotions by hiding them because they feel ashamed, or they suppress how they feel because they are uncomfortable or don’t understand their emotions. Sometimes, people don’t trust their own feelings because they have been gaslit or lied to. Yet awareness and validation is the first step in healing, and is an important step in managing how we feel, as mentioned above.

You can teach your child the importance of validating their own emotions and how they feel in the moment by doing precisely that — validating them. When your child tells you how they feel, listen to them and show them that what they are saying is important, so that they know that what they are feeling is valid. Let them know you have heard what they are saying by responding in a clear way; for example, say something like “I can see that this was really tough thing for you and that you are sad and frustrated.” Teach them that their experiences are always important and should be explored, not suppressed. Explain to them that, even though it can be uncomfortable to talk about these feelings, once they explore them and understand them better, they can find answers and develop practices that will help make their struggles more bearable.

Do you have any favorite books, podcasts, or resources you recommend to our audience reading this interview?

• Dr. Nicole LePera is an excellent mental health resource. She has several books and her social media is really helpful and uplifting!
• Nedra Tawwab is a great resource as well, she wrote a book called Drama Free that helps with family relationships. It is a must-read!
• Dr. Ann-Louise T. Lockhart is a really great parenting coach and has a lot of resources on her social media and website.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I believe that accessible and affordable mental health care is a basic human right, and I would like to start a movement where this becomes a reality. This is part of the reason I created my app, called Neurocycle® — to make mind management and self-regulation practices more affordable and accessible. I also think social media can be a great platform to provide mental health lessons, tips, and resources, and its free!

What is the best way for our readers to continue to follow your work online?

They can follow my Instagram or Twitter @drcarolineleaf. My website is drleaf.com.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.

About The Interviewer: Maria Angelova, MBA is a disruptor, author, motivational speaker, body-mind expert, Pilates teacher and founder and CEO of Rebellious Intl. As a disruptor, Maria is on a mission to change the face of the wellness industry by shifting the self-care mindset for consumers and providers alike. As a mind-body coach, Maria’s superpower is alignment which helps clients create a strong body and a calm mind so they can live a life of freedom, happiness and fulfillment. Prior to founding Rebellious Intl, Maria was a Finance Director and a professional with 17+ years of progressive corporate experience in the Telecommunications, Finance, and Insurance industries. Born in Bulgaria, Maria moved to the United States in 1992. She graduated summa cum laude from both Georgia State University (MBA, Finance) and the University of Georgia (BBA, Finance). Maria’s favorite job is being a mom. Maria enjoys learning, coaching, creating authentic connections, working out, Latin dancing, traveling, and spending time with her tribe. To contact Maria, email her at angelova@rebellious-intl.com. To schedule a free consultation, click here.