EveryDay Strong: Why your mental health affects your child’s mental health
Today, anxiety and depression are almost inevitable.
We have all felt one or the other, whether it be acute or chronic. We know what it feels like.
Yet, when it comes to children, we can feel lost trying to navigate them through those feelings. The goal is not to eliminate anxiety completely, but to help our children cope in a healthy way. Parents are the first, and most important, example of a healthy response to anxiety and depression for our children.
Demonstrating a healthy mind can be one tool we use to combat increasing rates of anxiety and depression among youth in Utah County. Here are three things you can do to exemplify resilience.
Nurture safety through showing weakness
As parents, we often feel like we need to be the superhero and never show weakness. However, expressing weakness can be one of the most beneficial things we can do for our children. When we talk to our kids about our own anxieties and struggles, we make it OK to be vulnerable.
The next time your child comes to you with problems or if they are feeling down, tell them about a time you felt anxiety or depression and how you overcame it. Being willing to share fosters a safe environment for our children to communicate their own feelings without fear of judgment. In turn, our children will feel safe to feel, safe to fail, and safe to be themselves.
Connect with your child through connecting with yourself
It seems that every second of the day is spent taking care of our children. This, of course, is great! They need us to take care of them. More importantly, they need us to connect with them.
However, they also need us to connect with ourselves. It is easy to feel like taking time for ourselves is neglecting our children or being selfish. However, taking a time-out for our own self-care is one of the most important things we can do for our anxious child.
If there are times we don’t feel physically or mentally well enough to go to our child’s dance recital or soccer game, it is OK! When we neglect our mental health, it is more difficult to have genuine connections with our children because our mind is tired.
When we allow ourselves time for self-care, we strengthen our mental health. This, in turn, allows for greater opportunity to give our children the undivided connection they need.
Build confidence by trivializing failures
It’s OK to fail! However, it is difficult, even for parents, to fail. Sometimes, children feel like they are failing when they feel anxiety or depression. Or, maybe, their anxiety and depression is triggered by failure. Parents can be great examples of failure for children.
A good way of showing them that failure is inevitable is by relaying to them a time when you’ve failed and how you overcame it. Another way is to react positively to failure in the moment. Instead of getting angry or sad when we fail, we can laugh at or brush it off.
Through trivializing failure, we demonstrate that failure is not connected to our worth or confidence. Our children will see and imitate this response the next time they face disappointment. Remaining confident, even through failure, is one way we can prevent failure from causing anxiety or depression in the future.
United Way is on a mission to help every child in our community feel safe, connected, and confident. Twice a month in this space, we’ll be sharing ideas from local professionals, parents, and friends about how you can do that for the kids in your life. In the meantime, find us at http://www.everydaystrong.org, or on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
