Yes, You Do Have to Talk to Your Kid About Mental Health  Heres How

Yes, You Do Have to Talk to Your Kid About Mental Health Heres How Being a parent means youll eventually need to have tough conversations with your kids, whether its about explaining the birds and the bees or talking about grief and loss. But while these kinds of topics are mora prevalent to discuss, theres one subject that needs to be brought to the forefront and its the discussion about mental health.But why is it imperative for parents to talk to their kids about mental health? Well, according to postdoctoral psychologist, Brad Stevens, Ph.D., having an ongoing and open conversation about mental health is key for the development of their psychological wellness. Talking to your kids about mental health will elend only destigmatize the topic, but also help kids to become more self-aware and psychologically minded, Stevens tells SheKnows. And when self-aware and psychologically minded kids grow up, theyll more likely grow into self-aware and psychologically minded adults, continues Stevens.And with today being World Mental Health Day, theres no better time to start discussing this important subject with your kids. Thats why we connected with a couple of experts to explain how you can navigate this topic with your child. Because while it might be hard to discuss, doing so will elend only benefit your kids relationship with you but their relationship with themselves, too.Build a capacity to discuss mental health as early as possible.Before you can begin to have in-depth conversations aboutmental health with your child, its important for you to begin building a strong trusting foundation between you and them. We have to make sure that the child has a foundation of trust with us and the history of what we call emotional attunement, which builds the ability to have whats called a top-down functioning (aka the ability to think or talk about something as abstract as mental health), says family psychologist and author of, Mona Delahooke. If you talk to a child about s omething before they have the infrastructure of dealing with emotions and seeking help when they need it, its leid going to help because you cant just talk about mental health. You have to live it.So how can a parent begin to build this trust and foundation? They should learn how to be more attuned to their own emotions to develop a healthier and better relationship with their own mental health. Infants, toddlers, and children need adults around them who are attuned to their emotional needs, says Delahooke. Its not what you say to your child, its how you are with your child. Our presence and body language form the infrastructure for psychological resilience and mental health.Help your kid assemble their feelings.Parents/caregivers can help their kids begin to develop a vocabulary so they can make sense of and understand their own internal experiences and talk about them with others they trust, says Stevens. Doing this will help your child begin to understand and become more attuned to what theyre feeling on a daily basis, which, in turn, can help them have an easier time identifying how others are feeling as well.When youre beginning to help assemble their emotions, you want to ask them, Whats the name of the emotion youre feeling? What are the sensations youre noticing in your body? What are the sentences (i.e., thoughts) going through your head? And what do you feel like doing right now (i.e., whats your action urge, such as crying or hiding), according to Stevens. Dont worry if they dont know how to answer these questions right away. Identifying what theyre feeling will take practice, and the assembling will go much easier once they learn how to match the correct words with their emotions. Just give them the space to do so. When you rush them, they cant learn and grow and may begin to resent this practice.Explain how they can view their own emotions.Once you help them identify what theyre feeling, you also want to articulate how they can begin to manage and view these emotions from a more positive standpoint. While kids might begin to have a grasp on what theyre experiencing, you dont want them to find ways to avoid these feelings or not have the ability to manage them in a healthy manner when theyre uncomfortable dealing with them.For instance, Stevens suggests for parents/caregivers to communicate that although emotions might feel uncomfortable, emotions arent dangerous and dont last forever they dont happen randomly they dont have to control how we act and there are always things we can do to make them feel more manageable and less intense. At the end of the day, you want your kid to understand thatemotions are nothing to be afraid of. And even though society may insinuate that theres one right way for children to connect with their emotions, thats just not how it works.Be careful not to stigmatize mental illnesses.Of course, when you begin to talk about mental health with your child, its natural for the conversation about mental h ealth challenges to come up. But before you start going down the list of naming every single disorder under the sun, you want to be careful that youre not stigmatizing them in any way.According to Delahooke, you should try to talk about individuals who children know and reflectively ask the questions like have you noticed anything about Uncle Johnny you would like to talk or ask me about? Let children lead and you follow. To avoid stigmatizing mental illnesses, it might be best to help children develop compassion for those who suffer. Parents can explain that sometimes people find themselves feeling really stuck maybe theyre having trouble understanding their thoughts and feelings, maybe theyve stopped doing things that deep down they want to be doing, or maybe theyve started doing things theyd rather not be doing. No matter what the case, there are always adults who are available to help people get unstuck, says Stevens. Model what a healthy relationship with mental health looks like.While you can talk the talk, you also want to walk the walk. Parents/caregivers who showcasehow they maintain and regulate their own emotions and mental health will have an easier time communicating with their kids about their mental health because the kids are already familiar with this language. When parents/caregivers demonstrate for their kids their own communication/discussion about their own internal experiences, it normalizes this process for their kids and facilitates their kids learning to do this for themselves, says Stevens.If youre unsure of how to actually walk the walk, Stevens suggests for you to label your own emotions and identify the cause(s) for your own reactions in front of your age-appropriate kids. Plus, you can also model your engaging in-adaptive activities to render your own experiences of uncomfortable emotions to be more manageable.Make it a routine.If you want your child to develop a healthy relationship with their mental health, its ideal to implem ent these conversations and vocabulary into your daily interactions with them. This means you want to discuss emotions and mental health, not just when theyre experiencing a bad day, but when theyre having good days, too. When conversations about mental health become the norm, children will become more comfortable talking and identifying their own and others emotions and have fewer inclinations to resist talking about their experiences with their parents/caregivers.However, keep in mind that its normal to have your kid resist these kinds of conversations, especially in the beginning. While you can see if your kid might be willing to write or draw about their emotions if theyre resisting, Stevens suggests not to push it. If your kid continues to resist and/or has a really tough time, you should respect that and make space for it by letting your kid know that thats okay and that youll be here if/when they change their mind and want to talk, says Stevens. Parents/caregivers being appro priately responsive to their kids is also a key ingredient in the recipe for their kids psychological wellness. After all, we just want whats best for our kid(s), right? Right. Raven Ishak--This article originally appeared onSheKnows.