Julika Van Stackelberg (Children's Wellbeing)
Parenting coach Julika discusses the importance of children’s mental wellness and the impact of prolonged stress on development. The video guides parents in supporting emotional re...
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How can understanding a child's individual circumstances help?
So first of all, understanding the context or knowing the context in which your child is experiencing life is important. Do you know if they're experiencing specifically stressful situations in school or as you drop them off, as they're at their daycare? Or are they exposed to difficult situations in the home? Are they exposed to challenges with their peers? Understanding what they're going through can help you recognise how your child is doing mentally and whether or not they might be experiencing particularly high levels of stress. Over the past two years, most children have experienced some really high levels of stress, and this is why it's important to really pay attention now to help them grow from what they have learned or grow from the experiences that they have had.
What can adults do to support their child's mental wellness?
There's something that is called mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are neurons, basically cells in us that read the people around us, and children in particular read the neurons or basically other people's expressions around them, and they adopt accordingly, or they adjust to these dose accordingly. And this is why it's really important for children to have regulated adults around them. Because when adults are dysregulated, their mirror neurons basically tell them something is off, and that has an impact on how their bodies respond to their environments. So one thing that we can do as the adults in the children's lives is to take care of ourselves, practise mindfulness, physical exercise, pay attention to our nutrition, get enough sleep. This way we are able to show up for our children in a regulated way so that we can help our children regulate themselves as well. Then what are some strategies? So providing a space for children to have their feelings is really important. As adults or caregivers, it's sometimes really hard to see your child sad, and we want them to feel better quickly, and so we may try to distract them instead of really recognising what they're sad about and exploring that. So holding a space for the children's feelings and talking about the child's feelings. What does that mean to them? How do they experience things? How does it show up? Allows them their bodies to process their feelings and really explore what is really the cause for those so that they can bring those up. Also, children oftentimes lack the content to understand why they have these really big feelings, which is why it's important to help them make the connections. Explain how certain processes often work and validate their experiences. When they feel validated, they understand, okay, there's nothing wrong with me. This is a normal experience to a difficult situation, then you are able to tell them you are functioning fully well and make connections with your child. Then always important to remember is that we want children to see the light at the end of the tunnel. So providing this is not talking things great all the time. It is recognising the challenges that they may be facing, but it's also really understanding that we can get through this and here are some of the supports for you. And with these supports, I am here for you. That helps children develop a hopeful picture for the future, for their own future in which they can see themselves.
Why does children's mental health matter?
Experiencing moderate or high levels of stress for children can have a detrimental effect for their long-term health and wellbeing, as well as for their development. And this is really why it's important to consider how we can support our children's mental health. Because what happens when children experience prolonged periods of high levels of stress, or sometimes we talk about it as toxic stress, is that their bodies get flooded with hormones and chemicals that can wreak havoc, havoc in their bodies over a long period of time. And this can be prevented. And if we understand what that means and how we can respond to children's needs and support their mental wellness.