Wellbeing Advice for Parents

The first line to supporting your children is by supporting yourself. By valuing your own wellbeing, you are not only in a much stronger position to support and value your children’s wellbeing, but also providing excellent modelling for them to look up to. The top ways you can support your own mental health are:

Talk openly about your mental health to friends, family, a mental health professional or school.
Maintain a healthy diet, keep active and get enough sleep (as hard as we all know this may be with children).
Keep learning. Try something new or discover an old interest. Learning or developing a skill will help you become more confident.
Take notice. Be curious. Catch sight of the beautiful. Remark on the unusual. Notice the changing seasons. Savour the moment, whether you are walking to work, eating lunch or talking to friends. Be aware of the world around you and what you are feeling. Reflecting on your experiences will help you appreciate what matters to you.

How to support your children

As well as promoting the four key tips above, there are some additional ways you can support your children’s mental health.

Take time to connect with your children, notice their norms and enjoy their interests. Doing this will not only create more confident children, but also help you to notice when something may not seem quite right.

Think about screen time and phone usage. Phones and social media, although a great way for children to interact with their peers and provide them an area of responsibility, can have a large impact on sleep and a negative impact on our mental health. Promote a change in them by thinking about your own screen time. When we disconnect from our screens, we also provide a fantastic opportunity to notice our children and promote the four tips above.

Mindfulness

What is mindfulness? Professor Mark Williams, former director of the Oxford Mindfulness centre says:

“It’s easy to stop noticing the world around us. It’s also easy to lose touch with the way our bodies are feeling and to end up living ‘in our heads’ – caught up in our thoughts without stopping to notice how those thoughts are driving our emotions and behaviour.

“An important part of mindfulness is reconnecting with our bodies and the sensations they experience. This means waking up to the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of the present moment. That might be something as simple as the feel of a banister as we walk upstairs.

“Another important part of mindfulness is an awareness of our thoughts and feelings as they happen moment to moment.

“It’s about allowing ourselves to see the present moment clearly. When we do that, it can positively change the way we see ourselves and our lives.”

What are the benefits of mindfulness?

Mindfulness can help us find joy in things that we may take for granted (such as the sound of someone laughing or the smell of fresh air), but it also helps us to realise when we have become ‘trapped’ reliving past problems or pre-living future worries. As a result, there are many studies showing the positive benefits of mindfulness, including:

decreased stress and anxiety,
improved health,
better sleep,
improved focus and awareness,
better problem solving,
improved impulse control,
increased compassion and kindness,
stronger relationships,
altruism,
and even higher life satisfaction.

How can I practise mindfulness? Mindfulness doesn’t have to be meditating for 30 minutes a day. There are many ways to include mindfulness into your day, including short pauses we can insert into our everyday life. Even spending ten seconds to take a deep breath and become aware of your senses again can help you bring yourself back into the present.

Using technology for mindfulness and positive thinking

There are a growing number of resources online that can help adults and children to be mindful and focused on positive thoughts. Here are some examples that you may wish to try out with your child/ren:

Smiling mind (free)
A very comprehensive package of guided meditations, breathing exercises and visualisations for children of various age ranges. Considering that it’s free, it’s well-worth a look at.

Insight timer (free)
Another collection of free resources available either online or through an app. It offers specific guided mediations and positive thoughts and visualisations for children as well as adults.

Three good things (free)
An app that focuses on the positives of the day instead of the negatives. You could perhaps adapt this to also look at three things you are looking forward to that day.

I am (free)
Daily positive affirmations. You can set when and how many positive ‘I am…’ affirmations are sent to you each day.

Youtube (free)
There are plenty of guided meditations for children on Youtube. The ‘Peace Out guided relaxations’ take you on a guided journey.

Positive penguins (99p)
One guided meditation
Work through what is making you feel nervous, angry etc by getting you to work through your negative thoughts.

Calm app (seven days free trial, then £29 for a year’s subscription)
App for children and adults.
Daily calm every day
Guided meditations on anxiety, stress, sleep etc
Sleep stories
Music for sleep and relaxation

Headspace (two weeks free, then £10 a month or £50 for the year)
Another well-developed app with guided mediations, breathing exercises, visualisations and programs for adults and a children alike.

Managing anxiety

Anxiety in children

All children (and adults for that matter) get anxious from time to time. Furthermore, some children are quicker to get anxious whilst others are quicker to let go of their anxiety. What’s also tricky, is that anxiety doesn’t always show as… well… anxiety. This iceberg explanation below shows how it can be triggered by a range of feelings but also be shown as a range of feelings. This link here explains the signs of anxiety in further detail.

What specialists say is important for parents, is to help their child manage that anxiety so that the anxiety doesn’t control their life and they can become more resilient as a result. youngminds.org.uk has useful tips for supporting your child, but here are Wicklea’s top tips.

Help them realise that they’re anxious, and help them find out why they’re anxious.
Show them love and affection. Don’t try and suggest they shouldn’t be feeling anxious but don’t also exacerbate the situation.
Model how you work through your anxiety to provide great blueprint of how to do it.
Help them look at the ‘best case, worst case and then most likely case (middle ground) situation’ to help them realise other options.
Talk through the worst case situation and come up with plans of what they can do if that arises (e.g. what shall we do if we miss the bus?)

If you’re looking for ideas for resources, this website has a list of some brilliant and simple ways to reduce anxiety.

Self-esteem

Just like everything to do with wellbeing, we can all suffer from high and low self-esteem during the course of our life. But how can you tell when your child is regularly suffering from low self-esteem and what can you do about it?

Spotting low self-esteem.
Reluctant to try something new
Engages in negative self-talk or doubts they can do things well
Finds it difficult to accept praise
Finds it difficult to accept criticism
Gives up easily

Here are some things youngminds suggest you can do that can really help, but we’ve brought together our top tips from here and elsewhere.

Allocate time each day to spend with your child to let them know they are valued as well as laugh and appreciate life.
Help them set realistic goals so they can realise their achievements. This can include doing appropriate chores.
Praise children often, but be sincere. Refer to areas specifically. For example, “That art piece looks great!” can become more sincere by saying, “I really love the way you’ve drawn the face”, or “You’ve complemented the colours fantastically there”.
Help them take healthy risks and congratulate them for doing so. For example, take them climbing and praise every time they did something that pushed themselves – they were constantly challenging themselves.

Getting support

If you have any questions or concerns over your child’s wellbeing and mental health, then we implore you to contact one of the many staff members. There are many of us and we are more than welcome to chat with you.

There are also many fantastic agencies that can offer a wealth of support:

Changes

A Bristol-based mental health charity that provides weekly peer support meetings. Their services are free and need no referral.

Young minds
Support and resources for children and parents to support their children’s mental health.

CAMHS – Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (part of the NHS) – Speak to your doctor or our Family Link Worker if you feel that this would be suitable for your child.

Mind
Support for adults includes a helpline and drop-in sessions.

Samaritans
A free 24-hour helpline service that offers ‘someone to listen’ when in need.

SHOUT – Text: 85258
A text/sms based service for those who are in crisis, anxious or worried.

Cruse Bereavement Care – 0808 808 1677
Support, resources and a helpline/ chat service for anyone suffering from losing a loved one

For other areas of support, the NHS have any other charities and helplines you can contact. Or, as always, feel free to contact us for advice and signposting.

Below are links to some videos that you may find useful.