Children can be quite volatile, so how do you tell when their behaviour is normal and when there is a problem with their mental/emotional wellness? At every stage of your child’s life – from kindergarten until they are grown adults with their own lives – you will find yourself asking serious questions about their wellness and wellbeing. You will ask yourself serious questions about whether or not the behaviour is normal.
Mental health is linked to your thoughts and feelings, and your child’s mental health is all wrapped up in how they feel about themselves, how they face obstacles, how they react to crises and how they manage to maintain a sense of wellbeing throughout any kind of hurt or negative forces in their lives.
Normality is a hard thing to diagnose, because there is such a huge spectrum of normal. It is also hard to compare your children to other children, because you are only looking in from the outside, and people are very good at putting on a public face. You never really know what goes on behind closed doors. You are the best judge of what is normal for your child. At the same time, don’t judge others based on your own family.
The best way to safeguard your child’s mental health is to work on prevention. Whilst you can’t prevent the crises that will occur, such as your child getting bullied, you can help to make sure your child is mentally strong enough to cope with whatever comes their way. You can do this through praise, encouragement and open communication, which will help to boost your child’s confidence and self-esteem.
This will help them to have a strong basis from which to tackle life’s problems head on.