Children's Mental Health Awareness & protective factors

This month honors Mental Health Awareness. There is stigma and misinformation about mental health and how we can counter it. There is still the attitude that we can buck up and get over it. It’s not that simple (if only, right?). What we do know is there are 5 protective factors that help us gain resiliency and thrive in the face of life’s challenges: parental resilience, social connectedness, knowledge of parenting and child development, concrete support in times of need, and social and emotional competence of children. 

Let’s break it down.

1. Parental Resilience: This protective factor determines how well parents respond to and recover from challenging situations, and how they change as a result of the situation. Children watch everything parents do and they learn from it. Learned behavior is a double-edged sword. They can learn our best traits and our worst. When faced with challenges, children are watching their parents’ response to know how they should respond in similar situations.

2. Social Connectedness: Humans are naturally social beings and crave connections. We are not meant to raise our children in a nuclear family only. We are meant to raise them within a community. As hard as it is some days, it is vital to get out, meet people, have people over, and be a part of our community. 

3. Knowledge of Parenting and Child Development: My daughter tells us the same story over and over and over again. Sometimes my husband and I look at each other and mouth the line from The Emperor’s New Groove“She’s like the thing that wouldn’t shut up.” Did you know this is actually a vital part of processing experiences? Learning this fact helped me to understand and be more patient (some days) with the constant repetition. As I learn more about child development, parenting strategies, and regulation I am more equipped (some days, let’s be real, no one is perfect) to help my children. Looking for a good starting place on where to learn development in a digestible way? I highly recommend The Whole Brain Child by Daniel J. Siegel, MD and Tina Payne Bryson, PhD.

4. Concrete Support in Times of Need: Have you ever faced a parenting moment (or year) where you felt utterly alone? This goes back to social connectedness. We are not meant to do this alone. We are designed to have a community help us with our children. Knowing and having concrete support is vital. It can be someone from your local church, local mom group, a best friend from college, a coworker, or family members. Know who your go-to people are and model for your children how to ask for help and receive it. Then they in turn will start to learn the skill to ask for help, when they need help, and how to allow others to support them.

5. Social and Emotional Competence of Children: This is another one of those learned behaviors and it stems from parent-child interactions. As we teach our children, they grow in their competence of how to communicate, respond, and thrive. Identify the emotion the crying kid has at the playground after falling. Highlight your emotions in an age-appropriate manner. Acknowledge what your child feels. 

Parenting, managing expectations, and navigating challenges is not easy. Please reach out, if needed, for more resources. Don’t forget to see last month’s post about the RRC parent support group. Surveys are on the table in Suite 120 to share what you need from a support group.

Written by Catherine Cook, MHC