Stress and mental health are now synonymous with the pandemic. Moreover, the pandemic is not over; you are seeing higher reported anxiety levels among children and adolescents, and with the schools opening, concerns for your children’s mental wellbeing increase.
Close monitoring of your children is counterproductive, leading to burnout and frustration for you and causing more stress for your children.
Our young have limited cognitive processing capacity as they use their limbic or emotional brain for decision making. Therefore, it is difficult for our children to identify their feelings, communicate with others, and manage their anxiety in healthy ways.
For example, working as a kindergarten teacher, the children would come to me sad-faced multiple times a day, saying, “no one is their friend.” On further questioning, I was told they were hungry, forgot their homework at home, or missed their pet.
Additionally, acknowledging that they have mental health problems contradicts adolescents’ sense of invincibility, as it is not cool to be anxious or depressed. Instead, they get involved in risk-taking behaviours like using substances to feel better.
Many of my incarcerated clients reported that they started substance usage in middle and high school to get accepted by their peers and feel better about themselves.
Knowing when your child is anxious will enable you to be more present for your child.
For instance, anxiety for early elementary school-aged children can best be described across a continuum, from feeling unwell to a meltdown.
However, in pre-adolescents, anxiety is displayed in risk-taking behaviours, inflicting self-harm, substance usage, running away from home/school. Other signs of stress to be alert for are ongoing irritability, voicing thoughts of hopelessness, interpersonal relationship problems, limiting contact with friends, and unkempt appearance.
I shall be discussing a 3 point action plan for you and your child to de-stress.
Keep an activity log when your child starts behaving “differently” from their normal behaviours, which, as mentioned above, can be having a stomach ache when leaving for school or being asked to do online learning. Record-keeping of your child’s behaviour will help identify the triggers leading to their maladaptive behavioural patterns. Secondly, the activity log will help keep your anxiety under control, the downside of parental stress being hyper-vigilance and having a fretful child.
Plan for immediate intervention when you see your child stressed, like throwing up or feeling tearful, depending upon your parenting style, a hug, talk, snack or drink; contacting your healthcare provider if needed. Besides, you can include breathing techniques: breath in, smile, breathe out.
You will also get the breathing space to reflect and plan for the next step; doing an activity together, a craft, for example.
With older kids, you can have a contingency plan, where your adolescent, when feeling overwhelmed in an online class, can briefly excuse themselves and do a pre-planned activity; taking scheduled breaks from virtual classes,
Now, I will discuss strategies to improve your child’s motivation and concentration as both dive when anxiety is predominant.
Normalize and validate your child’s feelings; acknowledge their emotions, worry, and anxiety are normal responses to the COVID-19 or school openings.
When your child says, “I feel like a failure,” they believe that their feelings reflect reality, so if they feel worthless, they must be useless. Here, cognitive behaviour therapy can modify the thinking error of “emotional reasoning” by helping your child identify and change their thinking.
Also, at the same time, be aware of your non-verbal cues, like when you frown or address your child in an inappropriately loud voice, which will make your child feel that they are being reprimanded. As a parent, you find that your child calls the “tone” of your voice condescending or judgemental at times; the solution is to do a shared activity with your child to maintain the connectedness instead of addressing this issue and re-address the topic later.
Find moments to engage with your child; you can ask open-ended and developmentally appropriate questions about their sleep, day, or friends. Offshoots can be addressing sleep patterns, like sleeping way past their bedtime. Before having this talk, you can mentally rehearse your questions and try to formalize answers, so you can best support your child.
A final word. Your task is not easy, but your efforts will help your child ease their way into a less stressful day and many more.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes and should not substitute for psychotherapy with a qualified professional.
This article was published in The Telegraph Journal
https://tj.news/story/101655584?ref=fbhttps://tj.news/story/101655584?ref=fb
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