Keeping your child healthy, both mentally and physically, is the greatest concern of most parents. Staying on top of your children’s well-being can be a complicated and contentious issue. So many adults have different parenting habits that it can become confusing to know what to do. However, if you want to raise a kind, smart and healthy child, the basic information will never change.
The first thing you need to be aware of is that beneficial behavioral patterns in your child work best if you walk the walk. A good example will help your child realize the person they want to grow into. This article will help you with some of the fundamentals you need to know to keep your child happy and healthy!
Encourage Self-Validation
Your child does something note-worthy – something kind and intelligent, and you want to encourage them! No doubt you will be inclined to say, “I’m so proud of you”. Of course, you would be right, letting your child know that you admire their good behavior is important. But, by saying this, are you in fact encouraging your child to seek validation from the praise of others?
New parenting techniques suggest that there are easy ways to avoid this. Instead, try saying, “you should be proud of yourself”. It is so simple! Through this phrase you are letting your child not only know that you admire them, but that your admiration is not necessary. By following this pattern of behavior, your child will learn to go through life gaining happiness solely from their own satisfaction and no one else’s.
Know Your Stuff
Knowing your stuff concerning your child’s physical and mental health is imperative. This means recognizing the signs of possible illnesses or differences. Basic information is widely available online, such as how to check your child’s temperature, when a cough could be problematic, or how to know when a tummy ache could be something more than just a complaint.
However, knowing the signs of poor or complicated mental health can be a little bit more difficult. First, know that all children and adults have mental health, whether or not it is regularly good, so knowing the signs of when your or your child’s mental health could be disordered is necessary. Basic signs of common mental health issues can include fatigue and tiredness, increased anxiety, poor sleeping patterns and reduced social inclinations.
When it comes to larger issues, it can become complicated to know what to do. In this case, knowing which reliable professionals to reach out to is vital. But maybe you want to take on this larger task? Have you found the responsibilities of parenting exciting and challenging and want to learn more about wider education and health? In this case, programs to qualify you in educational and care-giving positions are widely accessible. Click here to explore some of the possible routes you could take!
Practice Mindfulness
Practicing mindfulness may seem like a superficially popular fad, but it is in fact a wonderful tool for both you and your child to understand and moderate your mood and well-being. Mindfulness allows us room to think, to understand our own emotions and to figure out how to react and behave to occurrences in day-to-day life.
The first thing to teach your child is that taking a little bit of time to de-brief with yourself every day is an invaluable experience. Many people practice mindfulness in many different ways. Some meditate, some journal, some simply sit and think. Try some of these things with your child and figure out what works for them. Lots of children find it difficult to focus for long periods of time, so don’t be alarmed if your child takes a little while to adjust to the practice.
Show Kindness
The theme of last year’s Mental Health Awareness Week was “kindness,” and there’s no wonder. Being kind to others may be an obvious thing for most adults to do, but especially for young brains that are still developing, skills that are associated with kindness such as empathy and compassion may not be fully formed.
The benefits of being kind are endless. You know that warm feeling that you get after being selfless? That is not a superficial experience! Being kind to others actually creates a biochemical response in our brains. Oxytocin production increases, which can boost happiness, trust and self-esteem, as well as reducing anxiety. Dopamine and serotonin rushes are often induced – two hormones related greatly to feelings of joy and positive moods.
You can see that not only will encouraging kindness in your child improve the lives of others around them and help them to make friends, but being kind will strongly improve your child’s psychological well-being!
Stay Active
Everyone knows that staying active has endless physical benefits, promoting joint health, reducing rates of obesity and helping healthy growth. However, in an age when children are becoming more and more reliant on technology for both teaching and enjoyment purposes, knowing and encouraging exercise is more important than ever for both you and your child.
Exercise can improve your mood greatly, promoting a similar hormone release as practicing kindness. Similarly, staying active can greatly reduce stress and regularly getting outside to exercise will teach your child healthy coping mechanisms to deal with stress. Studies have also shown that exercise can increase pride in one’s own accomplishments, promote a healthy relationship with your child’s body image, and boost their confidence!
These are only a few of the many mental health benefits of exercise for both you and your child, so remember to get outside with your child and encourage them to play with their friends – as little as 10 minutes of aerobic exercise a day can work!
This is in no way an exhaustive list of advice, and knowing what works for your and your child specifically is something that no one else can take away from you, so don’t feel pressured to promote well-being by anyone else’s standards. Your child’s physical and mental health is unique, but devoting energy and research into figuring out how to help your child is something that every parent should put time and effort into doing.
