Importance of mental health in children

How has the pandemic affected your child?

I may not be an expert on this topic but being a parent of a 3-year-old and being married to a psychologist turned special educator. I developed an interest in understanding child psychology and here are my thoughts.

This May 2021 my son turned 3. ?He spent most of his first year laying on his back staring at our ceiling fan; the next 2 years he was enclosed in a house thanks to the lockdown.

I am not sure whether to say it’s a boon or bane for him. Boon probably because he got so much more facetime with his parents {especially with his amazing dad! :)}?bane probably he didn’t get much time to socially interact with other kids of his age.

Of the last 80% of his existence in this wonderful world we trained him to not touch things, objects and to not interact with strangers. It pinches my heart when we go for a walk all masked up to a park and he stares at the swings, slides, and other fun things. He takes a pause and tells us that there is corona around; in a way pacifying himself. [ We fed him with that pathetic intel].?When we meet our close relatives or friends, we ask him to be social and at other times we encourage him to be anti -social. So unfair!! ?

The poor child is so confused whether to talk, communicate, touch things/objects or not. He looks to us at times for an approval.

As a parent I often question on what I am doing to this lovely boy.

Do I need help /should I visit a counsellor? Am I hampering his creativity? Won’t this affect his behavioural and emotional wellbeing? ?

I am sure many young parents must be at this stage. Hence, I believe it’s okay to talk about it openly.

5 things that i have learnt

1. Firstly, heal yourself as a person: We often can transgress our negative energies to others. Remember your child could be a sponge here.
2. If you need help don’t shy away: Talk to a psychologist, therapist or a psychiatrist, or if your child needs help connect with a child psychologist. Counselling will help the child or the parent.
3. Quality time with your child: This could be a walk, pretend-play, playdates or just being with them by giving 100% attention. [ without the company of electronic media :) ]
4. Include physical activity and a decent diet in their regime. Occasional junk food is fine, don’t we all have it and how :)
5. Let’s not aim for perfectionism. Unrealistic standards can lead to a life filled with anxiety and unhappiness. Hence let’s stop comparing our child with other kids. Imagine if they did the same with parents. I’m sure they would have a better answer :) :) .

?I’m not saying that I follow all of this . Infact would rate myself a 3 out of 10 on parenting. ?Lucky, I got a better half who is managing the show well. Not many would be lucky in that front.

Experts used to think that only adults could get depression. Now we know that even a young child can have depression that needs treatment to improve. As many as 2 out of 100 young children and 8 out of 100 teens have serious depression [Source- British columbia Health]

Hence, it’s important to have a community for us to talk about and learn on the importance of mental health in children.

Would like to end with a quote:

"Remember Children are not things to be moulded, but are people to be unfolded"

[ isn’t that a great line, I copied it from the internet] :)

Looking forward to hearing your point of view in the comments section.