Mental Wellness for Children

I've wrote this article via my blog: mumtechpreneursg.com

Disclaimer: I’m posting as a mother of 4 and these are my own opinions thus it does not represent any organizations or individuals except myself.

Recently, I saw many news that spoke about the mental wellness and mental health of the younger generations. True that, there are many attributes that contribute to the negative well being — environmental, culture, the rise of the social media generations and the support made available.

Especially these 2 years due to the pandemic, many are facing not just the pandemic fatigue but the students felt a significant number of stress as the curriculum seems to be disrupted and it was done “nor here nor there”. And our society, sadly still focus largely on the academic.

My daughters shared that it’s hard to concentrate during the e-classes and the peer support to study together is not there. They do not know where they fall short of, teachers have been trying hard to finish the curriculum and ensure the students understand as much in this current situation (please note that they are unable to WFH like some of us and they too, are parents to their own kids.) to the best they could however kids being kids, they have this uncertainty and are unsure where their level of understanding are placed within the curriculum spectrum, within themselves.

And worst case scenario, in our context and (asian) culture, many of us do not adopt an open communication channel to share out the issues within. To make things worst, there’s a social stigma around mental wellness.

All I want to bring across is – us as parents, despite majority are brought up by the (traditional) generations, we should try our best to encourage kids to speak up in person or through private text if they felt awkward to share f2f and to assure them that it’s ok to feel stressed, to say no and to seek some professional help when required.

As parents, I just want them to know that I will be there for them and a healthy child is important than academics.