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One of the core responsibilities of being a parent is making sure that your child stays fit and healthy. However, it can be easy to overlook and neglect a less obvious aspect of their health – emotional health. Unlike physical health, understanding how to take care of one’s emotional well-being is not common knowledge.
Your child is in the process of developing their mental and emotional structure which will affect how they face adversity and distress in the future.
Therefore, it is crucial to connect with them while they are still young and establish a stable and strong relationship so that their mental health is resilient.
Continue reading to find out what you can do to better support your child emotionally!
Encourage emotional expression
This survey illustrates the lack of communication between the parent and child due to a lack of trust, love and sense of belonging. When your child is not shown how to express themselves emotionally at a young age, it can result in pent-up frustration, loneliness, or sadness as they age.
They are then more likely to withdraw within themselves and suppress their emotions because they are unsure of how to handle their emotional vulnerability.
One way to foster trust with your child is to encourage honest and open communication. Shower them with your love and unconditional support and your child will be more likely to open up to you when something is wrong.
Emphasize resilience & mindfulness, not perfection
In a competitive society like Singapore, the pressure to do well in school for a brighter future can be overwhelming at times. It isn’t difficult to simply tell your child to ‘score AL1 or A1’, but actually achieving it is much harder than it sounds.
These few words can be easy to say, but the impact it has will linger in your child’s mind.
As such, you as a parent should be mindful of what you convey to your child and learn to manage your expectations. Instead of emphasizing performance and perfection, you should instead focus on helping your child learn how to recover from failure without sinking into depression about it.
Giving your child praise and your unconditional support, as well as not forcing high expectations onto them is key to building resilience and mindfulness.
Spend some quality time together
It can be easy to get swept up in your own daily responsibilities and tasks that come with being a working adult and parent. While you are essentially still caring for your child by fulfilling their basic needs, they may still feel ignored and lost
You should conscientiously set some time aside to spend quality time with your child and check in with them. During this time, you can talk about anything with your child, from the happenings in their day or even their hobbies!
If you aren’t spending time doing activities with your child that they enjoy, your child may be reluctant to share their feelings. It takes time and effort to build a strong bond of unconditional love and trust, and one way that you can nurture that trust is by doing bonding activities that involve your child.
We hope these tips will help you to become well-educated on how to care for your child’s emotional well-being properly!
For more information and tips, you can check out these links:
https://adelphipsych.sg/straits-times-how-parents-can-support-their-childrens-mental-health/
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/8-tips-for-talking-about-bad-grades/
https://www.nasponline.org/resources-and-publications/resources-and-podcasts/mental-health/prevention-and-wellness-promotion/supporting-childrens-mental-health-tips-for-parents-and-educators