Assembling Your Coping Toolkit
A coping toolkit is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a collection of the coping skills, people, places, things, and ideas that help you to cope when symptoms of mental illness become overwhelming. Your tool kit is unique to you, and can be physical, mental, or some combination of the two. It depends on what works best for you. It can include ideas of where to go and what to do when you are experiencing overwhelming or distressing symptoms, it can include things like medication, it can even include a safety plan, if you ever experience self-harming behaviors or suicidal ideation or attempts.
Let’s Talk About Apps
It is nearly impossible to stay current on all the apps that are presently available, let alone keep up on what is trendy, but “being in the know” is one way to protect your children online. As we continue our social media blog series, let’s tackle getting familiar with the apps and platforms teens and children are using.
Limit or Permit?: A Parents’ Guide for Monitoring Social Media
Having a conversation with your kids about online safety rules is a crucial step. This will help your kids grow up using social media wisely. This post is intended to act as a guideline for parents who share some of these questions about when to limit or permit their kids’ online activity.
Learning From Failure
The reality is failure is an inevitable part of life. Allowing children to fail early and often when they have your support prepares them to deal with failures as a teen and adult. But in a world where there is so much pressure on kids to succeed, as parents, it can be difficult to allow them to fail.
Talking to Teens About Mental Health
Ask questions. It is okay to be direct when it comes to checking in with mental health, it sends a message you take this topic seriously. It is also okay to bring mental health up in a roundabout way. You can bring up an article you recently read or discuss well-known individuals such as Simone Biles and Harry Miller who are making their mental health a priority.
Building a Coping Kit
A coping kit is simply a list of skills and strategies a child can use when feeling anxious. It helps to practice these strategies when the child is already calm. Sometimes children can memorize their list of strategies but others may need to have them written down.
School Refusal
School refusal is different from truancy. Children who are truant refuse to go to school because they want to do something else. They will often concoct elaborate schemes to avoid going to school. However, school refusal is related to anxiety about situations or expectations at school.
Emotional Co-Regulation
The really amazing thing about mirror neurons is that you can use your mirror neurons to help your child when they are struggling to regulate their own emotions. If you stay calm in situations which are causing your child distress (ie frustration, anxiety, fear, anger, etc) and maintain a supportive presence, your child will essentially “catch” your calm.
A Guide for Parents to Support Children’s Mental Health
As parents, we play an important role in shaping their emotional well-being but it can be hard to know where to start. This blog post will provide practical tips about how parents can actively support and create a positive mental health environment for their children.