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How This Pandemic Is Affecting Your Child’s Mental Health And What You Can Do To Help Them

The coronavirus has been affecting many people around the world. It also caused numerous casualties, leaving families and friends alike in grief and anxiety. This pandemic affects our mental health too. Constant exposure to negative news, like the rising death rates, results in mental and emotional distress in adults and children.

How This Pandemic Affects Your Child’s Mental Health

Trends suggest that children are less vulnerable, compared to people age 18 and up, to the coronavirus. However, they are not entirely immune to the mental health problems that arise from sudden, prolonged quarantine, and of course, the consistent exposure to negative news. Here are some of the signs and symptoms that you can watch out for to check whether your child is experiencing mental distress.

Nightmares And Bedwetting

The news about this pandemic has been painting gloom and hopelessness in adults and children alike. This gloom burrows in the minds of our young, causing bad dreams and nightmares. Having nightmares is one of the signs of mental distress in our children and is more common in younger children. As a result, they may start to redo some things that have already outgrown, like bedwetting.

Clinginess

Anxiety in children sometimes causes clinginess. You may observe that your child may continuously seek for your attention and your touch for comfort against their stress. You may also expect sudden tearfulness and tantrums when they don’t get what they want.

Sleep And Appetite Changes

Nightmares may be more frequent in younger children, but they also affect your older ones and the teens, causing sleep changes. Some of them may oversleep (hypersomnia) or have less sleep. Others will even have difficulty sleeping (insomnia). Others may have adjustments in their body clocks, making them nocturnal or more active in the night, instead of being vigorous in the day.

Not only does it change their sleeping patterns, but it also affects their eating habits. Loss of appetite or overeating is some coping mechanisms that your teens may do.

Isolation

In teens, instead of being clingy, they may become more withdrawn and isolate themselves. Although this is common in growing teens because of the different changes that happen in their bodies, in these times, self-isolation may be anxiety induced.

How To Help Your Child Deal With This Pandemic

When you see these symptoms in your children, here are some ways that you can do to help them in facing their fears and anxieties.

Talk With Your Children About It

One of the ways that you can do to help your children face these issues is by talking to them about it. Acknowledging their anxiety will aid them in better understanding what they are feeling. According to Jamie D. Aten, Ph.D., “since children are constantly exposed to COVID-19 related news which could alleviate their anxiety and panic, parents need to create direct conversations with children about these issues to avoid panic and reduce anxiety.”

Limit TV Time

As the news is one of the common causes of panic and anxiety in our young, limiting their TV time will also help them a lot. Instead of watching the television, you may introduce family activities to keep them entertained and involved. You may instead do reading aloud sessions for your younger children. Or play board games or other party games that are appropriate for kids of all ages. Alternatively, you may also do cooking or baking activities with them, and even try learning new skills with them.

Take Your Time-out

As parents, we always worry about our family’s welfare, and this fretting does not only affect us but also our children. Your reactions towards the negative information that you receive models how your children should react about it as well. Therefore, you should also prioritize your mental health. You can do this by having your time-outs that you can spend talking with a friend, or exercising, among others.

Your children will not always be able to identify what they are feeling; that’s why they cannot quickly seek your help. So, it is crucial for you, as their parent, to watch out for the symptoms and to act accordingly. Your child will need you now more than ever.

A Guide In Teaching Children Good Manners

What a dream it is to have a child who has perfectly good table manners and more, right? This article will guide you in teaching your kids, whatever their age may be, to be polite, and to possess good manners. In psychology, children can be taught how to behave appropriately. This is not going to be difficult and if you think you are starting late, think again.

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Recognizing Mental Health Issues In Teenagers

Mental health is a term that encompasses the emotional, psychological, as well as social well-being and influences how a person feels, acts and thinks. These aspects determine how we handle everyday stresses of modern life, how we relate to other people, and how we make decisions in everything we do. Just like our physical health, our mental health should be one of our primordial concern, so we have to take care of it also. Good mental health means a person is generally able to think and react in ways needed to live a more productive life.

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The Do’s And Don’ts Of Reprimanding Your Children

Children do a lot of things that could get the rest of their family angry. The younger ones could break something accidentally, the grade-schoolers might snag a few sweets from the refrigerator without telling, and the adolescents might come home past their curfew. Situations like these aren’t uncommon.

Your child will inevitably do something that’ll get you angry. It is a common occurrence in any family. What’s sure to happen next is a thorough scolding and the warning that it should never happen again.

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But how should parents go about reprimanding their children? Is there a right and wrong way to do it? And how can you do it most effectively? Wonder no more. Here are some do’s and don’ts to follow when reprimanding your child!

Don’t Scream At Them

“Getting angry, becoming emotional, crying, laying guilt trips, or even nervously laughing are all inappropriate emotions during discipline.” That is according to Christine Hammond, MS, LMHC. Instead, take a deep breath before confronting your child about what they did. You have to be able to speak with them and discuss the matter rationally. No matter how angry or irritated you are, find a way to get rid of these negative emotions.

If you begin scolding your child while you’re angry, you may end up saying something you’ll regret. It will probably help in getting rid of your anger, but it might scar your child. As much as possible, avoid cursing them or calling them derogatory names. Doing that is counterintuitive.

Additionally, don’t raise your voice with your child while talking about what they did wrong. Children, especially younger ones, might get frightened if you yell at them. Moreover, there’s a high chance that your child will forget what you were trying to tell them. All they’ll remember was the fact that you screamed at them and the fear that followed from that.

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Be calm. Find a way to relax. You have to be able to address the situation with a clear mind. Doing this is both for your sake and your child’s.

Don’t Hurt Them Physically

“Nothing ruins self-esteem like surrounding yourself with people who abuse or neglect you,” explains Karen R. Koenig, MEd, LCSW. Spanking or slapping your child as punishment is a big no-no. The reasons why are very similar to the ones stated in the previous item. Physical punishment might scare children. It might also lead to them failing to understand what they did wrong. A slap or a spank, after all, doesn’t explicitly inform them of their wrongdoing. All it does is make them feel pain and fear.

Scientific studies show that physically punishing your children for their wrongdoing is ineffective. It is, in fact, harmful as it may lead to behavioral and mental health problems. There are many alternatives to physical punishment. These alternatives may prove to be less harmful, more effective, and, most importantly, more humane.

Before punishing your child physically, ask yourself if you can fix the problem by talking to them. Next time, think twice before deciding to slap or spank your child. Won’t doing so do more harm than good? Studies point to the answer being yes.

Do Explain What They Did Wrong

Sit down with your child and approach them about what happened. Tell them what they did wrong and why you’re angry about it. Allow them to ask questions about the whole situation. Make sure to answer these questions as best you can. “It’s important to ensure your parenting style is supporting healthy growth and development because the way you interact with your child and how you discipline her will influence her for the rest of her life.” Amy Morin, LCSW said.

Let’s say your child accidentally knocks over a picture frame and the glass breaks. Explain to them why you’re saddened and frustrated. Tell them that you bought that frame and that you were using it to hold a memorable photo. Also, explain to the children that they should be more careful next time. Do this so that they don’t break anything else and hurt themselves in the process. What you want is for your children to understand what you’re telling them. You also want them to try and better their behavior.

Do Discuss The Consequences Of Their Actions

Make sure that your children grasp that all things have consequences. When they do something terrible, repercussions will follow.

Let’s say; for instance, your child breaks a pen that belongs to someone else at school. Make sure they know that they have to apologize for what they did. Sincerely. That’s a consequence following their wrongdoing. The owner of the pen might also demand your child to replace it, which is another consequence.

There are good consequences and severe consequences. And if your child wants to avoid the latter, then they’ll understand why they’d be better off avoiding doing bad things. Remember why parents reprimand their children as many tend to forget. Your goal when doing this to your children is not to shame them or to make them feel guilty. It is indeed not to make them feel terrible about themselves either.

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Ultimately, parents reprimand their children to inform them of the wrong that they did or the damage they’ve caused. You want them to understand why you’re angry and that they shouldn’t do what they did again. Remember these do’s and don’ts so that you may reprimand your children in a way that is harmless and effective.

Teaching Kids To Be Responsible

The youth today is entirely different from yesterday, do you agree? Notice how busy they get with their phones chatting, playing games, and watching videos. Do they still have time to be responsible? If they do not have anything else to do than tapping their gadgets, then no, they do not have time to practice discipline anymore.

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