How comfortable are you with talking about emotional health?
Every person big or small can become overwhelmed, frustrated, tired, anxious, and feel angry sometimes. Those are natural, human emotions that we all deal with. When our children become overwhelmed and begin expressing that overwhelm with bouts of anger, crying, and frustration it can become incredibly frustrating for parents.
From the time your child was born, your goal was to calm them. When they were crying from hunger, you quickly fed them. When they needed their diaper changed, you’d do that quick to avoid their discomfort. It’s human nature to want to stifle the cries and discomfort of our children. But as they get older, we need to do better than just hand them a tablet, or chips, when they’re frustrated. This isn’t a judgement, because we get it! Parenting is so hard; you just want your kids to be happy. You’d give them literally anything in the world if you could. Because seeing the smile on their adorable face is just so worth it.
When those angry feelings rise up in them, or the tears start welling up in their sweet eyes. It’s natural to want to find a quick, easy remedy that will solve this burst of emotion. Unfortunately, though, this doesn’t actually help them at all. I mean, yes, comforting your children is beneficial! But, is it good to tell them to “Stop!” when they’re whining about something they’re worried about? Or quickly hand them something to calm those feelings? If feels right in the moment, but it truly does nothing to solve the greater issue at hand. And, that greater issue is related to their emotional health.
Where do we start with our children’s emotional health?
When your child is overwhelmed, what could you do instead of offering quick fixes? Well, we can start by taking small steps to help our children recognize their big feelings and frustrations. We can teach our sweet kids how to take good care of their minds! We can help our kids learn important steps and tools that matter! Tools to help them navigate those thoughts and feelings that they will inevitably be faced with throughout their entire lives.
Can you imagine a world in which they put just as much importance on learning about how to take care of your mind, as they do math problems? Imagine a future for our kids where they feel safe to present their feelings. Imagine if they could learn the tools and strategies to recognize when their feelings are taking control? And then utilize peaceful coping tools!
Let’s work on emotional health together!
Teaching our kids to journal their thoughts and recognize those big, scary feelings can help them have a beautiful, bountiful, future! And wouldn’t we all agree, that’s what we want for our kids? For them to feel joy, and not be afraid of those scary thoughts that pop into their minds? It’s really recent that people have started talking about mental health, because as you are well aware, there has been a painful stigma attached to anyone that doesn’t appear to be the normal. So, people have buried those feelings deep in their minds and used other means to soothe the struggle that they just can’t seem to overcome, suppressing their emotional health has been the normal for too long.
Because unfortunately, the stigma has kept us from sharing how we feel. And in turn kept us from learning how to cope through those painful days. And, while mental health has become much less taboo in today’s fast paced society, whether we want to admit it or not, there is still stigma attached to mental health and well-being.
So, let’s change that!
Let’s change the world one child at a time. Let’s learn about emotional health together with our kids. Let’s teach our kids that it’s ok to have bad moments and even bad days. It’s ok to have those big feelings, it’s ok to learn how to take care of your mental health. Have you ever been afraid to tell someone how you’re feeling? You don’t want that for your kids, you want them to feel peace when it comes to their mental health, and calm when it comes to their emotional health. So, let’s heal ourselves by helping the younger generations learn to take care of their minds, to recognize those unhelpful, unrealistic thoughts. Let’s help our kids learn positive, calming strategies to have a beautiful life.
Here at Schoolio we make it our mission to provide a holistic education for your children. And, that doesn’t stop with Math and Science. So, how could we possibly say education is holistic if we left out the importance of learning about our own minds. We want to help your children excel in every aspect of their lives, their whole self, which obviously includes their mental health.
Check out this Special Interest Unit about Managing Emotions by Schoolio. Let’s learn about emotional health and pick up some valuable skills together with our children to bring about a better future for us all. Let’s dive into this extremely important topic, let’s be the change, let’s start today!
Learn more about the new ‘Emotional Intelligence: Managing My Emotions’ mini unit now!
Find it here:
https://schoolio.io/product/managingemotions/