Strategies to Support Your Child’s Mental Health
DPS Prevention Services hosts a monthly webinar that seeks to promote health and wellness of youth to reduce substance misuse. For many, substance use is a coping mechanism based on underlying mental health conditions and trauma backgrounds. In September, DPS Prevention Services team hosted Dr. Jenna Glover, Psychology Director at Children’s Hospital, to present Back To School: Strategies to Support Your Child's Mental Health.
Dr. Glover highlighted a gap that exists in childhood mental health, she discussed the “20/20 problem” 20% of children (or 1 in 5) have a mental health diagnosis and 50% have this condition by age 14. The other side of the 20 is that only 20% of those 1 in 5 kids get mental health services.
The good news is that there are things that caregivers and trusted adults can do to assist in building skills to support children with resilience and coping. This work starts with being proactive in taking care of your own mental health to be able to show up as you want to as a parent.
Tools to Support Mental Health
Use concepts from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). DBT focuses on creating a meaningful life that is supported by your values. It’s about strengthening yourself so that when you hit hard times, you can cope effectively and not make it worse.
Find your Wise Mind. DBT proposes that you have three different mindsets, the Rational Mind (facts), Emotion Mind (emotion driven), and in the center of those two is the Wise Mind. Operating in our wise mind honors and recognizes emotions and also thinks about facts. The integration of the two is where we want to live, this is a shift from being reactive to reflective. This same concept is explained to children often using the lizard brain and wizard brain analogy.
Use mindfulness tools, such as rainbow breathing, to support children in building the wise mind to aid them when they hit hard times including mindfulness, emotional regulation, distress tolerance and interpersonal effectiveness.
Understand Dialectical Thinking, which involves understanding that two opposites can be true (love and hate; happy and sad). Helping kids to see both sides of things and frame things in a different way. An example Dr. Glover gave the statement “this is the worst year ever” and “this is the best year ever”. What is a statement that could bring you to the middle? A dialectical statement would be “this is a really challenging and interesting year.” Dialectical thinking helps rid us of using never, should, always and helps us embrace words that are more accurate thus empowering kids as more flexible thinkers.
Look to balance Acceptance vs Change Acceptance looks like “everybody is doing the best they can” and pushing towards change is “everybody can do better”. Both are true, we are constantly balancing these two ideas of acceptance and change. In DBT, acceptance and change skills are taught.
Create a Distress Tolerance Tool Box to include things that will calm you down (the photo below is the toolbox she created with her children). The tools are designed to support youth in getting through difficult times without making it worse. Dr. Glover’s toolbox includes fidgets, putty/clay, essential oils, finger paints, lego sets, gratitude journals, pictures of favorite places, etc. You could make a big toolbox for children to go under their bed or small toolboxes to fit in their backpacks. All of us have stress and this toolbox is a go to that can be very helpful when in distress.
High distress creates an aroused sympathetic system and puts kids into fight or flight. DevelopTIP skills (Temperature, Intense Exercise, Paced Breathing, and Progressive Relaxation) can help teach kids that we can change our body chemistry to regain control of our emotions and behavioral responses. Dr. Glover mentioned strategies that help calm the mind and give something else to focus on. Examples are putting cold water on your face, doing physical exercise like jumping jacks and burpees, and doing paced breathing exercises. Children need a variety of tools so if they are good at one then add additional strategies to increase skills.
Exercise radical acceptance. There are four ways for dealing with the unknown: fix it, change how you feel, stay miserable or make it worse and radical acceptance. Spend time focusing on what we can control instead of what we can not control. Move towards a growth mindset to cope, here are suggestions of what children can control.
Practice Emotional Regulation using proactive strategies to turn up positive emotions and turn down hard or difficult emotions. One tip Glover gave is to get away from bad emotions, take out judgemental language and get kids to name the specific emotions. Consider an emotional chart such as the one below to aid with naming emotions.
ABC Please! This tool starts with Accumulating Positive Emotions. Filling your wellness tank regularly will be helpful when you face stress or big decisions. Ways to build positive emotions through experiences that are fun and joyful including family movie nights, hobbies, dinners together, etc. Another essential concept is Building Mastery by getting kids into extracurricular activities that they are really good at and can excel at. Especially for our students that struggle at school, having something they excel at has a positive impact on resiliency. Cope Ahead of Time is essential so students are not just practicing tools for coping when they are in distress. Glover suggests that an important question to ask youth is “what are the things you don’t know how to solve and how can we do it together?” The final piece of this model is Please Skills, these are your basic functions of physical health including treating illness, eating well, avoiding drugs, sleep, and exercise. it is essential to focus on these one at a time until you make progress then you can tackle another.
Glover encourages people to do a one percent change using the tools she presented, “If you get on a plane at Los Angeles headed to New York and you change the flight by one degree, the plane will end up in Washington DC. A one percent difference each day can make a huge impact.” The webinar recording can be accessed here.