How are these times affecting children's mental health?
Many parents are concerned if their children are being traumatized by the current experience they're going through. Not being able to see friends, feeling lonely and isolated — what does this do to our kids?
We need to shift our perspective from "This is traumatizing my child" to "This is helping my child build resilience for the lifetime.”
Have a Black Belt Excellence mindset!!
It's time to prepare them for all the difficult situations they will be facing in the future. Our character is being built when the times are tough!
Knowing that, this is a great opportunity for us to coach our children how to face the difficult times, to share our coping techniques with them, to demonstrate that we can find gratitude even in the hardest of times.
We don't need to prevent children from feeling difficult emotions like loneliness, sadness, disappointment. What we need to do is to be near, offer our emotional support, and coach them through these feelings.
A conversation should go like
"I know things are really different right now. You feel lonely and miss your friends. It's tough to deal with the things we cannot control. In these situations, what helps me is to focus on what I CAN do instead. I like to think about what I GET to do rather than what I cannot do. Like all the time you've had to swim lately, all the new Minecraft worlds you've had time to create, all the quality time we've been able to spend together."
We need to be coaching children about how to deal with situations they cannot control and what things they can do to find ways to feel better.
