Should parents talk about mental health with their children?

Brief summary of Project

I did research on why parents should talk about mental health with their children. I gathered research on why this is true. My job is to encourage people to talk about mental health with their children or kids they know.

Children deserve to be listened to and not be treated badly.

Topics I am going to discuss

-Communication with children - Knowing how to communicate with children is important.

- Understanding children- Understanding your child should be a priority for their mental health.

-Parents" effect on children- A parent can affect their child's health in either a good or bad way.

Results of my survey

I asked people in my class if they thought parents should talk about mental health with their children and 100% of them said that they agreed. This shows how teens believe that mental health needs to be discussed more with kids. Kids should learn more about mental health to make them understand more and learn how to be capable of maintaining a good mental health for them. Having good mental health makes a big difference for a person and a good way to start is for parents to talk to their kids about it.

The Interview

The purpose of the interview was to get someone’s idea on why mental health for children is important and how parents should care more about their mental health. My interviewee was Zury. Zury is a teenager who is 17 years old. She has had experience with therapy and she knows how mental health is really important for a person’s well being. My candidate was really open about the idea of mental health and that it should be talked about more. Questions that were the most important or relevant to my research were: Have you ever wished you had listened more to your parents when you were a child? and Do parents have to do a lot with a child ' s mental health? Zury said “yes” to both of those questions which shows how her mental health had to do a lot with her parents which is important. What I learned from conducting my interview is that a lot of people have troubles with their mental health as an adult because of their childhood. I know my interviewee Zury Marinez had faced experiences from her past that she wished she could’ve talked to her parents about but a lot of kids don’t feel as comfortable because some parents make it seem that talking about mental health is not important just because they don’t want to talk to their children about it.



My Personal Opinion

Although children aren’t easy to talk about mental health with, they deserve to be treated seriously and be talked to about mental health by parents because that can make a good difference in their life. Today, a lot of adults suffer from their mental health because of their childhood and teenage life. They had parents or people around them that didn't treat them as they should. Communication with children and teenagers about mental health is important so later in life they would be more likely as adults to have a healthy mind. Mental health matters and should be talked about more in today's society. It is a part of life that is important.

Don’t make your children feel alone and sad when you can be a caring and loving parent until it’s too late.Parents have trouble talking to their kids about their mental health when their kids don’t seem good but that needs to change. Talking to your kids about mental health can change a lot and can make your child learn how to handle feeling emotions that they don’t like. When parents don’t teach their kids how to handle emotions that can cause their kids more likely to have a mental illness and not be truly happy in their life in the future.Mental health in children should be as important as adult mental health. I surveyed teenagers in my class and 100% percent of them said that parents should talk about mental health with their children. That shows how much they believe mental health is important for children. Although children aren’t easy to talk about mental health with, they deserve to be treated seriously and be talked to about mental health by parents because that can make a good difference in their life.

Knowing how to communicate with children is good for their mental health. “When bad news happens, the American Psychological Assn. advises planning a conversation with your children — even practicing it in your head in advance — so you feel prepared. It’s also important to find a quiet moment, so that your child is the sole focus of your attention``( Tseng, Ada and Garcia,Karen). It is clear that a child needs to be heard and listened to in order for them to feel good and most happy. A kid should be able to feel comfortable when a parent tries to talk to them. Having a parent practice with what they are going to say or do when they are put in this situation is a good idea so they know how to handle their kids in this situation. By parents knowing how to talk to their kids, the mental health of children will be better since they have someone that they can trust and talk to, which everyone needs, especially children. “While you’ll certainly want to up the ante if your child is showing any of the mental health warning signs listed below, you should be asking your kids questions about their lives every day” (Spector, Nicole). One of the things parents should do with their kids is talk to them about how their day went because that can really make a difference for their kid when they’re parents care about what is happening in their day. By talking to your kids regularly, that gives you a better chance to know if their mental health is good or not doing good. If they aren’t doing good a parent has a chance to deal with it right away before their child’s mental health gets worse. Communicating with your kids is important.

Having parents that understand their children is important for their child’s mental health. “Your child’s experience may not mirror your own. Even though you were a teenager once, Bond tells parents, you are not a teenager now. The experiences your child is likely to experience are different from what you experienced”( Tseng, Ada and Garcia,Karen). This explains how children’s or teenager’s problems are way different then adult’s problems and that makes sense but parents shouldn’t treat their kids like their kid’s problems don’t matter. Parents should be able to comfort their child and not make it seem like their kid’s issues don't matter because that will make their kid feel alone and sad. For example, parents will tell their kids that they don’t have to pay bills or do anything that involves being an adult but in reality everyone is gonna have to do it one day and by a parent saying that it shows that they don’t care about their kid’s feelings and don’t have empathy for them. “It's easy to be dismissive of kids when they're struggling because we don't always know that say, a fight with a friend is so negatively impacting them,” says Hamlet, adding that we may also not understand why such a seemingly minor event is really that important. “We might brush it off and say, ‘It will work itself out.” While we mean the best, it’s important to take them seriously and validate the pain by acknowledging it — even if we don’t agree with it” ( Spector, Nicole). It’s important to show your child that you actually care instead of just brushing their issues off. By showing that you actually care about your children’s problems that they might have that are serious for them they feel better and not bad that they feel a way on the issues that they may be facing. They will feel validated since they have parents that understand them instead of feeling that they are alone and no one understands them. Even if you are a parent that doesn’t get your child it is important for you to show that you care even though you don’t agree with them. Understanding children is important for their mental health.

Parents affect their children’s mental health. “The mental health of parents and children is connected in multiple ways. Parents who have their own mental health challenges, such as coping with symptoms of depression or anxiety (fear or worry), may have more difficulty providing care for their child compared to parents who describe their mental health as good. Caring for children can create challenges for parents, particularly if they lack resources and support, which can have a negative effect on a parent’s mental health” (“Mental health of children and parents”). Based on this evidence, it explains how if parents are having a hard time with their mental health it can affect their children. When a parent isn´t doing good with their mental health it is gonna be harder for them to actually take care of their children, cause of that the parents have to try to talk to their child and make them understand instead of their child being confused. By parents talking to their children it will decrease of the chance of the child suffering with mental illness like them. “A recent study asked parents (or caregivers who had the role of parent) to report on their child’s mental and physical health as well as their own mental health. One in 14 children aged 0–17 years had a parent who reported poor mental health, and those children were more likely to have poor general health, to have a mental, emotional, or developmental disability, to have adverse childhood experiences such as exposure to violence or family disruptions including divorce, and to be living in poverty”(“Mental health of children and parents”). This confirms that if a parent has poor mental health it is more likely for their children is more likely to have poor general health/mental health. If a parent isn’t good it will affect the child. This just explains why parents need to talk about mental health with their children so they can understand more about it and not feel bad about what they may feel. Parents have to talk about mental health with their children because of this. If a child has information about it it is more likely they will be able to control their emotions by learning from their parents, they will be happier.

By representing how important it is for parents to talk to their children about mental health, I hope people realize that mental health is important for everyone in this world. If you are planning to have kids, remember to talk to them because they are just as human as adults are. Kids are smarter than you think and they feel what is around them whether it is negative or positive. Parents can make a huge difference on how their children are. Parents can make their children feel happy if they try their best at talking to them. Kids feel emotions too and parents need to realize that. Kids are the future and if they don’t have a growth mindset and want the best for themselves that can be a problem. The goal is for parents to make their child have a growth and positive mindset for them to be as happy as they can be.