Looking after your kids, and your state of mind
Kids drive us bonkers. There’s no getting around it, but there are ways of dealing with it.
When you’re a parent, it sometimes seems like your entire wellbeing hinges on how you handle your kids from one day to the next; or, more accurately, how willing they are to comply with brushing their teeth, eating their dinner, and going to bed.
It’s also really hard to look after our wellbeing when we’re parents: we’re busy, often stressed, and we tend to put our kids’ needs before our own. But as well as being important for our own mental health, looking after ourselves models healthy behaviours for our children to emulate.
It’s really important that our kids see us doing things like:
Taking breaks from work when we need them
Setting healthy boundaries
Practising self-care
Eating well
Giving ourselves time to workout
Giving ourselves time to chill out
Modelling healthy relationships
Prioritising our mental health
Being open about our mental health
Managing stress levels and anger
Talking about our emotions
You might feel guilty for thinking about your own needs when you’re a parent, but if you don’t, your wellbeing and mental health can seriously suffer.
Dealing with parental stress
As well as modelling healthy behaviours – for our sakes, and theirs – it’s also important to learn ways to handle our emotions around our kids.
No one pushes our buttons quite like our children, and despite loving them with unearthly fierceness, daily parenting challenges can leave us tearing our hair out and screaming into the void. And because many of us have been around our kids more than usual throughout the pandemic, that breaking point feels a little nearer.
The trouble is, when we lose our cool we tend to feel so guilty that our form goes into freefall.
Reducing the amount of pressure we put ourselves under, letting go of the idea of the perfect family, stopping with the social media comparisons, getting some perspective, and being kind to ourselves can all help to keep stress levels down and emotions in check.
Of course, living with a mental illness when you’re a parent can be even more challenging. In these instances it’s really important to seek out professional help, and talk to your family. Mental health should never be a taboo subject within the home, and having these conversations with your kids goes a long way towards smashing the stigma around mental illness.
