How can you address mental health with your school age children as the school year begins

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — As the school year begins, changes in routine, and the return to some stressors like dealing with learning disorders, and difficulties with peers can create or heighten issues with your children’s, and teen’s mental health. Knowing how to approach the topic of mental health with your kids and teens can be difficult, but according to Dr. Betty Lai, an associate professor of Counseling Psychology at Boston College, sometimes it’s just best to ask: “Can we talk about how you’re feeling?”

“A lot of times as parents we shy away from these conversations because they’re hard to have and people worry that they’re opening up sort of a Pandora’s box,” said Dr. Lai. “But we know from the research side that it’s not bad to ask and often children are relieved that you do ask because otherwise they’re holding these feelings and feeling like they can’t communicate them to you.”

It’s not always clear either when it might be time to ask how your child or teen is doing as everyone will demonstrate signs of struggle in the same ways. Day to day changes in behavior might not always be cause for alarm, according to Dr. Lai but those that last for a few weeks are changes that need to be watched and could indicate more is going on.

“So the first few days of school, everybody feels a little bit anxious. But is that feeling of anxiety going on for longer than just the first few days? That’s something to pay attention to,” said Dr. Lai. “Are they sleeping the way they normally do? How are their eating habits? Have that changed? Are they not enjoying things that they used to enjoy? Those kinds of what we as psychologists call functional changes are really things you want to pay attention to as signs of distress.”

If you do see these signs, and are ready to sit down with your child, when and how you do ask is just as important as doing it in the first place.

“You want to make sure that you’re doing it at a time that’s not a high stress or high anxiety time […] if they’re in distress, for example, because they can’t get out of the car, because they have a new sports team that they are getting to, but they are not up to it at the moment. That is not the time to have a bigger difficult conversation about feelings. You’re trying to instead talk about what’s happening in the moment,” said Dr. Lai

Some ways to deepen the conversation when how they’re feeling comes up is helping them develop the language to even have this kind of conversation in the first place as especially younger kids don’t have the language skills to describe what’s happening.

“Sometimes it can help make it easier to talk about situations. If you say to your child, I’ve noticed that this piece seems to be hard and I wonder if you might be feeling this way. So giving them that language without saying this is how you’re feeling is often really helpful for young people,” said Dr. Lai.

If the issues continue to progress, or you as a parent or caregiver feel overwhelmed or are struggling to know what to do next, reaching out to the school can also be an option.

“It’s great to check in with your child’s school because everyone in a school building is an expert on child development. So they also have that insight of being able to tell you, is this sort of within the realm of what’s generally happening for all seventh graders or is this the time to start to make some extra calls and should we maybe bring in a mental health expert to help out and offer some more strategies?” said Dr. Lai.

While some of this advice, like just ask how they’re feeling, don’t do it during a meltdown, can seem so obvious it’s not worth mentioning the obvious can be easily overlooked and not executed. Even when it is the simplest and most direct way to offer help to someone who is struggling.

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