How can you really help your kids? Model mental strength

As I looked across the room at the parents gathered for the presentation on mental wellbeing in children and teenagers, what I noticed first was how some people were scrupulously taking notes

I admired their grit and determination as for sure, the challenge of how to enable our children to thrive by helping them build mental strength is one of the biggest challenges we face as a society today, especially post the pandemic

All around the world, the headlines inform us that we are all facing a monumental mountain of mental wellbeing issues in young people. We are swapping worrying about whether our kids will get the right grades with worrying about if they will either burnout through the pressure of perfectionism or drop out altogether through the feelings of somehow not fitting in because they aren’t the most successful tiktoker in their class. Yet taken to the extreme – I could also see the perfectionist parenting pitfalls

The piftfalls of seeing our children’s mental wellbeing as yet another project for perfectionist parents to ‘get right’

Rehashing even the smallest parenting missteps in our minds and looking over our children and teenagers with a magnifying glass might make us seem “attentive and meticulously concerned,” but in reality, we’re often playing the self-blame game. Because if we don’t get things just right, we start mentally berating ourselves—a surefire path to burnout ourselves and ironically piling even more pressure on our kids

The truth is, that in order to create the right environment for our children to mentally thrive, it’s imperative for us to start by building and modelling genuine mental strength ourselves

“Prioritise giving yourself some slack and don’t expect perfection. Keep a sense of humour and remind yourself that you’re always learning, and you won’t always get it right"

The more we model these behaviours ourselves, the better chance our children will have to also realise that it’s ok to make mistakes, to try out new things, to fail, pick themselves up and try again

So for us as parents, more important than reading the books, attending the talks and scrupulous note-taking is in fact, to focus on our own personal development and continuous improvement — so we can overcome perfectionist tendencies in ourselves and therefore lead our children by example

Choose to model mental strength

It is no surprise that feeling insecure about our own abilities makes it not only easier for us to reach burnout ourselves - as we constantly question our every decision - but also creates an environment of increased insecurity for our children who miss out on the opportunity of having a strong, poised curious and open base to go into the world from

If we are serious about enabling our children to thrive, rise to the challenge and make the most of their talents - the place to start is with ourselves - genuinely acting as if we are okay with failing ourselves whilst at the same time, demonstrating to them that we believe in our own capabilities and talents

Avoiding burnout episodes requires us to focus on the traits that have made us successful - like hard work, perseverance, and relentless effort. A tip to share here is that one of the practices we recommend at Progressfull is to note our actions and achievements in our Progressfull Journals - so that we have an immediate visual log of how far we have come, and how much progress we have already made

So, when thinking about creating mental strength for our children - alongside being honest about the impact of our own beliefs, behaviours and mind-sets on them - we recommend checking in with yourself first - how is your mental strength? Are you managing excessive stress? Are you having trouble sleeping, and later feeling fatigued or irritable most of the day?

To get back into balance, we first need to take inventory of our physical and emotional wellbeing, and become intimately familiar with our own mental strength

If you think you may have tendencies towards perfectionism, think about how you can create an environment for your family which is more accepting of mistakes and missteps so that your children feel more relaxed about exploring their talents, rather than under pressure to perform

Consider restorative practices such as yoga, breathing exercises, and taking 10-minute walks in nature to check in with yourself and re-energise – then share these behaviours with your family – some they will enjoy, some they will run a mile from – yet you are modelling behaviours to increase your mental strength. This will benefit them far more than you modelling behaviours which can lead to burn-out

If your dream is to help your children and teenagers make the most of their talents and thrive – we say, start with yourself, start with building your own mental strength

If you would like to discover more about how you can build your mental strength, we have an Upskill (our name for a course/masterclass) called Building Mental muscles which helps you do just that – you can learn more about it here