How To Nurture Your Child’s Mental Health: Expert Tips For Supporting Children’s Well-Being

A child’s mental health doesn’t start in the teenage years; it begins in early childhood. The way children experience love, care, and connection shapes their emotional resilience, self-esteem, and ability to cope with life’s challenges. Just like their physical health, their mental well-being needs attention from the very beginning.

Mental health begins in early childhood

Sadiq is a cheerful 6-month-old who enjoys cooing and babbling with his mother. He laughs heartily when his father plays tickle games with him. He rarely cries and feels comforted quickly when one of his parents holds him close.

Neuroscience research highlights how early childhood experiences of love and safety play a key role in building trusting relationships and developing active pathways for learning. As the child absorbs all that is around them in the earliest years of life, it becomes imperative that the air in the home be healthy, physically and emotionally, for the child to be healthy.

When infants receive care that is consistent, immediate, and in tune with their needs, there is a high likelihood that they will develop trust in their caregivers, who mean the world to them. Soothing human voices, gentle physical touch, regular playful interactions, and predictable routines all help infants develop a rhythm that works well for them. Offering infants all of these regularly is their supply of love and safety. This is crucial for the overall well-being of the child, and particularly helpful for the optimal development of key structures in the child’s brain.

In fact, right from the time the fetus is in the womb, it is impacted by the experiences of the parents, especially the mother. Making intentional choices about nutrition, sleep, exercise, healthy relationships, and stability of emotions right from the stage of conception can go a long way in ensuring a strong, stable, and nourishing foundation for the child.

Supporting mental health in the preschool years

Curious Carla is 3 years old. Anyone who meets her for the first time may see her being more cautious than curious. After they have spent a few hours together, her curiosity comes forth. She is busy exploring places and objects around her. She walks up to the person standing closest to her and asks whatever is on her mind: “What is the doggy’s name?” “Where did all the water go?” “Is that your mummy?”

By temperament, some children need more space and time to warm up to a new situation. When we allow the child to get comfortable with a situation in an unhurried manner, they blossom with confidence.

Parents must remember to let go of their expectations of how the child needs to be or what the child needs to do in a given situation. They must carefully tune in to the child’s needs and see how best they can help the child meet those needs.

When eager relatives wish to talk to or carry the child, the parent stating, “She needs some time to just be by herself and get comfortable with the space,” can be very helpful. It can go a long way in easing the child’s anxiety and building her confidence in managing new situations.

When parents get anxious in such a situation, the child picks up on the anxiety and finds it much more difficult to settle in. Children need parents to be emotionally stable to help hold and anchor their big feelings. So please remember to take a deep breath and help yourself relax!

Building a child’s sense of competence

Raghav is 7 years old. He is a keen learner at school, but finds writing challenging. Raghav’s mother encourages him to use his hands in a variety of ways—rolling out chapatis, making shapes out of clay, creating art by pasting grains and stringing beads, cutting out shapes and pictures to make a collage, coloring, and finger painting. She also breaks down the writing work into smaller bits and offers generous encouragement for the efforts that Raghav makes. Raghav’s parents celebrate the success of his “writing muscles.” They have also informed his teachers that they recognize the issue and have shared what they are doing at home to support him. They have heard the teacher’s concerns and have jointly worked out a way to track Raghav’s progress in writing. Raghav’s parents look at mistakes or failures as golden opportunities to learn from and not something to be ashamed of. They are more confident than concerned and trust that Raghav will pick up the necessary skills at his own pace.

It is during this period of approximately 7 to 12 years of age that a child develops a core sense of their competence or inadequacy. By honoring the child’s capabilities and challenges, significant adults can support the development of a healthy sense of competence. This core sense of competence helps the child feel confident about themselves with family, peers, at school, and in the world in general.

Gautam is another 7-year-old who is a keen learner at school. But he finds it challenging to stay put in a place. Gautam’s parents are more concerned than confident. Since Gautam’s father also found it challenging to stay put as a child and had experienced several reprimands growing up, he was determined that Gautam must be free of those. He would constantly watch Gautam and keep offering suggestions on what he could do to stay seated. Sometimes this helped Gautam stay put for a bit. Most times, though, it led to arguments and meltdowns, making everyone feel miserable and helpless. This was also because Gautam’s behavior was often judged as right or wrong, which made it extremely difficult for Gautam to be himself. His mother would sometimes talk to him about listening to his father better. At other times she would advise her husband to be more easy on the child. It was very confusing for her to recognize what would help. Sometimes, this confusion would play out as arguments between the parents in front of Gautam. His parents are even more worried now that they have received a note from school saying Gautam has been fighting with his classmates in the last couple of weeks.

Navigating parental anxiety and its impact

While it is natural for parents to be anxious when they observe some persistent difficulties that their child has, operating from that anxious state of mind is often unhelpful for the developing child’s well-being. Overprotectiveness, consistent criticisms, regular parental disagreements, and arguments over the child’s issues, in the presence of the child, can all contribute to significant mental health challenges.

Helping children through transitions

Diya has been a highly cooperative child, eager to follow instructions and receive praise for her efforts. She is quite talented in singing, playing the guitar, and swimming. At 11 years, she is among the toppers at school in academics and is well-liked among her peers, too. Of late, she has been irritable with her family and with her friends at school. The past few months had been challenging for Diya—her pet dog passed away, her grandmother, who lives with her family, had been quite unwell, her favorite teacher had moved out of school, and to top it all, she is just beginning to get used to having menstrual periods.

Fortunately for Diya, as had been the case throughout her childhood, her family continues to place a high priority on expressing feelings and supporting each other to manage intense feelings. Importantly, no feelings are considered bad or unwelcome. Every feeling is recognized and accepted. So, Diya is very aware by now that feeling irritable is okay; it is just signaling that some important needs of hers are not being met. In addition to her parents’ unwavering support, she knows that there is a strong safety net to hold her—her uncle, her closest friend, her swimming coach, and Asha aunty, who lives two houses away. Her parents had intentionally developed this network of people over the years, as they knew that their child would need to feel connected and safe with more people than just them.

The importance of healthy emotional expression and support in a family cannot be emphasized enough. This support is particularly helpful to deal with transitions in a positive and adaptive way, whether it is the youngster who is undergoing transition or the whole family. Families who have built a strong and safe social network also aid the mental health of their children by offering them access to trustworthy and dependable relationships. Children growing up in such environments can often navigate challenging social situations with a sense of optimism and confidence.

Piyali, Kevin, and Vagmi are all youngsters forging a clearer sense of identity for themselves, yet they are quite different from each other. Piyali (15) has been struggling with academics right from primary school—particularly with mathematics and writing. She was diagnosed with a specific learning disability when she was 9. Though her parents initially found it hard to accept her challenges, they partnered with counselors, special educators, clinical psychologists, and teachers to offer the best support they could for Piyali. They often took Piyali’s opinions and concerns into consideration while making important decisions about her education. They found avenues for her to nurture her interests in baking and dance. Though the journey was challenging, they drew strength from every successful transition to help Piyali enjoy who she is with all her strengths and limitations.

Adolescence: Identity, growth, and support

A person’s sense of identity gets consolidated significantly during adolescence. However, it is also based on the experiences they have had till then. When parents are aware that their child may have developed a poor sense of themselves, they can intentionally use the adolescent years as a period of repair and restoration. Identifying areas of strength or interest and nurturing those, while acknowledging and offering aid to areas of challenge, in collaboration with the youngster, is important for all adolescents, and particularly for those with persistent developmental challenges. This collaborative approach enhances the child’s ability and confidence to make and follow through with decisions, gradually preparing them for adulthood.

Kevin was adopted when he was 3. He is 17 now and has a 20-year-old sister, the biological child of his adoptive parents.. One could make a movie out of their experiences as a family; there were many twists and turns involving his father’s health, his mother’s job, his sister’s schooling, and his intense emotions. His parents could navigate this journey successfully, as they had what one would call a growth mindset. They demonstrated by example what it meant to grow every day from their experiences and make today better than yesterday. They grew as parents and as persons as they were raising their children. Kevin feels blessed today that he has grown up in this family with these parents. There were innumerable instances where he could have been punished or criticized. Instead, his parents would sit with him and support him to learn from the experience without shaming him. As a teenager, he found it so helpful that they would give him the space to figure out opinions, pros and cons, preferences, and priorities for himself, thus giving him a chance to discover himself without feeling judged.

The power of parental growth and openness

It is important to remember that openness to learning and growing in parents makes a big difference in their efforts to support their child during this phase. While a child’s adolescence challenges parents in different ways, it also offers innumerable opportunities for the parents to make changes in how they approach their child or a situation. Significant emotional damage occurs when parents are keen to continue the approach they have used so far, while the child has now transitioned to a new phase of development, with different needs than before. Having space to acknowledge their individuality without being judged unfavorably is one such important need, which, when met, supports positive mental health.

When Vagmi turned 4, she realized that she did not have a father at home. This was a source of great confusion for her then. She is 22 now, completing her education in textile designing, having a strong circle of close friends and a steady partner, and carrying dreams of starting a business of her own. Her biggest source of strength has been her mother. She admires how her mother has raised her as a single parent and yet created a little village of well-wishers for her. The way her mother would make time for her morning walk, evening tea, singing sessions, and sleeping sessions stood out for her as the islands of wellness amid the many challenges they had. ‘Self-care is not selfish’ was a motto she had seen her mother live by, and it was easy for her to incorporate this philosophy into her life as well. Looking at the struggles some of her friends and their families had, Vagmi is deeply grateful for self-care being a key part of their lives. It did not make the challenges go away; instead, it gave her and her mother clearer minds, calmer bodies, and a centered spirit to face those challenges.

Self-care in parenting: A gift to your child

While we may not be able to choose all the experiences that we have in life, it is important to remember that we have the power and freedom to choose how we respond to what life offers us. It is often in dealing with adversities that our children experience and develop resilience. Taking care of ourselves is key to ensuring our children’s mental health and well-being. As we journey through parenthood, it is important to remind ourselves to honor ourselves as persons who are parents. While parenting is a joint venture, often it is the mother who is closely involved in raising children. Being a woman and being a mother many times can be a barrier to self-care in a culture such as ours. However, prioritizing emotional healing and self-care by parents, especially mothers, can go a long way in supporting the mental health of their children directly and indirectly.

Dr Nithya Poornima is a former associate professor of clinical psychology at NIMHANS, Bengaluru.

Read this insightful guide on how parental actions impact children's mental health, and learn how to foster emotional well-being at home.