Harriet Inglis on the vital help that is always available for those bringing up children
TV, newspapers and social media posts constantly highlight the current mental health crisis amongst young people.
Every day we read distressing stories about young people self-harming or ending their life because of harassment and bullying. It can be overwhelming for parents as they try to help their children navigate a different world than they themselves perhaps grew up in.
There is a wealth of information and advice available to parents to help them support their children to navigate social media and phone use. Families must discover what works best for them. There is also lots of advice about maintaining good mental health, like encouraging healthy sleep patterns, eating well and getting some exercise. Parents can encourage their children to adopt these habits even when they might have very different lifestyles and approaches to life.
However, one of the most effective ways of facilitating our young people to grow into capable and resilient adults is to help them manage their emotions, to help them contain their feelings so they can cope with them, without feeling overwhelmed to the point of despair.
The word contain, at first glance, does not appear to be a healthy way to describe feelings. It does not mean shutting them in a box. Rather it means helping them to manage their feelings, so they are not doing it alone. Children have so much to cope with now, and when emotions are too big, parents can help lighten the load by sharing and holding them and giving them a place of safety from which they can then explore the world.
To visualise this, think of making tablet. The pot is full of boiling sugary ingredients. You realise that the pot is too small and it’s going to boil over. You don’t take it off the boil or pour cold water on it, as this will ruin it. It needs to boil like this to turn out well, so you don’t put a lid on it because it will explode out and could hurt you. We put it in a bigger pot so it can boil and froth and no one will get burned. The ingredients here are a metaphor for your child’s emotions, and parents sometimes need to help their children to put them in a bigger ‘pot’ so they are manageable.
The good news is that parents are already doing this.
With a newborn, who despite being fed burped and changed was still crying, parents will have swaddled, rocked and cradled that baby. This is an early way of ‘holding’ this tiny person’s overwhelming feelings, of making them feel safe and secure in a somatic led way.
When toddlers are overwrought, overtired and overstimulated, parents might put them in a bath, let them splash and play. This again is helping them manage the overwhelming feelings they have when their body feels out of control.
As our children grow and their language starts to develop, parents add to these sensory methods by talking in an empathetic and articulate way. We help our children by naming the emotions they might be feeling, and it is so important to do this. By naming emotions, we encourage our children to become autonomous beings and reinforce that their strong feelings are both valid and valuable.
This is difficult for both parents and children, and even more so when children hit the teenage years. Navigating and living with teenage emotions is tricky. They still need help from their parents to contain their feelings, even when those feelings are negative towards them. ‘I understand why you are feeling angry at me because I said no to the party’. You are not changing your mind about the decision you have made, but nor are you dismissing your teens’ feelings about it.
Dismissal of feelings and being dissuaded to recognise and name feelings can lead to anger or numbness.
No-one gets it right all the time, and it can be exhausting and overwhelming for parents to be this facilitator of managing emotions and feelings for our children, especially if we haven’t experienced this ourselves growing up. So, it is vitally important that parents look after themselves, seek help when needed and have an a ‘bigger pot’ for themselves, so that when our toddler has a tantrum or our teen decides that 11pm is the time they want to properly chat, we are in the best place possible to do this.
Relationships Scotland can provide support when everyone’s ‘pot’ is too full. We have a range of services across Scotland, including individual and couple counselling, young people’s counselling and family therapy.
To find out more, please visit our website at www.relationships-scotland.org.uk
Harriet Inglis is head of practice for relationship counselling at Relationships Scotland.
