Description
Talking to kids about mental health can feel overwhelming, but several UAMS therapists break down how to do this. Parents who have had success with this also provide encouragement for other parents.
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Transcript
Beth Tody: My advice to give parents um when they start talking to their children about mental health is that it’s okay if you don’t know it’s okay that you aren’t for sure what you’re talking about there’s no rule book for parenting there’s no there’s no guide book for anything and mental health is the same.
Jason Wallace: I think the most important part is just that you start somewhere and remember that each kid is different. Yes they’re not cookie cutter; they’re not the same. I don’t care if it’s twins they’re not the same; everybody’s different, everybody deals with trauma and drama in different ways.
Beatriz Varela: You need to be there you need to talk about there as a parent as a guardian and you need to be uh realistic about the issues of some of the mental illness in our communities and society.
Tiffani Kennedy: In order to talk to your kids about mental health and why it’s important, you have to remain vulnerable and so that means you have to make it like an everyday conversation so for us a lot of times in the car they get in in the afternoon from school and how is your day I don’t like that question because usually from the teens you get it’s fine oh really like so we try to ask like more specific questions.
Keneasha Scott: Don’t say words like how was your day and they say good, don’t end it there because they’ll be programmed to say good so let’s say you start there because it may take a while to develop that how do you ask the open-ended question when they say it’s good, say tell me something good about it, or what we do, we quantify, give me three good things today.
Beatriz Varela: uh the first thing that I would tell them is I would talk about myself. I would talk about what embarrassment or a shame uh situations I have lived and my parents supported me enough in a way that could understand that what’s happening to me could happen to anyone else and that it is no reason to be embarrassed.
Jason Wallace: But, when they know that the teacher goes through it and my big brother goes through it and Mr Jason the director he goes through it’s okay, it’s okay, I’m not different; I’m not strange.
Beth Tody: Any parent with a pre-teen knows the struggle trying to get information out of them is hard um but you have to do more listening than talking and when they really start to open up one of the most important things I learned is just let
them talk about it.
Jason Wallace: The hardest thing for me to do and I think everybody needs to deal with this and a lot of us adults have a problem with this: listen, number one be quiet and listen. Don’t just and don’t be the the type of listener that’s getting your response ready, no, truly listen hear what they’re saying. Listening is so important and we’re in a country and
a world right now that is moving so fast people forget to listen we really forget to listen.
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