Raising Emotionally Healthy Children

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 Raising children presents dozens of challenges every day, whether it’s getting them to eat healthfully, do their homework, or stay safe. But a good parent must also focus on a child's emotional health as well. And while dealing with emotions may seem more taxing than the day-to-day challenges of parenting, raising children who are emotionally healthy may be easier than you think. All you have to do is love your child and be there for your child.

“What every child needs is a loving, caring adult who is passionately, wildly committed to that child,” says Geoff Nagle, PhD, MPH, associate professor of psychiatry and neurology and director of the Institute of Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health at Tulane University in New Orleans.

Emotionally healthy children tend to:

• Perform better in school
• Build enduring, mutually respectful relationships
• Have coping skills that can help them through hard times
• Practice healthy behaviors later in life

Raising Children: The Caregiver as a Role Model

Children learn tools for emotional health by watching how you, the caregiver, relate to them and to other people, and by observing how you cope with the challenges in your life — which include parenting.

Nagle says that this truth may mean changing your home environment, especially if your child is likely to witness or be the victim of violence.

Raising Children: Planting the Seeds of Emotional Health

If parenting were easy, most of us would be perfect, but no parent is perfect, says Nagle. “Even low-risk parents have high-risk moments, but what counts is the overall relationship.”

Nagle offers the following tips to help you raise children who are emotionally healthy:

• Know what behaviors are expected at a given age. One of the most common problems parents face (especially new parents) is that they do not know the appropriate developmental milestones for their child’s age and what behaviors are reasonable to expect. Becoming informed about developmental stages will help you respond better to your child's needs. Also, knowing the appropriate behaviors for your child's age can help you better identify real problems. The signs of emotional health vary with age, and what is appropriate at one age may be a red flag at another age, says Nagle. If you have concerns about any of your child's behaviors, talk to your child's doctor.
• Don't turn your back on your own problems. If you are struggling with emotional issues yourself, or battling substance abuse or addiction, you need to get treatment. If you don't deal with your problem, it will turn into your child's problem, too. A study of 984 teens who had been adopted as babies showed that those whose parents suffered from depression were more likely to be depressed themselves. No matter how swamped you are with balancing your overall life and raising children, seek help for these issues, says Nagle.
• Spend quality time with your child. It can be hard to come home at the end of a long day, take off your work hat, and put on your parent hat, but this is exactly what your children need you to do. “Find a way to be present for them, to find out what happened in their day, what worked, and what was hard for them,” says Nagle.
• Choose the right child care. For many working parents, crucial decisions in the course of raising children revolve around who will care for their children during working hours. Your children’s health — emotional and physical — will be maximized with a person or institution where there are only a small number of children for each caregiver, the caregiver is not depressed or overwhelmed with her own concerns, and the caregiver has been educated about child development.

The question of how to provide a good foundation for the long-term emotional health of your children has a seemingly simple answer: you. Putting that answer into practice is challenging, but infinitely rewarding.