Mental Health Awareness

As I sat in the garden listening to the wind in the trees and the birds singing, with my dog lying in contact with my leg, (to alert him, if I dare move) my brain often goes to a place in which I create analogies to explain things that feel pertinent to share.

Thinking positive mental health, which for me, is an everyday continual task, I visualised a picture of a large vertical tunnel, with an equally long ladder attached to its side.  As you can imagine the bottom was a long way down and very dismal, dark and unappealing spot with the top opening out to light, sunshine and maybe the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

To create personal context, I have been in the pit at the bottom when my brain was unable to read, unable to notice danger and implement safety behaviours, were I felt numb and could not make decisions of any kind…. but hey, I am been at the top too, and all the wonderful feelings that occur in that mental space too.

But I only found out how to manage my mental health through reflection of what I had experienced in travelling up and down that ladder, and it is those small daily behaviours that both help me to climb and also to alert me when I am slipping.

But every action has to be a deliberate one, and the actions are different for each individual.  I can only implement them whilst I am ladder bound however the more I take notice and implement the positive actions and acknowledge what the negative, unhelpful or draining ones are, the more I remain on the ladder.  From the depth of the pit, it has be interventions beyond the ‘self’ and include medical support.

My actions can be as small as noticing/caring about what I look like before I leave the house, washing my hair, creating time to eat, making eye contact, watching nature… to name a few.  This arms me with the ability to notice when I don’t do things and to notice when I need to do more.  It is an internal gauge of self-care, emotional well being, positive mental health, me time.

Where are you on the ladder? What small thing could you do to move up a rung?  Make a declaration of these things with a supportive friend, colleague, neighbour.  This gives them permission to give you a nudge when you are perhaps slipping and helps to uphold commitment to your own self care.

Slow down…

Challenge yourself to slow down, to be led by a child, they are your equal, so why not let them take the lead?

Children are our best educators for teaching us to slow down, we need to trust their outlook.  Children are fabulous at being mindful, they can rest in the moment, be captivated and totally absorbed by the ‘here and now.’  Unfortunately adults, technology and societal expectations work very hard at disrupting this ability from a very young age.

We are so busy, in so much of a hurry that we can barely stop to allow our child to try to put their own shoes on, before we are hurrying them along or internally absorbing greater anxiety levels as we bite our tongue, then get cross and do the task for them anyway.

Children’s behaviour becomes tricky and difficult when we force children to be adult led in an adult environment with adult expectations.  A prime location being a shopping centre.  Our stress levels increase as our children can’t meet expectations.  From personal experience this never ends well.  Here comes the greater challenge!!

So try something different….

We can’t commercialise and market the benefits of watching a ladybird walking up and down individual blades of grass.  There isn’t an app. for that!  It does not fit into our adult agenda and value system. We are just too busy.

But I challenge you to stop, notice and wonder…..

Slow down…one home day is worth much more!

As my middle child, my lion moves towards the end of his first term at school, it still has not reached its climax, we are only beginning to crescendo as we begin to enter into December.  My lion cub is 4 years and 9 months, starting school 6 months earlier than his elder sibling due to birthday months but yet school and society expect so much of such a young child and at times so do we as their parents.  A child starting school is set to task on learning their phonics, writing and reading, managing their behaviour and social skills around their peers, older children and all in the absence of their parents (think of that first day learning a new job role, driving lesson, uncomfortable social experience…and how mightily exhausting they are!) But our 4 year olds do this every day for many many weeks…to be topped off with the run up into Christmas….it feels like an unwieldy messy sprint of survival, parents and children alike! This sprint seems to commence with the learning of christmas songs and lines for a play (baring in mind that your child only started to put three phonic sounds together last week!) the school christmas fair, inclusive of donations, christmas shows, daytime and evening, including costume rehearsals, making costumes, church service, disco…..to end the school term a mere 5 days before Christmas Day! (Clearly adding any adult social events, work commitments or younger/older children would just be impossible….wait a minute actually that is …..life!)

Once we retrieve our children at the end of the term from the demands of school, they enter into another arrangement of routines, standards, travelling, lack of sleep, expectations, different food and routine!  If at any point our children rebel or complain or indeed are just very tired and a little grumpy, we are quick to condemn them…What have you to moan about, ITS CHRISTMAS’

I have unravelled this as something to be mindful of over the next month or so, because I believe the growing expectations of wanting a perfect Christmas and ‘doing more = better’ is hard on children as well as adults, and children have not developed the emotional resilience that most adults have.

In the midst of the school term the weekends become, for most families, THE opportunity to do things together.  I had my lion and zebra who are 4 and 3 at home last Saturday by myself, I suggested to them over breakfast that while daddy and monkey were out for the day we travel into the city, look at the huge pretty sparkly Christmas tree and pick daddys Christmas present…my lion cubs response was an exclamation that Christmas is not daddy’s birthday and that he wanted to stay home in him pyjamas. I responded “you would like a home day?” He answered “I want to stay at home and play in my bedroom with my toys”  This was agreed!

This challenged me, as I think I knew that actually my children needed to do that, they needed time to relax and play… real play, the spontaneous stuff were you only get disturbed because lunch is ready.  Where expectations are low and your child’s brain has a mini ‘time-out.’  I also felt a subconscious pressure (probably media/society driven) that if I was to take my children out and show them pretty Christmas lights that I would somehow be better fulfilling my parental role and enriching their learning.  I was also slightly concerned that staying at home all day would make my job harder, that I would have to personally provide more, in terms of their demands or that I would be constantly sorting their disputes.  Neither of these were the case.  My children played all day. we did some things all together and some things individually; we read, played, coloured, talked, danced, watched and none of it cost money!!!  I also had a nagging doubt that they could not entertain themselves without external input for the whole day, but children can and mine did, shops/brands/leisure parks etc would like us to believe that we can’t!! However if we don’t expose our children to having to entertain themselves or allow them the time to play in their own homes then they too will get caught up in the need be continually stimulated by external devices/sources.

As we read ever more popular books about ‘being mindful’ and ‘mindfulness’ I hope we as adults and parents can practise it with our children over the Christmas time and not get caught up in the need to provide enriching/extracurricular experiences and activities to further exhaust them before their next school terms begins.  So before you start planning…just stay in your pjs and go nowhere!!