New Delhi

If you find yourself reading an article attempting to make a curious case of emphasis on children’s mental health almost a week after Mental Health Day, it is because it’s appearing fashionably late! That is how late we are as a society at noticing a child’s state of mind whom we always assume happy.  

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Why bother about a child’s mental health? Children of ages 12 and below spend most of their time playing, sleeping or avoiding school homework. But, when you go for a therapy session, have you ever wondered: why did the therapist ask you about your childhood? Why were you quiet, unable to explain a thing? Or worse, you didn’t want to talk about it. Chances are that your adulthood traumas that need therapy took root in your personality when you were quite little; a child who wanted to talk but had nobody to communicate with. NO SAFE SPACE.

Speaking on therapy sessions, Pooja Priyamvada, who is a mental health counsellor and media educator, said, “I believe childhood shapes your entire life.” Many people have had a successful professional life, “but one incident from childhood, whether it was abandonment, whether it was physical abuse or sexual abuse; that keeps haunting them and affecting them in ways that they do not even know about. So, their personal relationships suffer.”

Based in Vancouver, Canada, Host and writer of the Alone Together podcast, Peg Fong claims that the pandemic may have made the situation worse because kids spent a lot of time at home and on screen.

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She says, “The pandemic had a significant impact on young people, we are now seeing a generation that was born during lockdown. At a time when children are interacting with other toddlers and kids their own age in playgrounds and in daycare, instead, they were spending the time indoors and on screens.”

What parents think

Discussing children’s mental health between ages 1 to 12, a parent said, “Do they even understand the status of their mental health? Is there any awareness in this kind of age group? I don’t think so.”

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Another parent stated that if a child has issues, it starts building at home. The environment at home affects how they begin to think at an early age.

In general, parents find it tough to navigate a child’s mental health status as they have very little awareness about it.

Trauma shapes personality

When asked how these issues shape their personality moving forward, Priyamvada says that there is a big problem in India since Indians believe children are always happy, and they do not experience anxiety or stress; but that is not the case.

She says, “It has been proven again and again by experiments in psychology that children as young as three or four can experience anxiety and can express that as well, and various other emotions. When they experience any such traumatic incident or any emotion that is not easy to handle on their own at such a young age, it does shape their personality in a long way.”

Loneliness among children

Peg Fong on the other hand explains how feeling lonely is “normal,” even amongst children, and they must be told so.  

She says, “It's perfectly ok to talk about why they feel lonely, and what they want to do about it. Do they want alone time sometimes? Do they want to be with others and not talk or do they want to spend time with others?”

Signs your child is distressed but not saying it

Children have a hard time communicating with elders or anyone as they don’t have the right vocabulary to explain themselves. The idea of meeting children halfway completely fails when it comes to communication. There are signs that parents can take a clue from as to how their child is feeling.

Priyamvada explains the signs of a child feeling lonely but not expressing it. “If a child was very playful and suddenly has become quieter, they used to sleep well, but now, you know, they are awake at odd times during the night, the things they used to love to eat, and the friends they used to love to be with, they're not doing that. These are some very common symptoms that the child must be going through some distress.”

"They lose appetite, or they lose sleep, or they feel jittery. And that then leads to children feeling that there is somebody who is a safe person or somebody who understands what I'm going through, and it becomes easier for children to go to this adult and express what they're going through,” she adds.

How parents play a vital role in communicating

Peg Fong says, “Parents, like everyone else, are stretched thin and burdened with many things. Mental health, whether in the home, or in schools or in the workplace, are topic that should be discussed without feelings of shame. I think it helps to put it into context of how resilience and emotional intelligence and curiosity and kindness are ways to get into the topic of loneliness.”

As an Indian parent and mental health advocate, Priyamvada emphasizes on Indian parents and their parenting styles.

“Indian parents largely are dismissive because of their lack of awareness about mental health. They think every mental health condition or experience is an illness, and the taboo and stigma about mental illness is so huge that nobody would want to associate it with their child,” she said.

Also read: Rujuta Diwekar ‘will update in 2034’ if she found a man who supports his wife; enables health care

Neglect is the root cause

She added, “I see a lot of young parents, using phones as nannies, using TV as nannies, and having no control on what kind of content the child is consuming that might also the child might see a scary movie and might start getting nightmares.”

“Neglect is also considered to be a form of abuse,” says Priyamvada.

Before children begin to have issues, it is important that they have people to talk to, someone they can trust. Someone they can reach out to, so they don’t contain their thoughts in their mind alone. Communication is the key at any age. But the right time to begin solving things is the beginning itself.