The Most Important Foundational Skills For Good Mental Health For You And Your Child

If you are trying to make sure that your children in particular have good mental health, there are all sorts of things that you might want to pay attention to in order to help encourage that. The truth is that it’s the kind of thing you can approach in a lot of ways, and you should generally be able to ensure that your child is developing their mental health in a good and positive way. There are always going to be challenges to this, but it’s the kind of thing that you should definitely bear in mind if you want to make sure you are developing them well.

So in this post, we are going to look at some of the foundational skills that you might want to try and develop for good mental health. As long as you have thought about these, and you have encouraged them in your child, you’ll find that you are going to have much better mental health in general in your family, which is a great situation to find yourself in.

Self-Awareness

First of all, you need to make sure there is a really strong sense of self-awareness in place. This is the kind of thing that is really going to be hugely important, and it is truly a core part of being much more mentally well and emotionally available. If there is a lot of self-awareness it tends to mean that many of the problems that we go through as people are much easier to deal with, and some may simply not arise in the first place at all.

To develop this self-awareness is usually a relatively simple process for most people, although it may well take time to develop fully. However, it begins just by being mindful of what is going on internally and then following that feeling as well as possible. This is the kind of thing that is going to lead to more self-awareness in no time, and it’s amazing what it can really do for a person.
In terms of your child’s self-awareness developing, there are quite a few ways that you can help this process along too, including simply asking them to reflect on themselves again and again. If you do that from time to time, you are probably going to find that it leads to them being much more self-aware, and it’s amazing what that can actually really do for you and for them.

So there is no doubt that self-awareness in whatever developed form is hugely important for the development and advancement of good mental health, and it’s something that you really need to make sure you are focused on in your family.

Mindfulness

This is related to self-awareness although in some respects it may be even more foundational. That’s because you need a strong degree of mindfulness in order to be able to view yourself clearly, and mindfulness can simply be thought of as the act or ability of paying attention to what is going on within yourself as best as you can. This includes any thoughts, feelings, emotions, physiological changes and so on.

However, something that often gets forgotten in mindfulness talk is that it’s also about what’s happening outside you. So a good mindful approach will take into consideration the whole environment, what you are perceiving as well as what you feel and think. If you are able to develop both of these poles of mindfulness at the same time, you will certainly find that they are going to help you to have a much stronger overall mindfulness, which in turn increases your self-awareness.

However, it does much more than that. Mindfulness is also calming and healing in its own right, and this is something that you will need to make sure that you are thinking about if you want to keep your mental health as strong as possible. Just the fact of paying attention to what is going on in yourself is already going to bring about some incredible healing. So if you can bear that in mind, you might be a lot more inspired to do it.

And for your child, you might decide that you want them to start being mindful as soon as possible. It’s a really useful skill to have early on especially, and you’ll find that there is a lot to be said for your child developing it as much as possible. So make sure to encourage it and to show them what a fun and enjoyable thing it can really be.

Social Skills

For everyone, but especially early on and for your children, social skills are a really central and important part of having good mental health. That’s because we are social creatures, and we need interaction and relationships in order to develop and to be full human beings. So if there is this lack of a social bond, it can be really troubling for mental health – and indeed, later in life, loneliness is one of the main determining factors in a lot of mental health issues.

So having strong social skills is really important, and it’s something that can be developed easily enough if you are keen to do that. For your child this might involve developing social skills through following particular sets of activities designed for that purpose. The sooner you get them to do that kind of thing, the better it is going to be for their social life in general.

For you, you should remember that social skills are important throughout life and at every stage, so it’s really important to make sure that you are thinking about this and that you are doing all you can to make the most of them. You will find that having more social skills increases your confidence and allows you to get so much more out of every element of your life too.

Self-Care

This is not often thought of as a skill, but it might be helpful to reframe it as such, because it’s only by taking good care of yourself day after day that you can ensure you are going to do all you can to keep yourself as happy and well as possible. If you are caring for yourself right, you should find that this really makes a huge difference to how you feel in yourself very quickly. And keeping that up is going to be really important for looking after yourself later on too.

There are many elements to self-care, and it can help to think in terms of different areas of your life that you need to look after. So you can focus on the physical side, the emotional side, the mental side, as well as the home, finances, work, relationships and your spirituality. If you have got all that looked after well, that is going to make for a good holistic approach to your self-care.

For your child, again it’s all about helping them to develop this as early on as possible. If you can do that, you should find that you are going to notice them being much happier and better in themselves, and that they are able to have much stronger mental health right from the start.

We are not doctors and this is in no way intended to be used as medical advice and we cannot be held responsible for your results. As with any product, service or supplement, use at your own risk. Always do your own research before using.