The school year has ended and summer is upon us. While in the past, summer was a time for relaxing and resetting, today’s students often have schedules jam-packed with summer athletics, test prep, academic camps, jobs/internships, and other structured activities.  Whether you have small children or young adults about to leave home in the fall, summer is a great time to check in with your kids and their mental health. This often feels like a daunting task. After all, what does mental health mean, exactly? Mental health can be characterized by the presence of optimism, self-worth, resilience, and emotional well-being. While those may feel like complex traits to hone in on, there are straightforward ways to encourage the growth of those healthy characteristics and gauge how your child is doing on an emotional level. 

Lifestyles and Life Skills

First, let’s start with lifestyles and life skills that add to not only your child’s mental health but also your own. Simple ideas and endeavors like exercise, positive self-talk, minimizing screen time, incorporating healthy eating habits, and being outdoors will absolutely contribute to a healthier outlook and overall feeling of wellness for both adults and children alike. These are activities and daily routines the whole household can do together and feel the positive results as a family.  

Communication and Checking In

Next, let’s talk about communication and checking in. As parents, we are conditioned to problem-solve for our children from birth. They scream, we feed or change them. They cry, and we troubleshoot until we figure out what they need and/or want. They fall, and we scoop them up and make everything better. As children become adolescents, their need for us moves away from the physical and into more emotional territory. They are learning how to be more independent and interact with others. While this transition occurs, it is a perfect time for parents to curb their need to solve every problem for their children and prioritize their willingness to listen. 

Listening Skills - the WAIT Approach

By listening, offering support, and asking follow-up questions instead of immediate solutions, parents are able to encourage their children to problem-solve on their own, grow from experiencing consequences for their actions, and actively reflect on their choices. This may feel completely counterintuitive. You’ve lived through much of what they are going through! You have all the answers they need! There is absolutely space for advice giving and space for silence as well. Just like adults, sometimes they are just going to need to vent. Sometimes they are just going to need to feel all the feelings. Sometimes they just need someone to say they are heard and understood. The more you allow your child to speak freely with you without fear of an immediate directive or response, the more you’ll be able to intuit what they need. 

There will be in-between moments when they don’t JUST need someone to talk to and are looking for more. In these instances, parents then have the opportunity to introduce ideas to their children such as how to give themselves grace when mistakes are made, set boundaries for friends who don’t make them feel good, recover from losses and celebrate wins, and remember to dream big. An easy acronym for this approach to listening more and speaking less is “WAIT” or “Why Am I Talking.” When your child approaches you and starts to talk, tell yourself to WAIT and then really think about whether they are asking for your advice or truly just need you to lend a sympathetic ear.

Incremental Steps

Does this feel like a huge and overwhelming task? Start small! Choose one lifestyle step like a walk outside or saying positive affirmations in the mirror together this week. Ask your child one question in the car or at the dinner table and then listen with all your might. Just as your own, your child’s mental health is of utmost importance and you as their parent can make a wonderfully positive impact. These small, important ideas can and will contribute to the growth of optimism, self-worth, resilience, and emotional stability… the achievable components of positive mental health.

Rebecca Railsback is a licensed mental health counselor who is also a Success Prep Partner Coach providing social and emotional counseling to SPP students and families.