Top tips for how best to support children’s mental health

Families have been stretched like never before during the coronavirus pandemic.

Parents and caregivers have had to support their children through school closures, social isolation from their friends, bans on visiting relatives, cancelled trips, parties, activities and holidays as well as dealing with the stress of potentially losing jobs or being furloughed.

Family wellbeing expert Jennifer Wyman, founder of social enterprise Bridge the Gap which supports family and child mental health, has shared her top tips for getting through the upcoming months of restrictions.

The Derby-based nonprofit has received a record number of enquiries from worried parents this year seeking advice on how to help their children deal with day-to-day life.

Jennifer, an experienced early years educator and nanny, founded Bridge The Gap after experiencing her own anxiety issues. She said: “Few people will emerge from 2020 unscathed but it’s been particularly hard on young people and many parents, who will also have been affected by uncertainty at work, or by not seeing friends and families or having had long-arranged plans scrapped.”

Her top tips include:

• Use grounding techniques and mindfulness at intervals through the day, like getting children to do restful activities such as word searches, jigsaws and colouring

• Audit the child’s bedroom environment – remove clutter, consider restful lighting and use relaxing colours

• Be present – put away your phone and stay off social media so that you can concentrate on positive time together and connecting with your children.

Bridge The Gap provides mental health services to schools and families through one-to-one or group sessions in safe environments that suit individual needs, for example in schools, through private play therapy, or at their hub.

Much of their activity has been curtailed because of social distancing measures, but that has not stopped the phone ringing, especially towards the end of the year.

Jennifer added: “There was already a mental health pandemic, but the coronavirus pandemic has sent numbers soaring and we are getting way more enquiries than at any other time in our history.

“The coronavirus has had a huge effect on young people’s health and we regularly get calls from parents who are in tears because their child is feeling anxious or depressed and they just don’t know what to do to help them.

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