Article By EEW Magazine Online // Mental Health // Family

In an effort to raise awareness about mental health issues in children, The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) is challenging parents and caregivers to reexamine how we interpret children's behavior.

Instead of making snap judgments, we should take a more realistic look at our children's behavior to identify underlying issues that may be impacting them.

While there is a general misconception that kids don't experience mental illness, 50% of mental health conditions begin by age 14, a statistic based on data from the 2017-2018 National Survey of Children's Health. More than 10 million kids in the U.S. are dealing with mental health conditions including depression, anxiety and ADHD.

Our outdated notions of “good” and “bad,” for kids who are struggling, is not a sophisticated enough evaluation.

Dr. Ken Duckworth, medical director for NAMI, provides tips for EEW Magazine Online readers to help you tackle the bigger conversation with the entire family about these issues. Employing these methods can reduce the stress on kids by changing the expectations of those around them.

Some tips include:

Reconsider the "good or bad” labels

Jumping to conclusions with labels “good” or “bad” could cause you to miss important warning signs about what's really going on with your child.

Start sensitive conversations with empathy.
Remember that different people have different triggers. We need to meet each other in the middle and have more empathy for others.

Leave judgments behind.
Less shame and blame and more compassion is the rule of the day, every day. There are more intense expectations from people who approach children and relationships from a place of judgment and unrealistically high standards.

Tell your kids you've got their backs.
Your kids are already open to opinions from the “peanut gallery” all year. As often as possible, remind them that it's OK to be themselves, and you love and support them no matter what.

Model the behavior.
Be a good example for your kids by approaching others with compassion and understanding. What they see you do has a much bigger impact on them than what you say.

"People can feel down for many reasons," said Dr. Ken Duckworth. "It could be the lack of sunlight, pressures in school, high expectations from family, loss of a loved one— any number of triggering factors,” which can contribute to emotionally difficult times.

Dr. Duckworth added, “Let's recognize that we're experiencing a mental health crisis for kids in America. We all need to try be more compassionate with our kids and each other."