Are the kids alright?

Though in recent years there has been a welcome focus on holistic wellness, the mental health of children still does not get the attention it deserves.

Mental wellbeing of children is crucial

A few months ago, one of the two beautiful Gulmohar trees planted near the front gate of my house fell without warning. A big earth-shattering thud resounded in the air as it fell. I was shocked. The tree had looked absolutely healthy from the outside; leaves flourishing, trunk sturdy and no sign of termites. I peered at it closely trying to understand what happened. ‘You’re looking too close’, went a voice inside my head. ‘Zoom out’, and I did. I took a few steps back from the fallen tree and looked around it. Our neighbours had paved their walkways and had extended the brickwork right up to and around the tree, possibly cutting off its water supply and choking its roots. Perhaps it had been drying up inside all this time and we didn’t notice because the signs were not obvious.

So many times, in life, people around us behave in incomprehensible ways. Not all reasons are obvious, especially when it comes to the behaviour of children. Children are flowing rivers that are dammed from the time they emerge as trickles. At every bend and curve their flow is manoeuvred, sometimes reduced to a slow rivulet, at other times forced to gush at ferocious speeds and often blocked completely. Parents are the sluice gates to these rivers, controlling when and how much these rivers flow, directing them to reach desired outcomes — outcomes that have been set by social-cultural educational systems that dictate what is appropriate and what isn’t. Their natural paths diverted, their flow controlled, I wonder if these rivers forget their joyful abandon or if these gates and bunds cause the angry floods we often see.

And when these floods erupt as angry tantrums, sullen withdrawals and disobedience, we either blame ourselves for being ‘bad parents’ or we name-call our children and attempt to ‘discipline’ them. I wish there was a way we could free children from the straightjacket they are forced into from an early age. Perhaps then we’d see them in all their power — free, beautiful and energetic. But since we live in a world that comes with its conditions, we could use some pointers to create a warm, hospitable environment for our children that protects their mental health and encourages their well-being.

Your triggers, their tantrums

The biggest mistake we make as parents is to feel that everything our child is saying and doing is a reflection of our worth or the lack of it, our competence or the lack thereof. Two things happen when we do this. One, we miss noticing what may be happening in a child’s life externally — in school, in tuition classes or in friends’ circles or in the wider world they are exposed to through the media — that may be making them sad, angry or withdrawn. In other words, we forget to zoom out and look at possible reasons that may be causing the child pain that shows up in their behaviour and affects their mental health.

Two, we stop noticing our internal triggers from our own childhood wounds or traumas that may be affecting how we miss cues and react. Many times, someone will complain about our kids or criticise something they did or said and we erupt without talking to them about what happened. When we feel attacked by small things someone says about our child, chances are that our own low sense of self as a parent gets triggered and we react instead of responding. The niggling voices in our head that tell us we’re not ‘good enough’ often come from our past, our own hurtful childhoods, and our deepest fears and insecurities as human beings. But we feel them pinching now and become defensive, and attack verbally, and sometimes, physically. And when we’re on the defensive, everyone is attacked, not just the person complaining about your child, but your child as well.

When to back off...

Being mindful of these two things is like paying attention to what is happening around your unique little tree and also what is happening inside you. Is the soil of your child’s life watered and rich, is there enough sun and air, are you free of termites and insects, do you need pruning to better shelter this growing tree or are you smothering it with your weight? This zooming out and in is like a gardener’s dance as he surveys the landscape of his handiwork and also peers in closely at each leaf and flower. This dance requires closeness as well as distance. Sometimes we will have to lean in close to our children so they feel seen and heard. At other times they will need space as they process their emotions and discover themselves as individuals, especially in their teenage years.

In a way, this knowledge of when it is appropriate to come closer and when to back off requires balance and ease that can come with knowing ourselves, freeing our minds from the burden of what makes a ‘good’ parent and simply being what our child needs us to be. Till the time we perceive our children as our personal report cards, we will continue to set them and ourselves up for disappointment and pain. Class assessments, extra-curricular activities, trophies and hobbies were meant to add value to our lives. But in the outcome-oriented, competition-driven world, even these are marketable assets that delete the human. The human that is your child and that is you. Children cannot be balance sheets if they are to be happy and healthy.

Is your worry darkening their skies?

I read somewhere that to have children is to see your heart walk naked on the streets as you stand quaking with terror. Worrying is the other face of love. But there is such a thing as too much love and it’s a sticky, tricky thing. Like being stuck in a marsh with no way of getting out or like a piece of gum you thoroughly enjoyed chewing that is now stuck in your hair. To take it out means cutting off your hair. When we worry too much, we hold our children too tightly. In our attempt to protect, we hurt and smother those we wish to keep safe. And then we wonder why our children feel anxious or sad.

We let our worries twist our tongues and slip out as barbs that maim little hearts. We let our worries become so big and dark that we forget that time passes and bad phases end. We imagine that these dark clouds stretch all the way to eternity and the struggles we see in our children as they scream or shut themselves in rooms will stay forever. We imagine that the way things are now will decide their future. And we measure that future with our past. Things that were important when we were children — good grades and clearing entrance tests, these are the things we measure the future by.

Listen to the small stuff

We couldn’t be more wrong. In a world that is changing rapidly, markers of old territories cannot define a new territory whose shape shifts constantly, especially because of the pandemic. There are no maps to this age except that of curiosity and innovation; both of which children have in abundance. I think what we need as an antidote to our worry is courage. Courage to not fall for the checklist that rates parents, to remain rooted in the present moment and not obsess about the future even as we prepare for it. Courage to admit our mistakes and the heart to apologise when we hurt our children. But all of this is terribly difficult. It’s like climbing an escalator that is going down.

Humour can make this climbing easy; like a swinging rope, you can latch onto and swish around with jokes and stories. Who said parents have to be so serious? Perhaps our children pull away from us because we take ourselves too seriously, our roles as parents too seriously and we forget to be just us. Who said we can’t be goofy as we go about figuring out this manual-less assembling of child-monster-trickster-yeller? When we laugh with our kids, not at them, when we welcome their fart jokes and make silly faces with them, we also create safe spaces for them. When we listen to the small and silly stuff, they come to us with the big stuff.

Seek help when you’re struggling

I am yet to fully understand the strength of this ogre called judgement that scares us all so much. We have no qualms in asking for help if our car breaks down or if an intruder breaks into our house or when we lose something precious. We break bones and go to surgeons; we sneeze, we go to physicians but my, oh my! All hell breaks loose if someone suggests we see a counsellor or therapist if we have been struggling with our mental health. And this ogre beats us up more if our children are struggling. There goes that voice in our head again telling us how badly we have messed up this act of parenting, how we’ll never win any prizes and will most definitely fail. All we can think of is our reputations as our conditioned reactions to mental health issues hijack all sense in us. But what of our children? What will it take for us to realise that we weren’t supposed to know it all as parents, that we are allowed to ask for help and seek support when we struggle or our children suffer in silence? Perhaps if we stop looking at our children as our markers of success or failure, we can really look at them and see what they’re going through.

In a world that is hyperconnected, isolation has hit us like never before. While our neighbourhood was literally just our physical neighbourhood, our kids are exposed to the judgements, opinions and perspectives of the whole world. They may be physically safer and more comfortable than we were as children, but the modern world is a neurological battlefield that we never had to fight in. And it’s okay if we need help and support as we navigate the choppy seas of adolescence and teenage. In the absence of a community that was a given with joint families and villages, it is okay to seek a community in support groups and therapists.

The farce of independence will have us believe that we have to do everything alone. I am here to tell you that we don’t have to. This messy, joyful, sweaty, often thankless journey of parenting is lighter when we reach out to each other. When we hold each other, our children have the space to fall safely, without breaking.

The author is a life coach, trauma and relationship counsellor, speaker and sexuality educator. Her book ‘Unparenting - Sharing Awkward Truths With Curious Kids’, published by Penguin, is a collection of deeply personal essays that follow the journey of a mother-son duo as they talk about everything from puberty and dating to sex and mental health.