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Four analogies for parenting mental health. On June 9th, along with 44 intrepid fundraisers, I climbed Mount Snowdon to raise money for Parenting Mental Health (PMH). It was an incredibly challenging walk. The wind blew with 30-mile-an-hour gusts, and the clouds closed in. There were many points when I wondered if I would make it.
When was the last time you told your child they were beautiful, funny, supported, loved?
How many hats do you wear? Parent, child, spouse, friend, employee, employer? Whatever roles you’re responsible for, when your child’s mental health declines, and you’re expected to work as if it hasn’t, it can add an additional layer of stress to an already challenging situation.
Our founder Suzanne reflects on why sometimes, you have to stop fixing and start feeling.
On World Mental Health Day, read today's blog on hope or scroll to the end to listen.
As we drove up the M6 on a bright sunny day in September 2019 to take our daughter to university, I felt a huge sense of achievement - and stomach churning anxiety. Just 4 short years before, Issy had become depressed and suicidal after a period of sustained bullying at school, leading to 2 years out of education and a whole wilderness of pain for her, and for us. But here we were, against the odds, hurtling towards a fresh start with everything from the prerequisite coloured plates (so they don’t get appropriated) to a full body hot water bottle (possibly not so necessary) ready for an experience that I naively hoped would be like a young adult version of Mallory Towers. Connection, challenges, life changing growth. But to consider the university experience for our child to be the deliverer of all the things they may have missed - friendships and relationships, opportunities to work or volunteer, a chance to become independent - can make more of it than is realistic, to them and to us. Removing the expectations of it can be more helpful than we think. University really isn’t like college or school so if your child’s mental health has been poor or challenged their ability to greet the world in positive or purposeful ways, you can naturally worry that they’ll be isolated away from home; they won’t have the support they do from you and others; that this might not be the great adventure we’re all told it is. So how can we approach this in a way that supports them and helps us to come to terms with the enormous challenges your child may have overcome to get there or the very real, very natural fears we hold for them?
If you’re one of the 11million+ adults in the UK alone whose body image has made them anxious, I see you. I hear you. I am you. I vividly recall getting changed after swimming at school aged about 10 and realising that I was about 2 feet taller than everyone else and that I had the beginnings of breasts. As I dried myself, someone pointed at these mounds of flesh and everyone stopped and looked at me as if I’d grown another head before their eyes. And as I looked around at the picture perfect girls before me - small, perfectly formed, and nowhere near puberty - I thought how strange I must be to be different. Not good different then, but sad, bad, differently different. I think that was the day I consciously stopped innately, naturally, loving myself. By rights, I should have been delighted about the burgeoning boobage. My first memory is running down the stairs on my 5th birthday crying to my Mum that they hadn’t come! I thought breasts grew overnight when you were 4 years and 364 days old. These early memories set the scene for me to feel somewhat out of sorts with my body. Always bigger than everyone else, I have fought my beautiful body for decades. If anyone else had size 8 feet in the 1980s, I am sorry for the pathetically small range of Clarks school shoes you also had to choose from. Thankfully times have changed. The fight I have with my body hasn’t developed as rapidly though. It has taken me decades to come to terms with my body: this amazing vessel that has borne 2 beautiful, perfect human beings, that hasn’t ever broken a bone, that survived physical traumas, that continues to function, regenerate, and breathe without my overactive mind telling it to do so. And it’s a work in constant progress and flux.
Parenting Mental Health is a charity that exists to improve the experience of parenting a child through poor mental health, so, we’re used to distress. We see a lot of it: from anxiety and depression, to eating disorders, self-harm, and far, far too many suicide attempts. And we see much of it through our amazing digital communities: safe, well moderated, judgement free spaces where over 40,000 parents convene daily to share their experiences and gain support and a sense of not being alone. We’re deeply proud of our caring and supportive corner of the internet. But we’re seeing parents becoming more and more concerned about the impacts on their children of extreme content accessed via social media. Much of this content would make us adults squirm, look away or take to the streets in outrageous protest if it played out on any other medium than social. So, when we were invited to join the Dove campaign on making social media safer for our children, we knew immediately that we wanted to support it. We see the daily impacts of disconnection brought about through inappropriate content online and believe that the voices and experience of the parents we support deserve to be recognised and heard by those with the power to change social media. We see the impact unrealistic representations has on young people, and while we also see the power of social media for positive wellbeing and connection, we wholeheartedly support Dove’s campaign to challenge the accessibility to and presence of toxic content that feeds into young people’s growing brains at such a key point in their development. Without a clear and consistent schedule of whether our child will see something delightful or damaging when they go on social media, it can feel as if they are rolling the dice. What will they see this time? What might a simple ‘like’ take them to next time? With algorithms that exist and evolve to make the act of searching and staying online more enticing and exciting than ever before, the uncertain and unpredictable nature of the content that is being served up serves only advertisers and technology companies, not our children.
