Mercy in the Madness

I recently shared my thoughts on a couple of strategies for raising kids who are emotionally resilient. Here are a few more strategies that I wanted to add.

Live a Healthy Lifestyle

Encourage a healthy lifestyle, and model one.  You know the basics – eat your fruits and veggies, exercise, and get enough sleep and rest.  Have regular routines.  Keep up with your hygiene. Stay away from drugs and alcohol, and talk to your kids about these things early and often. Consider your reproductive health as well, and talk to your kids about waiting and about safe sex early and often. Prioritize access to good health care as much as possible. Although you can certainly live a healthy life style and still experience a mental health disorder, your risk is lower and recovering from mental illness and thriving even while having one is much easier when you live healthfully.

Help Them Identify Values, Meaning, and Purpose

Help kids identify their values, meaning and purpose in life.  I know that’s deep, and you might be a parent who wants to allow your kids to decide for themselves what their values and beliefs are going to be. I can see the appeal in that, but the truth is, research shows that people are much more resilient and mentally healthy when they understand and live by their values, and when they can find meaning and purpose in their lives.  That goes for children and adults. If you’re not sure about your own beliefs, your own sense of purpose, there is no better time to explore that than now. Sharing your own values with your kids – talking about what they are, why you have them (which goes back to having meaning and purpose), and how you live by them – is something that will help them become emotionally resilient when faced with life’s challenges.

Let Go of What You Can’t Control

Know that there are limits to what we can control.  This was one of the most difficult and hard-won lessons I ever learned growing up. But that’s reality, isn’t it? We all need to learn that there are limits to what we can do ourselves to better our situations. In our relationships, this is just as crucial. There’s only one person we can and should control in every relationship we have, and that is ourselves.

Even if our heart’s deepest desire and our life’s greatest work is to raise well-adjusted kids, there are sometimes factors we simply cannot control, and there are no guarantees that we will be successful. Go back to the serenity prayer (whether or not you’re in recovery!). Seeing a parent maintain faith in the face of a challenge that they cannot control will teach them something incredible valuable. These are just a few strategies to help lower the risk for our kids as best we can. But take the pressure off yourself to have perfect kids – you don’t, and no one else does either.