When I ask the question “How much does our children’s mental well-being really matter?” The vast majority of people recognise some sense of moral responsibility for equipping children for an uncertain future.
But the question is – Are we willing to take the action required to stabilise and then empower our children to live healthy, productive and satisfying lives?
Only last week the BBC reports, yet again, on the escalating incidence of anxiety, depression, self-harm and eating disorder in children. We are provided with irrefutable evidence that the approach we have been using is not delivering a worthwhile result.
Do you think that focusing on the symptomatic evidence for problems which we do not have the resources to manage, will move the needle when seeking to improve our children’s mental health?
If, instead of looking at the data confirming deteriorating psychological trends, you look at the primary sources of input for our children’s paradigms they are:
- The parental heritage paradigm – imprinting is the process by which a whole multitude of aspects of the parents paradigm are absorbed by the child at the unconscious level. Many parents report to me that although they promised themselves they would not pass on the harmful aspects of their own upbringing to their children, they can see evidence that the harm is being passed on to the next generation.
- The family culture – in a harmonious family environment where the paradigm is that everyone can be equipped with the skills needed to a make a success of life, the probability of capability, contentment and happiness rises significantly. How do you imagine a child’s paradigm will develop if they are raised in a family culture which contains the disharmony caused by high levels of judgement, apathy, catastrophising and self-centredness?
- The child’s friendship group – especially when homelife is not engaging and emotionally nourishing a child may place even greater emphasis on meeting their needs through their friendship groups. Understandably children are seeking to find their place in the group and the spitefulness which often comes through competition can be deeply harmful to the development of healthy self-esteem and solid self-belief.
- Society and educational paradigms – our society is increasingly influenced by what’s generally popular and trending. The widely reported harm from social media is an obvious source of distress for children and young people.
From a paradigm perspective our media often causes unconscious but harmful decisions. For example, could the high volume of food related programmes reinforce family cultural beliefs which lead to comfort eating, obesity and food addiction?
We now have junior bake off programs which imply that as a young person you can have success and reach ‘the top of the pile’ by making biscuits, cakes, bread, pastries. Are these food stuffs useful education for a healthy diet?
Continuing the educational theme children spend 32.5+ hours a week in school. Prevalent educational paradigms tend to a greater or less degree to negotiate control through reward and punishment according to what the school believes is right or wrong. Inevitably those who do not easily succeed or conform in this environment experience harm to their self-esteem.
If we are to fundamentally change the probability of enhancing our children lives, does it seem reasonable to suggest that progress could be made in all of the above. My life’s work has involved seeing how the paradigms we use cause the sub-optimal circumstances about which we subsequently complain. More significantly I have understood practical alternative paradigms which drive different results.
If you think that our children’s mental health really does matter and you would like to investigate a different more productive paradigm you can:
- Join a parenting talk about how to build a healthy paradigm in children which will enhance the probability of your child developing a healthy paradigm for life. You can sign-up here.
- Investigate the Human Beings Club which uses enjoyable activity to enable strong and healthy paradigms in children, young people and parents.
- Contact me personally at info@achieving-momentum.com to discover the contribution I can make to developing a healthy paradigm for your children.
- Get in touch if you would like to make a bigger contribution to enhancing children’s quality of life at info@achieving-momentum.com.
