Have you ever wondered:

“Is my child’s behaviour typical?”

“Is their development on track?”

“Could my child have a mental health challenge or need extra support?”

The answers to these questions aren’t always straightforward. Every child is different, and kids can’t always articulate what they’re experiencing or feeling. So, as parents, how do we know if we should find support for our child’s mental health, and where can we find it?

To help us answer these questions, FamilySmart, together with Karen Peters, created three videos for parents and caregivers: Beyond Behaviors: When Is It More? What It Looks Like Ages 4–8, What It Looks Like Ages 9–12 and for parents of teens, What It Looks Like Ages 13+.

Peters’ expertise as a registered clinical counsellor and her lived experience as a mom helps parents understand typical child development, when it might be helpful to find out more about our kid’s behaviour or feelings and when to reach out for extra help. The videos address a range of kids’ ages.

“We see things like kids getting left out or rules getting broken,” says Peters.

“When struggles are chronic… going on for two years, that’s where the flag happens.”

Each video in this series starts with an animated analogy that compares parenting to swimming in a pool. This helps us to put our parenting challenges into perspective. Some of us parent in the deep end where it’s busy and stressful, others parent in the shallow end with seemingly little effort and some of us spend time on the poolside. And then there’s the lifeguards and life rings that can support us. The videos help explain when and how to reach out for a life ring.

When my kids had some challenges with their mental health, I often swam in the deep end of the pool. Now and then, when things got easier for a brief time, I waded through the shallow end—a little more refreshing and always more relaxing.

After Peters helps us figure out where we are parenting in the pool analogy, she walks us through what to expect physically, socially/emotionally and cognitively with our child’s development, depending on our kid’s age. She gives us practical examples of what typical developments can look like in our kids, and what it can look like when our kids might have some challenges that we need to address.

“We put a lot of pressure on ourselves and when there are opportunities to take tiny breaks, we don’t take them because we feel guilty for not somehow always being present for our child,” says Peters.

“Please give yourself permission. It requires you to say, ‘I will let myself take a break when I need to.’ I was able to do this when I recognized it wasn’t just about me feeling better. My child benefited, my partner benefitted, we all benefited.”

Despite all the learning we do as parents, sometimes it’s still hard to tell if our child’s development or behaviour is typical. When this happens, Peters talks about doing our own curiosity assessments with our kids to find out more about what they might be experiencing.

If we discover that our child or teen might need extra support in some areas, or that they might have a mental health challenge, we need to know where to go for help. Peters offers some suggestions for finding the lifeguards or life rings to support us.

“Don’t rule out connecting with other people,” she says.

“That interactive care offers something we can’t give ourselves. We need to connect with other people to recognize, that truly, we are not alone.”

As we journey through all our child’s developmental stages and challenges, we can learn from our kids, other parents, ourselves and the experts. Sometimes the learning is hard, and sometimes it’s beyond hard.

When it’s hard, asking for support can be hard, too. FamilySmart’s Family Peer Support Workers are in communities across BC, and they can make it easier. They support parents/caregivers who have kids with mental health challenges, even if their child doesn’t have a diagnosis. They help families find services and provide emotional support and resources. Find out who your Family Peer Support Worker is in your community by going to http://familysmart.ca/family-peer-support.

School is hard for some kids (and their parents).

We might not know why our child is struggling, or how to support them or we might have a hard time asking the school for help. We might not even know that asking the school is an option.

Talking to the teacher, staff or administrators about our kid’s challenges can be overwhelming. So how do we work with our child’s support team to get help for them? And how do we help our kids at home?

For me, talking to my child’s teacher about her challenges with school wasn’t easy. When going to school became hard for my daughter, I had no clue how to approach her teacher about it. How could I share my daughter’s struggles with school and my parenting difficulties with a teacher I barely knew? The only words her teacher and I had exchanged were brief greetings in the hallway at drop-off and pick-up time.

What was I supposed to say to her teacher?

“My daughter doesn’t like school, I don’t know why, I don’t know what to do about it and I don’t know how we’ll get through the school year. And by the way, can you help us?”

That conversation felt like a big leap—a vulnerable risk.

Seek Support

FamilySmart’s Family Peer Support Workers can support parents and caregivers through those hard times with their child’s or teen’s mental health. They can also help families to find community and provincial support or services.

In the FamilySmart video Working Together: Families and Schools, Ashley Ragoonaden, principal at École KLO Middle School in Kelowna, speaks to FamilySmart’s Programs Director Victoria Keddis about creating relationships with your child’s school.

He and Keddis speak about parents and educators working together to build positive relationships with children and teens by focusing on their strengths and interests.

“Find out what their definition of success is,” says Ragoonaden.

“What are the things they would like to achieve? It’s about building trust, positive relationships and using the right language with them. From there, what are their interests? What are they good at? And then build a system around (that).”

Celebrate the Good

When my daughter struggled with school, a teacher who had a similar approach to Ragoonaden’s helped me focus more on my daughter’s strengths and interests, and less on the hard stuff. I learned to enjoy and celebrate the things that were going well for her and the things that she loved.

With that mind shift, I became a more relaxed parent. Her school experiences still weren’t easy, but after time, her strengths and love for music carried her through her challenges.

When we connect with our kids through their strengths and interests, we can begin to learn more about them.

Ask yourself how you can be creative about focusing on the things they love, or the things they are good at, so that you can build deeper connections with them.

When we build a strong relationship with our child, it’s more likely they will talk to us about their experiences and feelings. And when we build relationships with their teachers, it can make it easier to ask for help. We might even learn something about our child’s experiences at school. This approach can empower us and make us feel less alone.

Shift Your Mindset

As Ragoonaden explains, we can benefit from having a growth mindset, something he says is an approach that tells our kids that even if things aren’t going well now, we (the parents and the school) will find a way to support them.

“It’s about empowering your young person to say, ‘I am struggling now. Mom and dad, can you help me get better?’” he adds.

“Let the child know, ‘No matter what the struggles are, we can find a way to help you. We just haven’t found it yet.’”

Even then, it can be hard to not beat ourselves up or to feel like you should have this parenting thing all figured out. Through no fault of our own, sometimes it takes extra time and patience to learn and to make things easier. If you have a tendency to take on the blame, Ragoonaden has another message: Forgive yourself.

Learn more about FamilySmart’s programs and access resources such as the video featuring Ragoonaden and many more at familysmart.ca.