Pay attention to your child’s mental well-being

Each time the mother rebuked her son, he would burst out into laughter. Every strong word she mentioned, he looked down and laughed. At first, it did not make sense to me. I wondered why he was laughing when there was nothing funny.

It finally hit me. He laughed in order to cope with the pain of chastisement. He would look down in shame and laugh in order to console himself.

Human beings cope with situations differently. When someone is upset, they might frown and keep quiet. Others yell and throw things. In this particular little boy’s case, when deeply upset he would laugh, a painful sarcastic laugh.

As children grow, they develop into individual characters with distinct ways of understanding and doing things. If a parent is not keen, it is possible to miss guiding cues and warning lights. There comes a time when you look at a child and you do not understand them and they do not understand you either.

Every time you listen to people, you hear undertones of things that happened to them as children and how they impacted their thinking and perception of the world. 

A young man was telling me how one of his children was facing trouble at school and contemplated quitting. Whenever he came home, his mother would say things that mocked him to leave home.

This disconnect was taking a toll on him. As a result, he almost fell into severe depression. So I asked myself over and over, where was I missing it as a mother? How many situations had I overlooked and what impact was it having on my children in the short, medium and long-term situations?

When a child laughs every time they are rebuked, what does this mean for the parent? When a child closes themselves up in a room for hours, what does it mean? When a child seems to be binging on food all the time, what does it mean?

We usually pay a lot of attention to the physical health and wellbeing of our children and we take care of their material needs as best as we can, but are we aware of their emotional health and well-being? Are we able to read the unwritten script and notice the silent and unspoken things? Do these things even matter to us?

Can we say with confidence that we know our children or are there things about their lives that can shock the life out of us? What are their deepest cravings and aspirations? What are their daily activities communicating to us? Are we monitoring? Are we responding?