How parents can prioritise their children’s wellbeing during remote learning

As we continue with this period of remote learning, it’s a stressful time for everyone in the school community – parents, teachers and students alike. Many parents are trying to juggle the demands of working from home, as well as supporting their children’s education online. Most schools are doing an incredible job in providing online lessons and resources, and parents are doing their best to keep all the balls in the air – not an easy task. It can certainly feel overwhelming and some parents worry about whether they are doing enough. It’s really important to take this pressure off yourself and to accept as a starting point that this is a temporary measure, so you just have to do the best you can and keep going, whilst trying to stay as positive and calm as possible.

The main thing for you as a parent to remember at this time is to prioritise your child’s well-being ahead of their academic progress. Why? Research shows that emotional well-being in childhood is the strongest predictor of a happy and fulfilled life in adulthood. Supporting your child’s well-being and mental health has to come first, before any academic or curricular tasks. It’s a win-win situation, as when children feel happy, safe, positive and supported, they can learn, and reach their academic potential. If a child is stressed and anxious, the learning part of their brain shuts down, so it’s counter-productive to try to continue with academics.

So, how can you help your child to feel happy, safe, positive and supported? Of course, it’s not possible or even desirable for us, or our children, to feel happy all the time – all emotions are completely normal and are part of the richness of being human. We need to teach our children to accept all of their emotions and find healthy ways to express their strong emotions such as sadness, anger, frustration and worry. Keep the channels of communication open by checking in with your child regularly, asking them how they are feeling, and validating and empathizing with them. Just listening to them and helping them to express their emotions can be a really powerful way of supporting them – we can’t fix everything for our children, but once they know that we are there for them through it all, they will feel so much safer and calmer. Don’t underestimate the power of your loving relationship – that sense of connection and closeness is just magic for children’s well-being. They crave connection with us, so make sure that you have moments during the day when you are fully present for them. These don’t have to be long periods of time, even 10 or 15 minutes of your undivided attention a few times during the day will help to fill your child’s cup. We are so often multi-tasking and only half-present for the people in our lives, so if we can be more mindful of the power of wholehearted connection it can really work wonders. Just by reframing the phrase ‘attention-seeking’ as ‘connection-seeking’, we can start to change our mindset and remember our children’s huge need for our unconditional love, support, encouragement and validation.

As well as that, we can try to create as positive a home environment as we can – don’t underestimate the power of fun, laughter and joy. Research shows that experiencing micro-moments of positive emotions such as love, joy, pride, humour, serenity, interest and gratitude actually buffer us, build our resilience and sustain us through difficult times – and the same is true for children. Think of all those small ways that you can boost positivity for you and your child every day – maybe a daily gratitude practice, watching a funny movie together, getting creative, practising mindfulness, doing random acts of kindness, creating a positivity playlist of their favourite upbeat songs – there are so many small things we can do, and we often don’t realise that these small things are really the big things! That’s one of the reasons I created this 30 Day Positivity Challenge for Kids to do at home, which you can check out here: otb.ie/home-support

Emotions are contagious, so when we take the time to think about ways to help ourselves to feel positive, replenished, happy and energised, this ripples out to our children too. Prioritising our own well-being as parents is absolutely vital if we want to prioritise our children’s well-being and mental health. We are their first role models after all, so if they see us giving ourselves permission to be kind to ourselves and take care of ourselves, that’s how they will eventually learn to give themselves permission too.

So maybe slowing down and being more mindful on a day-to-day basis is a good starting point – what can you let go of, so that you can deliberately create moments of connection and happiness for yourself and your child? It’s a very deliberate and purposeful process that can’t be left to chance. It’s very possible that your child may fall behind academically for a while, or that there may be gaps in their knowledge – we have to accept that. Most children will catch up again in the course of their years in school – it’s a marathon, not a sprint. It may be much more difficult to repair damage done to their well-being and mental health, so take the academic pressure off now and use this time to connect with your child and enjoy this precious time. Children are learning far more in lockdown than we realise – they are starting to realise how strong they are, how to deal with challenges and how to grow in gratitude. Remind them of how proud you are of them, of how much you love them and of how we will all get through this together.