ABC Revisited - Learn Alphabets from a Teenager’s POV

Story Time!

Amjad is an all-rounder student studying in one of the most reputed schools in the Emirates of Dubai. He recently received the “Student of the Year” award in his school. All his friends, teachers and family members congratulated him on this achievement, but this 14 year-old boy appeared to be lost yet smiled into an empty space. He had always been feeling a vacuum in his mind despite all the accomplishments he made. He could not express his complex feelings of not feeling good because he had no reason to justify this state. He just went on living that way.

There are many such teenagers like Amjad who struggle in expressing themselves. Their mental health condition ends up affecting their daily life including academics and co-curriculum. Often such complexities of emotions arise from lack of compassion, insecurities due to unrealistic expectations, and other factors.
Situations often end up escalating when they cannot muster the courage to talk about their emotions to their loved ones. This is why it is important to know how to give your teenager or a pre-teen child the compassion and attention they deserve.

The ABCs of Teenage Mental Health - Encourage Talking Among the Teenagers

Undoubtedly, mental health is extremely important for teenagers right from the moment they enter their early teens. Several organisations and educational institutions have come up with mental health tools to give students a platform to emote their feelings and adopt a healthy lifestyle at the right time. One such example comes from GEMS Education. They created an Alternative Alphabet card game.

To promote overall mental health among adolescents, they created the following ABCs -

Mental Well Being is More than Just Talking! Tips to Improve Your Child’s Mental Health 

To make sure your child remains mentally and emotionally healthy, here is some homework you as a parent and a guardian would need to do -

• Give Them a Platform to Express their Emotions - One thing an adolescent or child of any age wants is to be heard. So as a parent you can initiate conversations with them by simply asking about how their day is going. Let them run you through all the vulnerable moments of the day too. This gives them space to open up about their feelings too. To make them feel more comfortable, you should assure them about your presence in their lives. Words and phrases like “You know I am always there” gives them a sense of assurance and encourages them to keep working on the obstacles in their lives. 
• Work as a Team When It Comes to Achieve the Unimaginable - To enable your child to succeed in life, it is really important that you help them become independent. While it is important that you should keep a watch on their actions, you can involve them in planning daily goals for themselves. Say, they need to get their homework finished before dinner. When they get involved in setting their daily goals, they become choosers and work on the goals with utmost dedication. Make sure you slip in enough breaks for their mind’s neurons to recharge before they hop on to the next task for the day!
• Work on a Conflict as a Team - It is really important to understand a teenager’s mind and how they deal with a conflict. Do not discuss the problem at hand in spite of anger. It is essential that you avoid any sort of power impositions over your children. Thus, be honest with them about your emotional stress too. Teach them with your experience. Tell them how you deal with your complex feelings. This gives them a relief that they are not the only ones who are suffering from such complex emotions and they can deal with them too. 
• Give them Alternative Spaces to Talk about Extremely Complicated Emotions - There are some very sensitive issues they might not be open about in front of you and this would require external help. However, it is crucial that this help offered is right and professional. So, it could be from a school counsellor, a local mental health organisation, or child therapist.

Always remember that adolescence and pre-teens are very sensitive stages of a human’s life. Thus, getting the right assistance and guidance at the right time will assure that your child does not suffer from anxiety disorder as they grow older. It is important that you start working with them on their complex emotions right from when they first appear. This will help them to sail through the toughest phases of their lives in their adulthood.

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Written By: Tanvi Pathak