Children's Mental Health Week

Not just this week, but every week! It's so wonderful when a week dedicated to a certain cause, raises awareness. Improving children's mental health and promoting wellbeing in education has long been a passion of mine so I, like many other teachers, have been sharing resources between ourselves, particularly on platforms like Instagram, where there is a lovely educational community. You can chat to new friends across the world and share your passion!

Encouraging children to talk about feelings and emotions is always a starting point for me. It's why I wrote 'The Emobeans and the Feelings'. Encouraging them to develop emotional literacy, become mindfully aware of feelings and emotions when they are experiencing them, and knowing who they can talk to if needs be. But we must never force them to talk; create the conditions where they feel safe to speak with you, should they wish to.

A week like this one is a good time to educate ourselves further too; it is important that the educational mental health and wellbeing content we put out there and share, really is of true value, purposeful and is factually/scientifically based. There are so many misconceptions about mindfulness/wellbeing/health ed, that is important to research and gain clarity before sharing activities that run the risk of being token gestures.

I look forward to learning more from colleagues across the world this week and would like to share something that always helped me put mental health into perspective; mental health is not the absence of mental illness - we can be functioning well - but there is always room to flourish.