Your Teen’s Mental Wellbeing

Mental Wellbeing helps with your teen’s ability to learn and succeed in their life.

Listen to today’s episode or read the post below to learn about my top 4 tips on what you as a parent need to focus on in terms of your teen’s mental wellbeing.

Welcome to the third post of this 8-part series on holistic wellbeing for teens. 

This series is on what you as a parent should be paying attention to when it comes down to the holistic wellbeing of your teen or preteen.

This post is about mental wellbeing.

Mental and emotional wellbeing are very close, and sometimes they get mixed up together. In my opinion, when people talk about mental health, they actually mean emotional wellbeing. You might like to watch the previous episode if you haven’t done so already if you want to hear me talk about emotional wellbeing.  

What is mental wellbeing?

Mental wellbeing is the healthy mental state that allows us to move through life, to learn, to work, to contribute to our community, to realise our abilities. 

Our mental wellbeing determines how we handle stress, how we make decisions, and how we act in relationships.

Mental wellbeing for teens is essential for them to enjoy life, to learn at school, to develop new skills, to navigate friendships and family, to move forward, and ultimately to succeed.

What is key to mental wellbeing is emotional wellbeing. 

There is a very close, back and forth relationship between emotions and thoughts, and correspondingly decisions and behaviours.

Emotions and thoughts tend to loop together.

When teens learn how to properly manage their emotions, then they are more likely to manage their thoughts. 

Here are my top tips on what you as a parent need to focus on in terms of your teen’s mental wellbeing:

Tip 1 – Focus on their physical wellbeing. 

A healthy mind needs a healthy body. I have covered physical wellbeing in the first episode of this series. Read this previous post here.

Tip 2 – Focus on their emotional wellbeing. 

Check this previous post to learn all about emotional wellbeing.

Tip 3 – Help your teens satisfy their needs for self-actualization.

This means you provide them with opportunities to learn new skills, not just academic skills, any life skill, hobbies, sports, social skills, or communication skills … Give them rich experiences, take them places, let them meet new people. Help them realise their potential. If they have talent for something, nurture that talent. And sometimes, they need to be exposed to new experiences so that they discover themselves and find out what their interests are. 

 Tip 4 – Help your teen develop Executive Functioning Skills:

These are the skills that allow the mind to do its job. They include:

* Focusing skills, Sustained attention

* Working memory, able to retain information

* Organising, Prioritising, Planning

* Task Initiation, starting tasks

* Time Management

* Persistence skills, follow through tasks

* Metacognition – self-awareness, how much so you know yourself

* Flexibility and tolerating stress

* Emotional regulation skills – which takes us back to emotional wellbeing 

It really pains me sometimes to see teens and young people giving up on their dreams and their goals, whether it’s academics or their hobbies, their passions, or not going for careers they really want, they just give up before even trying because they think it’s too hard. It pains me because they were never taught how to strengthen their executive functioning skills. The skills of the mind. These are skills that need to be learned and practised. 

Quick Recap 

When it comes to you teen’s mental wellbeing,

• Focus on their physical wellbeing and their emotional wellbeing 
• Help them satisfy their needs for self-actualization
• Help them develop their Executive Functioning Skills

I invite you now to pause and reflect on your top takeaway from this post. 

What small, simple step can you start doing today to improve your teen’s mental wellbeing?