How Can Parents Help Children Manage Their Mental Health While Homeschooling?

We are at the end of the first week of homeschooling. Well done for doing this! Unfortunately, we don’t know how long this is going to be the “normal”. Being stuck inside with kids is tough after 1 or 2 days. A lack of social exposure for children and the stresses of learning from home will likely have a severe impact on the mental wellbeing of thousands of children in Britain. These longer periods of time is hard on everyone’s mental health. So I thought I would share some ideas on how parents can help their children manage their mental health while homeschooling.

Get your kids to help you

Children find it hard to overcome laziness and a lack of motivation if they don’t have a structure in their lives like a school timetable. Ask your children for help with tasks around the home. My daughter at 4 years old wants to help with everything. It keeps them involved and giving them projects to complete, such as cooking, painting, basic DIY (supervised and for older kids of course!) will provide them with vital structure and goals to achieve.

Give them their own workspace

Set up an area for all their homeschooling things. This way they can switch off from school subjects when it’s not school time. This will also help them to focus when it’s learning time. It may be a good idea to create a timetable, useful in making sure that your child receives enough breaks away from their work, and they do not become overwhelmed.

Play games together

Use this time to get the games out, board games can be great to passing time and using our brains. Spending this time together is good for everyone’s mental health. It’s a fantastic way to maintain their social development and will help them to improve useful social skills such as negotiation, explanation, and strategizing.  It’s important to use this as a time to connect with your kids and spend more quality time with them. If you are lucky enough to have a garden, get outside and play hopscotch. I found my childhood love for this the other day!

Encourage children to use social media in a healthy way

For older children, it’s important for them to keep in touch with their friends. Using social media in a healthy way could actually be incredibly beneficial for children and young adults, by allowing young people to maintain good contact with their friends to share their concerns.

Encouraging your kids to get involved in group chats with close friends and using Facetime can help them to remain close with their peers and engage in regular, healthy social interaction.

Helping your children get through this period of social separation is important for mental health.

Thanks for stopping by today, I hope you have found this post useful on mental health while homeschooling in some way. Stay safe.

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