Ways you can help your depressed child
Tags: Teenagers, Parenting, Health, Depression, Mental Health

BY THABITHA DAVID · PUBLISHED JULY 22, 2020 · UPDATED SEPTEMBER 9, 2020

Topics Covered

Ways you can help your depressed child:

Help your child understand the stress they face.

And then help your child to solve the problems they are facing. And to help to manage that stress.

For this usually involves a combination of stress reduction and / or teaching the child ways to deal with these stresses.

One of the best life skills I feel a parent should teach their teenager is to face challenges with the right attitude. To get more insights read our article How to Prepare your Teenager Face Challenges in Life.

Make sure your child is in good physical health by getting good nutrition, sleeping, and exercising.

You can also help them by developing their self esteem, self confidence and giving them hope to look forward to life ahead.

We have written in detail about these in the below mentioned articles..

Things to avoid:

Avoid blaming or blaming your child for their depression. It just does not help and adds to the stress, which makes your child even more overwhelmed.

Worse, it makes your child less willing to talk to you. Give your child a sense of control by giving them as many choices as possible.

Read our articles How-To develop Positive Thinking in your teenager and How to influence your teenager’s mental well-being. It will be of help to you.

Healthy living makes the difference:

Caring for the basics can go a long way to helping your child or teenager feel better. A healthy body supports a healthy mind. Help your child:

Get enough sleep. Poor sleep can cause mood and energy levels to drop. See our fact sheet on sleeping problems if your child or teen has trouble sleeping.

Eat healthy meals and snacks with lots of fruits and vegetables. Some studies suggest that a lack of omega-3 fatty acids can worsen depression (see our fact sheet on omega-3 fatty acids).

Be physically active. Children and youth need about an hour a day of physical activity, and it is best to exercise outside in the sun. Research tells us that aerobic exercise (exercise that speeds up the heart rate and breathing) can have an antidepressant effect.

Get enough sun exposure. Lack of sun (or vitamin D) can trigger depression in some people who are susceptible to “seasonal depression”. There are numerous benefits of us getting exposed to sunlight. And it can also help in elevating mood. Do read about our very interesting article 20 Astonishing benefits of sunlight for kids

Take school help:

If school stress contributes to your child’s depression, or if depression affects your child at school, then it will be important to speak with the school.

Make an appointment with your child’s teacher, guidance counselor or director to talk about your child’s depression.

It is important to work with the school to minimize unnecessary stressors.

Leading a day to day life with a depressed teen

As a parent, it is natural to feel anxious if your child is showing symptoms of depression. So, In the conversation with the child, it is important to put the child’s feelings before anything and look past their own.

If you suspect that your teenager is battling depression — then it must be accepted.

Children feel anxious and disappointed with the parent and often do not want to talk at all as a reaction.

Focus on making it easy for the child to tell and open to you.

You may need to stay home or be more available

For a period, you may need to be at home with the child, even if the teenager who is feeling low and not opening to you.

Your presence and availability. Constant assurance and love will ultimately be received by your child. And your child will slowly open to you.

You will be able to build a emotional connection with them which is very important at this stage. And, our article How-To Easily build Emotional Connection with your Teenager and How to build positive family relationship with your teen will be able to help you with this.

In the event of a severe depression, a child or a teen should never be alone at home.

Try and avoid friction at home

The best way to avoid friction at home between family members is to stick to a certain timetable. And respect each other’s schedules and rhythm.

Personally, this has worked wonders for me. Not just for me it also helped us as a family to not constantly lock horns with our teenage children. Mainly my husband and my sons.

Fathers play a very crucial role in upbringing of their children and especially during teen years their impact on their teenager sons are not to be taken lightly.

Read our popular article 11 Amazing ways FATHER’S contribute to child’s success but if you have teen teen son. You must read our article How-To deal with teen sons — A father’s perspective.

By having a schedule and timetable demystifies the way children spend their time. And brings about some predictability in their routine.

We as parents need to accept that our teenagers will…

Like to get up a bit late, spend more time at night, wish for some quiet time, and not having parents on the back.

They can create an impression of being a little lonely and try to be a bit mysterious.

Respect that, on the condition that he respects school and its assignment and studies.

Entrust teen with responsibilities

Parents can involve teenagers in some day today activities.

They can ask their adolescents for help as per their age. Things like to drop in a cheque in the bank. Recharge a phone. Pay utility bills. Etc.

Ask them to take responsibility, to help their siblings with their school projects or homework while we are teleworking,

Ask them to participate in household chores etc.

If your team is interested, it is also better to give the responsibility of another living being to your team.

Such as a plant a fish a pet anything that your team can feel responsible for and relate to it.

For my elder son, in his teenage years I feel our pet dog was a very positive experience in his life.

Giving cores is the best way to instill responsibility in your teen. You can read all about it in our article All You Need to know about Chores for Your Teenager

Note: The key is to engage your teen. And as your teen engages with members of your family and yourself.

It gives us opportunity to help reach out to the teenager and in turn try to help then fight their depression.

Also, such involvement will help them feel responsible, loved, and cared for.

Keep an eye while continuing to respect Teen’s privacy

Most teenagers need a little distance from their parents, and it is very hard to have your parents on your back all the time.

So, we respect their need for privacy with simple things like,

Do not open the door without knocking,

We distribute everyone’s territory well,

Accept the fact that they isolate themselves in their rooms for a given time.

They can have a bit of scheduled screen time.

There is a distance, a space to respect to limit conflicts.

All the above this will show your teen that you are respecting them as an individual. You are still trusting them. And you are not chocking them up.

Video time: Expert opinion about sign of depression in kids

Conclusion

Prevention is always better than cure. So, with awareness, open lines of communication help a lot in preventing an occurrence.

However, if you still feel your teenager is battling depression. It be a stressful situation for you.

The best resort that we have as parents is to keep our emotions in check, accept and acknowledge the situation.

Once you have acknowledged the issue at hand the next steps that we can do logically is seek and ask for help and guidance.

Help and guidance not necessarily means only for your teen who is battling depression. But it will also be needed for the rest of the family members also.

Which will be right from grandparents, siblings (so that they do not follow the same path) and of course your spouse and yourself.

Getting more aware of the situation. Joining in support groups along with parents who are in similar situation as yourself.

Gives you strength that you are not battling the problem alone.

It might also give you the strength to carry on and get some encouragement that there is always light in the end of the tunnel.

God Bless!

Disclaimer:

I like to make a disclaimer here. I am not a Psychiatrist / Doctor / medical professional and more about me or my team you can read in About Me page.

However, I am a mother growing 3 kids. Two of which are well into their teenage years.

I am a very concerned parent. And have been in the look out for signs of depression in my teen sons.

I also, I have had instances where I am aware of my kid’s friends battling depression and taking help for it.

I have written this article, basis my experience, my talk with experts in this line and research on this topic. And, Things I have watched out for and been cognizant and implemented it in my life with my kids.

I like to emphasize that this is ONLY for knowledge sharing and information purpose. This is not a substitute for any medical or professional advice.

If you are feeling concerned and worried about your kid. Your instinct tells you to be concerned.

As a parent to parent. I would say trust your instinct. And,No one knows better than you as a parent to your child.

It is best to reach out to a qualified practitioner to address your concern. And do this immediately. Time is one of the main essences in these matters.

If you wish to know more on our disclaimer. We have shared the link here for your easy reference. Disclaimer.

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