How to Put Yourself in the Driver's Seat of Your Child's Life
This week, Esteem CEO Tommy Black appeared on the Lifegiver Podcast with Corie Weathers to discuss how parents can put themselves in the driver's seat, proactively nurturing their children's mental health to prevent serious problems before they come up.
Listen here: https://www.life-giver.org/s5-ep15-parenting-series-a-new-way-to-track-your-childs-esteem/ (55 minutes).
Being a parent can be an incredibly moving, rewarding, and life-affirming experience. Unfortunately, it also means worrying a lot: worrying that your child will do poorly in school, that they'll become depressed, that they'll have a mental breakdown, or health episode, or simply won't be healthy.
It's easy to find yourself forced into a passive role with your children. Maybe you've felt stuck in this loop before:
1. Parent them
2. Hope it's working
3. If anything goes wrong, See a professional - a pediatrician, psychologist, psychiatrist, school counselor, or God forbid, the school principal!
4. Hope these people pushing you along know what they're doing!
Ideally, you could head these problems off before they happen - when your child is simply a little withdrawn, a little down, not sleeping well, or taking longer to finish their homework. But to do that, you need to have some way of recognizing small problems before they get big!
The challenge is even greater, of course, if one parent is frequently separated from the rest of the family. Tommy had to deal with this when his children were little and his wife was in the army. Many parents, including Esteem parents, face a similar challenge, whether it be due to military, business travel, death, divorce, or any other reason.
But these challenges aren't insurmountable! In fact, modern technology makes it easier than ever to provide parents with insights and actionable steps towards taking care of childhood mental health and development and making progress!
About Corie and The Lifegiver Podcast:
Corie Weathers is a military spouse, author and licensed counselor who specializes in working with military and first responder families. As a military and first responder clinical consultant, she works directly with military and first responder families as well as with organizations that work with service families. As the host of the Lifegiver Podcast, she brings together some of the world’s greatest experts to help strengthen military and first responder marriages.
Link to listen: https://www.life-giver.org/s5-ep15-parenting-series-a-new-way-to-track-your-childs-esteem/
If you haven't checked in on your child's mental health and development in a while, we encourage you to log in to Esteem to focus on your child, level-up your understanding, and approach child development in a fresh way.
If you don't have a free Esteem account, learn more at: https://www.chooseesteem.com/
Be well!
- Donna :)
