Here on Moodscope, we take our test, read the blog and if we feel like/or connect to it, have something to say, we respond to the blog writer and other comments.  We are a Moodscope family…..in many families there are children but here on the blogs we don’t know if there are any children participating…

I mentioned in one of Lex’s blogs that I first heard of Jon Cousins at my daughter’s school, where Jon discussed how he felt going through his own mental health journey, with little help from the NHS and how he had invented a tool to help himself.

It is interesting that I found Moodscope at an after-school session in Baby Bear’s psychology class!  

The reason I bring this up again is that many children are affected by low moods (persistently low, not just when they’re not getting their own way!) and some get anxiety and depression too.  

I am left wondering what can we do to help the children in our lives, the ones we meet in other situations (or hear about the children of our friends) when they show signs of depression, anxiety…a long-lasting ‘low’.

Since Covid and the lockdowns, the numbers of young people and children with anxiety and depression has risen and we are aware that many children have been affected - it was always there for some which manifested itself in self-harm (especially in girls) anorexia, bulimia, suicide (and now being ‘trans’ has overtaken anorexia and other self-harming problems in some cultures as it is something else for children to feel like they have control over.)

I’ve been looking into what we might do to help…here are a few questions/suggestions you might like to try, or pass on to someone who has confided in you that their child is suffering:

Ask: ‘how are you?’- seems simple, but look at their eyes - see if you can make eye contact and please LISTEN to their response!

Ask:  Is there anything you want to talk about?  (Find out if something seems not quite right:  Has something changed recently?  If it has, how do they feel about the change? It could be friendships, home, school or a club situation, bullying from other kids or adults) 

Ask:  

What can I do to help?

What would you like to see happen?

Where do you feel safe - do you have a safe place? What makes you feel safe there?  (How can I help to get you there?)

What makes you feel happy?

When did you last feel happy?

What makes you sad?

What difficulties are you facing now?

What do you think of/what’s on your mind when you cannot sleep?

What makes you feel calm?

Doesn’t have to be all of these questions and I certainly wouldn’t try to stick to a ‘script’ -  but maybe keeping some of these to hand might just help them feel listened to and cared for….in fact, these questions don’t just need to be for younger people - we can always ask these questions of each other here.

If you do manage to ask a child any of these or other questions, please be prepared to listen.

Love and Bear hugs x x x

Bearofliddlebrain

A Moodscope member