Children’s Mental Health Week 2021: Express yourself

Children’s Mental Health Week has begun and it feels different this year. With children spending more time at home than at school with their peers, it’s understandable that our littles ones mental health can suffer.

But what happens if they don’t have the tools to express themselves in the way we can? How can we better understand what is going on in their minds? Well, Place2Be might just have the answer.

This year the theme is Express Yourself. Which is “about finding ways to share feelings, thoughts, or ideas, through creativity. This could be through art, music, writing and poetry, dance and drama, photography and film, and doing activities that make you feel good.”

Now, I am not a parent and I can only imagine how hard the pandemic has been for both children and parents alike so, I am not here to tell you how to interact with your children, but what I can do, with the help from Place2Be, is give you some suggestions of things you can do this Children’s Mental Health Week.

It’s important to note that there is no right way to express yourself and whatever your child decides to do, doesn’t have to be perfect.

So, what could you do with your child? Here are some ideas:

• Dress to express! Play dress up, and then you could do a photoshoot together.
• Pick an emotion and ask your child to draw a picture about what they think that means.
• Move to improve their mood. Any activity which your child likes to do, as long as they’re moving and getting exercise. This could be dancing or kicking a football around their garden.

“Around three children in every primary school class has a mental health problem” so let’s do something to changes this.

Follow wellbeanblog for even more ideas.