Supporting the Mental Health of our Children with Mandy Owen, owner of The Calm Centre.

Mental Health comes in many guises, positive and negative. We all have mental health; it’s part of us. However, some of us seem to float through life with no worries (on the outside), and many of us have enormous anxieties and stresses.

How we deal with and manage our mental health is so important. We’ve all heard on the news more recently about the effects of the past 20+ months of Covid 19 and the impact this has had on our youngsters, as well as the extra anxieties it has given us adults.

All of my adult life, I have been in supporting roles in one way or another, from helping nervous patients visiting dental surgeries to spending 20 years working to supporting children in education who were presenting with emotional and social difficulties. I have also worked in a large male prison, supporting people who suffered from substance misuse. The majority of young people and adults I have worked with had mental health problems of some sort.

I’m now a Relax Kids, Baby Mindful, and ChargeUp coach offering mindfulness and relaxation from pregnancy to adulthood. I did my training through Relax Kids and now run ‘The Calm Centre’ in Old Skelmersdale.

My classes use the Relax Kids 7 steps programme of Move, Play, Stretch, Feel, Breathe, Believe and Relax. I take youngsters from high energy to total relaxation using this programme. Classes are slightly different for adults, but we still use the 7 Steps. We learn strategies to name and tame our BIG emotions and learn how to manage them through fun and enjoyable activities.

We learn how to stretch our bodies and relax. We learn about massage – self and peer massage, all done in a safe environment. Breathing techniques are invaluable in reducing our heightened cortisol levels when we are anxious or stressed. Believing in ourselves and repeating positive affirmations help raise our self-esteem and our self-worth. We finish our classes with relaxation, done through visualisation stories or mindful meditations.

I have recently been concerned about the number of youngsters I work with being embarrassed when something friendly and positive has been said to them by myself or their peers. This is really sad!

It’s more difficult to help our youngsters when they are in a heightened state, so equipping them with coping strategies learned when they are level-headed is one way of supporting and meeting their needs.

Top Tips for helping your child to relax – You can read this to your child to guide them through the steps:

• Start by lying or sitting down. If you feel comfortable doing so, close your eyes and remain as still as possible.
• Scan your body from your toes to the top of your head
• Squeeze your toes, then relax
• Squeeze your calves, then relax.
• Squeeze your thighs, then relax.
• Squeeze your tummy and your bum muscles, and relax.
• Squeeze your chest, and relax.
• Tighten your arm muscles and clench your hands, then relax.
• Push your shoulders up to your ears, then push them as far down as you comfortably can, then relax
• Screw your face up, then relax.
• Now just be… listen to your breath going in and coming out.

Many of my youngsters find the ‘Hand Breathing’ technique really useful too – You can talk your child through this method:

• Put one hand up and with your index finger of the other hand, follow the outline of the fingers from the thumb all the way to the pinky finger.
• As you go up, breathe in. As you come down, breathe out.
• Do this as slowly as possible. The slower the breaths, the more relaxed and calm you feel.

To find out more about ow you can get involved with any of the Relax Kids classes, or any other services follow Relax Kids on Facebook @RKWLwithMandy or Instagram @relaxkidswithmandy or call 07380 286389