Talking About It: Mental Health Buffering
October is Mental Health Awareness Month, and October 10th is World Mental Health Day. In NSW, the theme for this year’s event is “Let’s Talk About It”. Neurodivergent people are more likely to experience mental health conditions including mood disorders and anxiety. There is no clear evidence as to how much of this is biological or genetic, and how much is resultant of the difficulties of living as a neurodivergent person in a neuronormative society. While recognition and treatment of mental health concerns in your child is crucial should they arrive, buffering your children with preventative measures is even better. It’s rarely possible to protect our neurodivergent children from the stressors of the NT world, so how else can we improve their chances of avoiding serious mental health problems through talking?
Why
Neurodivergent kids experience many factors that can negatively impact upon their mental health. Additional criticism and correction, recurring experiences of failing, sleep differences, gut health differences, and burnout from needing to invest more energy into day to day life than neurotypical peers, all play into any predisposition for mental health conditions.
Society is structured around neurotypical behaviours, abilities, and expectations. Society assumes people to be neurotypical, and expects people to engage in a neurotypical manner; this is known as neuronormativity. The neurodivergent experience regarding this can be exhausting, frustrating, hurtful, and confusing, among many other things.
- 78% of kids with autism spectrum disorder have a mental health condition, with almost half of them having at least two mental health conditions
- Up to 81% of adults with autism spectrum disorder have a co-occurring mental health condition
- Around two-thirds of people with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder have one or more co-occurring mental health conditions
- About one in four adults with ADHD also have a mood disorder (such as depression), and nearly half of adults with ADHD also have an anxiety disorder
So when you are raising neurodivergent children, it is not so much an “if” regarding mental health, but far more likely to be a “when”. This is why preventative measures, buffering, and open lines of communication are crucial.
Daily Talking
It can be hard for any child to reach out to their parent for help. To know how to begin that conversation, or even how to request the conversation in the first place. Having a structured opportunity, however forced it may feel at first, circumvents this step.
Here are some ideas for daily contact opportunities:
- If your family (or at least you and your child) eat dinner together, establish a question that might be a good conversation starter about tricky days. Something like, “What’s something I did well today, and something I would do differently tomorrow?”
- Sharing a daily gratitude at bedtime
- Sharing a daily hope or goal in the morning, perhaps when you’re brushing their hair
You might find that most days are relatively trivial, sharing that they wish they’d eaten more cake, or chosen to wear more comfortable shoes. But opening that frequent avenue of communication allows your child to easily share, “Tomorrow I won’t play with Jack, because he was mean today.”
And when these little bits of information are shared, validate, and be curious. Demonstrate that you are empathetic and interested, without diving in to problem solve. Do offer your problem solving skills, but equally offer a friendly ear, a hug, a cup of tea…
If you child does open up to you, the question of, “Would you like me to try to fix this with you, or do you just need to get it out of your system?” can help clarify which approach your child needs at that time.
Share and Be Vulnerable
It is important to be age-appropriate, and not to add additional stress to their lives, but sharing your own feelings and experiences with your child can model openness and honesty regarding feelings. If your child is an “emotions-sponge” or prone to anxiety (even if they’re just a bit of a worrier), it is risky to share any current concerns. However, sharing personal emotional recollections from your own childhood and adolescence is a safer compromise.
I Can’t Ride A Bike…
…but I could when I was little. Not long after I took off the training wheels I had a fall over the handlebars that winded me. It scared me enough that I didn’t want to get back on. I wasn’t forced to. And over the years I’ve had a number of experiences in which not being able to ride a bike has been negative.
When my own kids have had “I can’t!” moments, I have shared this. Not as a guilt trip or a threat. But to demonstrate to them that something like not being able to ride a bike isn’t just about that; it’s also about unintentional exclusion, shame, embarrassment, regret, honesty (moments of “I’m afraid I’m busy that day,” when invited on a bike ride), and frustration. It also affords me the chance to share the positive feelings in the opposite experience; becoming a confident driver after years of driving phobia.
Sharing these experiences allows me to demonstrate to my kids that I genuinely know what that “I can’t!” feels like, what the consequences are of the decisions that follow, and that they have my full support and understanding either way.
I have found that in these situations, my kids seem increasingly willing to try and potentially fail – or at least discover their true limit at that point in time – than when I’m simply sharing with them what I feel their options and potential consequences would be.
One on One Time
Where possible, especially if you have more than one child, finding one-on-one time to just hang out also increases opportunities to share feelings and ask for help.
One-on-one time that is conducive for chatting could look like:
- Eating dinner or dessert, particularly going out
- Working on a craft project together one night a week
- Taking the dog for a walk
- Going on a bushwalk
- Cooking together
- Kicking around a football at a close distance
- Even doing the washing up!
Don’t dive head first into asking about personal topics! Gentle ways to edge towards this include talking about school in general, discussing current affairs, or sharing appropriate things about what you’re up to lately. Talking around topics can also help. Ask, “How are your friends doing? Coping okay with the new teacher?” or “So tell me, what’s the gossip at school this week?”
Isn’t This Crossing the Parent-Friend Line?
While the role of the parent is to parent, not be a best friend, there is so much crossover between the two; and so much connection that many parents miss out on by attempting to follow a staunch line of “I’m not your friend”, particularly with their teenager.
No, it’s not okay to try to gain connection with your teen by being their drinking buddy. Indulging your child by agreeing to all of their requests – or demands – to avoid conflict and make them like you more, is not okay. Disclosing financial and personal concerns, or treating your child as a confidant in adult problems, is also not okay. However, being someone they can safely gossip about their friends with – knowing it won’t be shared – demonstrates that you are a safe space for sharing. Being a person they can ask questions about sex, words or terms they’ve heard (perhaps in relation to drugs or sexuality), and many other topics, means they’re able to source this somewhere reliable, and be acting in response to that rather than false information.
So while you’re a parent first, and there are important boundaries, being your child’s friend as well can be so positive for their mental health.
Other Approaches to Talking
Perhaps your child isn’t much of a talker. It could be due to their neurotype or a disability. Or it could be their personality. It could be down to their past experiences and consequences of verbal interaction. Or, frankly, it might just be adolescence.
“Talking” doesn’t have to be face-to-face, immediate, or anything else that neuronormaitve society determines it should be. “Talking” with your child means communicating.
If the suggestions above don’t work for you or your child, consider other means:
- Sliding notes under bedroom doors
- Sending emails
- Drawing pictures on a whiteboard
- “Secret” hand signals
- And, of course, any AAC
Some children might be experiencing difficulties around communicating their feelings and experiences, not because of complex emotions regarding the conversation itself, but for other reasons…
Difficulties in Communication
Around 1 in 10 people have alexithymia, a neuropsychological difference in which people have significant difficulties in recognising, naming, describing, expressing, and sources/causes of emotion. In people with neurodivergenecies such as autism, this rate is more like 8 in 10.
This does not mean these people feel their emotions any less significantly, or have any protection against mental health conditions. Conversely, it seems that people with alexithymia may be more likely to experience mental health difficultuies, possibly due to their inability to clearly express their emotion experiences and needs.
There are a number of methods you can use to encourage whatever skills are present in this area. Read more about this here: https://www.morethanquirky.com.au/alexithymia-emotion-processing-complications/
If your child has ongoing difficulties opening up to you, for whatever reason, facilitating access to a school counsellor, or even semi-regular sessions with a psychologist, may allow your child to share their experiences in a way that aids the prevention of mental health concerns. Talking doesn’t have to be with you, and doesn’t have to be literal speech-with-mouth for it to be effective.