Being a parent is undoubtedly one of life’s most rewarding and challenging journeys. It is beautiful, fulfilling, and often painful and trying. Though at the end of the day, almost every parent agrees on what matters most: their children’s happiness and well-being. Because of this, most parents want to do everything that they can to help their kids develop what they need to be resilient and thrive in their lives.

Parents: What you need to know about your child’s mental well-being

Let’s first look at some essential things for you to know.

Mental health problems often begin quite early in children

It is estimated that around 1 in 4 individuals will be affected by a mental health problem in their lifetime. On top of that, fifty percent of those issues begin by the young age of 14. In other words, emotional problems usually begin at a strikingly young age.

Parents play an important role in their children’s mental health

We know that the child-parent relationship is one of the most predictive factors of a child’s future mental health, meaning you play a vital role.

This fact is especially true early on in your child’s life when they are learning to make sense of themselves, others, and their circumstances. This belief system they will form will act as the foundation for their long-term well-being.

Parents play a significant role in shaping their children’s belief systems by modeling behaviors to their children: how you take care of yourself and how you deal with your emotions will all indirectly impact your child.

Parents can either promote or undermine the development of critical internal resources for children that will support them throughout their lives.

Healthy parenting takes conscious work

Parenting can be pretty overwhelming and activate chronic stress responses. This is why our unhealthy patterns often emerge in parenting, making it challenging to model healthy ways of being to our children.

The good news is that healthy parenting is something we can learn. Wondering what you, as a parent, can do to boost your child’s long-term mental well-being? Let’s get into that.

How can you promote the psychological resilience, healthy sense of identity, and mental well-being of your child?

Much research has been done in developmental psychology to understand the core elements of well-being. Researchers such as Richard Ryan and Edward Deci have been at the center of this research. Specifically, the questions that have been asked:

1. What does a child need to be resilient to difficult life experiences and live a fulfilling life?
2. How can parents promote these crucial processes?

Research has shown that there are some concrete things that parents can do to nurture their children’s mental well-being. Here are three of the main ones.

#1 Nurture their psychological needs

We all know it’s essential to meet our physical needs, but psychological needs are just as important. Researchers Richard Ryan and Edward Deci discovered that these three universal needs are crucial to a child’s emotional well-being:

• Autonomy — A child needs to feel like they can make their own choices and live in a way that feels authentic to what matters to them.
• Relatedness — A child needs to feel unconditionally loved and connected to others.
• Competence — A child needs to feel competent in their ability to achieve their goals and desires.

If your child cannot meet one or more of these needs, this can put them at risk of developing mental health issues, which can impact the quality of their life, physical health, relationships, and professional lives. As a parent, you can create an environment for your child that will help them meet these needs. Thankfully, the research gives us insights into what parental behaviors promote or undermine these needs.

#2 Help them develop healthy ways of dealing with their emotions

Emotion regulation is about how we manage our emotions, including difficult ones; how we process and express our feelings, and is thought to be a critical factor at the heart of mental health and well-being.

According to recent research, there are three emotion regulation styles, one of which has been associated with greater well-being, higher-quality relationships, and other positive outcomes. The other two are related to poor mental health and relationship difficulties.

Just like with psychological needs, we also have insights into what kind of environment a parent can create that will support their child in developing a healthy emotion regulation strategy and the types of parental behaviors associated with children developing unhealthy emotion regulation strategies.

#3 Do your own inner work

Limiting patterns you are not conscious of or find it hard to break out of typically show up in your parenting. It takes work to be able to look at the reality inside of us and step out of what is not serving us, but for those who do, the payoff is well worth it.

These limiting patterns are typically defense mechanisms you have developed in response to your environment, especially in childhood and adolescence. When they emerged, they served an important function. That function was to protect you from a psychological perspective.

But many of us hold on to these unhealthy behavioral patterns, even when they do more harm than good in our present reality.

To illustrate this point, I’ll give the example of a friend whose patterns interfered with her parenting. This friend grew up around family members who had trouble dealing with their emotions.

Everyone around her would act out quite impulsively to their feelings. She became uncomfortable expressing her emotions because she worried about how they would react. She also did not want to be an added burden. When she developed that pattern of keeping her emotions in, this served her to some extent with her family, in the sense that it allowed her to not feel like she was hurting those she cared most about.

But she continued using that pattern unconsciously in other situations, which harmed her with time. Even if it were perfectly okay for her to express emotions, she would automatically withhold them. This prevented her from having the fulfilling relationships she wanted and impacted her relationship with her child, who did not feel connected to her mother. That is until she became aware of this pattern and began stepping out of it, which naturally brought her and her children closer.

If you genuinely want to show up as your best self for your child and reclaim agency over your life, now is the time to take an honest, compassionate, and vulnerable look at yourself. Regardless of what your patterns are, one thing is for sure. They won’t go away if you ignore them, and they will impact the habits and beliefs your child develops.

That being said, it's so important you give yourself compassion and not fall into judging yourself. We all have cycles of behaviors that don’t serve us well. That’s just part of being human. The goal is to learn to learn to understand and relate differently to these limiting voices and to develop new skillsets.

The bottom line

Every child and every parent is unique, but we all share the same essential needs and processes. Developmental psychology offers powerful insights into how we can support both our children and ourselves.

It might not feel urgent now—we rarely feel urgency until something goes wrong—but you can start making a change today. The good news? There are clear steps you can take to nurture your child’s long-term well-being.

By setting out on this journey, you’ll help your child build resilience and shape a meaningful life, while also contributing to a healthier society and world.