Dealing with Kids' Mental Health Issues

Having two children in primary school and one just started high school, I feel like a part of the furniture within the current primary school environment!  The school years are probably somewhat easier than the baby/toddler phase, yet they still come with their own set of challenges.

All of our kids transitioned pretty smoothly from preschool/kinder to primary school; there were no tears on the first day for any of them, which I guess is a win, depending on your perspective!

For our oldest child, his issues and tears started at the commencement of grade one.  I thought grade one would be easy, but that first week had my child crying and clinging to my leg; having to be pulled off me so I could go to work.  And there I was thinking I’d avoided all of that!

His main issue, it seemed, was that he didn’t like his teacher.  This was the first year his teacher had been assigned to a grade 1 class; she had taught grade three and four for many years until now.  I think she simply wasn’t accustomed to being able to deal with a younger age group.  Our son didn’t connect with her and grade one ended up being a long, hard year. At the end of that year, we had one very angry little boy.  He ripped up artwork that he’d done; he said he wanted to be a soldier so he could go away and die so he didn’t have to be a part of his stupid family.  He was weeks away from his seventh birthday. He told us he felt like he was waiting to be born and that he wasn’t himself.  I tried to show him baby photos, to assure him that he was real and he had been born, but he started crying and couldn’t look at them.

We thought that the school holidays over Christmas would give him time to settle.  We figured we would just put grade one down as a bad year, and that grade two would see a fresh start.

In grade two, a new teacher started at the school who was passionate and full of enthusiasm.  Our son loved her, we loved her, she was great. It looked like grade two would be easy street.

As it turns out, grade two was just as hard!  Our son still struggled to make friends and still kept saying that he felt like he wasn’t real; he was waiting to be born.  Then one Sunday afternoon, he got in trouble for being mean to his younger siblings. I still can’t quite recall how, but the situation escalated with him screaming on the ground in the backyard, saying he hated us and wanted to die. It took us four hours to calm him down and he couldn’t go to school the next day.  When I spoke to his teacher, I actually burst into tears because I had never seen our son behave like this before.  He never had tantrums, not even as a toddler.  Well he certainly made up for it!!

After discussion with the school welfare person, we arranged for our son to see the school psychologist.  This was a great success.  He responded really well to these sessions and the psychologist was able to provide him with strategies that he still has filed away to this day, to help him with his emotions.

I should also mention that the level of support we received from the school at that time was beyond amazing.  The Principal and our son’s teacher spent so much time supporting our son and supporting us as parents.  We will never be able to thank them enough; their support was invaluable.

Once we got over this massive road hump, our son went on to develop solid friendships from grade three onward.  He ended up becoming school captain in grade six and has started high school with great resilience and maturity, given the upheavals with remote learning due to this rotten virus.

We couldn’t be more proud of him and how far he has come since what seemed like impossibly difficult times early on.

To other parents out there who might be faced with a similar situation, there is hope!  It may not seem like it and sometimes it can be trial and error to be able to find the most appropriate help, but the important thing is to ask for the support. Find the peace, find the calm and above all, be kind. Especially to yourself.