The Importance of Maintaining Maternal Mental Health
There are various beliefs regarding the biggest predictors of a child’s success. Recent studies have found a mother’s mental health has a significant impact on a child’s development. Mindful parenting and taking care of yourself can be just as important as taking care of your child! SENSE-ational Spaces can provide support and education for a mother’s and child’s success. Read further to learn how a mother’s health impacts their child, how a mother can improve her emotional and physical health, and a variety of supports we offer the whole family unit!
Why Maternal Mental Health Matters
When you are a mother, your personal, relational, and contextual experiences change, and the ability to adapt to these changes depends on your available resources. When you have little availability of support and resources, it in turn, affects well-being. Common challenges mothers experience on a daily basis include stress, depression, and anxiety, which, even at lower levels, can affect a child’s development (Potharst et al., 2022). This is due a mother’s moods and actions directly influencing a child’s view of themselves, the world, and how to handle situations. Bonding with a child and their quality of life is shown to be impacted by depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, and stress (Lutkiewicz et al., 2020; Potharst et al., 2022). Mindfulness was shown to improve depressive symptoms and physical health complaints (Emerson et al., 2021). The way these mental health impacts are presented varies from parent to parent. A common experience includes a lack of confidence in your ability to parent, which can influence cognitive (thinking and reasoning), behavioral, and socio-emotional (the ability to understand, regulate, and express emotions) development. Bonding deficits with your child also can occur when experiencing mental health-related complications. It is found the best way to facilitate these common parenting challenges and your mental health is through work on your own mental health, addressing your parenting style and the relationship you are creating with your child.
Supporting Your Mental Health and Parenting Journey
Mindful Parenting is the intentional focus on and attention toward your child and how you parent, being present and not judgemental of yourself in these moments. It helps with internalizing and externalizing behaviors and improves your physical health (Emerson et al., 2021). It is also shown to help with parenting stress, overreacting, and avoiding experiences. This is linked to improved relationships between the child and parent, with greater sensitivity and acceptance being found (Potharst et al., 2021). These are some tips to support Mindful Parenting
Being Persistent: How you model your persistence affects your child’s ability to persist when they face their own challenges. Not only are your actions important to build your child’s success, but so are your words. By role modeling persistence in parenting, you are not only showing your kid the tools to succeed, but you, too, are helping yourself succeed. For example, if you drop something at home and it breaks, you show how you can clean it and problem-solve how to use something else or get a new object. Use this time to talk through your feelings of frustration and how you will figure it out. Then, when a child is struggling to dress themselves or with homework, you can talk them through it, bringing your own situations you have worked through.
Utilizing Public Resources: The CDC provides support for parents and caregivers online, such as positive parenting tips and information on various age ranges. On each page, they offer common diseases and conditions, tips on safety information, milestone schedules, and other tips for raising healthy children. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) also offers excellent resources, including contacts and services in each state that can be easily located on their site! There is also a presentation by the Primary Care Development Corporation available for free on YouTube to address the crisis in our country. Talking with healthcare providers can provide you with great insight and support as there is a rising awareness of maternal mental health problems due to the United States being in a maternal mortality crisis, with mental health conditions being the leading causes of maternal deaths.
Create A Support System: Find people who you can lean on and services in your area that can help you when you may need a day to fill your own cup! It is important to remember you aren’t alone and it’s okay to ask for help! This can include your healthcare team (doctors, nurses, therapists, or other trusted healthcare professionals).
The Minnesota Department of Health has a page for Perinatal Mental Health Support with Contacts and Resources. This includes emergency hotlines, non-emergency help, NAMI, Pregnancy and Postpartum Support Minnesota (which offers online support meetings).
Finding care through care.com, community Facebook pages, and connecting with other moms are huge ways to find support if you feel alone.
How SENSE-ational Spaces Help
Utilize our handouts and downloads available on our website that give tips to support your child’s development and take the work out of finding creative ideas!
Read our blogs about various topics relating to sensory integration, mental health, development, and more! These provide parents with support through education and easy tips that are manageable as a busy parent.
If you think your child could benefit from some sensory equipment, check out our equipment catalog for easy access to sensory tools that support your child’s development and regulation!
Become a SENSE-ational Insider: We provide full and instant access to handouts and resources for $5/month!
Equipment ideas, worksheets and activities, “cheat sheets”, installation guides, and sensory system handouts
Along with access to our insiders page!
References
Center of Disease Control. (2023, March 8). Mental health of children and parents. https://www.cdc.gov/childrensmentalhealth/features/mental-health-children-and-parents.html
Benson, H. (2019, September). Happy wife, happy life. Marriage Foundation Stephen McKay. https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/MF-Happy-Wife-Happy-Life-FINAL.pdf
Emerson, L. M., Aktar, E., de Bruin, E., Potharst, E., & Bogels, S. (2021). Mindful parenting in secondary child mental health: Key parenting predictors of treatment effects. Mindfulness. 12(2), 532-542. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-019-01176-w
Lutkiewicz, K., Bieleninik, Ł., Cieślak, M., & Bidzan, M. (2020). Maternal-infant bonding and its relationships with maternal depressive symptoms, stress and anxiety in the early postpartum period in a Polish sample. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(15), 5427-. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17155427
Potharst, E. S., Kuijl, M., Wind, D., & Bögels, S. M. (2022). Do improvements in maternal mental health predict improvements in parenting? Mechanisms of the mindful with your baby training. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(13), 7571-. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19137571
Potharst, E., Zeegers, M., & Bogels, S. (2021). Mindful with your toddler group training: Feasibility, acceptability, and effects on subjective and objective measures. Mindfulness. 12, 489-503. https://doi-org.pearl.stkate.edu/10.1007/s12671-018-1073-2
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2024). The task force on maternal mental health’s national strategy to improve maternal mental health care. https://www.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/mmh-strategy.pdf