Just One Small Thing for Your Mental Health 2: Just One Small Thing for Your Children's (and your) mental health

Everyone wants the best for their children. You can dramatically improve the mental health of your child by combining warmth and high, but reasonable, expectations.

Warmth is expressed through supportive, helpful, and loving behavior toward your child, while low warmth is characterized by a lack of interest, coldness, harshness, or anger. For instance, you can likely think of examples along the warmth-coldness continuum, from nurturing encouragement to dismissive indifference. High warmth fosters a child's confidence and motivation, while low warmth can diminish their positive feelings about themselves.

Expectations, on the other hand, involve setting high standards and believing in your child's ability to achieve them. However, expectations can be harmful if they are set too high, surpassing the child's current capabilities, or too low, failing to challenge the child to improve. Striking a balance is crucial, as high warmth combined with appropriate expectations creates an environment where children feel supported and motivated to grow.

High warmth combined with high expectations is the cornerstone of Authoritative Parenting, a style proven by decades of research to foster confident, capable children who effectively manage their emotions and experience less anxiety. In contrast, high warmth paired with low expectations defines Permissive Parenting, while low warmth with high expectations reflects Authoritarian Parenting. Neglectful Parenting is characterized by low warmth and low expectations. Among these, Authoritative Parenting, with its blend of support and challenge, is most likely to result in well-adjusted children.

Consider some examples. Ian, age 7, struggles with reading. His mother helps him with his homework but criticizes him when he makes mistakes. This criticism reflects low warmth, while expecting perfect reading, given Ian's difficulties, is an unrealistic high expectation. Consequently, Ian shuts down, uninspired to learn. On the other hand, Emma, age 12, talks excessively and struggles to sit still. At dinner, her father listens kindly to her, thanks her for sharing, and shows genuine interest in her day. When Emma becomes overly fidgety, he calmly shifts attention to her brother but returns to Emma once she calms down. Her father demonstrates high warmth and high expectations, balancing attentiveness with the expectation that Emma regulate her behavior.

Liam, age 5, spills his milk and is harshly told by his father to clean it up. While the expectation to clean up is reasonable for a 5-year-old, the father's harsh tone indicates low warmth. Similarly, Sophia, age 11, loses her notebook on the school bus. Her mother scowls and says, "Never mind, you always lose your notebooks," before handing her a replacement. This response shows low expectations for Sophia to manage her belongings and low warmth through the scolding tone.

These examples illustrate that warmth and expectations are independent factors. A parent can be high or low in either, and both significantly influence a child's mental health and development. While not the only factors affecting a child's well-being, warmth and expectations play a vital role. Strive to embody high warmth and high expectations in all your interactions with your children to nurture their growth and resilience.

Just One Small Thing for Your Mental Health is a series of insightful blog posts by Dr. Patrick McGrath, a seasoned clinical psychologist at CMAP Health. With a wealth of experience treating both children and adults, Prof. McGrath is a highly regarded clinical researcher and mental health expert. Recognized for his groundbreaking work, he has been honored with the prestigious Order of Canada and numerous awards for his leadership, innovation, and research contributions.

Join us as we explore practical tips, evidence-based strategies, and expert advice to enhance your mental well-being. Your comments are welcome!