Colourful Feelings - A Parent’s Guide to Educating and Supporting Infant Mental Health

What Can Be Done/Interventions: by Michaela Myles & Monique Staples As for most health and mental health issues, it is best to act upon the issue early on. There are basic and simple ways to affect your infant’s mental health positively. Parents can: Talk, sing, smile, laugh, and make eye contact with your infant Respond quickly to your infant’s needs Learn the different smiles, cries, and cooing of your infant and learn what they mean Provide all essential and basic needs such as clothes and food Give your infant lots of love and attention, especially if your infant is sick, hurt, or upset.  (Kelty Mental Health Center, 2021) h tt ps://keltymentalhealth.ca/infant-mental-health How to Build Your Baby’s Mental Health Video: This masterclass by UNICEF gives you concrete actions to take to promote your baby's mental health (UNICEF, n.d.). How to build your baby's mental health master class | UNICEF Listed further on this website are the following blog posts to help you continu

  Signs of Infant Mental Health Distress & When to See a Doctor by Michaela Myles & Monique Staples As for most illnesses including mental health illnesses, it is best to consult a doctor as soon as possible. This also goes for the mental health of infants. While parents and/or caretakers can often be stumped, as infants cannot use words to express what they are feeling, there are a few common warning signs to watch for that indicate that your infant may be struggling with their mental well-being.  When considering the mental health of your infant, it is important to include any potential factors that may increase the likelihood of mental health struggles in your infant. Risk Factors Parents : Struggle with a mental health challenge, including postpartum depression  Where abused in their childhood Have issues with drugs and alcohol Have issues with relationships  Have violent/abusive tendencies They lack support They are young, teenagers Have had a difficult, scary, or tr

References by Monique Staples & Michaela Myles   Bethany Hope Centre. (2021). From Cradle to College. Retrieved March 31, 2021, from https://bethanyhopecentre.org/ Buffalo Schools. (n.d.). Questions from the Movie "Inside Out". Retrieved March 31, 2021, from https://www.buffaloschools.org/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?moduleinstanceid=8596&dataid=45486&FileName=inside_out_movie_questions.pdf First 5 LA. (2020, August 06). Building Resilience and Decreasing Childhood Trauma. Retrieved April 2, 2021, from https://www.first5la.org/article/building-resilience-and-childhood-trauma/ Harvard University. (2015, June 19). Retrieved March 31, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L41k2p-YRCs Kelty Mental Health Cetnre. (2021). Infant Mental Health. Retrieved April 2, 2021, from https://keltymentalhealth.ca/infant-mental-health KidCentral TN. (2018). Mental Health & Emotional Health. Retrieved April 2, 2021, from https://www.kidcentraltn.com/health.html#mental-emo

Ottawa Community Resources by Monique Staples & Michaela Myles They say it takes a village to raise a child. The same can be said about nurturing strong mental health within your children. It can feel daunting to find all of these resources by yourself to support your family's mental health - it is for this reason we felt we should bring the village to you! Listed below are three incredibly Ottawa based community resources to help you feel supported as you educate your children about their colourful feelings. Bethany Hope Centre https://bethanyhopecentre.org/ 820 Woodroffe Ave, Ottawa, ON K2A 3V7 CA (613) 725-1733 "From Cradle to College - The Bethany Hope Centre exists to improve the well being of pregnant youth and young parent families" (Bethany Hope Centre, 2021, Home Page). The Bethany Hope Centre offers educational, financial, nutritional, and emotional support to the diverse styles of young parent families in Ottawa. Whether you are looking for support for your

Worksheets, Tools, and Resources to Help Your Children Understand Their Colourful Feelings by Monique Staples & Michaela Myles Actively engaging your children in activities focused on learning to label their emotions will provide them with the language they need to express their emotional state with you and to learn coping skills to self-regulate. The first step is to learn to identify the emotion. Get creative! Arts and crafts can be a fun way to explore the various rainbow of human emotion! Visual Cards for Managing Feelings Use these free printable "How do I feel today?" sheets to facilitate exercises with children to artistically express their thoughts and feelings on that particular day. They can draw a face, a color, a picture, or anything else that represents how they feel. You can also cue them to draw specific emotions and put each face on a popsicle stick so that they can use them as masks to help identify their emotions in the heat of an intense moment.  This i

  Online Resources to Support Your Child’s Mental Health by Monique Staples & Michaela Myles The first step to supporting your child’s mental health is making sure you are educated around infant mental health. Below there are a variety of online resources available to help educate yourself so that you might start to educate your children on the importance of infant mental health. InBrief: Early Childhood Mental Health https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L41k2p-YRCs To begin, here is a summary of Infant Mental Health: what it is, why it is important to support, and what are the early signs of infant mental health problems. This video will provide you with a foundation of knowledge as you start to create your toolkit of infant mental health support (Harvard University, 2015). Infant and Early Mental Health Promotion https://imhpromotion.ca/ Toronto Sick Kids’ hospital has a web resource called Infant and Early Mental Health Promotion where they have searchable catalogs of information inc