Mental health is an essential aspect of our livelihood that has received little attention until the COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying months of lockdown opened our eyes to the reality and importance of mental health for our overall well being.

According to the WHO, Mental health is "a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and can contribute to his or her community."

Also, a research conducted by the Mental Health Institute, USA, discovered that in most cases, mental issues begin at 14, and 45% of humans will face mentally related issues once in their lifetime.

Another research by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) discovered that 1 in 14 children aged 0–17 years had a parent who reported poor mental health. Those children were more likely to have poor general health, mental, emotional, or emotional developmental disability.

A child's healthy growth is dependent on their parents or other caregivers who operate in the role of parents, who are their initial sources of assistance in helping the children to become mentally self-sufficient, leading to healthy and prosperous lives.

Mentally healthy children are more likely to have a high quality of life and perform effectively at home, at school, and in their communities.

While we may not control how our children turn out, our decisions regarding their life, education, spirituality etc., will be a decisive factor in their development.

Children who grow up in families with histories of divorce, violence, abuse and harassment will have those experiences haunt them for the rest of their lives if it's not controlled.

While you cannot control everything they expose your children to, there are measures to increase what I will refer to as a positive to negative ratio of experiences.

Positive to Negative Ratio of Experience and mental health

The positive to negative ratio of experience is the number of positive experiences versus the negative experiences a child faces from birth to adulthood, affecting his mental health.



Positives experiences

Examples of positive experiences include; Love, Care, attention, forgiveness, Respect, etc.



Negative experiences

Adverse experiences include all the opposites of the positive experiences, which include but are not limited; Hate, Neglect, absent parent, death of loved ones, disasters, abuse etc., that a child experiences when growing. Negative experiences are better referred to as "Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) in medical climes.



When a child's negative experiences outnumber his positive experiences, that child will grow to exhibit what they have exposed him to, leading to trauma, PTSD, and even suicide.

Parents should be careful of what they expose their children to because reinforcement and environment form a large part of a child's behaviour later.


A top school of thought on behaviour spearheaded by John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner emphasized the significance of the environment in behavioural development. According to this school of thought, learning occurs through association and reinforcement. Read the full article at;

https://astrokiddies.com/blog/8/Parenting-and-Mental-health