Protecting Your Child Mentally (certkare.com)

I am currently a contributor on certkare.com

We are trying to build the first child care platform in Nigeria. 

We want to inspire a fun, creative, safe and loving, atmosphere for all children and families.

This is an exciting duty, it has enabled me bring out the caring part of me. A huge shout out to the certkare.com team! 

As your child resumes school, it is crucial to protect their mental health from all forms of attacks.

They need to be shielded from the teacher who says ‘you are naughty’, ‘you are dull’, ‘you are a dummy’, ‘if you talk, I will smack you’, etc. Statements like these will attack the mental well-being of your child and will make them sad, depressed, afraid, and uneasy. They may even make them cry. 

Most schools no longer flog children: they have tried to secure the physical well-being of your child and protect them from physical pain, but they have ignored the mental well-being of your child.

Also, there are attacks from friends, friends who say to your child: ‘you are ugly’, ‘you are obese’, ‘you are too dark in complexion’, ‘you are a monkey’, ‘I will beat you up’, etc.

These attacks are probably why your child comes home sad, and also makes them afraid to go to school the next day. As a matter of fact, you could have a huge problem the moment your child starts getting afraid of school. It means they have eaten up the mental strength of your child, and your child may never grow up to have the resilience of Abraham Lincoln and the mental strength of President Buhari which kept him going despite several defeats, insults, abuses and uncertainties. I will always argue that the mental strength of any individual is the most important attribute, because when your physical strength fails, your mental strength will keep you going. Also, when there is no way, your mental strength will always force a way. It will be very dangerous to raise a child without adequate mental strength. In the bible, we can see clearly that it was Joseph’s mental strength that made him overcome Potiphar’s wife’s temptation. If he wasn’t so strong mentally, he would have succumbed out of fear.

Sadly, you cannot stop these attacks from occurring. You can’t force the teachers to always be nice to your child, neither can you make sure your child’s classmates stop the attack. Many of them have a terrible upbringing, so your child is constantly exposed to attacks from them.

In cases like this, all you can do is to defend your child from these attacks, and like my father’s favorite quote ‘attack is the best form of defense’. You need to attack these attacks with positive words. You need to shower your child with positive comments and make sure it sinks into them. Make sure it gets so deep into them that whenever someone tells them ‘you are ugly’, they can boldly reply that ‘It is not true, my daddy said I’m beautiful’, ‘my mummy said I’m the best’. While bathing them in the morning, make sure you say lots of positive words to last them for the day. While dropping them off in school, do the same.

Most importantly, find a way to find out if anyone abused them in school, find out if anyone said anything offensive to them, and address the issue nicely in the school the next day. Don’t start a fight or an argument, just explain the importance of your child’s mental health to the head teacher and insist that they have to protect your child from mental attacks. You could show them this article for further conviction.

I wish your child/children a great session in school and hope they grow to become mental giants.