Children's Mental Health Month 2025: children's wellbeing

It's Children's Mental Health Week 2025, which is an ideal time to focus on your children's wellbeing. The experience of the pandemic has had a long-lasting effect on many children who lived through it, and the pressures of social media and school also take their toll. 

So, how can you help boost your child's wellbeing?

The building blocks to wellbeing for children 

Providing a foundation for wellbeing helps children cope with life's ups and downs. The following tips give steps you can take to create that foundation:

Have open, honest conversations

Create space to engage with your child every day. You could do this by asking about their day, having family dinners together, or taking them out for a hot chocolate or a dog walk. Finding opportunities to chat offers emotional support for children. It might feel like they are somewhat closed off (teens in particular can be this way), but practising giving them your time and undivided attention every day can help them open up. 

Tell your child that they can come to you about anything, and that you'll help them work problems out. 

Provide opportunities to express themselves

Journaling, drawing, writing or playing music can help kids get in touch with their feelings and emotions. Younger children can benefit from having a chart of emojis to look at to help them understand their feelings, and they can point out which emoji they identify with to you. 

Exercise

Exercise is good for everyone, and children need at least 30 minutes a day of activity for their health. Encourage your child to try out different sports and activities to find ones that they like, and meet up with friends to play in the park. Try going to the park as a family to play rounders, or kick a ball back and forth- all activity counts. 

Nurture their hobbies and interests

Hobbies give us a feeling of purpose, joy and happiness. Take a look at what hobbies and interests your child could pursue, and encourage any that they already have. There is a hobby for everyone, and you needn't be any good at it to enjoy it! 

Kids can try anything from acting classes to crafts, stamp collecting, gardening or collecting things. 

Maintain routines

Children find safety and comfort in routines, so build them into your lives. You can stick a routine- for example, getting ready for school- up on the fridge so that it can be adhered to. Younger children will respond well to images- perhaps of school uniform and a toothbrush- to act as prompts. Older children can use a list. Routines help everyone keep on track and avoid extra stress. 

Routines for bedtime help soothe kids before sleep. Try and stick to the same routine- e.g. bath, bedtime story and then lights out- every day. 

Try a children's mental health activity

When your child is stressed or upset, these activities can provide relief:

• Try making a self-soothe box
• Or use our calming box-breathing video

Spurgeons provides emotional support for children

Our trained counsellors work with children to help them overcome mental health concerns. 

One of those children was Tina (pseudonym), an 11 year old. Tina often seemed sad and low and her parents were concerned. She had become withdrawn and lacking friends. 

Tina began working with one of our counsellors. She explained that she was being criticised by other children at school about her appearance. Our therapist worked with Tina by using a sand tray and a Russian doll so she could explore her feelings. These creative activities helped her to get in touch with things that she found it hard to express. 

Over 12 sessions, Tina's confidence grew and she started to learn the difference between fact and opinion. She began to tell other children at school to keep their opinions to themselves, and recognised that she has a choice in how to deal with them.

If your child is struggling, get in touch with us and find out about our child counselling. Our counsellors are fully trained to work with children and use strategies such as art therapy to help get to the root of the problem. 

What is Children's Mental Health Week 2025?

Children's Mental Health Week is a campaign of awareness around empowering young people and parents to look after their mental health. Explore our other mental health resources by clicking here.