Children's Mental Health Week
Middlesex FA is pleased to be supporting Place2Be’s Children’s Mental Health Week 2019 (4-10 February).
For this year’s theme ‘Healthy: Inside and Out’, Place2Be is encouraging children, young people and adults to look after their bodies and their minds.
When we think about healthy living, we tend to focus on looking after our bodies – our physical wellbeing – through food, being active and getting enough sleep.
However, in order to be healthy overall, it’s important that we look after our minds – our mental wellbeing – too. Our bodies and minds are actually very closely linked, so things that we do to improve our physical wellbeing can help our mental wellbeing as well.
Children in every class have diagnosed mental health conditions and many more struggle with challenges from bullying to bereavement. But when we take steps to be ‘Healthy: Inside and Out’, it helps us to feel better in ourselves, focus on what we want to do and deal with difficult times.
Get Involved
Find more information and share Place2Be’s resources for parents, teachers and youth groups at www.ChildrensMentalHealthWeek.org.uk
Here are three tips from Place2Be about being ‘Healthy: Inside and Out’
- Pick something you already do to look after yourself and try to notice how it makes you feel. For example, eating fruit, playing football in the playground, reading a relaxing story at bedtime. When you do it, do you feel happy? Excited? Full of energy? Calm? Why do you think you feel like that?
- Ask your family, friends and teachers about what they do to look after themselves. Do they have any good ideas? Why do they do it? How do they make sure they keep doing it?
- Decide one new thing you can do to look after your body and your mind. It doesn’t have to be big or tricky – and you could find a friend to do it with you! For example, you could try to drink only one fizzy drink a week, or do five star jumps every playtime, or do something relaxing to help you sleep better. Keep a diary or a blog about how it makes you feel. If it doesn’t work, it’s OK to try something else! Find something that makes you feel Healthy: Inside and Out.
Remember – everyone’s bodies and minds are different. There’s no such thing as a perfect body or mind and no one is perfectly healthy. People might pick different things that help them feel Healthy: Inside and Out, and that’s OK. If you’re not sure about something, you can find an adult who you trust to talk to – it could be someone in your family, a teacher, or someone else involved in your hobby.