What do parents want from schools when it comes to supporting their children's mental health?
Mainly it is to feel safe.
That is according to most recent data of Action for healthy children, a nonprofit organization that promotes the physical and mental well-being of school-aged children. The report's results come from a survey of about 1,000 parents with children in K-12 schools in December 2023.
Parents' concerns about their children's mental health ranged from worries about stress (“The pressure on children to do well on exams is sometimes overwhelming,” one parent wrote) to fears that their children experience racism at school.
The goal of collecting data on parents' views on mental health is to give them what they want, says Rob Bisceglie, CEO and president of the organization. Based on survey responses, that means training and tools on how to talk to your children about issues that affect their well-being. Action for Healthy Kids is using the survey data to develop guides for parents on topics such as general mental health, racism, body positivity, setting body boundaries and suicide prevention.
“Our program is what is called a family-school partnership model, so what the family (parents and caregivers) think is of particular importance and interest to us,” says Bisceglie.
Strong support for services
Parents surveyed generally agreed that having a school where their child feels a sense of belonging is important to supporting students' mental health. They also wanted mental health services to be available at the school.
Nearly 70 percent of parents say their children have “at least one adult at school they trust or talk to.” Another 88 percent of parents said a welcoming classroom environment would help their children in particular feel safe and supported. Nearly the same percentage wanted teachers to do everything they could to create positive relationships among students.
Despite the recent politicization of K-12 schoolsMost parents said they want schools to include lessons on topics including “respect, cooperation, perseverance and empathy.”
“I don't think this is surprising, but (the report) reinforced something for me: What parents really want for their children in schools is for them to be safe and feel a sense of love and belonging,” Bisceglie says. “We would love for that nurturing relationship to be with a parent or primary caregiver. “The second most likely person to provide that kind of support to a child is the school, and that is why this is so important.”
Feel good'
The barrier to accessing mental health services that parents cited most frequently was that their child felt like nothing was happening even though the parent felt otherwise: 38 percent of parents said this was a problem.
Anais Murphy is Senior Manager of Action for Healthy Kids' Youth Social and Emotional Learning and Mental Health Social and Emotional Learning Program. She says that while parents may be concerned that children say they feel fine when they don't, it's also important for them to know what behaviors are normal for each age group.
“I think part of the goal of this campaign is to give parents the information they need to understand what 'fine' means,” Murphy explains. “We're certainly not trying to overdiagnose or raise inappropriate alarm bells, but we do want parents to understand what the typical markers of development and mental health are. A 14 year old boy is really irritable. “That's totally appropriate and sometimes it's cause for concern, but sometimes it's exactly where they're supposed to be.”
The numbers also point to the fact that parents are paying more attention to young people's mental health, Murphy says, and the organization wants to help parents know where they can go for more help.
“We are in a phase of reducing stigma (I mean mental health), at least among the younger generation,” he says. “I think that's a big part of it. “It's not something that necessarily came up in terms of this survey, but it's certainly something that is (confirmed) in other research.”
Racism at school
In addition to mental health concerns, 58 parents of Black parents and 45 parents of Hispanic parents are worried that their children will experience racism at school.
Bisceglie says this is the first year the survey has asked parents about their concerns about racism.
Murphy says one of the tools the organization is working on as a result of the survey is a guide on how parents can talk to their children about racism at home and how teachers can do the same at school.
“I think one of the things that happened around the time of the pandemic and George Floyd was that we started talking a lot more about racism and about institutions like schools,” he says. “It's not that people weren't experiencing that before, but we weren't necessarily drawing attention to it. So it didn't really surprise me, because schools have access to the same kind of institutional forces as all of our other institutions, and structural racism and institutional racism are one of them. “I think it's really important that the level of collective consciousness has been raised so that we can start talking about it.”
