Even the most devoted parents can unknowingly chip away at their child’s emotional well-being, but a psychologist says that recognizing five key behavioral patterns is the first step toward building a stronger, more open relationship with your kids.
With youth mental health at a crisis point across North America, the stakes for getting this right have never felt more urgent.
The numbers alone tell a sobering story. The Canadian Paediatric Society estimates that roughly 20 percent of children and youth in Canada meet the criteria for a diagnosable mental health condition — a category that spans everything from ADHD and anxiety disorders to depression, eating disorders, and learning disabilities.
A still larger group of children experience emotional and behavioral difficulties that are real and disruptive without quite crossing the clinical threshold.
When these struggles go unaddressed, the consequences can ripple outward into academic performance, peer relationships, and a child’s ability to hit key developmental milestones.
The urgency is not just statistical. Alison Escalante, M.D., a pediatric psychologist writing for Psychology Today, described a community shattered by multiple teen suicides in a single month.
One mother, whose children were still in elementary school, approached the author in distress. She told the psychologist, as recounted in Psychology Today, “That was the fifth suicide this month.
They were successful kids; some were top athletes. I worry for my kids. How can I keep them talking to me so this doesn’t happen to us?” That question — how do I keep my child talking to me — sits at the heart of everything experts are now saying about protecting kids’ mental health.
There Are 5 Behaviors That Can Backfire
Clinical psychologist Dr. Shahrzad Jalali outlined five specific parenting behaviors that can quietly undermine a child’s mental health to the NY Post.
While the full list spans a range of communication styles and emotional responses, two patterns in particular stand out in the broader clinical literature as especially common and especially damaging.
The first is what Psychology Today calls the “tough it out” mentality, telling kids to push through pain or dismiss their feelings as weakness. When children receive the message that struggling emotionally is shameful, they stop bringing their problems to the adults who could help them most.
The second, perhaps more surprising, trap is the opposite extreme: hovering so intensely over a child’s emotional state that the child concludes their feelings are dangerous or unmanageable. Kids with parents who constantly monitor their moods often learn to hide their struggles entirely, sometimes until those struggles become severe. As Dr. Escalante noted, children in private practice frequently admitted to concealing their mental health difficulties specifically to avoid triggering a parental overreaction.
Both extremes share a common flaw: they send the message that emotions are either too weak to matter or too powerful to handle. Neither gives a child the tools to process what they are actually feeling.
Practical Strategies That Actually Work
Knowing what not to do is only half the equation. Experts across multiple disciplines point to a consistent set of behaviors that build the kind of family communication culture where children feel safe enough to be honest.
Dr. Martin L. Greenwald, MD, a psychiatrist at Northwestern Medicine Regional Medical Group, advises parents to be strategic about timing. Low-distraction moments, like car rides or the quiet stretch before bedtime, tend to be more conducive to meaningful conversations than sitting a child down for a formal talk.
He recommends asking open-ended questions that invite children to express themselves rather than respond with a single word, for example, asking how a child is feeling rather than posing a question that can be answered with a simple yes or no. He also recommends building shared routines, whether that is a weekly walk or baking together, as a way to create a consistent connection without pressure.
The Canadian Pediatric Society adds that helping children develop genuine problem-solving skills is just as important as emotional openness. Rather than stepping in to fix every difficulty, parents who guide children through working out solutions themselves are building the self-esteem and resilience that serve as long-term mental health buffers.
Mealtime conversations, physical activity together, and simply praising effort rather than only outcomes all contribute to a child’s sense that they are valued and capable.
For parents whose communication with their children has not been open, whether due to their own upbringing, stress, or simply not knowing better, the Psychology Today author is clear that it is never too late to reset. Calling a family meeting, acknowledging past communication gaps honestly, and inviting rather than demanding conversation can reopen doors that seemed permanently closed.
The key is to take responsibility without making excuses, and to make clear that the parent is genuinely ready to listen rather than react.
What the Research Says About Parental Support
The good news is that parental involvement, done well, genuinely moves the needle. Research on middle schoolers found that having a supportive parent measurably reduced the impact of life stress and was associated with lower rates of suicidal ideation among that age group. This is not a soft finding; it represents a concrete, measurable protective effect that parents can provide simply by showing up consistently and communicating openly.
The emotional regulation skills children develop during their early years do not stay in childhood. Dr. Greenwald emphasized this developmental reality directly. “The best way for a parent to help their kids’ mental health is to talk about it,” Dr. Greenwald told Northwestern Medicine’s health publication. “You don’t have to use clinical terms, but just have an open ended conversation about how they are feeling.”
Warning Signs Every Parent Should Know
Part of protecting a child’s mental health is knowing when something has shifted. Changes worth paying attention to include persistent sadness or irritability, a sudden drop in school performance, withdrawal from activities the child previously loved, unexplained physical complaints like frequent headaches or stomachaches, and significant changes in sleep or appetite.
A single sign in isolation does not necessarily indicate a diagnosable condition, but a cluster of changes that persists over time warrants a conversation with a pediatrician. And if a child ever expresses thoughts of suicide or self-harm, parents should contact a doctor or a mental health crisis line immediately, not wait to see if it passes.
Parents managing their own mental health challenges are also encouraged to seek support. Dr. Greenwald specifically noted, in Northwestern Medicine’s publication, that parents dealing with mental health conditions should consider therapy, both for their own well-being and to ensure they have the emotional capacity to show up for their children.
Understanding the scale of the child mental health crisis unfolding across the United States makes it clear that these are not abstract parenting tips — they are urgent, practical tools for families navigating a genuinely difficult moment in history.
What stands out across all of this expert guidance is how much of it comes down to one deceptively simple thing: making children feel heard without judgment. That is harder than it sounds, especially for parents who were raised in households where emotions were minimized or ignored. But the research is consistent: modern parenting approaches that prioritize emotional openness and collaborative problem solving produce measurably better outcomes for children.
The five behaviors a psychologist has flagged as harmful are not signs of bad parenting. They are signs of human parenting — and recognizing them is exactly where change begins.
