New analysis of Google search data reveals that mental health is amongst the most-searched for topics by parents in the UK.
Anxiety is the most Googled mental health condition for children, with searches looking for help diagnosing children with the condition rising by 190 percent in the past five years, and queries about panic attacks in young people increasing by an incredible 5,000 percent during this period.
This is closely followed by searches for neurodiversity, with 1,000 UK parents per month turning to Google for advice on whether their child has autism.
The analysis, which was conducted by leading name-label manufacturer MyNametags.com, further highlights British parents’ growing reliance on Google to help with all aspects of raising children. In fact, parents across the country use the search engine to answer questions about their children over 10,000 times per day, a third more than this time five years ago.
Alongside mental health, children’s physical health was one of the most commonly Googled aspects of parenting in the last 12 months, with searches concerning chickenpox, croup, and asthma topping the list.
This was followed by more practical, everyday queries about parenting. For instance, searches for what age a child can be left on their own have increased by 280 percent, whilst queries about what age their child can use a booster seat have spiked to 540 percent higher than this time five years ago.
Lars B. Andersen, Managing Director at My Nametags, comments: “We offer parents advice on preventing lost belongings every day, so we were interested to find out what more about what other pressing questions families have.
“It was eye opening to discover how many parents are turning to Google for information and resources to help them manage their children’s mental health.
“Whilst the internet is an incredibly valuable tool for parenting advice, we’d always recommend families use trusted sources for information on health and wellbeing, such as the NHS and established mental health charities.”
Top 10 most Googled parenting questions last year:
This week marks Children’s Mental Health Week (5th-11th February), shining a spotlight on the importance of children and young people’s mental health.
The rise in such problems over recent years has previously been labelled as a mental health energy and one of the greatest public health challenges of our times. These problems are even more worrying when they concern the mental fitness of our younger generations, and how we are preparing them to face the growing challenges of entering adulthood.
Against this backdrop, our mental health services are however facing overwhelming and unprecedented pressures, which existed even before the pandemic and are becoming further exacerbated by the cost-of-living crisis.
Too many of our young people are waiting too long for treatment and the rapidly escalating number of those seeking support, faced with inadequate services, could potentially lead to a lost generation of vulnerable children and young people who are missing out on the support they vitally need.
Against the perfect storm of a mental health crisis combined with the long shadow of lockdown and the rising cost of living, we must not lose sight of the challenges that our children and young people are facing, renewing our efforts in a national crusade to ensure that they receive adequate mental health support.
With children and young people’s mental health so badly effected by lockdown and prolonged absence from school, this year’sChildren’s Mental Health Weekhas a particular resonance.
Former primary school teacher Laura Steele of education expertsPlanBeehas gathered a week’s worth of fantastic FREE resources inone downloadable pack.
Parents can use them to help their children explore their mental health and give them the tools to express their thoughts and feelings.
These posters aim to help your child understand some of the physical sensations that accompany different feelings. Explore and discuss the vocabulary on each poster. You could ask children: Do you know what this word means? Have you ever felt like this? What made you feel this way? Could you add any more words to either of the posters?
Older children may find the Synonym Booklet of Emotions useful to expand their vocabulary and help them to better express themselves.
Use these 16 feelings and emotions cards to develop discussion around a range of different feelings, using the questions below each emoji. If your children cannot think of an example, you could describe and explain a time when you felt this way. They could also be asked whether each of the cards represent a ‘warm fuzzy’ or a ‘cold prickly’ feeling, picking up on yesterday’s discussions.
You could then challenge your child to use the Design your own Emotion Emojissheet to create their own versions. Encourage them to think about their personal experience of each emotion, and think carefully about the shape, colour, size and facial expression they choose.
Today’s resource focuses on a specific feeling: worry, or anxiety. Tell your child that everyone experiences this feeling sometimes, and more often than not, acknowledging and talking about the reasons why you are worried or anxious can help you to feel better. These Worry Monster Activity Sheets can help your children to voice, and then deal with, any anxieties they may have.
Anger and frustration can be difficult emotions for anyone to deal with, not least children. These posters offer a range of techniques that can be used almost anywhere, in any situation. The first four posters (The Calm Down Cake, The Slow Down Star, The Slow Down Square and the Helping Hand) direct children to focus on their breathing, using an image to help them do this. Discuss and practise the techniques together, first with and then without the posters in front of them, so children realise that these strategies can be successful using only their imagination if needed.
The final poster in the pack (5…4…3…2…1), may be more suitable for older children. They are directed to use all of their senses to focus and calm the mind. They can do this for the actual environment they are in, or an imagined one, such as a park, a beach or a forest.
The mental benefits of meditation are now widely recognised – for children as well as adults. Research has shown that short, regular meditation sessions can have a positive effect on children’s attention, focus, self-awareness, and their management of thoughts and feelings. This Guide Sheet is a simple, easy introduction to meditation, with step-by-step instructions to follow. Try a short session with your child. Ask them how they feel afterwards. You could try to add a session like this into your daily routine, and see what effect it has over time on your child’s emotional well-being.
A person with a fixed mindset feels that they have no control over their abilities, or problems they may face. But someone with a growth mindset knows that they can improve their abilities and overcome difficulties if they persevere and are patient with themselves. Discuss these differences with your child, and look at the poster for examples of each type of mindset. What type of mindset does your child think they have, and why? Why might it be better to have a growth mindset?
Children could use the blank poster provided to write their own personal examples of statements they made when they felt they had a fixed mindset, and how they could turn this around into a growth mindset statement.
End the week on a positive note with this activity, where children are encouraged to think about all the different aspects of their life that they are thankful for. A blank template is included for children to record these thoughts.
The I am Lucky Because…activity sheet may be more suitable for younger children, where they are encouraged to think about and complete the sentences, ‘I am lucky because I can…’, ‘I am lucky because I am’… and ‘I am lucky because I have…’.
It’s widely known that children who feel nurtured and safe will not only learn better but feel better too,but it’s sometimes easy to overlook as teachers grapple with the every-day demands of the primary school classroom.
Child Mental Health Week (February 4-10) is the ideal opportunity for schools to focus on creating a nurturing environment where every child feels valued and safe. Education expert and former primary school teacher Becky Cranham has some great ideas.
Getting to know every child in the class
Teachers can take some time each week to learn a new fact about each child. They could give them a ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’ card for them to fill in with something interesting about themselves, or as a space to share anything they are struggling with or worried about. Having one-to-one feedback on these (you could write a quick response on the back of the card and leave it in their tray, or take a child aside if necessary) or sharing a quick “Hey, I didn’t know you love ostriches – they’re my favourite animal too!” moment with a child can make them feel really valued and supported.
Encouraging every child to have a voice
It’s often the same children putting their hands up to answer a question. Teachers can use Flip Sticks to keep track of who you’ve asked a question and to encourage the whole class to take part in discussions. Another good method is to use ‘Talk for Me Buddies’ – a child discusses a question or problem with a partner who then feeds back what the first child has said to the rest of the class, and vice versa. This is great for children who want to share their ideas with the class but who don’t yet have the confidence to voice their own thoughts in a large group.
Being playful and having fun
Play fosters creativity, collaboration and problem solving, all of which are important for good mental health. Teachers should make sure there is time in the timetable for children to play, whether it’s a Maths game, a role-play activity or ateam-building game to foster class relationships.
Feelings and emotions: name it to tame it
This gives children and adults the language to describe how they are feeling. In the words of US child psychiatrist Dr Dan Siegel, ‘Name it to tame it’. Children need to be able to identify the emotions they are feeling in order to understand how to deal with what they are feeling. Teachers could display an Emotions Poster in the classroom and encourage children to refer to it throughout the day, or give them each an individual feelings monitor to encourage them to identify when they feel different emotions, and thereby how to deal with them.
Taking a ‘mood register’ to check in with the feelings in the room
We recently asked some of our Facebook followers what they do in the to take the register. One response that we absolutely loved was to do a mood register. This involved children giving a number from 1 to 10 when answering their name in the register to show how they were feeling that day. The teacher can then follow-up with any low-scoring children later in the day for a private chat, and other children can be aware of how their peers are feeling, giving them the chance to offer encouragement and support. This is what this teacher said about how it was working in her classroom:
“It’s amazing how, when you make talking about feelings and emotions the ‘norm’, children feel totally safe and natural expressing how they feel.”
Creating an atmosphere where all feelings are allowed
It’s important for children’s feelings to have an appropriate outlet. Boundaries should be put in place around behaviours to keep everyone safe and strategies developed to help reinforce those boundaries. For example, children should know that they are allowed to feel happy, angry, sad or whatever other emotion they may be feeling, but that they are not allowed to bully or hit. When addressing undesirable behaviour, it’s good to help both the child concerned and the other children in the class to understand that there are appropriate and inappropriate ways of dealing with difficult emotions. Learning to identify these will come in time as the children are supported in identifying and accepting their feelings.
Move on from a negative experience
Sometimes it’s important to help children (and colleagues) to see past the latest disastrous playtime or bad lesson and focus instead on the bigger picture. Is a child frustrated because they didn’t understand column subtraction straight away?Teachers can remind them of a time they struggled with, and overcame. Is this really any different? Do they really want to end the friendship with their best friend over the argument they had at playtime?
Take learning outside and make it active
It rains a lot in Britain. But that doesn’t mean that we should automatically discount the idea of making outside learning a regular occurrence. It doesn’t have to mean traipsing around a forest looking for earthworms (although this kind of outdoor learning is extremely valuable, too). Exploring places of worship, streetscapes, architecture, local businesses, museums, galleries, parks and shopping centres all provide rich experiences that provide an immediately engaging environment and provide many opportunities for learning.
Learn from fiction: discuss the feelings of book characters
It’s a great opportunity to discuss the feelings and actions of the characters when children are read to. Is there a better way they could have reacted? What led up to the crisis point? Analysing the actions and reactions of characters in a number of stressful situations can support children in identifying how they themselves react in certain situations and how they might react more positively next time. It’s also important to share stories that directly encourage empathy, sympathy and kindness in order to foster these traits in children. The Kindness Movement, for example, are giving away a free kindness book which can help kickstart your class in thinking about, and discussing, feelings.
Keep it calm
Being able to calm down is a skill that needs to be practised (in some children more than others!). Embedding periods of calm into your classroom through simple activities, like this one from the Everyday Mental Health Classroom Resourcewebsite, will help children to feel safer and more peaceful, leading in turn to better learning.
Becky Cranham, a former primary school teacher, is Lead Resource Creator of PlanBee, an education resources website.
Praise for Forthview parents’ ‘wonderful resource’
A book encouraging children to talk about anxiety has been written and published by Forthview Primary School parents as part of Children’s Mental Health Week. The parents’ work has been praised by Lothians MSP Miles Briggs, who tabled a congratulatory motion at the Scottish Parliament.
‘No Worries’ tells the tale of a group of primary school children going on school camp, each facing and overcoming their different anxieties. Each of the eight characters’ stories was developed by a parent drawing on their own experiences.
The Forthview parents were helped in their venture through a series of writing workshops with author Mary Turner Thomson and used money from the school’s Pupil Equity Funding to publish the book with WhiteWater Publishing Ltd.
The launch, which took place yesterday at the National Library of Scotland, was attended by Deputy First Minister and Education Secretary John Swinney alongside Councillor Alison Dickie, Vice Convener of the city council’s Education, Children and Families committee.
The Forthview book launch was one of several events involving schools and young people across the Capital to highlight Children’s Mental Health Week. These include St Catherine’s Primary School pupils contributing to a short film on mental health, a singing workshop at Tynecastle High (both also supported by Place2Be) and a young people’s event exploring social anxiety and young people as part of the council’s Growing Confidence programme.
Forthview parent, Yvonne Thompson, said: “Writing this book has been a positive experience for each of us, as mental health has an impact on ourselves, our families and within our community. We supported each other through the process of making this book and learnt about the process of writing a book, how we structure stories, use proper grammar and punctuation.
“Writing the book has been somewhat therapeutic for some of us, as we thought about our own anxieties and how they affect us so that we can help our children deal with their worries – it was a great sense of achievement being able to help our children.”
Tracey Berry, the popular Family Support Teacher at Forthview, received an MBE in 2013 for her work at Forthview and Craigmuir schools in West Pilton, and she helped co-ordinate the latest ‘No Worries’ book project.
Tracey said: “At Forthview we are all very excited to have been part of this writing project. This book is really special and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed working closely with this group of parents.
“I’ve watched them grow in confidence as they have produced this wonderful book, written solely with the purpose of supporting their children and other children with a range of anxieties.”
Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Education John Swinney said: “Pupil Equity Funding is empowering teachers to put in place creative new initiatives to tackle the attainment gap in their schools.
“This is a great resource which starts to teach children how to handle anxiety in a way they can understand and relate to and I hope it will be put to good use. By giving our young people the right knowledge and understanding about emotional and mental wellbeing we can help to ensure important conversations about mental health become an everyday part of life.”
Councillor Alison Dickie, Vice Convener of Education, Children and Families at the City of Edinburgh Council, said: “What a wonderful resource! I’ve been really moved reading ‘No Worries’ as it uses simple language and scenarios that children understand to convey a crucial message about the importance of talking about our feelings and anxieties.
“As a former teacher, (Cllr Dickie taught at Ferryhill Primary in Drylaw) I understand how challenging it can be for young people to deal with their worries, and how alone they can feel. This children’s book helps them to find their own voice and to have that first, sometimes very difficult, opening conversation. All children should read this book!”
The Scottish Conservatives health spokesperson Miles Briggs MSP has congratulated the Forthview parents for their efforts to break down barriers. He said: “The No Worries book is a great initiative to get children talking about their anxieties and mental wellbeing.
“In Scotland there is still stigma attached to mental health and getting children to talk about mental health from a young age is exactly what is needed to break down these barriers. I highly commend all of those involved with the No Worries book for their part in helping to improve young people’s mental health.”
The Lothians MSP tabled the following congratulatory motion at Holyrood:
Title: Edinburgh pupils and parents mark Children’s Mental Health Week
Motion:
That the Parliament congratulates the parents and pupils in Edinburgh who are helping to highlight Children’s Mental Health Week which takes place this week; notes that parents from Forthview Primary School have written a book entitled “No Worries” which encourages children to talk about anxiety; further notes that the parents were helped in their venture by writing workshops with author Mary Turner Thomson and that the book has been published by WhiteWater Publishing Ltd.;
is also aware that, with the support of Place2Be, pupils from St Catherine’s Primary School are contributing to a short film on mental health and a singing workshop will take place at Tynecastle High, and that a young people’s event exploring social anxiety will take places as part of Edinburgh Council’s Growing Confidence programme; commends all those involved in these initiatives, and considers that they have the potential to play an important role in improving young people’s mental health by raising awareness and understanding of mental health challenges and reducing the stigma that may be associated with them.
