Catch Them Being Good! Positive Parenting Moves for Kids’ Mental Health

As a child psychologist interested in depression, suicidality, and eating disorders, I think a lot about how to help parents improve their children’s mental health. In the field of eating disorders, it’s well established that treatments that help the most are likely to involve parents and other family members. From food shopping, to prep, to mealtime, everyone in a household has a role to play in normalizing eating. With childhood depression, it’s become clear that we cannot simply take treatments that are effective for adults (like cognitive behavioral therapy) and cloak them in cartoons or kid-friendly metaphors.

Recently, I was involved in a study testing whether a treatment program called the Family Check Up, which helps parents to perfect and put into action their positive parenting moves, could help kids with their mood.

Positive Parenting Moves

Here are 3 key positive parenting moves:

• Catch your child being good! It’s easy to notice when kids are misbehaving. This move is about noticing when your child is doing the right thing. And then, acknowledging them for it! For example, if young Max always interrupts, praise him when he waits his turn in a conversation.
• Use labelled praises. Most parents are good at praising their child when they’re being good, but specificity can make praise more effective. For example, “I love how you used your words to explain your feelings” instead of “you’re so kind!”.
• Ignore bad behaviors, when safe. It can be tempting to correct or scold your child when they’re misbehaving or acting in a way that is embarrassing or irritating to you. But sometimes even that negative attention is rewarding. To reduce this, parents must do the hard work of ignoring the child’s behavior (to the extent you can do so safely). Let’s say Max is having a tantrum because he can’t do what he wants. Can his parent perhaps turn away from him and ignore it?

How the Family Check Up Might Help

The Family Check Up approach has been shown to reduce children’s inattention, increase their self-control, improve grades, and reduce anger and impulsivity. We wondered whether these improvements might extend to mood and suicidality. So, we compared children from 469 families who did and did not receive the Family Check Up in middle school (by random assignment). We surveyed them for several years into adulthood.

While receiving the Family Check Up treatment did not improve depression or suicide in kids when they were adults, it did help with long-term self-control.

What exactly is self-control in this context? It refers to a child’s ability to recover from disappointments, regulate emotions effectively, and resist impulsive urges. This turns out to be an important skillset! In this study, those who received the Family Check Up and improved in self-control were, in turn, more resilient to depression symptoms and suicidal thoughts and behaviors.

Application to Eating Disorders in Youth

Because children and teens who struggle with eating behaviors and body image can experience anxiety, mood changes, and thoughts about suicide, positive parenting moves – particularly while helping your kid navigate eating disorders treatment – offer a helpful framework.  

In our example with Max, let’s imagine he also has difficulty with eating. What started as pickiness has transitioned into the kinds of highly restrictive eating seen in Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID). It’s led to significant weight loss and created problems for him at school lunchtime.

In his eating disorder treatment, Max is coached through exposure experiments with new or challenging foods.

How could his parents apply positive parenting moves? Well, maybe when Max is actively whining on his way to the therapy session, his parents ignore it. When he calms himself down, they catch it. And, praise his hard work in managing his big emotions. Or, perhaps when Max is trying foods that he tends to avoid, his parents praise him specifically for being brave.

Positive parenting is its own hard work for parents. Setbacks are natural, as you too, are learning a skill alongside your child.

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