How To Raise Emotionally Healthy Children

“We envision a school where parents and teachers work individually and together to meet the emotional needs of children at home and at school.” Dr. Newmark

You’ve heard the old adage “parents are a child’s first teacher,” but next to the family, teachers have the greatest influence in meeting the emotional and developmental needs of children. This can feel rather overwhelming at times but in his book How to Raise Emotionally Healthy Children, Dr. Newmark makes it just a little bit easier for those of us dedicated to providing the best experiences for children.

It’s no secret to educators of young children that emotional health provides the foundation for success in school, but it may be a surprise to some that the attention we give to the emotional health of children early on has an impact not only on school, but their work, marriage and life in general. That’s really powerful when you think about it!

In his book Dr. Newmark refers to the five critical emotional needs that all children (and parents for that matter), have. He says that if parents can recognize that their children need to feel respected, to feel important, to feel accepted, to feel included, and to feel secure, then, in the process, they will have their own needs satisfied too. The website emotionallyhealthychildren.org describes each of these needs in detail and offers other resources you can download regarding emotional health.

The book How to Raise Emotionally Healthy Children provides powerful and practical concepts and tools that enable parents, teachers, and childcare providers to interact with children and with each other in emotionally healthy ways. Having this role modeled, children learn to interact with each other in the same way. Children that experience this type of support for their emotional needs will be more likely to become self confident, independent, responsible, caring, civic-minded individuals.

This perspective feeds nicely into my original goal of finding ways to develop the whole child, to allow them to learn traditional academics in a way that respects their inner being so that they can develop a good sense of self, with inner strength and a deep sense of purpose, a relatedness to others, and ability to problem solve. If we work with parents to meet the five critical emotional needs that their children have, together we will set the foundation for success in school and in life.