What Emotional Health Really Means for Children (and Why It Matters)
What does emotional health mean to me?
In short - everything.
Emotional health is the foundation on which everything else is built upon and it’s intrinsically linked with our physical health too.
I grew up as a child confused and anxious. I look back at my first few years of life and I can’t remember any obvious loud emotions that overtook my young life, yes, I was naturally reserved around people I didn’t know and felt the end of things intensely - even the end of the day, but I can’t remember overwhelming feelings on a daily basis. I often spoke about “how I can sleep with my eyes open”, so there were perhaps early signs of me being hypervigilant, however.
I was happy though. I had amazing parents and extended family, and the memories of that time are vivid and treasured.
When we moved house and city when I was 7, I was naturally nervous, excited, but deeply sad to leave grandparents, cousins, and friends and to start from scratch. Anxiety raised its head quickly when I started my new school, a constant state of dread that I can still remember to this day. I was physically sick during school and had constant stomach aches. My poor mum would have to walk me screaming to school, I would kick as I was prised from her arms, I just wanted her so badly.
When I moved schools again, things settled somewhat and then came an event that shaped all of our worlds. The weeks that followed shaped me. My behaviour showed I was struggling, but it was the 80s. Kids were resilient. My absences from school were still higher than average. My friendships were inconsistent and often strained.
I simply did not understand how I felt and nobody was asking. The doctors didn’t get curious, even when I began to show worrying behaviours in my subconscious quest for connection and to be seen.
Instead of “What happened to you?” the question, quietly, systemically, was “Why are you like this?”
I struggled massively with friendships. I became dishonest to control a narrative and to try and find my place, adapting myself to be whoever I thought might give me an opening. This emotional confusion only spiralled as I grew.
My parents continued to be loving and understanding, but they had no textbook for navigating such a frightening time, they were living through a nightmare themselves. As hormones and grief mixed, I became someone nobody ever really knew. Not fully. Not even me.
Re-reading old journals now, I see the same words on the page year after year: sadness, unsure, pessimistic, no sense of belonging in the wider world outside of my family home. That vulnerability left me exposed and as a result of that vulnerability, I faced more trauma.
Fast forward to being an adult and through my role in early years in 2014, I attended my first emotional literacy training, I felt connected to my emotions for the first time. Something clicked. I sat there not only as an adult but as a child. Eyes wide.
This.
This was the stomach ache.
This was the obsessive thoughts.
This was the behaviour.
Emotional health.
It wasn’t my fault.
Emotional health isn’t one single thing. It isn’t a checklist or a destination you arrive at, it’s made up of lots of little things - how safe we feel, how understood we are, how our bodies are supported, how much space we have to process what life throws at us and it looks different for everyone.
There are shared elements of emotional health - connection, safety, regulation - but how we meet those needs varies. One thing I see over and over again is how little sensorial time we now have.
We now live in a world that is incredibly cognitive. Fast. Busy. Multi-tasking has become normal, we are often doing or listening, watching, three things at once, moving from one demand to the next, rarely pausing. Even everyday tasks that once held sensory input, counting money, handwriting forms, sorting papers, are disappearing. Now we sit, tapping at keyboards, eyes fixed on screens, bodies largely still while our minds race ahead.
