Understanding our Children's Mental Well-being

(Daddy blogs)

The emotional well-being of children is just as important as their physical health. Good mental health allows children to develop the resilience to cope with whatever life throws at them and grow into well-rounded, healthy adults.

Resilience refers to the ability to recover from adversity and to function successfully despite difficult situations, stress, or trauma.  As parents, no doubt we would always wish that our children will never have to deal with anything bad or hard and just remain carefree and happy.

Unfortunately, life isn't a bed of roses. And what we parents can hope is that our children will be resilient if the need arises. So how do we foster resilience in children? Building resilience is not unlike building muscles. And to truly appreciate the methods of building resilience, we would first need to understand how our child thinks, feels and behaves.

And this is where Colours of the Mind comes in.

Colours of the Mind is the result of about 2 years' worth of research undertaken by the Health Promotion Board (HPB) to understand the mental well-being of children and from its results, a quiz was developed which seeks to help parents better assess their child’s mental well-being.

Essentially, Colours of the Mind is an online quiz for children aged 6 to 12 years old. It consists of 25 questions which are put across in a very simple and casual manner.

So kids are supposed to choose the most appropriate responses to the respective scenarios. Parents can choose to do the quiz on behalf of their kids, but I reckon the results will be far more accurate if kids complete it on their own, with their parents beside them. Especially with sensitive questions like this.

Don't you as a parent, want to find out which response your child chooses?

I did. So I put both Ash and Ayd through the quiz.

Luckily (for them), they both agreed their parents love them very frequently. Phew.

At the end of the quiz, a brief report will be generated where three key areas of a child's mental well-being will be identified - Positive Functioning, Social Intelligence and Emotional Intelligence. From it, parents will be able to gain a better understanding of how to build on a child’s strengths so that he/she can grow up to be confident, happy and resilient.

As an added benefit, tips are included as well for each of the three areas which teach parents how to use simple daily activities to build on these areas.

And since we always love a report or two, one can also opt to save a copy of the report through email. What is even better is HPB will send you an email after three months, inviting your child to do the quiz once again to see if there is an improvement in his/her mental well-being!

So do head to www.coloursofthemind.sg to try out the FREE quiz... you might just be surprised by some of the responses that your kids come up with!