 a lot of you parents out there are doing the bare minimum and I'm here to call you out because if you only knew how important your child's mental and emotional maturity was to who they become later on in life if you knew how important that was you'd be doing a much better job. What's up everybody this is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution and as you might know by now I have a mental health channel and because this is a mental health channel I got to talk about a topic that is very very important which is childhood mental health so something that I've recognized a lot in parents that I've met parents that I know parents that I've had is something that I call bare minimum parenting and it's pretty self-explanatory it's parents who are doing the bare minimum just to get by and what does this mean in crude terms it means that you're pretty much doing just enough so CPS isn't cold on you so like a question I ask myself as a father like what is a good parent right what is what does it mean to be a good parent because I see a lot of parents out there who want an award or a plaque because they're like I work and I put a roof over this kid's head I feed them I clothe them I buy them toys and it's like okay congratulations you're you're doing the bare minimum like that's really the bare minimum like providing for the child that you gave birth to the child who didn't send a request in to be born that is the very bare minimum so one of the reasons why I get kind of amped up about this topic is because as somebody who is a mental health advocate and somebody who tries to coach people on improving their mental health like I need to tell you that most mental health disorders are because of environment and not genetics all right there are many many people out there who struggle with mental health issues and it was purely based on their genetics they happened to get a bad roll of the dice but many mental illnesses are based on childhood and how the person was cared for when it comes to mental health 90 percent of it comes from nature not being as important as nurture so it's very important that as parents we do a lot more than just the bare minimum now here's the reason why I'm doing this I'm I'm doing this because I don't know how old your child is but I'm doing this to potentially help you out in the future because I don't want you to be confused I see a lot of parents who are just extremely confused I work at a drug and alcohol clinic okay every single day I have people of all ages coming through my treatment center and when I sit there and I listen to their stories I'm like well no wonder you became a drug addict but parents are just so often confused and don't get it twisted it doesn't even have to manifest into a drug addiction or alcohol problem like it comes in a lot of different ways like there's so there's so much that falls on us as a parent if your child grows up and they have abandonment issues in relationships that is most likely your fault if your child grows up and they have trust issues that is most likely your fault if your child grows up and they don't know how to build healthy relationships that is most likely your fault all of these things all of these things that turn somebody into adult most of it is from what we teach them as a child one of my meditation teachers said this and it really just kind of it just kind of clicked for me when he found meditation he said that when you're born when you're a child when you're growing up like nobody comes up to you and gives you an instruction manual for life and nobody warns you nobody says hey you know what life is going to be really intense and when he used that word intense it just really clicked for me like life is intense it is extremely intense like when you are a child nobody explains to you like hey yo you're gonna get these emotions and they're gonna feel like right a sock like a sock in the stomach and it's gonna hurt it's gonna be difficult you're gonna have people in your life who are gonna hurt you and not be there for you you're gonna have a young man or woman break your heart you're gonna have people let you down nobody explains these things to you so as a child it can be very very difficult but a lot of parents out there we put this insane expectation on our children to just figure it out one of my favorite things that parents say is i need you to calm down i need you to calm down like real quick empathetic role play let's put you in your child's shoes like something that we often forget as parents is like no child likes losing control of their emotions no child wants to have an epic meltdown we forget that what i need you to understand here is when your child is going through emotional difficulties as a child they don't know how to turn it off and one of the main reasons is because of brain development this is what i was talking about in the intro of my video like if you could understand how a child's brain actually developed you would be a much better parent so something i'm gonna explain to you right now just basic childhood brain development like one on one what you're looking at right now is a 3d graphic of the brain so this part i'm showing you right now this is part of the limbic system do you see how close it is to the brain stem so the brain stem and the limbic system these are the first parts of the brain to fully form imagine when your child was in the womb this is the part of the brain that forms this part of the brain is responsible for survival it is a very very emotional part of the brain this part of the brain fully develops fully develops 100 maturity before a child is even five years old now let's rotate this thing this part of the brain that i'm showing you it's called the prefrontal cortex this part of the brain is very complex but it does not fully form until a person is in their mid 20s some of the aspects of this part of the brain that i'll explain to you right now are logical decision making and emotional regulation so when you take into consideration that your child has a fully formed part of the brain that makes them run purely off emotions and they have an underdeveloped part of the brain that allows them to regulate those emotions you start to see that your child does not have the necessary tools to learn how to manage their emotions so your child is experiencing very very stormy waters and as a parent it is your responsibility it is our responsibility to navigate our children through these stormy waters because if we don't do it who else is going to do it the overcrowded public school system no they're busy worrying about you know tests and all these other things that they have to do and teachers have like 50 kids in the classroom so who is teaching them how to navigate through their own emotions that they have absolutely no control over that what 100 falls on us as a parent and if they don't learn it at a young age guess what they don't learn it at an older age either as you've heard as you've heard it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks i experience this every day when i'm working with the older population and when i say older like i'm talking about people who are just even 18 and up trying to teach people how to relearn things these are things that are embedded from them from childhood that's why it's our responsibility to help mature our children emotionally so some of you out there right now are asking yourself well chris like how do i how do i do better what am i supposed to do to help my child navigate through these stormy waters it takes time it's process and trust me i'm going to make a lot more videos on this so make sure that you subscribe to my channel because there are different ways that you can do this but i will emphasize right now that the first thing you have to do is work on your mental health because if you are not mentally healthy you can't lead your child to a mentally healthy life that's like the blind leading the blind all right so remember your mental health is extremely important when it comes to learning how to help your child manage their own mental health all right so i really hope this video got through to some of you and if you are somebody out there who understands what i'm saying do me a favor and please share this video out there because we have a lot of parents out there who are doing the bare minimum and then they're extremely confused when they get this rowdy teenager that they can't control because they're doing the bare minimum all right but anyways if you'd like this video if you like what i'm doing here please give it a thumbs up and if you're new make sure you hit that little round subscribe button like i said i'm going to do more videos about parenting childhood mental health so you don't want to miss any of that and you can also click or tap on one of the thumbnails right there check out some other videos on this channel thanks so much for watching i'll see you next time