Dear depressed parents,
You are in a hard place. Sharing, relating, and engaging are often the last things you feel like doing. Yet, your child needs all those things. Every day. It must be exhausting for you to work up the energy for all the hugs, the will to pay attention, or the desire to attend a parent teacher conference or school performance… when you’d rather just head back to the couch or draw the shades.
But Mom or Dad, you need to know: Your depression is affecting your child’s life deeply. Especially at school. According to research, untreated parental depression has a prolonged negative impact on a child’s schooling that can greatly affect whether a child graduates, the types of opportunity he or she is afforded, and general satisfaction in life.
For just a few paragraphs or so, please consider how your depression may be impacting your child’s academic world:
Your child’s concentration is diverted. An unhealthy home life and anxiety about his or her relationship with you is distracting. Your child may be so concerned regarding your mood that concentration on his or her own responsibilities seems less important. Perhaps your student feels too worried about your interactions or behavior to think much about turning in assignments and test taking. Family therapists will tell you, you are the key to your child’s internal peace. Your sadness or withdrawal is jarring and their concentration suffers.
Your child’s motivation and confidence are subverted. As a depressed parent, you may not realize how your low self-esteem colors your child’s own self-image. Unable to obtain positive attention from you or observe a healthy, positive self-image, your child may feel unworthy or incapable at school. This affects his or her ability to socialize, seek help, and progress.
Your child’s relationships are increasingly insecure. It is true, too, that your depression makes it difficult for your child to know quite how to manage relationships. Depression interferes with his or her attachment to you and has a trickledown effect on his or her relationships with people at school. Your child may now be wrestling with labels like:
- Troublemaker
- Disruptive
- Nuisance
- Uncontrollable
- Loner
- Remedial
Those perceptions get in the way of the truth: you need help for your depression and your child needs help reconnecting with you so that he or she can learn to fit in at school in healthier ways.
Your child’s emotional problems increase. You know how much depression has affected your life. You should know too, that a cycle continues to play out if you don’t get help. Your depression makes it difficult for your children to know how to emotionally self-regulate. Kids have trouble with recognizing and identifying their own emotional wants and needs. They often show signs of depression early in life too.
Dear depressed parents, this is serious, but all of this information is not to blame you or shame you. Indeed, it is to support you. You should know that you are not alone. According to recent reports, clinical depression among all adults, including parents, has reached near epidemic proportions.
In February 2015, the journal “JAMA Psychiatry” published a Swedish study, using data collected over a decade’s time. It investigated the impact of having a depressed parent on school-aged children. Grades for more than 1.1 million children were examined alongside their parents’ mental health assessments. Marks were significantly lower for those whose parents were managing depression.
The study’s authors reported that, “the diagnoses of parental depression may have a far-reaching effect on an important aspect of child development, with implications for future life course outcomes.”
So now you know… But all is not lost.
What’s the good news?
Depression is treatable. You can get help. You can recover.
For your sake and the sake of your child or children. Depressed parents are not doomed parents. The children of depressed parents are never a lost cause. Reach out to a therapist and seek the support of those who want to help you.
Become a recovering parent and perhaps soon you’ll see your child’s spirits rise too… along with his or her grades.
