The world can be such a cruel place to live in sometimes, and as a parent, you might worry about your children because you can’t protect them from bad things all the time. This fact alone can urge you to keep them on a tight leash so that you can keep them from harm, but this can be counterproductive.
That’s because children have to learn how to stand on their own two feet and be gradually exposed to the world beyond their home. This can be frightening and exhilarating at the same time, but it’s important to let them experience the world first-hand. Delaying the inevitable won’t do anyone good.
However, even if you can’t always keep an eye on your children and protect them from the evildoers outside, what you can do is provide them with a safe space where they can heal out of harm’s way. Your home is the perfect place to do this because it’s where your children can freely be themselves without fear of prejudice. Here are three aspects you can focus on:
The Safety of the Physical Space
Out of all three aspects, maintaining the safety of your house’s physical space is arguably the easiest to do. That’s because the physical realm is something that you can see and touch just by using your senses. To achieve this, you only need to make sure that your children won’t be harmed by anything inside your household.
This can include having access to clean water, breathable air, a comfortable bed to sleep in, and a roof over their heads. These are already things that you continuously provide your children to ensure that their health and well-being are at an optimal condition.
By performing routine and preventive household maintenance, you can preserve the safety of your children when they are at home. But that doesn’t mean that you won’t encounter any problems. For instance, you’re experiencing a mosquito problem that’s affecting your children’s health and you don’t know where it’s coming from.
You might need to seek professional help for this because the problem might be caused by a clogged roof gutter that’s been holding stagnant water, which is the perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes aka the deadliest animals on earth. To solve this, you’ll need to call residential gutter cleaners who can stop the problem at its source before it becomes even worse.
The Safety of the Emotional Space
There may come a time in your children’s lives when they stop talking to you about the things they are experiencing at school, like if they’re being bullied or having trouble with academics. And while they are entitled to their privacy, it’s also important that you at least have a vague idea of their emotional stability.
But you can’t force them to talk to you when they don’t want to because that can take a turn for the worse. You have to let them naturally come to you and open up about what they’re feeling or experiencing. To do this, you have to establish a healthy and open line of communication.
This situation is especially prevalent among adolescents because this is the age when they are exposed to all the sides of the real world: the good, bad, and ugly. If you ruthlessly demand the attention of your children, they might choose to close off even more.
To establish healthy communication lines, you can start by letting them know that they can talk to you about their problems and follow through to show them that you’re staying true to your word. This can help you maintain the safety of the emotional space within your home.
The Safety of the Mental Space
As a parent, you have to understand that your children are entitled to their own thoughts, feelings, and opinions. You cannot dismiss the validity of what they’re feeling just because you didn’t go through the same things at their age. Keep in mind that family conflicts and misunderstandings are among the many reasons why there is an unresolved mental health problem across the globe today.
If your children are old enough to have access to the internet and social media, they may be exposed to all the negativity online. And while this is not to say that you should never have conflicts at home, it can help everyone’s mental headspace if you can healthily resolve the conflicts.
Give your children enough breathing room to gather their thoughts without pressuring them to solve conflicts outright. Likewise, you can ask them to return the favor because your mental health matters too. If you all learn how to communicate properly and actually listen to what the other is saying, you can maintain the safety of your mental space within the house.
Not all households are innately safe; that’s something that you have to do on your own accord. As a parent, it can be exhausting to maintain your home as a safe space for your children because you have other responsibilities on your shoulders. But it can also be incredibly healthy and beneficial for your family’s overall well-being.
