Is your little one feeling anxious, irritable, low, have trouble sleeping or having meltdowns? If you see them waving little amber flags, don’t wait until they are huge red flags, you can support them in so many ways with natural medicine. The earlier you get support for children’s mental health, the better the outcome for them as teens and adults. Children’s mental health challenges are on the rise, and nutrition can play a vital part in helping your kids.

Let’s see nutrition in a new way, and focus feeding your child in four ways: feeding their brain, bacteria, soul and sleep.

Feed their brain. Our moods are created by our neurotransmitters. Cognition and brain health support involves ensuring we have enough fuel for neurotransmitter production by nourishing the brain with healthy fats, and key vitamins and minerals. Without B vitamins for example, especially folate and B12, methylation is impaired, and our neurotransmitters- or brain messengers don’t get enough help to move around or transmit. This might mean lower moods occur. Vitamin B6 is a very important B vitamin that helps support a healthy nervous system. Zinc is an essential nutrient for cognition and immunity. Without enough zinc, key neurotransmitters can’t get produced. It’s found in foods like pumpkin seeds, red meat and shellfish. Zinc and B6 are brain health co-factors, they often hold hands together to ensure good neurotransmitter function.

Magnesium is a mineral that kids use a lot of, and unfortunately a lot are deficient in. Supplementing with a quality magnesium can quieten the excitatory signals in the brain and help the brain cells communicate better.

Saffron is a herbal medicine that is amazing to support mental health. It calms the mind, and helps relieve mild anxiety, and irritability. You can cook with saffron, however, supplementing with saffron at the evidence-based dosage will be the way to ensure you get the mood boosting benefits. Safron is available in capsules, liquid tinctures, powdered formulations, and chewable children’s products.  Ask our naturopaths which is best for your child.

Supplement with a child specific multi vitamin if your child is not meeting their nutritional needs with their dietary intake, and boost it up in times of rapid growth, convalescence or stress.

Feed their bacteria. The gut-brain connection is a two-way pathway that influences mood and mental health. The brain can influence intestinal activities, while the gut influence mental health and mood.  Gut bacteria and the balance of the microbiome play a massive role in the neurological pathway. By eating a wide variety of colourful plant foods and including probiotic rich alive foods like yoghurt or kombucha, we can encourage a flourishing and diverse microbiome. Targeting mental health with probiotic strains is a new and immerging science- certain species of probiotics have been shown to lift mood and improve anxiety.

Feed their souls. Family meals are important as they are a time to connect. A key part of feeding their souls, is ensuring yours as the carer is taken care of too. Kids co-regulate their emotions, and if we aren’t calm or coping, it’ll be harder to support that regulation our children need. Teach your kids to self-care by doing it yourself.

Feed their sleep. Our brains need sleep to wash the waste of the day away, and this is critical for kids. They are actively building neural pathways and need sleep to assimilate the days learning. Create a calming bedtime routine, reduce screens and blue light, use magnesium baths and essential oils to calm the body and mind, and use calming herbal teas or nighttime elixirs to help your child drift off to a wonderful healing night’s sleep.

Get the foundations for health solid. If they are well rested, and you focus on feeding their brains, souls and bacteria, they will be over all happier healthier kids.