“Why don’t people teach us these skills in kindergarten?” a client once asked me. I was teaching her a DBT skill called validation, which helps people regulate their emotions more effectively. I explained to her that often people learn these skills from their family as they grow up, but not everyone has this opportunity – more and more kids are growing up in broken homes, where they either have less time with their parents to learn the skills required to deal with their emotions in a healthy way; or their parents never actually learned these skills themselves to be able to pass them on to their children. Whatever the case, she’s right: teaching kids these kinds of skills in school would likely save them a lot of pain and energy, not to mention the money they’ll later need to spend on therapy!

I recently read an article about a study that compared high school and college students from 1938 to those in 2007, and concluded that mental health problems such as depression and anxiety are much more of a problem for modern-day students than they were in the past. It does seem that mental illness is affecting more and more people at a younger age – or perhaps we’re just more aware of these kinds of problems now. Regardless, there are things we can do to prepare kids better for the pressures they’ll be facing in life.

I think most therapists would agree that mental health has not been as much of a priority for most people as it needs to be. More and more, we see people not only putting the demands of life ahead of their own mental health, but also striving to catch up to the Jones’s, to get ahead, and to have more. It’s little wonder, then, that kids nowadays are growing up thinking they have to do the same – get into the best university so they can get the highest paying job, buy the biggest house and own the fanciest car. In the chaos of all of this competition, we seem to have forgotten to stop and smell the roses. We often don’t take the time we need to cultivate relationships with others, or our relationship with ourselves. And many of us forget – or never learn in the first place – the skills we need to live an emotionally and mentally healthy and happy life.

So my message to you today is this: come back to the present moment. Take a deep breath and feel how it feels to breathe, and to be alive. Give someone you care about a hug. Get really involved in a good book. Really listen to your child as she tells you about her day. In other words, stop and smell the roses! Stop living in the past and the future and be in this moment. You might just notice when you do this that things aren’t as bad as you thought, and may even be better than you realized. At the very least, the more often you do this, the closer you’ll be to mental wellness. And the more we all do this, the more our children will learn from us how to be healthier and happier.

Sheri Van Dijk, MSW, is a mental health therapist in private practice at Southlake Regional Health Centre in Newmarket, ON, Canada. She specializes in the treatment of bipolar disorder and other psychiatric disorders using dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and mindfulness practice. She is author of The Bipolar Workbook for Teens and The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Bipolar Disorder. Visit her online at www.sherivandijk.com.