With half term upon us, and children’s mental health week having just passed, now feels like a good time to try and reflect on mental health with our children.

Online learning, the suspension of team sports, and the inability to socialise as normal has shaped our children’s lives for the past year.

Given the isolating nature of the pandemic, it is even more important to have conversations with our kids about how they are feeling, and how the pandemic may have affected their mental health.

After all, we have now had almost a year of this pandemic, and children’s lives have been hugely altered.

Children have missed sports days, Christmas plays, team sports, and the everyday playground interactions with their peers. A year is an awfully long time in a child's life, and many of their usual outlets and support networks for dealing with difficult emotions or circumstances are unavailable to them.

Since April, Childline has noted that mental health counselling sessions delivered to young people in Wales have increased by 13 per cent on average. Meanwhile, volunteer numbers have dropped by 40 per cent across the UK. It is clear that children need mental health support at the moment, and the half term break may be a good time to open up these conversations.

This pandemic is once in a lifetime for all of us but for young people it may be harder to come to grips with.

It is important that we give children a chance to talk about how this year has affected them and their mental health. Children are extremely resilient, but this has been a year full of unprecedented upheaval and uncertainty. Many children may feel anxious about school work, or missing friends. Many will be missing out on team sports and be suffering from the fall in exercise.

Sadly, too many children will also have experienced the loss of family members as a result of the pandemic in the last year. For many this will be their first experience with grief but unlike normal times they can not be surrounded by loved ones. This is challenging for most adults but is particularly difficult for children. We must ensure they receive the mental help support they need.

Ensuring mental health aid is available to children is essential. Without it we risk a generation of left behind children who have faced a confusing and traumatic time without the proper support.

We can all take steps to help the children in our life by following the guidance provided by Childline and Young Minds. Young Minds have a number of suggestions, including focusing on open communication, maintaining a routine as much as possible, and spending time doing a positive activity together.

If you are worried about how to support your child's mental health during this time the NSPCC has some helpful resources available online and Childline is able to provide children with counsellors to talk about their anxiety.

Many parents will be worried about the effect of the pandemic on their children but with small steps we can help our children emerge from this terrible year as resilient as ever.