Selena Gomez’s mother shares two tips for parents of children with mental health issues

Both Teefey, who has ADHD, and Gomez, who has bipolar disorder, have spoken openly about their experiences with mental illness. Gomez shared her bipolar disorder diagnosis on Instagram in 2020 and detailed her experience in more detail in the 2022 documentary Selena Gomez: My mind and me.

“I’m grateful to be alive,” she shared in the documentary. And in an interview with The Newsette, a newsletter from Daniella Pierson, who joined the mother-daughter pair to launch Wondermind, Teefey shared her experiences with ADHD and anxiety, according to Entrepreneur.

Teefey says the two are often asked in public how they deal with mental health issues as parents and children.

“As we talk, we think, Wow, we can’t go anywhere,” Teefey says AssetsShe added that this spurred the creation of Wondermind, which she describes as an “ecosystem” for mental health care. “How do you navigate? [mental health] as a family?”

And now Teefey, knowing the pressures parents face today, has advice on how to support a child who may be experiencing symptoms of mental illness.

Education is the key

Whether your child is afraid, nervous, or already struggling with a mental illness, Teefey says the best course of action is to learn everything they can to face their fears.

“When [Gomez] When she was younger, she was very afraid of tornadoes,” Teefey says. “So I had them sit down and learn everything there was to learn about tornadoes.”

As parents educate themselves, they learn how to help a child cope with a possible diagnosis, just as one would deal with the flu, Teefey says.

“When you’re not fully informed about something, it’s scarier and more intimidating,” she says. “I’ve read all kinds of books and done all kinds of research on bipolar to understand how to have that conversation or how to kind of mediate and really manage her in a way that she needs to be parented and not the way I do it “wanted to be educated.”

Model taking care of herself

Teefey wants to normalize processing emotions and practice routine self-care. Since founding Wondermind, she has focused on creating a wellness routine that works for her.

She wakes up at 4 a.m. and has a slow, quiet morning. “I get up and do everything at a very glacial pace and just enjoy my time,” she says. “I don’t know if waking up early is the key or if the alone time really helps me, but it keeps me very focused and grounded for the rest of the day.”

She meditates for 15 minutes, reads something new and exciting, and writes what’s on her mind in a notepad—what she calls her daily “brain dump”—to reduce anxiety and manage her ADHD.

“The ruminative thoughts move at 90 miles per hour, so I feel like that’s why I have to keep journals and all sorts of other things like calendars and schedules,” she says. “I’ve found that reading and writing allows me to disconnect from the chaos that’s going on.”

She also doesn’t look at her phone until around 10 or 10:30 a.m

“There’s something really relaxing about disconnecting from all the information that hits you when you wake up in the morning,” she says. “I really try to stop, just breathe, and then remember that the end of the world isn’t going to happen, no matter what’s going through my head.”

The saying is true: put on your own oxygen mask first. For parents today who are struggling to cope with the realities of their children amid work and other responsibilities, it is important to keep themselves mentally fit and make time for the habits and routines that serve them.

“It’s OK to take 15 or 20 minutes,” Teefey says. “It’ll all be there when you get back.”

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