Episode 22: Hope Amidst Despair: A Candid Discussion on Teen Mental Health

Suicide Prevention Month is over....but the issue is a constant every single day.

In the dark corners of our lives, where our secrets and fears lurk, we find suicide, a topic that is often shrouded in mystery, taboo, and silence. In our latest episode, we pull back the veil and bravely face this topic, not from the fringes of society, but from the core of our daily lives, our families. From Janice's personal experience with her older sister's suicide attempt to taking a closer look at the alarming statistics - almost 50,000 people lost to suicide each year, we begin an important conversation on this heavy subject, aiming to shed light and hope.

We delve deeper by sharing intimate stories from our pasts, reminding us all of the profound ripples such incidents create within our community. We discuss how a single, seemingly insignificant conversation might be the lifeline someone desperately needs. The episode explores the pivotal role of teens in suicide prevention, how they can support their peers, navigate difficult discussions, and cope when they are caught in strained relationships with adults. 

Our conversation then shifts to parents, urging them to recognize the often subtle warning signs and how they can most effectively support their children. We look at the harsh realities of abusive households and how they can trigger suicidal tendencies. Lastly, we emphasize the importance of understanding and supporting teen mental health through open, honest dialogues. We explore the importance of a robust support system, taking the time to know their friends and parents, and encouraging open conversations about mental health. This episode reminds us all that in the face of despair, connection and understanding can be a powerful force for healing.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

or listening to Dumpster Diving with Janice and Jane, and today Janice is going to disclose our topic of discussion. It looks like we're having some technical difficulties because I keep freezing and then she freezes, so hopefully this will all work out.

Speaker 2: 0:22

How about this? Why don't we go off camera just to see if that helps? Because they can't see us anyway. So they could give a Pam how much what we look like right now. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 0:33

Bloom story, two story.

Speaker 2: 0:37

All right, all right. So you guys, we're so glad that you are with us today and we were trying to decide, like, what music we wanted to lead in. And then we were, like you know what, we're going to go with no music to lead in, because we decided today that we want to spend a little bit of time lifting up Suicide Prevention Month. All of you guys probably know already that this is the month that we bring more awareness to that really tough topic. And so, as Jane and I were planning, we kind of thought you know what, given the nature of our audience, it makes a lot of sense for us to have a conversation about, kind of, how we have experienced suicide in our lives, what we know about how the mental health of, especially of our teens and our kids in general is suffering right now, et cetera. So we're going to spend a little time doing that right. So the way we're going to do this is, you know, let's start off and we kind of do this with all of our episodes and talk a little bit about, like the why us part, right. So of course we every time I feel like you go on social media, you go on the news, you go on any sites, you see another incident of somebody losing their life through suicide, and you know whether it's a celebrity that everybody knows and loves, whether it's somebody in your community, whether it's somebody you don't know anything about.

Speaker 2: 2:01

The scariest thing, I think, right now happening in our world and our country is that suicide is touching people of almost every age. Right, there's almost not an age too young where we can feel safe and feel like we don't have to worry about a child engaging in self-harm. Last year alone, almost 50,000 people died from suicide. That doesn't count all the people who attempted suicide. That just is the number of people who succeeded in the attempt.

Speaker 2: 2:30

And so, with that in mind, we're going to jump into this really hard conversation today and I think, jane, I'm going to go ahead and kick us off with. You know, I have two or three different stories in my mind about how suicide has impacted my life, and so I'm going to go ahead and kick off with one of those and then turn it over to you to talk a little bit about just your thinking around. You know, when we talk about suicide prevention, kind of just your general thinking around it, and then I'll come back and talk about a couple of the others, but mostly we want to get into today, folks, how do we navigate this right as parents like, how do we navigate a world where suicide is so prevalent and how do we make sure that we are keeping our kids safe right At the end of the day? That's what we're trying to do. So how does that sound, jane?

Speaker 1: 3:23

Sorry I was muted. I have airplanes at my house and one's flying over right now, so I don't know if you can hear it or not, but hopefully you can't. No, that's great, let's roll into it. And I actually, as you were talking, I actually thought of a couple of people, so I was like, oh wait, no, I do know some people, so we can definitely talk about that.

Speaker 2: 3:42

Ok, that sounds all right, I love it. So I will say and share with all of you guys that my very first interaction, if you will, with suicide was when I was a teenager. I was probably about 14 years old, and my older sister attempted suicide. It's not something I talk about very often and the reason I don't talk about it very often is because, really, knowing what I know now, when I look back on it, what I would say is that she engaged in a significant cry for help, and the reason I say that is because she basically took a handful of Tylenol. And this is going to sound really horrible, but I remember like we were on our way to school, we were going to the bus stop and I remember her saying to me what would happen if somebody took a lot of Tylenol or something, and I was like they would probably get really sick, that's about it. And she was like, ok, and that was it. I didn't even think twice about it. In fact, I was a little annoyed because I don't know. I think in my mind I was like is she trying to get attention? Like, what is she trying to do right now? And for those of you who've been listening to us for a while.

Speaker 2: 4:59

If you go all the way back to my origin story, you know that our existence, our household, was a living hell, and so my sister you heard some of my origin story my sister took the brunt of that. She was not like me, rather, she suffered at the hands of our stepfather in terms of being sexually assaulted, but she also took a lot of physical abuse from him. So she really just had a lot of cards stacked against her. But later that day got the call to leave school early and, long story short, we ended up in the emergency room because she had gotten really ill, and I share that now because it was definitely a cry for help in terms of her trying to just let the world around her know that the things happening to her were more than she could handle. And in retrospect I look at that and I think to myself on some level she might have thought those pills would have killed her and she might have hoped that they would, given what we were experiencing.

Speaker 2: 6:04

And I think I actually referenced this, jane, in my origin story, because what I talked about was there are a lot of ways that the system disappoints us, and that was one of those instances, because I remember vividly being in the emergency room and my mom coming out to talk with me one-on-one and to tell me that CPS was involved. There were social workers, they were interviewing her and that if they talked to me I needed to lie, because if I told them what had happened or what had been happening, that they would take us from them. And this gets into a whole different like we could go way down a different road in terms of the options that kids have when they're in really abusive situations. Because as a kid who only knew what foster care was from TV shows, I definitely immediately had that thought of I'd rather deal with the devil I know than the devil I don't know. But in the end it did matter because nobody ever asked me a damn thing.

Speaker 2: 6:59

And so even though I know that in that emergency room she said a lot of things out loud to adults about what was going on, it was never pursued and to this day I have no idea how that's true, right, except that back then the system wasn't nearly as prepared to handle those situations as it is now. So my sister was the very first experience I had with someone close to me who made that attempt. So when we think about the why of why it's important to bring it up, it's because that's a drastic example in terms of the condition she was living in. But there are lots of kids out there especially kids and adults too who seemingly have normal, happy lives, who suffer from mental illnesses that drive them there. So, jane, before I go into another story, what you got for us.

Speaker 1: 7:49

Yeah, I mean this is such a hard topic to discuss and for me it's like I said before we started recording. It's not very comfortable Because so many different ways you can run with this and I'll be. All is that we're losing our friends and family members to suicide because of underlying issues, whether they be trauma or mental health or physical health. I mean there's people that don't take their lives because they're depressed and they're hopeless or anything. They're just in chronic pain and they cannot handle it anymore. It is something that they can't live through anymore, whether it's mental pain or physical pain or heart pain. There's pain and it's not being able to see and I'm just purely speaking off the cuff, I don't have scientific proof behind this or anything but it's not being able to see the end of that, whatever it is, whatever is torturing them, and so I can only imagine that getting to that point where you think that that's the only result or resort that you have, maybe due to a lack of support or a lack of a healthy environment, having abusive people in your life or people that are always trying to keep you down. I mean the abuses. I'd much rather have physical abuse than psychological abuse and mental abuse in those manners as a kid I was like just spank me and stop screaming at me, just let's go with it. So not to derail what we're talking about, but all of those situations do things to people and everybody's affected by it differently, and so we were talking about stories and stuff like that, and I do know a couple of people that have actually committed suicide and were successful, and so what do we do now?

Speaker 1: 10:04

It was traumatizing in the way of oh wow, it affects people, even people that have what you would think of everything, and I'm speaking of two very famous musicians that I just happened to have in my world for an extended amount of time, and that's Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington, and they both passed. Chris Cornell committed suicide in May and Chester Bennington committed suicide in July, and just a couple of months away from each other, and they were best friends. And so sometimes suicide affects people in the most extreme way. You know where they have that loss and they don't feel like they can live without that person. You know, because they were best friends or for whatever the reason was, you know. But it leaves so many unanswered questions and everything else. But most of all, we lose the people that we love. And that's what we're trying to prevent and bring awareness around. And the why we're having this conversation is because I don't know what I would do if one of my children were to commit suicide. I mean, I don't know if I would ever recover from that.

Speaker 2: 11:14

Yeah, that's exactly right and I'm with you on that 100%. And that's why I think we decided to spend some time on this topic today, because you know we both have kids of all ages and you know there's an underlying fear, right, that that anything can happen. Right, we all know that the world is an unpredictable place and the thought of them being gone under any conditions, but certainly under something like this, is just devastating, and that you know that'll lead me to. I had a couple of different situations as a school principal. You know, one of the really hard realities that educators carry is that, you know it is a people business and so you lose people. Sorry for that, you lose people for all kinds of reasons, right, you know, we lose people to illnesses, we lose people to accidents, and two different times as a school principal, I had incidents where we had students who attempted suicide and, in my tenure, one who died and one who, fortunately, at the last minute, was kind of pulled off the brink, so to speak.

Speaker 2: 12:23

And in both situations, right, what linked them is, in both cases, very different young men ran in very different circles. There was no correlation between the two of them, except that when I look back on them. In both cases it was a shock. In both cases it was a nobody saw it coming, right. And in the first case it you know, it was a devastating case of a young man who one morning before school, seemingly like any other school day, broke into his father's gun safe, got his gun, went to his bedroom, shut the door and shot himself in the head. Didn't leave a note, didn't have conversations with anyone in advance. He was 16. And his parents, like they're both in the house getting ready, right, his family was all there and, you know, of course, didn't even really recognize what the sound was when they heard it and then raced to his room and found him and it was across the board a devastation for everybody, right, because nobody saw it coming, you know.

Speaker 1: 13:36

And those are the ones that are the most puzzling. You know, and I think that hit us the hardest is when it's the least expected.

Speaker 2: 13:44

That's right, that's exactly right.

Speaker 2: 13:47

And you know you can imagine the months that followed. You know everybody digging into and everybody trying to figure it out. And, honestly, from a school's principal's, school principal's perspective, he was a student who I knew by name. I did not know him well, so I couldn't have spoken to right. Was it a shock? Was it not a shock?

Speaker 2: 14:04

I relied on his teachers and his friends and his family to say that, and it was really one of those you know, this is a kind of behind the curtains look for people one of those moments where his family never called it a suicide and so therefore, we could never use that language, which was really hard for us because we wanted, of course, to talk openly about it, but we had to use the language that he was no longer alive, right, that he shot himself with a gun. We could say that, but we couldn't say he committed suicide. And to this day, his parents basically and you know I won't hypothesize here why, but have avoided that terminology. And so, yes, it was one of those situations where it was. You know, everybody around him who was close to him was changed forever, right, and it certainly breeds a great deal of just fear, because if he was susceptible then maybe the kid sitting right next to me is susceptible, right, et cetera. The second student was a close call and that student is always going to. He's going to be in my heart and my mind forever because he was a kid who same thing. I knew him by name, you know we would chit chat in the hallways, that kind of thing. Never knew him any more deeply than that. He was never a student who, you know, had behavior issues. He was not an academically superstar, he was an average kid by all accounts and just a nice kid, right.

Speaker 2: 15:38

And he came into my office one day after school which was unusual, right for him to want to talk to me one-on-one. And he asked to talk with me and we sat down together and he just very calmly, very quietly, said I wanted to tell you that last night I almost killed myself and I was just stunned and I just kind of said, okay, so tell me about that. And so he proceeded to tell me what he had been planning and that he had all the things that he needed ready, et cetera. But at the last minute he decided to call a friend and he told the friend what he was about to do and the friend to talk to him. Out of it, right, the friend was the one who backed him away from it and got him to kind of take a deep breath and take a pause.

Speaker 2: 16:32

And so you can imagine, right, there were a million things for me going through my head, not the least of which was we have to better equip our kids to deal with this. Right, because up until that point, typically when we talk about suicide or mental health in schools, at that point, right, it's different now, but the message was get help, get help, get help, find an adult, get help. But the truth of the matter is and this situation really smacked me in the face with it kids get help from each other, right, teenagers especially are turning to each other. So we can't just say tell an adult, we have to equip the teen Now, again, not because I want that friend to feel like they're a mental health professional, because that's gonna weigh on them, but more that they need to at least be equipped in the moment to give them time to then be able to reach out to somebody else who could help.

Speaker 1: 17:18

You know, Well then, it sounds like more so than anything. What we need is, you know, coaching these kids on how to best support their friends. You know, exactly so how to have that support. Because you know, tell somebody, tell somebody. If I would have told my mother, because I mean at one point when I was 12, you know, and that's pretty much the only time as a child I really considered it, and I laugh at myself because it was so silly on how I was gonna do it, but that was my thinking at the time. I was gonna go eat pencil lead, like that was my thing, like, oh, I heard that your 12-year-old brain thought that would work right.

Speaker 1: 18:01

Yeah, because I saw I got a mechanical pencil lead and I was sitting there and I was crying. I was, I hated my home life, I absolutely hated it and it was well, it was, and it was severely abusive and neglectful and all of those things. And but then the thing that stopped me was who's gonna take care of my brother and sister, my younger brother and sister, my older brother's, six years older than me, you know, and he's already a teenager and he's in high school and he doesn't spend any time with us. Now I'm the oldest and I have to protect them. You know, that's what, and that's what kept me around, or from not doing anything, because I knew that if it didn't work, my mother was gonna kill me, like she would have killed me, absolutely killed me.

Speaker 1: 18:47

And so, you know, it was like, okay, do I do it myself and let my brother and sister, you know, survive, or do I get in a lot of trouble? Yeah, I'm just not gonna do it and I'm gonna make sure that my brother and sister survive, you know. And so that's what I did. But you know, I seriously contemplated it and I couldn't talk to my mother about that, you know, and even to this day, with her being 75 years old and me being 44, I still couldn't talk to her about that. She wouldn't understand, you know so. But it's more so about the support and being able to talk to your friends and stuff like that. And so I pay attention to the friendships that my daughters have and I don't get involved, but I'm curious of who they're hanging out with, because I wanna make sure that if they're not comfortable talking to me, that they have a good friend with a good level head that they can talk to.

Speaker 2: 19:38

That's right, well, and it's helping them see that balance right Of how their friends can support them and how adults can. And it's interesting that you say that about your mom, because this young man, his whole point for coming to talk to me and that's where he went next with his story was he said I'm coming to talk to you because I know I need to tell my parents, because I know I need help, but I don't know how to do that. And so I basically said, well, I can coach you through how to do it, or we can do it together. And he said we do it together. And so we got on the phone with his mom and his dad and we talked through it, and my job in that conversation was to simply make sure we stayed focused on him, right? Because I will say this, when you know your kid is suffering like that, there's obviously your whole heart is about your child, but there is a part of you that is about you, right? Your fear.

Speaker 2: 20:31

But it's true right, right, yeah, the guilt and the guilt of how did my kid get here and how is this even possible? Or and this happens too, guys, and this is a really important part of this conversation or it gets dismissed, right, and by the best of most well-meaning of parents, right, you can love your kid more than anything and still, unfortunately, hurt them in ways that you don't intend right, and the dismissal piece is really like well, maybe you thought it was that serious, but maybe it wasn't that serious and that comes from embarrassment, right, like there's a little bit of embarrassment that comes from that fear right.

Speaker 2: 21:09

Right, and I remember having a really close girlfriend who, back in the day, whose kid was having some significant mental health issues and she's a college-educated adult, right, and she still she did not want to do anything that could lead him to medication or any serious therapy, because she came from a family that believed in pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and solving problems yourself, and that using drugs for mental health was not, not, it was a myth, right, like that's not something you should really do, so can you imagine, right? And so there are a lot of ways that parents can vary accidentally, right, right, hurt the situation. Right Versus helping.

Speaker 1: 21:57

Well, I mean going back to the embarrassment part of it. I mean, that's where I come from, where my mom would have killed me. It would have embarrassed the shit out of her to have a child that failed a suicide attempt Are you kidding Like that would have pissed her off so much that she would have killed me, you know. And then, and then gas lit me. For oh how dare I, you know, have a I think I have it such a terrible life. You haven't seen anything yet, and blah, blah, blah, because that's what I heard on a daily basis, you know. So it was like shit. If I don't, if I'm not successful at this, I'm going to really hate life, you know. And then I won't have any pencil lead around me or whatever, but then I'll be punished and ridiculed and made fun of and all of those things, and you couldn't even do that. Blah, blah, blah. I could hear it all ringing through my head and I'm like I'd rather just live this life right now.

Speaker 2: 22:48

I'd rather live the life I would have if I tried and failed. I can't. I mean what a, just a. I don't even know, that's what I thought about Like the truth right.

Speaker 1: 22:58

Yeah, that's what I thought about. So. So in those instances the reason why that child came to you was or maybe he had a parent that would have been really embarrassed if it was something that got out, you know. And because that when you have an abusive household and you are re-released into the abusive household after doing something like that, it's 10 times worse. So you know it's it's so hard to talk about Janice.

Speaker 2: 23:28

No, it is, which is why I were doing it, cause that's what we do for people, it's what we do for our people, and that is, now that you say it that way. That's exactly like life for my sister after her attempt was worse than it ever could have been. She was essentially on lockdown right Right.

Speaker 2: 23:44

Because not only has she done that, she had brought all of these strangers into our life, she had opened doors to their secrets, even though, again, I still don't know how, but that it never went anywhere from there. And so, yeah, life was what's that?

Speaker 1: 24:01

Shame on them. And you know the similar thing happened to me as well at around that time. You know where there was sexual abuse and it just gets dismissed. And you know that I mean, come on, that is a catalyst for suicidal tendencies.

Speaker 2: 24:20

Yeah, oh, my gosh, of course, any kind of abusive situations like that, right? So let's talk about, you know, now you guys have a good sense of why, you know, jane and I felt like it was important to add our voices to this, and so let's talk a little bit, then, about like, and we're going to talk about like what signs you should be looking for, and then things that you can do, right To support your kids. And, honestly, it's a little bit hard to do this from the perspective, too, of it feels like everybody knows this, right, every we hear about suicide all the time. And then I have to remind myself that I feel that way because I'm an educator, and so in the world of education, we are hyper aware. We do have specific protocols to follow. If a kid indicates any kind of ideation, right, we do have all those things and so. And so I have to remind myself that just because it's there's like a height and level of awareness in my brain doesn't mean that there's a common height and level of awareness. And so we're going to go ahead and talk about some of the warning signs and then some of the things to be considering, and when Jane and I were looking at this research earlier, one of the comments that we made was how tricky this is, because a lot of the signs that you should be looking for to ascertain if your teen is at risk of something like this are also the signs of being a teenager, right, like, like.

Speaker 2: 25:39

There are signs like changes in behavior, expressions of hopelessness, changes in sleep patterns, loss of interest.

Speaker 2: 25:47

If you took those out of context and just said, hey, my kid's showing a loss of interest in their usual stuff, I'd be like and they're 15, right, right, exactly. So it really is tough, and so I think it speaks to like. As parents, we have to be really cognizant of the natural course of how our kids change over time, but then also be looking for things that seem out of the norm of that, right, so, so changes in sleep patterns that are, you know, usually my kids not going to bed until midnight and then they get up for school, and now, all of a sudden, like they're not sleeping at all, right, like they're walking around looking like a zombie or they're sleeping all day. I literally cannot get them out of bed, right? All the things I've done in the past that have been the typical ways I get them out of bed and they know it's. I'm serious. Now it's time to get up. Don't work anymore. That, that's the kind of nuance that you're going to be looking for when you look for some of these signs.

Speaker 1: 26:41

Well, it's more extremes, you know, but sometimes they're subtle and sometimes you don't even see them coming. So it's you know. I'm sure there's a couple more that we can name off. What's the rest of your list before I cut you off, janice?

Speaker 2: 26:55

No, not at all, but your, your, your point was actually well positioned, because those are some of the things that are typical characteristics of teens and, like you said I love the way you said that, jane you're looking for the extremes there are also things that are screaming in your face, warning signs, right, things like giving away their possessions. Right. All of a sudden, you actually see that they're giving away things that you know. Like last week they were telling their younger sister not to touch that because it's the most important thing in the world to them, and this week they're giving it to them, right.

Speaker 2: 27:27

Obviously, substance abuse is an indicator. Self-harm is an indicator and self-harm you guys, this for me, this becomes a conversation around. We have to really pay attention and we are all guilty of. Two weeks, three weeks, a month goes by and I realize I haven't really like looked closely at my kid, right, like actually spent time where we weren't watching a movie together or we weren't engaging and actually just like paid attention to them, right, and so self-harm is a really powerful indicator, and a part of the way you can know to look for self-harm is if your kid very suddenly changes how they dress, right, they change their attire and they're wearing like long sleeves and the dead of the summer.

Speaker 1: 28:08

Yeah, there's easily not adapt to what's going on with the clothes Exactly exactly which.

Speaker 2: 28:16

again, you know my 16-year-old will wear a sweatshirt in the summer, right, but I also know that that's normal for her.

Speaker 2: 28:23

If all of a sudden they're doing that, right, and you had to notice it for, and frankly even to notice when they do have the occasional short sleeves on or the shorts on or what have you, because you know, under the arms, behind the legs, those kinds of things tend to be places that we see. That happen Obviously, and this seems really obvious to you guys. But if they're talking about suicide, if your kid says something out loud about suicide or expresses any kind of indication of harm to Jane's point earlier, you can't dismiss that, right, and I do think that it's easy to dismiss. They're attention-seeking, they're being dramatic, they're being you know, they saw it on a television, whatever. Even if your kid is attention-seeking, being dramatic, copying something they saw from something else, even if all of those things are true, it is much better to treat it as a serious probability. Then it is to dismiss it and regret that later down the road, right? Those are some of the other ones. What do you think of Jane?

Speaker 1: 29:22

You know, I was just thinking about just the different signs and stuff like that. And to add on to the clothing thing, you know it's. You know, kids, we all dress very. I mean, I dress odd sometimes. I like being in different outfits and stuff like that. You can never really say, oh, that's a Jane outfit for sure, because you never know what you're going to see me in. But it's more so like the refusal to like, let's say, it is hot and they're sweaty and they won't pull up their sleeves yeah, you know. Or stuff like that, and it's like, okay, something's going on. You know stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 30:00

And like the giving the things away. That's a big one, you know, just, all of a sudden you know things that they've always truly treasured, or now something that they can just give away and be, you know, with. It is definitely something to look at. But you know even eating habits and stuff like that. We all know our kids very well, but I think we take it for granted. And there's, you know as much as they don't want us in their face as teenagers and they want to have their hoodie on and their hood up. I mean, janice, you do all the videos and you imitate a teenager so well, you know, and I love it because it's so true, but at the same time they want the attention at the same time. So right, so I kind of like communicate with my kids during those times where they've kind of been down or whatever. As I communicate with their favorite things, I'll go get one of their favorite treats or something like that and not even tell them home with it If they're excited, you know, if I regulate that based off, like, like you said, if they don't like their normal things anymore, if I walked into the house and handed over a, you know blended coffee drink over to Jenny and she didn't go her exact quote every single time, oh thanks. If she did that and just rolled over, I would know that there was something definitely wrong, because that girl is food motivated and if I ever bring something with whipped cream on the top it's always ooh thanks. So I know, and she's a quiet girl, she keeps to herself, she hangs out with her friends on Roblox and does her thing and doesn't really talk a lot. So she's one that I have my eye on, I know, to get you know how to gauge her and so, but that's because I have a really close relationship with her. Nothing, nothing beats a close relationship with your children, nothing. And that's where you're going to get the honesty in them coming to you and talking to you.

Speaker 1: 31:53

My oldest daughter came and talked to me when she she knew she had something going on in her teenage years and I didn't understand it at the time and, granted, I was still a young mom, you know, and so I didn't understand it. But as I got older and have, you know, old, more kids getting older and everything else, I'm now understanding it. You know, she was coming to me telling me she had, like she felt like she had, a mental health disorder, you know, and I didn't understand it, but you know, she got the help and everything else, and, and now she's on medication that helps her with it and everything else, if I would have, just, you know, ignored her and not talk to her about it, and she ended up going to the doctor for it because, you know, at the time I didn't have health insurance. So she ended up going once she got health insurance but figured it out, but we talked about it, you know, and and even though I didn't understand it and I had no idea what you were talking about, just the fact that I sat there and listened to her and talked to her about it. I'm sure it made her feel better, you know, and worked on those things.

Speaker 1: 32:51

So sometimes and most of the time, as parents, if we don't understand something, it scares us and then we want to dismiss it and we want to push it away and we don't want to deal with it because it scares us. But those are the things that we really need to listen to and those are the things we really need to get involved in and just dive in headfirst because no change comes from being comfortable and truly want to prevent future trauma or or you know, anything like that, you know, or just having a mental disorder and just sitting there, you know, get involved and get them seen and get them all of those things, because it's better to know than not know, and I'd much every parent would much rather have their kid around than not around.

Speaker 2: 33:36

That's right, well, and that whole, it's better to know than to not know, right? I had a close friend with a daughter who you know they had gone through divorce and she you know, the daughter you know opted for counseling just to help kind of work through that and no real big warning signs or anything like that, just kind of like the I'm gonna say the usual, if you will right, when you go through an event like that as a kid. But when they finally got in there and they were actually doing the, the typical kind of like blanket assessments they do when you start with working with a counselor, one of the things that they found was that she absolutely had depression, anxiety and Suicidal ideations and again, just the whole like complete shock factor. Now, fortunately, you know she was already a parent who, okay, your kid needs counseling. You don't counselor, you don't question it, you don't ask why, you don't try and convince on that they're fine, you just do it right, because why wouldn't you? Why not right? But the shock that came from that and and she ended up, you know, going on like a mild antidepressant, kind of a Drug, and even that, you know, for some families is there are a lot of reasons why they push back on that, whether they're, you know, belief systems, religion, whatever it is, and they don't kind of accept that, despite all of the medical science and research out there, right in terms of you know there are, there are people who literally have a chemical imbalance in their brain and the medication simply balances it right, that's all it's doing. But, to your point, like you know, that that's, that's it's.

Speaker 2: 35:03

I love how you framed, jane, the idea of it's about having a close relationship with your kid, and in our teen years it is the hardest, there's no question, right and their teen years. That is typically when our teens are trying to keep us at arm's length and so figuring out the ways that we still are close to them. And I love your example with your daughter in terms of the simplicity of Knowing what to expect in terms of a reaction over something she loves, and, if you don't get it, knowing that that's a warning sign, right, that simple little thing is something that I think can be a takeaway, right for folks to consider. As I'm looking at our time, let's go ahead then and talk a little bit about, you know, what can we do, right, when we start to see these things and we're already kind of talking about that. And this conversation, by the way, I feel like is more important than ever before, because there's no question that the suicide rate has increased since COVID, right, we all know again. Well, I shouldn't say it that way.

Speaker 2: 35:58

I feel like there's a lot of news coverage these days around Mental health and mental well-being of kids and how much our kids are struggling as a coming out of that right, because of the social isolation, because of the additional academic challenges they faced, because of Perennial stress right, all of their parents were locked on to and increased per parental Stress and the adults only translates to more stress than the kids, etc.

Speaker 2: 36:21

So so let's think a little bit then dig into some of the things that that folks can do if they start to be Concerned, or they or they just want to be more aware right of where their kids are in terms of their mental health.

Speaker 2: 36:34

You've already talked about working on that close relationship, knowing the things your kids love, you know, testing the waters with those things right to use as as an indicator. I would add to that Make time for Conversations right, and by that I mean not the it's family business, it's family meeting time and we're gonna sit across the table but just make casual time for conversation, whether it's going to making our routine of going on a walk, whether it's going on a drive. You know, once a week we're gonna get carry out but we're gonna go pick it up in the car together versus having it delivered. Create that time where you have one-on-one Space with your kids so that if there's an issue, it can be surfaced right, because it's usually not going to be surfaced in Moments where they see that you're busy, right, and so you have to create times where it's clear that you're not busy and they can actually say things out loud to you. What would you add, jane, in terms of ways that parents can support?

Speaker 1: 37:30

Yeah, I mean, I 100% agree with you. I think that another thing that I do with my kids is I take them out on dates, you know, just one-on-one, and so we do plenty of things together, but it's, you know, it's about that one-on-one time where they can, you know, voice their frustrations about their sibling, or, you know, and I I have a total open door with Mike. Your roles, you know. If you have a problem with me, tell me. You know, did I do something to make you mad? Well, yeah, when you said this, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that that affected you that way. I didn't mean for that to happen. I'm sorry, you know, and it's like, okay, cool, you know, because my, my two youngest daughters, fortunately where their hearts on their sleeve, you know, and so I can tell from a mile away when something's going on with them.

Speaker 1: 38:14

But again, I contribute that to the relationship that I have with them, and so we talk about everything. I don't scold them or berate them or or, you know, shake my finger at them when they tell me about bad things that they've done. You know, nothing that's gonna harm anybody else, but things that they shouldn't have done, you know, and we kind of laugh about it and I go okay, what lesson did you learn about that? Oh, I learned this. Okay, good, are you gonna do it again? No, I'm not.

Speaker 1: 38:39

Okay cool, you know stuff like that, where you know, when we were growing up, if I would have shared 90% of the stuff that I share, that my kids share with me I'm I yeah I wouldn't be here right now. You know it's the little thing, so you know it's it's. It's about really just treating your kids with the utmost respect that you expect you know from them, and so that's that's. What I would add to it is is just that going on dates and the one-on-one time is super important, especially when you have multiple kids. You know they need that one on one time. Each one of them is different, so you're gonna have to do different things and and but spend the time the way that they would want to spend it and allow them that space and and and Support to be able to talk to you about whatever it is that they need to talk to you about.

Speaker 2: 39:32

Yeah, that, I love all of that. I love the idea of the one-on-one date. I think that's so important and, like you said, even when you have multiple kids. But remember you know, if you're in a household with more than one parent, then there's a really wonderful divide and conquer opportunity, right, in terms of you guys taking turns right, taking one-on-one dates with the different, with different kids, and, and, and if you're not right, and and you hear that Idea and yours, just like there's no way I could possibly make the time. Remember that they can be simple, right, just remember that they can be simple.

Speaker 2: 40:05

And, jane, you touched on this earlier when you said knowing your kids friends, so that you, you're certain that they have, you know, people they can turn to, that they can trust, who can help them in a situation like this.

Speaker 2: 40:15

I would extend that to their parents too.

Speaker 2: 40:17

I feel like this is another reason why it's so critical that parents Know their, the parents of their kids friends and, trust me, I know from first-hand experience that your kids are not opening the door to that now, right, in fact, they're doing the opposite.

Speaker 2: 40:32

They're trying really hard to keep you as in the dark as possible about who their friends are and who their parents are, etc. But when you do know at least a couple of those key parents those are other people then that you know your kids can turn to right, that you know will be in their world and, frankly, you can set up situations where you say to yourself, okay, I really feel like my kid needs to hear blank, so I'm gonna call his best friend's mom and say, listen, next time you see him. And if it comes up in the conversation, how about you say this? Because they'll listen to them way, way more than they'll listen to us, right, like that's how it works in the ticking brain and that's perfectly normal. And it's also perfectly okay for us to Leverage that understanding by using right each other as resources for our kids. Yeah, those are all important pieces.

Speaker 1: 41:21

Yeah, no, that's, that's a really great point. And and, and it's very true, chase's friends from her four years in high school. You know I knew all the parents, they knew me and and we trusted each other and and we depended on each other to for pickup and drop off and and all those things. And there's three girls you know, chase, emma and Sam. And and I knew that, no matter what it, whoever's, how she was at or who she was with, that she had that support from two other sets of parents. You know that was really great and they always created a safe space for them and made them feel like family and everything else, and I did the same for them. So, but it got so comfortable that they would ask me to come chime in on on debates they were having and stuff like that. So I know for a fact that if any of them had feelings of, you know, suicidal tendencies or whatever the case may be, I would have found out about it. I would have gotten a phone call. You know like, hey, you know we need your help or whatever. So, um, yeah, it's super huge.

Speaker 1: 42:23

You know my, you know your niece, jenny. You know she, she had a, um, a friend that the mom you know. I got to know her, but I also got to know that she had some substance abuse issues and stuff like that. And so when I put in boundaries is when the shit hit hit the fan and you know all of those things. But then Jenny was able to see the true colors. She didn't think it was a big deal at first, but then, when she saw how everything was transpiring and the way that this person was talking to me, she was like oh, I see, now you know so, but it's about communicating that and talking to them about that and showing that, um, you know what? How to see those true colors and see beyond that, how to get pulled into something that they don't belong in.

Speaker 2: 43:12

I love that. Yeah, and that's I mean all of those pieces right, and I know the common denominator is it keeps coming back to knowing your kids. You know, which seems so simple and I hope nobody's rolling their eyes right now but it really kind of comes back to that and we're hoping that you're taking some things away that are gonna make you think about. You know, if you're somebody who worries that you don't have a deep connection with your kid right now to even know if suicide is something that could be a part of them or that they're suffering from a mental health issue at all, whether it's as something that's leading them to suicidal ideations or not then we're hoping that you take away from these experiences and these examples that were often from our lives, from people we know, et cetera, and that those are gonna be helping you with your own thinking. And at the end of this, I think that the key message is gonna be this right, if your gut tells you something is up, listen to your gut. Right, we say that all the time and a lot of different instances, but listen to your gut.

Speaker 2: 44:09

And there is zero downside to getting your kid connected with a mental health professional. Zero downside, right. It can be as casual as counseling once in a while when they need it. It can be as significant as therapy if they're really struggling or they have significant issues, but there's no downside. So if your gut tells you something's up, then we're going to encourage you to have a conversation with your kid, and if they deny it and your gut is still saying it, then we're going to encourage you to say listen. I hope everything you're saying to me right now is 100% accurate of what you're experiencing, but I'm worried enough that I wanna make sure, and so we're gonna talk about talking to somebody who can be a listener for you, right, besides me, we're always gonna encourage you that you've gotta follow that gut, and better to have your kid a little put out and maybe even to have a couple of sessions and then have a professional go. They're fine then to not follow that and regret it later, jane, final word.

Speaker 1: 45:10

It's never too late to start building that good relationship with your child, no matter how bad you think it is or whatever the case may be. There's nothing wrong with saying you're sorry back and forth and starting on a clean slate to preserve the life of your child, or yourself, or your uncle, mother, sister, cousin, whoever it is. There are relationships Janice and I both have them where that just doesn't need to happen. But if it's really every situation's different, it's never too late to start building a better relationship, and as long as both sides are willing. So don't for the parents out there that think that they have no hope. There's hope for you. Just get the help. Just get the help that they need and say you're sorry and move forward.

Speaker 2: 46:06

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 46:07

Drive in a little bit of review mirror, we're gonna crash into something.

Speaker 2: 46:11

I love that so much. Thank you for that. And my final word is this you guys, because of my experiences, I have learned that no matter your kid, no matter their lifestyle, no matter how happy they seem, don't seem, how engaged they are not engaged, how active they are at school, not active in school, we never know. Right, most kids who commit suicide are kids that people say I didn't see it coming. And so, with that in mind, every single kid, every single kid, benefits from their parents saying you are important to me, you are valued in my life and I don't know what I would do if you were gone. And, as a result of my experiences with the kids that I outlined earlier in the episode, that's exactly what I've said to our kids right, you're important to me, you're of great value to our world and we really don't know what we would do if you were gone.

Speaker 2: 47:06

And we don't have to say please don't commit suicide, right? Or this is a suicide conversation. It's just a message, a very simple message, so that if any voice in their head anywhere is saying to them, nobody would care if you weren't here, that they have an external voice that is countering that, and so I absolutely encourage every single one of you that, if you do nothing else after this episode, that you start by saying that to your kid All right, jane, you're good. Yep, we're good. That was a hard one. You guys. Thank you for letting us enter that space with you Because, again, it's not something that we ever wanna think about and we hope that everybody takes away something valuable, as always, like share, subscribe, do all the things, because the more we have interaction with our episodes, obviously the more episodes we can bring to you, and it is such a gift to us to have you all listening on the other end of this. With that, peace out everybody, we'll see you next time, bye.