Mental Health As Prevention

Forty percent of high school students report persistent sadness or hopelessness, and that word persistent should stop all of us in our tracks. We keep raising awareness about teen mental health, but the numbers don’t magically improve, so we want to talk about the next step: prevention skills that actually live inside a family’s day-to-day life.

We start by defining mental health using the CDC framework: emotional, psychological, and social well-being that affects how we think, feel, relate to others, handle stress, and make decisions. Then we simplify it into four trainable areas you can practice at home: thinking, feeling, relating, and functioning. Along the way, we share protective factors backed by prevention science and programs like the Strengthening Families Program, including strong relationships, clear expectations, and knowing what’s going on in your kids’ lives.

You’ll hear practical coaching language for “automatic negative thoughts” (ANTS), plus simple prompts to help kids problem-solve instead of spiraling. We also dig into emotional regulation as a skill that’s taught when things are calm and practiced when they’re not, with coping options that work in real settings like classrooms and friend groups. For connection, we talk “my time,” putting your phone down when your kid wants to talk, and helping them identify trusted adults beyond you. Finally, we unpack resilience and functioning: how to help kids get through stress, disappointment, and setbacks without shutting down.

If you want a clearer, doable approach to parenting for teen mental health, listen now, then subscribe, share with another parent, and leave a review. What’s one skill you want to start practicing this week?

Transcript

Why Mental Health Is Prevention

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Welcome everyone to Good Friends Strong Families Podcast. I'm Angela. And I'm Anna. And we're here to talk this month about a really great topic. This is one of my favorite topics to talk about because I think we forget about this a lot, but we're going to talk today about mental health is prevention, how mental health is prevention. Before we jump in, I want to mention this that May is Mental Health Awareness Month. That's why we decided to start working on this whenever you're actually listening to it. It's really just a good opportunity for us to just kind of put a pin in it and talk about this really important topic. But we just wanted to have a conversation because of that. It's something that people talk about all the time. I know when my kids were younger, we never talked about that in terms of what parents were learning or like what kids are learning in school or whatever, but it's really something about that everybody's talking about. But Anna, and I'd love to hear what you have to say about this. But I am not always sure that we mean the same thing when we talk about mental health. We use that a lot, but I'm not really sure that we always know that. Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

I feel like it's become more of like a catchphrase. And so it's just kind of like people throw out mental health, and sometimes you're like, are we are we talking about the same thing? And then also we're talking about it more than ever, you could say. And yet you could also say that our kids are struggling more than ever.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

So what no, they're fully struggling more than you're absolutely right.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Yeah. So where's there's a disconnect because we we think like we're gonna bring awareness to an issue and we're gonna solve the problem. We're bringing awareness and we're talking about it, but we're not fixing it. And and we as parents, I mean, I know that like I want better for my kids. I want them to have tools and resources available to them that like we never heard of when we were kids, right? So, how can we bridge that gap? That's kind of like what we want to talk about.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Yeah, because we keep talking about it more, but we don't see it getting better according to the data.

The CDC Data And The Disconnect

SPEAKER_00 2:32

I want to read a little bit about this data because this is really interesting. Um, the this data, this particular one comes from CDC's most recent youth risk behavior survey. So listen to this, friends. 40% of high school students report persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness. You know what? Okay, for like for real, I'm looking at the word like you might maybe you're stuck on the 40%. You know what I'm stuck on? The word persistent. So it's not even just like kids. I caught that too. Yeah, it's persistent. It's not even like kids, but it's like the it it persists. They feel sad, they feel hopeless. And this really struck me a couple years ago. Get this a couple of years ago, um, when this first started coming out, this particular piece of data talked about how for girls it's actually hired that more than half, more than half of teen girls report persistent feelings of sad lit sadness or hopelessness. More than half. More than half. So it's not small, it's not small. And you know, we talk about we talk about mental health, but really we have to figure out what exactly are we talking about. And then as family coaches, I think Anna, you and I can like add a little bit to this conversation.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

Yeah, absolutely. And and we want to be really clear that um, again, under the umbrella of mental health, again, like we want to define that first and foremost, but we also want to say that there are actual mental health diagnoses that are beyond this conversation of just like parents wanting to help their kids build stronger mental health. And there's a time and a place for intervention and professional support. And so this conversation is not in place of professional support.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

Right, 100%.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

But for just your average parent of a teen who hears that hears that report about, you know, the CDC report and goes, oh my gosh, like I can't ignore that. What can I do in my home, in my relationship with my child to, you know, keep them from being one of the one of those in the statistic? And um or if they're there, what can we do to help them build a stronger ability to handle the ups and downs of life? Because those are gonna happen.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Well, and let me just say this too, because as a parent, uh and I you and I have really made it a point to not like jump to conclusions, like we so and so it's not that we don't look at this and we say, wow, these numbers are going up, you know, kind of like with the advent of the phone. Like we know that they're so I just want to make the point if if and as people are jumping to, well, it must be because of their phone, yes, I'm sure contributing factors, but we don't want to, we don't want to be glib, we don't want to just come up with like what what oh just take away their phone or no, we really want to talk about where and we are gonna talk about what are the actual things we can do, and to also make the point when we do these podcasts, it's part of a series. We also do on Facebook, Delta Prevention does prevention in my kitchen. We also have live classes, we design those specifically so we can give you a little taste of it here, but then you can get more support elsewhere. Absolutely. But you said you said that we define mental health. Can you define it? Because I think that will really help people to see, okay, what are we talking about here?

SPEAKER_01 6:08

Yes, this is what

A Clear Definition Of Mental Health

SPEAKER_01 6:09

we are talking about. So the CDC defines mental health as including emotional, psychological, and social well-being. And it says it affects how we think, feel, relate to others, handle stress, and make decisions. So we're gonna make that really simple. Mental health is your ability to think, feel, relate, and handle life.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

That's really good.

SPEAKER_01 6:39

So this isn't just theory, it's in prevention science and in programs like the strengthening families program. We know that three things consistently protect our kids: strong relationships, clear expectations, and knowing what's going on in their lives. So this has never been and will never be about being perfectly doing everything perfectly because we would all fail that test.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

100%.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

It's about building the right things consistently. And um, so we just want to bridge the gap from we've increased awareness. We all know mental health is a really big deal.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

Yep, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

Okay, so what's the next step? We want to increase our skills and our children's skills.

What Protects Kids At Home

SPEAKER_00 7:26

Well, I think that's a really important point because um a lot of times, and it's true, schools talk a lot about mental health. They actually have even built into whether we're talking about elementary kids, even kindergarten. I mean, you really have been, they've really been good about building in some of the skills kids need. But the reality is that these particular types of skills that you're gonna need in order to really set yourself up to have some really good um mental health outcomes. And I'm thinking in terms of like depression, anxiety, being able to navigate all those things that you were talking about, those types of skills, and this is important, friends, for you to hear, are actually better practiced at home because they need some um, they need some uh, I want to say like situational awareness, but they just need uh they need a parenting adult to help them to navigate those things in a deeper way than we can get to in school. And then the other thing is that um it's going to take them understanding who they are and you find that out at home. Right. So we definitely want our parenting adults uh to be able to not only learn the skills for themselves, but to pass those on to their kids, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:46

And and so as parents, one of the first things that I think we can kind of like stop and do a little check-in with ourselves is when our kids are struggling with something, um, it's really easy as parents to want to step in and kind of fix it, right? We we like how many parents are gonna say, I want my kid to have a better life than me or an easier life than me? I don't want them to have the difficulties that I had, right? Like that's just something that we want to do, right? We want to protect our kids, but we also need to prepare our kids. And we want them to have a strength to handle life.

SPEAKER_00 9:30

And unfortunately, strength is built in the struggle, and so I hate that you said that, and yet I feel like you should say it again.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Strength is built in the struggle, and so if we want to build those skills, it's gonna be a little uncomfortable for them and for us. But like Angela was talking about, like in home practice, that's where they build the skill.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

And there's plenty of opportunities in our day-to-day life, in our home life. Like, we don't, we are not under the guise of like, oh, everybody's just sitting in bliss at home with their families 24-7. Like, there's opportunities, there's going to be disagreements, there's miscommunication, there's just uh emotionally, your emotions will fluctuate. Um, life will hand you enough opportunity. And so we want to know how to build skills and strength. That makes me laugh.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

That part makes me laugh. So if it's built in the struggle, and then life gives you all the opportunity you need in order to build it, it means we're like living in the struggle. But I think that's a really good point because again, okay, these are skills, sure, they could be taught at school and they are taught at school and they're taught in different places, but they have to be practiced continuously and it has to be something that we walk through. And so when you think about what that looks like, what you know, how do you actually set it up where you can help kids to learn how to do it? So we figured, this is for everybody, we figured that we would give people a starting point in every one of those four areas that we talked about so that you actually will have an opportunity to practice. And then we're gonna continuously add to whatever those things are in the other uh classes that we offer, whether it's prevention in my kitchen or a live class or whatever. So then you should by the end of being able to watch all of those have kind of like a bucket of ways that you can help kids to do that.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

Right, exactly. So again, those four areas are how kids think, yep, how they handle their feelings, yep, how they connect, yep, and how they handle life when it's hard.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

Yeah, yeah.

Thinking Skills And Automatic Negative Thoughts

SPEAKER_01 12:03

So what is talk about thinking, talk about thinking? So thinking is problem solving. I I I kind of think it's twofold. One, I think we have to um acknowledge that we have our internal thinking, our thoughts that like we may never voice.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

And um, because of that, we may not actually know what is running on replay in our kids' minds. And so this is something that we have to be have an open and honest conversation. And as parents, that um that falls on us. Like, if our kids aren't talking about it, we have to talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

And so um we love with the strengthening families, we love the concept from Dr. Eamon called stomping the ants. I love that stands for automatic negative thoughts, which we all have. Yes, yes. So again, this is something if you haven't addressed this concept, please, please do. It is simple in concept, it is much more difficult in practice just to constantly catch them when they pop up.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

Here's something really interesting. So, uh, two things about that. So the first thing is now that you're talking about this, and I love automatic negative thoughts, you have them, I have them, we all have them. I always think um that thought doesn't belong to me unless I keep it. I mean, we all think really dumb things at times, you know what I'm saying? Like the thought just comes across, it doesn't belong to me. That thought just my brain sometimes thinks of stupid things, you know. That thought doesn't belong to me unless I decide to take it, like feed on it, or like nurture that thought or whatever. Okay, so, but then that's true of kids too. They also have automatic negative thoughts, and that can impede their ability. And when you're talking about mental health, when if if our kids have like these circular thoughts that keep going and going and going and going and going in their brain, and they continuously feed them, that becomes reality for them. That can increase their anxiety, can increase their depression. But I want to just say something. So you said something that I thought, ah, interesting. You said sometimes we like to jump in and help. In this situation, if we jumped in and helped, we would not be allowing them to then learn how to handle it in that hard part. Right. That's not good. Because then how will they grow? How will they be able to pull out? You know what I mean? Right. That's good.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

And and I think it's something again, um, you're you're teaching them and you're giving them guidance. So that might look like, and again, some of these thoughts are spoken out loud, right? So they might say, I can never get this right, or I always mess up, or you know, they just they might kind of pour out of their mouth. And so we can step in and say, Oh, identify it, right? That's an automatic negative thought. We bring truth to it and then we help them. We don't necessarily, I mean, it depends on the age and it depends on a lot of things, but I think twofold is instead of jumping to think this instead, say, hey, what is true? Like give them prompts to help them think through of a replacement thought. And again, if necessary, maybe you can provide them one, but don't jump to do that first. Get say, hey, you just said you you can never get anything right. Is that true? And so we want them to, because thinking is problem solving. It's when they get stuck, when something is hard, right? Like, I mean, think about it. I can't, I depending on the age and stage, right? Like, they may be struggling learning how to tie their shoe, they may not be able to solve a math problem. They may like, how many times do we get stuck? And if we quit, then we never achieve the next step. But if we push through, we figure it out. And so that's really breaking that process down for our kids and helping them like what you know, what else can you try? And again, that just those simple questions instead of like, why don't you do this, or why didn't you try it this way? Why didn't you know, um giving them the opportunity to stop and think through, oh, well, I didn't try it this way, or I didn't try that, or you know, I've been trying the same way over and over and over, and I'm building in frustration versus like maybe this isn't the best way to solve this. Maybe I do need to try this. So again, you're kind of like the guide through that process and and really try to hold back the answers unless absolutely necessary. That's what I would say. What do you think?

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Well, I like that because you're saying you're you're so in my I'm changing what's in my mouth. I think that's a really good point. Like I think as a parent, sometimes I look at my kids and I talk the way I talk, but what you're saying is, okay, but there are some ways, there are some things that you can say that is that's gonna help them move a little closer to, for example, solving their problem or thinking differently about the problem or trying in a different way. And so it's not necessarily this is what I'm getting from what you're talking about. Gosh, I feel like I can't believe I this is almost hitting me over the head. We began this conversation talking about how we can help them with their skills, but the truth is that if we are coaches, and we've always said that we're parent, we're we coach our kids, we're parent coaches who teach parents to coach their own kids, right? If that's the case, then actually we're not just changing their skills, we're changing what comes out of our mouth.

SPEAKER_01 17:57

Oh, absolutely. And and uh not knowing the history of every parent that's gonna listen to this. I mean, we are very open and honest that like we don't have it all, we have not, we're not telling you these skills because we started with these skills day one. We still have areas where we're still constantly trying to like reevaluate, and you know, as our kids grow and and reach new milestones in life, new opportunities arise for us to be challenged by teaching.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

A hundred percent.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

Is like, wow, like I wish I would have known this when I was a kid, but I wish I also would have known it when I my kids were, you know, 15 years younger than they are now.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

Um you know it's so crazy the things that we learn when our kids are grown up. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

Exactly, which is why we love doing this because we're we're I mean, we never stop being parents, let's be real. But also we just love being able to help other parents do even better than we we've achieved.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

Yeah, exactly. And and like, no, you listen, no shade to us because you know, as as coaches, we learned things that people don't have the opportunity to learn necessarily. Um, and that's a there's a real honor in that. You know, we were able to do that, there's a real honor in that. Now, whether or not um, you know, like whether or not we were able to always be able to do the right thing, we can actually help families, you know. We got to do, we got to learn a lot. We can help them to learn faster than we did. And that's why you and I talk about like how many times we screwed up.

unknown 19:36

Exactly.

Emotional Regulation In Real Time

SPEAKER_00 19:37

All right, so we talked about thinking, I want to talk about the feeling piece, right? Because this is we use this term all the time, emotional regulation. And the truth about emotional regulation is this is a skill, it has to be taught in the fire, you know, it has to be taught like in the moment. We give them the skills when it's calm and quiet, and then they practice the skills when it's not calm and quiet, because emotional regulation is can you regulate your emotion your emotions in the moment that you need it? So everybody, whether you're a kid or an adult, is gonna have big feelings. Like there are things that, and you know, even as adults, there are people that we know right this minute. We could probably name names, but we won't. But there are people that we know they cannot control themselves emotionally in in a any in like certain public situations or whatever. And the truth is we need our kids to be able to know how to navigate those. So we need them to understand what to do when you have those feelings. That is only friends gonna serve them. And just I know in my life, I was taught, and I you can probably speak to this too, Anna, but I was taught more like there are only two options. You either like shut your feelings down or you let them explode. And let me just say I don't think I was ever taught either of those things explicitly. I was taught those things because of other people's reactions. Like, for example, when I was a kid, I was only ever told that my that I wore my feelings on my sleeve. Oh, but you always wear your feelings on your sleeve. The message that I got is that I should not be then sharing my feelings. That is not how you train a child or teach a child to deal with what are big feelings, because all that taught me is oh, other people don't want to hear about my feelings. So because I'm feeling them so big, I'm gonna need to stuff them because I don't want other people. Or then there comes a point where they could just explode. And we know lots of people who just cannot hold their feelings long and then they just explode.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

Well, and I I think you could also say, and I don't know that this is true 100% of the time, but I can think of instances in my life where this was the case where. For whatever reason, for the message was sent to um to you or to me that like you're like to shut your feelings down, right? But one can only do that for so long, and then they will explode. 100% versus hey, you these feelings are real, they're there, you're experiencing them. So what do we do? How do we process them? How do we metabolize them? And and that I just I don't know. Like I you like when I see people who are so well regulated, I'm like, where did they learn that? You know what I mean? Like because it it wasn't I it wasn't modeled or taught.

SPEAKER_00 22:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:49

To me at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

Now, okay, but here's the good here's the good news, and this is true, um, friends. We teach this in strengthening families. We literally teach you to sit with kids and help them to identify what is the feeling that you're feeling. By the way, that's another thing they need to be able to do is identify what is this feeling. Frustration might come out as anger. Is it frustration or is it anger? And so you may have different things to do with that. Um, we've actually even seen anger come out as hunger. And so helping them to understand. Then the second thing is give them options for dealing with those. What are healthy ways? And literally sitting with them. This is one of the ones that we're actually going to break down a little bit more in our prevention in my kitchen because this one's really big. So, what exactly can you do? Give them options, help them to see, okay, in the moment, what can you do in your body? What can you do just in terms of like anger? And you can actually um give yourself, you could go for a walk. Of course, you could go for a walk. Of course, you can like go in your room and punch a pillow. Of course, like you could do those things, but that's not good. What are you gonna do if you're in class? Like you can't go for walking. So we'll actually walk folks through just like a process where it helps them to teach for us and for our kids, what do you do in your body? What thought do you have? What how do you, you know, move your body until you can get yourself in a to a place where you can um handle those emotions? That's a good one. We're gonna actually dig deeper a little bit. That's a good one.

SPEAKER_01 24:21

And and that is impactful in so many areas of our kids' lives. Like you said, like what if you're in class? What if you're out, you know, in a situation with friends? Um you you like you said, some of those skills that are taught, um, coping things aren't always the most constructive and most healthy ways to do it. And and they don't always fit in every situation. And so if that's the only way you've trained yourself to handle anger or frustration or whatnot, it doesn't cross over to all the all the real life circumstances.

SPEAKER_00 24:56

No, a hundred. That's a great one. I hope everybody that's a good one. All right,

Connection And Trusted Adults

SPEAKER_00 25:01

two more. So the next one is relating or connection, right? And this one's interesting because I was, I actually just did a webinar. Oh gosh, it's early this week, I think. I don't even know. Maybe it was late last week, who remembers? But um, I was doing it with an emergency room doctor, and one of the things that he talked about is this idea that when his kids were younger, he always helped them to find trusted adults who were not him. In other words, he would say, and I agree with this, we did this with our kids as well, where we would say, look, obviously we're trusted adults because research is clear that a strong relationship with at least one trusted adult is one of the biggest protective factors for kids. But, friends, you might not want to hear this, especially if your kids are younger. There they may get to a point where it's harder to talk to us. And so we are constantly working, especially when we do strengthening families on bonding boundaries and monitoring. Those are our big three. And bonding is really, really important, whether your kid is seven or 17 or 27 or 37 or whatever. Right. But bonding, um, sometimes kids get to an age and they're like, I'm not sure I want to have this conversation with you. And so to expressly help them, sit with them, talk to them about who else could you talk to? And this particular doctor that was giving the presentation said he would identify trusted adults with his kids and then he would contact them and say, Um, can we go to coffee? Or like, you know what I'm saying? So he would like, he would tell the other adult. So for him, he said that he um he had his church pastor, another adult mentor, maybe. But that's really important because we need to be connected to them, but they also need to have another place to get connected if they can't in a big moment come to us. But for the most part, it's like the we have to do all those things like having my time that one-on-one, 10 to 15 minutes alone with our kid each day, where they get to choose what the activity is, and we're just playing along because we're trying to connect. We want to spend time with our kids, yeah. Yeah, not connect, correcting, not teaching, just connect. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 27:28

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 27:29

Yeah, that's really good.

SPEAKER_01 27:30

Yeah, it's those small, consistent moments where I think that to me, the message whenever we talk about my time, the message that I I have like in the back of my mind as like my motivation and my intention with in that time is like I get to spend time with this person. Like, yeah, they're one of my favorite people in the whole entire world. And like I am genuinely interested in what they are interested in because I want to know them.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

And I'm gonna say it because, like, you know, we call this podcast good friends, strong families, and we kind of run it on the premise that everybody needs a good friend if you're a dead person. Um, and the idea is that um a good friend would tell you the truth. So I'm gonna tell you the truth that if your kid walks in the room and says, Hey mom, can I talk to you? Even if it's like, you know, just to kind of joke around or just like that 100% of the time, unless we're on the phone calling 911, we need to put our phones down.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

Right.

SPEAKER_00 28:35

Not and not like hold the phone and keep looking at it. And listen, I'm preaching in the choir here because I'm just as guilty, not with my kids really so much anymore, but even with my husband. If if another person walks in the room that you love and care about, you have got to give them the message that they're important. Take the phone, put it down. Yes, what did you want to talk about?

SPEAKER_01 28:55

Right. Make that eye contact and show them that you care. I also want to throw in there, sorry, this is kind of like an aside, but relating and connection, we we are emphasizing the importance of that starting at home with parents and other trusted adults, but we also need to not ignore the impact that their other relationships will have on them and especially their mental health. So we as parents should have an idea of who our kids' best friends are. And um, and I feel like we could probably do a whole nother podcast on this specifically on how to help our kids identify healthy relationships beyond just parents, similar, you know, the ones within our home. Um, and so I just want to throw that in there because they those those outside connections that um uh will absolutely impact their their mental health.

SPEAKER_00 29:47

If well, here's another relationship that I think is really important, and we could do several podcasts about this one is um grandparents, aunts, and uncles having the you know, get helping them to have rich relationships with the other people in their family that really care about them. Or um, and and you know, we're just in an age right now where um people find that really challenging. And here's what I would encourage you, families, is to really consider the good outweighing the bad. Obviously, if you you know, it goes without saying if you come from a family where there could be actual harm to your child, right? I mean, that we're not talking about that, right? We are talking about sometimes, and again, we could do a bazillion podcasts about this. Sometimes the people in our family, maybe we're like, ugh, oh, he's got that uncle that always tells the dirty jokes, you know what I mean? Or like, oh, or like every time I send them over to my mom, she always gives them um, she always gives them sugar, or you know what I'm saying? Right. I'm just encouraging you to weigh that, right? Weigh that. It it is not impossible for you to say to the uncle, listen, I want my kid to know you and to be close to you. And I think that's such an important connection that they have. And so I notice that you tell a lot of dirty jokes. Can you refrain when my, you know, just have a conversation or with mom? Listen, mom, I prefer you not to give the kids sugar when they're over there. Friends, they're gonna break that rule. And so we have to make the decision that that uh that the kid's eating too much sugar is does not even live in the category of my kid has a relationship with this person that thinks they walk on water, right? And sometimes they eat too much sugar.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

Absolutely, yeah.

Functioning Through Stress And Setbacks

SPEAKER_00 31:47

Last one, last one, last one, functioning. Okay, wait, I want to repeat them. Can we repeat them? Because we've got okay, thinking, feeling, relating, and functioning. What is functioning?

SPEAKER_01 32:00

Yeah, so how can you cope in this life again when when they're stressed out, school, relationships, friendships, um, they didn't get a part in the play that they wanted. They like, can you go through get through your day? Can you get through your week? Um or are you just shutting down? And again, there's there's there's gonna be the tension, right? But our kids will not build the resilience, yes, everything is going easy, and they're not gonna build strong mental health unless unless there is some struggle. But we this is about giving them the skills to handle the struggle, yes. And so, you know, reminding them like you are capable, you can do this, um, coaching them through it, asking them like, well, what's your next step? What do you want to try next? Um, and I know that you and McKinley are gonna dive much deeper into that in the live class at the end of the month, right?

SPEAKER_00 33:06

Yeah, we actually are. Yeah, we're actually gonna go into and here's why, because this is one of those areas where you need skills, you and you need to know exactly what to do. So some of this is actually about talking, right? This is about like being able to shift the way that we talk about it and being able to shift when our kids are, you know, are uh scrambling to solve a situation or whatever. But the truth is that um if we really are coaches and we really are choosing not to rescue, we we do have to be able to put some of those words in our own mouth to like what would a coach say, but also this is one of those things, friends, where you have to think about this preventatively and be really open about these conversations. So um it really is about having those conversations with them before hard things come up. And you know what hard things normally come up for your kids and then helping to give them the skills.

Build Skills Early And Keep Practicing

SPEAKER_00 34:04

We are gonna cover this more in our live class. So um, if you're listening to this at some point later on, you can also find um our live class and our prevention in my kitchen on our Facebook page, on Delta Prevention Facebook page. All of that is on there, and we're gonna give you tons, tons more tools. But the at the end of the day, so here's a really important thing, Anna. At the end of the day, we're when we talk about mental health, it's we we really want you to understand we're not talking about something abstract. We're really talking about like how do you get those skills into your kids? We gave you an example, like what uh when we talk about thinking or feeling or relating or functioning, we just gave you one example. But at the end of the day, we are family facilitators for strengthening families classes, for other um relationship skills building classes. And the reason why is because skills are build upon, build upon, build upon, build upon. So even though we just gave you a quick little example for each one, you can go onto our webpage to find or onto our Facebook page to find more. Because we really want those small shifts to build over time. And when you're when you're building that, it means that mental health isn't something that, you know, you have that or you don't have that.

SPEAKER_01 35:23

Right.

SPEAKER_00 35:24

But it's something that you're like building this every day, you're building these skills early, you're being open and honest about what it means to be able to navigate tough things because that's what they need in order to uh protect them long term. And those conversations can be weird and messy, they don't have to be perfect, they can be, you know, and you can come back and say, Well, I I was reflecting on that conversation we had yesterday, and I kind of feel a little bit like I wasn't clear. Can I just try that again?

SPEAKER_01 35:55

Yeah, they have to be consistent and and uh the struggles that your kids have today are gonna look different than the struggles they have in two years, five years, et cetera. So you have to continually have those conversations because how they apply them and what they need to apply them to is going to shift. And um, so sometimes you need little reminders, right? You're like you could be coasting through life, yeah, we figured out that hard thing. Um, but at some point, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but at some point another little speed bump will pop up for you. And um, so it's just it's good to kind of always have these conversations kind of going.

A Parenting Story That Sums It Up

SPEAKER_00 36:35

I have to tell you a quick story before we go. Um, one of my adult kids, I was texting back and forth with them, and they made a comment in front of their partner. And when they made that comment, I thought, mm-mm, that's that's not no, that's not nice. They weren't talking about the partner, but they were they just said something about somebody else that I thought, oh, that's not good. And so I waited and sent them a private message, you know, I didn't want to say anything in front of the partner, whatever. And I sent them a private message and I said, Um, this is what I heard you say, and this is why I think you should not have said that. And when I did that, they sent me a message back and said, Thank you for saying that. That wasn't what I meant. I meant this other thing. And so I recognize that what I said might not have come across well. Right. So the thing about it is this kid is in their 30s, like you never stop helping them to become a better version of themselves, and they never stop helping us become a better version of ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 37:52

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 37:53

It's not just because we're trying to get, it's not because we're trying to perfect one another, it's because we're trying to make life easier for one another.

SPEAKER_01 38:01

Yeah, and that's also a good example of maintaining connection.

SPEAKER_00 38:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:06

Right. Like uh sometimes it's easy to think like, oh, they're 18, they've graduated high school, we've done our job. No, no, no. No. We we have to keep that connection um and feed it and nourish it. And I mean, if we value it, and I believe we do, that's why we're here. So right, right.

SPEAKER_00 38:28

And we're we're not raising kids who don't struggle, we're raising kids who can handle life, and that's part of it. They have to handle life when they become parents, when they're, you know, when their kids are um in elementary and middle and high school. I mean, just life just keeps going on, and the more we do this when they're young, the easier it'll be when they're older. This was fun.

SPEAKER_01 38:49

Absolutely. I'm excited to see the rest of the month as well and sharpen those skills.

SPEAKER_00 38:56

So yeah,

Share The Podcast And Find Resources

SPEAKER_00 38:58

that's awesome. Well, thank you for being here today. And thank all of you for listening. Thank you for uh listening to the podcast. Please share this with other people that you think might really like it. Um, you can always check us out on Instagram or you could check us out even on Facebook. Uh, when you're looking for us, you're looking for good friends, strong families. But we also uh are a part of Delta Prevention. You can find more resources on deltaprevention.org or our Facebook page on Delta Prevention. Thank you all so much for being here. Thank you, Anna, for being here. That was awesome. Bye, everyone. Bye.