A Safe Place for our Teens

I was recently contacted the mother of a high school student who didn’t know what to do.  She had used the car and found marijuana between the seats.  Like most parents would do, she immediately got both angry and scared and searched through the child’s room.  During the search, she found more drug paraphernalia as well as notebooks filled with sketches and thoughts.  What she read scared her even more.  The notes and sketches mentioned wanting to die, wondering whether death would be better than life.  Not knowing what to do, she confronted her child.  The child admitted that they had been using drugs but that they were in a healthier place now.  Her child had been using drugs to counter the effects of depression.  It may sound like an unusual occurrence but it is anything but that. Over the course of my ministry at St. Matthew’s, I have had a similar conversation with multiple parents because not only do today’s youth have easy access to mind altering substances at an alarming rate but they also suffer from depression and suicidal thoughts frequently and mainly in silence.

Depression, drug use and suicide are topics that are frequently discussed in the news, on social media and on the Internet.  There are many people that have opinions and solutions concerning these issues and I am sure that many are very good ideas.  I’m not here to debate or discuss them, but rather to offer some suggestions about how we, as parents, grandparents and caregivers of teens can try to “break open” our teens and give them a space to discuss the issues they are facing in a safe non-judgmental manner. 

While your teen may never be able to have the conversation with you in a face-to-face manner, many teens are willing to have the conversation in writing.  One of the best ideas I have heard comes from a blog, handsfreemama.com.  Rachel, the author of the blog and the mother of a teenage girl, says that no matter how hard she tried to talk to her daughter, her daughter wouldn’t open up.  Finally she got the idea to give her daughter a notebook in which she could write down anything she needed to say.  On the first page of the journal, Rachel wrote this,

“No mistake you make is bigger than my love.  

You are never alone. 

I love you, just as you are today.  

You can always come home.”  

Think for just a minute how powerful those four lines are.  In four short lines, Rachel told her daughter that no matter what I will be there for you.  Her statements covered something that most teens question and Rachel answered them without being asked.  Maybe you feel that your child already knows those answers, and maybe they do, but when was the last time you said it to them?  Would your teen feel safe coming home from an evening out with friends after drinking or smoking or doing something wrong?  I’m not condoning those behaviors, but I am saying that we as parents must respond rather than react to our teens when they make poor decisions, after all we were teens once and most likely also made bad decisions. 

My response to the mother who called me and when speaking to parents about their teens is make sure you teen knows you love them and there is nothing they say that can change that fact.  They aren’t alone in what’s going on in their lives and that we (parent and teen) will work through this together.  While it may not be a miracle answer, it is an opening for the teen to understand that you are not the enemy but rather someone that they can open up and share their feelings with and know they will be safe in a tumultuous world.  Depression can easily be hidden from people even parents so it is important to look for signs of depression in youth.  Some of the signs and symptoms are: Sadness, irritability, withdrawing from some but not all people, unexplained aches and pains, extreme sensitivity to criticism.  Many of the signs might be attributed to normal teenage growing pains but that isn’t always the reason.  Youth today wrestle with many more issues than we were ever faced with growing up.  In speaking to our kids, I hear them saying that there are very few people that teens today feel safe talking to and who they can open up to so it is of the upmost importance that home is a protected place to talk.  If you feel that you aren’t able to have difficult conversations with your teens, counseling is another possibility with both group and individual options.

            I like to think that trying to get a teen to open up about their feelings is like getting to the heart of an artichoke.  It takes lots of work and perseverance, but once you get to its heart, there is a wonderfully delicious gift.  If you give up while peeling back the layers, you will never know what lies at the center.  Your teenager is the same.  Once in a while, a spine might prick you as you peel it back, but when you get to the center of your teen, you will find a wonderfully created gift from God, a loving caring child.

            If your teen is in crisis due to depression, suicidal thoughts, or other mental challenges, there is someone they can talk to anonymously by calling the National Suicide Prevention Hotline @ 1-800-273-8255 or by texting HOME to 741741.