How do we talk to our kids about things that might be bothering them? About the weighty issues of mental struggles or substance abuse? When is our best opportunity to reach them?
The ride home.
That was the answer a subcommittee of a Franklin Substance Abuse Task Force asked themselves when challenged with reaching out and advising a community. They put together a resource pamphlet, The Ride Home: Conversations for a Lifetime.
“It just came off the presses a few weeks ago, and we’re just starting to disseminate it,” said Anne Bergen, Chair of the Franklin School Committee and member of the substance abuse subcommittee. She explained the substance abuse task force began a few years ago, comprised of counselors, teachers, school administrators, State Rep. Jeff Roy, Jim Derrick of the S.A.F.E. Coalition, police, members of the medical community and students. The group meets almost every month.
Bergen’s subcommittee was tasked with, “How do we help educate? How do we talk about this issue? And in the process of our discussion, Tom Angelo, the Athletic Director for Franklin Public Schools, said that if we were ever going to write a book, it should be called ‘The Ride Home.’ That was the time with his kids where those important conversations were held,” said Bergen.
“When we talked to the high school kids that were part of the community, the most important thing to them was that people listened to them, that there was time for that,” says Bergen. “We want them to know that, on the surface, kids are looking fine, but under the surface, many, many are in trouble.” Parents, she says, need to make “time to focus on that resilience, so they can deal with all the things life is going to throw at them, while understanding the pressure kids are under to please their parents.”
Social media is also a strong influence.
“One of the things was that increasingly, our kids are being shaped by social media, by peer groups via social media, and influences that are talking out there,” says Bergen. Teens are also grieving lost time with parents, who are increasingly distracted themselves.
“By the time kids leave school or they enter college, the level of mental health issues is skyrocketing,” says Bergen. Many are squeezed by the pressures of high expectations in academics and youth sports.
“The pressure that they’re under, it’s killing them,” says Bergen. “That’s where they’re doing the substance stuff, to self-medicate and soothe. But it isn’t just parents. The need to be perfect, to look perfect, to be all things to all people, to be an athlete and be a perfect student. Then you compound that with social media.”
Bergen says many parents tend to overprotect. “We don’t want kids to grieve,” she says, but rescuing children all the time isn’t necessarily the answer. “Kids don’t realize when they look at social media, that they are going to feel such anguish inside, and some loneliness, and it’s going to feel awful. We don’t tell them, and they’re frightened by it. They’re going to feel those feelings of emptiness. What they don’t know is everyone goes through it.”
Making the space and time to have natural, not forced, conversations allows parents to “share your own stories, the times you messed up and how you dealt with it or didn’t deal with it, or dealt with failure,” says Bergen.
Topics in the booklet range from a discussion of why children are at risk to why they’re dropping sports, how vaping, marijuana and prescription drugs come into play, to distracted parenting and suggestions on how to build relationships, including establishing rapport and family routines. The booklet lists resources for parents such as finding local activities for children through Franklin Recreation Department and the local YMCA, to the serious tasks of how to begin searching for free and confidential mental health referrals through the William James College Interface Service (888-244-6843) and other resources.
Copies of The Ride Home are available at the Franklin Superintendent’s office, and will be available at the middle school and high school offices. The group also hopes to hand out the booklet at various school meetings, doctors’ offices, the YMCA, and MIAA conferences.