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Wanting for our Children – To Become The Best or To Want The Best

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Jeff Yalden - Speaker for Teens

Jeff Yalden – Mental Health Speaker for Teens & Parents.

I HAD heard about all of the dying, about all of the grief, and still I didn’t immediately understand what I was seeing when, at a railroad crossing here, I spotted a man in a blaring orange vest, the kind that road crews and public-safety workers wear. He wasn’t carrying any equipment. He wasn’t engaged in any obvious activity. He shuffled his feet, staring into the distance. Hours later, at the same crossing: an orange-vested woman. Like the man, she just stood there, without evident purpose. “They’re on the lookout,” a friend of mine who lives here explained. “For what?” I asked. “Suicides,” my friend said. Between May 2009 and January 2010, five Palo Alto teenagers ended their lives by stepping in front of trains. And since October of last year, another three Palo Alto teenagers have killed themselves that way, prompting longer hours by more sentries along the tracks. The Palo Alto Weekly refers to the deaths as a “suicide contagion.” And while mental health professionals are rightly careful not to oversimplify or trivialize the psychic distress behind them by focusing on any one possible factor, the contagion has prompted an emotional debate about the kinds of pressures felt by high school students in epicenters of overachievement. This is one such place. Children here grow up in the shadow of Stanford University, which established a new precedent for exclusivity during the recent admissions season, accepting just 5 percent of its applicants. They grow up with parents who have scaled the pinnacles of their professions or are determined to have their offspring do precisely that. They grow up with advanced-placement classes galore, convinced that their futures hinge on perfect SAT scores and preternatural grade-point averages. Experts on sleep are in keen demand. The kids here don’t get enough of it.
If you know of a teen that is suicidal, please have them visit www.NotTheSolution.com and encourage them to seek help immediately!
But the situation isn’t so different in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., where a separate cluster of teen suicides in recent years forced educators and parents to re-examine the messages they give teenagers, intentionally and unintentionally, about what’s expected of them and what’s needed to get ahead in this world. It’s not so different in Chicago’s western suburbs, where a high school teacher recently pulled me aside and, in a pained whisper, insisted that the number of advanced-placement classes that local students feel compelled to take and the number of hospitalizations for depression rise in tandem.
An-Unforgettable-Night

Order your video today . . . Jeff spent 48 hours in a community suffering from loss and searching for meaning and answers to their questions. Visit https://jeffyalden.com/products/.

These are to some extent problems of affluence and privilege. But they have relevance beyond any one subset of our country’s populace. They reflect a status consciousness that bedevils Americans at all income levels, and they underscore an economic trepidation that is sadly widespread and is seemingly intensified by the gaping divide between the haves and have-nots. The suicide rate among all teenagers has seemingly risen a bit over the last decade. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it was 8.15 per every 100,000 Americans between the ages of 10 and 24 in 2013, the last year for which complete data is available; the rate was 6.74 in 2003. Many more children think about taking their own lives. According to a 2013 survey by the C.D.C., 17 percent of American high school students had considered suicide in the previous year. Eight percent said they’d attempted it. And suicide clusters have at least as much to do with imitation as with environment, each instance of self-annihilation planting an idea and heightening the possibility of the next. There’s no direct line connecting the pressures of Palo Alto and the deaths. But the community’s soul searching goes beyond those tragedies, to matters plenty important in and of themselves. Are kids here getting to be kids? Does a brand of hovering, exactingly prescriptive parenting put them in unforgiving boxes and prevent them from finding their true selves and true grit? “There’s something about childhood itself in Palo Alto and in communities like Palo Alto that undermines the mental health and wellness of our children,” Julie Lythcott-Haims told me. Lythcott-Haims was a dean at Stanford from 2002 to 2012. She lives in Palo Alto. Her two children, ages 13 and 15, go to school here. And she’s the author of a new book, to be published in June, called “How to Raise an Adult.” It reflects on the shortfalls of some modern parenting, which, in her view, can be not only overprotective but overbearing, micromanaging the lives of children, pointing them toward specific mile markers of achievement and denying them any time to flail or room to fail. They wind up simultaneously frazzled and fragile.
If you know of a teen that is suicidal, please have them visit www.NotTheSolution.com and encourage them to seek help immediately!
“The suicides are tragic, but they are at the pointy head of the pyramid, the tippy top,” she said. “Beneath them is a larger number of kids who are really struggling and beneath them is an even larger number of kids who feel an amount of stress and pressure that they shouldn’t be made to and that’s untenable.” THE local media has been rife with commentary, from many perspectives, about the mental health of Palo Alto teenagers. Here is what Carolyn Walworth, a junior at Palo Alto High School, recently wrote: “As I sit in my room staring at the list of colleges I’ve resolved to try to get into, trying to determine my odds of getting into each, I can’t help but feel desolate.” She confessed to panic attacks in class, to menstrual periods missed as a result of exhaustion. “We are not teenagers,” she added. “We are lifeless bodies in a system that breeds competition, hatred, and discourages teamwork and genuine learning.” Adam Strassberg, a psychiatrist and the father of two Palo Alto teenagers, wrote that while many Palo Alto parents are “wealthy and secure beyond imagining,” they’re consumed by fear of losing that perch or failing to bequeath it to their kids. “Maintaining and advancing insidiously high educational standards in our children is a way to soothe this anxiety,” he said. He made these observations apart from the suicides, for which, he emphasized, “There is no single cause.” He recommended lightening children’s schedules, limiting the number of times that they take the SAT, lessening the message that it’s Stanford or bust. “I will never be neutral on this issue,” he wrote. “The ‘Koala Dad’ is the far better parent than the ‘Tiger Mom.’ ” What he was saying — and what’s obvious, but warrants repeating — is that ushering children toward a bright future means getting them there in one piece. There’s a fresh awareness of that here, and perhaps a new receptiveness to some words of his that should echo far beyond Palo Alto: “Want the best for your child, not for your child to be the best.”

Parenting – Unconditional Love & Support

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For 23 years, I have worked with teens and parents in multiple capacities – speaking engagements, television, life coaching, intervention, and coaching.  It’s been an honor and a privilege to have found myself in this field of work. Over the past 10 days, I have had the opportunity to sit back and read the sad and unfortunate circumstances in regards to the loss of Leelah Alcorn, the transgender from Ohio that committed suicide.  I sit back and reflect as a parent and think who am I to judge.  We all have opinions. I certainly am not and haven’t been a perfect parent or role model.  I’ve made my mistakes and have been judged.  I’ve had my successes and been applauded.  As I age, I continually learn so much and look back and learn from the lessons I’ve lived knowing what I did wrong and how I could have done better.  Being healthy and balanced in my heart and head has been a journey with counseling and my relationship with God.  Everyday, I try and be a man that lives a positive life and supports and loves unconditionally my inner circle of people and my family.  What exactly does that mean though?  Through anything will I love unconditionally?  Through anything will I support unconditionally?  My opinion depends on the circumstances and personally, I have dealt with many circumstances to have learned from and to where I now teach from.  Life’s lessons have certainly made me who I am and who I am today is a much better communicator and motivator as a result of experience and age.  I think this is the case for us all. When I look at the situation from Leelah Alcorn and I think, “What if that were my child?”  First, I want to hope that I would have been closer to “her”, and to know that my son, “Joshua”, that I brought into the world was having emotional issues that I needed to understand.  Then, regardless of how I felt or how I thought, I wanted to do what is right as a parent and what is right and best for my child.  In this circumstance, I would unconditionally love and support my child, “Leelah”, and embrace her.  No question!  When it comes to sexuality, my child being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, this is my child and I will love and support my child.  I would act from my heart even if this challenged my faith. Where does that love and support change?  What if my child was addicted to meth, heroine, crack-cocaine, prescription drugs, or alcohol?  How would I respond then?  Completely different situation because now I am dealing with an addiction that is different than an emotion.  Having dealt with addiction and seen it firsthand, I have come to learn that to enable a behavior is to hurt the person more than you could be helping the person.  I am not one to enable anyone.  Personally, I think we’ve become a society that is failing our children because we are trying to hard to protect them from failure and mistakes.  We can’t shelter our children from the real world.  I feel that we as parents, teachers, coaches, and counselors it is our responsibility to teach our youth and children about personal responsibility and accountability.  Teach them that life isn’t easy.  Life is hard.  Life isn’t fair.  Life will never be fair.  Tough love?  Perhaps!  Put the responsibility where it belongs.  This doesn’t change the fact that I love my child unconditionally, it just changes that I am not going to support the behavior which is a result of the addiction.  This is choices versus consequences. If my child chooses to get help, I am supportive and there through the process every step of the way.  If the addiction is stronger than the desire and my child isn’t getting help and tearing apart the family – stealing, fighting, disrespecting, etc. I will not tolerate that and I will put boundaries on the relationship.  I will let my child hit rock bottom.  You can’t over parent addiction.  Addiction needs the help of professionals and in my opinion it needs to be dealt with in residential care.  I am not supporting the behavior, but this doesn’t change my love which still is unconditional. The point I am trying to make is that as parents we need to look at every situation differently and deal with the situation at hand.  Many families have issues within the walls of their home.  Don’t let your neighbors influence your parenting.  Don’t try and be the almighty perfect family because you’re living a life protected by a facade.  You brought your children in the world and society has an influence on them – the music, media, marketing.  Nature verse nurture, too.  Your faith has an influence on your morals and values, but is that more important that the circumstances at hand?  Sometimes we need to change and pray about it, but what is important here is that our child knows we unconditionally love them no matter what.  The support may never be understood, but that is parenting.  Parenting everyday is never understood. In the case of Leelah Alcorn, I think the demise of her death is very sad and didn’t need to happen.  She didn’t feel love nor she didn’t feel support.  That is sad.  She left saying, “Let my death mean something!”  I want to honor that.  What does her death mean to you as a parent in how you love and support your child?  Whether it is grades, sports, friends, sexuality, drugs, or anything else.  How are you going to show your child your support and love?  How are you going to parent and teach?  What message do you want your child to get?  Parenting is about being a part of your children’s lives and knowing who they are and being there for them in the good times and the bad times.  It’s being their inspiration and the disciplinarian.  It’s listening and offering advice and support.  It’s correcting actions and behaviors, too.  Parenting isn’t easy.  Nobody every said it was.  You will fail and cry, because you did things wrong.  You will laugh and applaud, because you did things right, too.  To judge yourself daily as a parent is to be expecting too much of yourself and trying to be the “Perfect” parent.  You are a family and that is what is most important. In the end, I want my children to know I love them and I’ll support them.  I may not support their choices and decisions, but I will listen.  They need to know that I will give tough love when I have to.  I will not enable them because enabling is setting up our youth, whether our children, our students, our athletes, whomever, for failure and a life of hurt.  I want to be a role model and let my actions speak louder than my parenting.  I want them to be happy, but what does happy really mean?  I want them to be good and to do what is right, but who is to say, “What is really right?”  I hope in the end, my children grow up and become young people that that live a life of meaning, live a life of fulfillment, and are rewarded for who they are, how they live, and in the manner in which they’ve lived – as a result of what I may have taught them. Just my thoughts . . .   Who is Jeff Yalden Jeff Yalden is a Teen and Family Communicator.  A Suicide Prevention Specialist and a Teen Motivational Speaker.  He is the author of “Your Life Matters.”  Jeff is the Host of “The Jeff Yalden Show”, on WMRC 1490 Radio and his Podcast for teens and parents can be found at www.JeffYalden.com/itunes.  Follow Jeff on Social Media @JeffYalden and visit his website at www.JeffYalden.com.  

Texting Acronyms for Parents of Teens

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Warning: Can be shocking to some! Your kid has something to hide CD9: Short for “Code 9,” which means parents are around. KPC: Keeping Parents Clueless MOS: Mom Over Shoulder P911: Parent Alert PAL: Parents Are Listening PAW: Parents Are Watching PIR: Parent In Room POS: Parent Over Shoulder Your kid’s personal information or safety is at risk ASL: Age/Sex/Location F2F: Face to Face. Asking for a meeting or video chat LMIRL: Let’s Meet In Real Life NAZ: Name/Address/ZIP MOOS: Member of the Opposite Sex MOSS: Member of the Same Sex MORF or RUMORF: Male or Female, or Are Your Male or Female? RU/18: Are You Over 18? WUF: Where You From? WYCM: Will You Call Me? WYRN: What’s Your Real Name? Your kid shouldn’t be involved in this 143, 459 or ILU: I love you 1174: Invited to a wild party 420: Marijuana GNOC: Get Naked On Cam GYPO: Get Your Pants Off AMEZRU: I Am Easy, Are You? IWSN: I Want Sex Now KFY or K4Y: Kiss For You KOTL: Kiss On The Lips NIFOC: Nude In Front Of The Computer RUH: Are You Horny? TDTM: Talk Dirty To Me Not every acronym is bad BRB: Be Right Back CWYL: Chat With You Later CYT: See You Tomorrow IMHO: In My Humble Opinion IMNSHO: In My Not So Humble Opinion L8R: Later LMK: Let Me Know NM: Never Mind ROTFL: Rolling On The Floor Laughing SOHF: Sense Of Humor Failure If you’re curious about another acronym that you’ve stumbled across in your kids’ texts or chat, look it up on NetLingo. It has a continually updating list of online acronyms, along with their various meanings and origins. As any parent will tell you, dealing with teenagers and preteens is a fine balancing act. You want to give them freedom to explore, but you also need to keep tabs on what they’re doing. Click here for 5 dangerous apps you don’t know your kid is using. I recommend friending or following your kids on any sites they use. If they know you’re watching, they’re less likely to do something they shouldn’t. Plus, you can keep an eye to make sure they aren’t revealing information they shouldn’t or talking to people who aren’t safe. Of course, you never know what sites they might be using that you don’t know about. That’s where monitoring and tracking apps and software come in handy. You can keep tabs on everything they do online. Just be sure to communicate with your kids about why certain sites are bad so they can grow into responsible digital citizens. In fact, you should start before they’re teens with my 10 Commandments for Kids Online. It’s a contract between you and your child about the do’s and don’ts of our digital life. Jeff Yalden is a youth motivational speaker and celebrity teen and family life coach.  Visit Jeff at www.JeffYalden.com.

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