Austin Scholar #16: Your Teen's Mental Health Knowledge Shouldn't Come From a Stranger on Reddit
Answering Mental Health FAQs
Hey, y'all!
Welcome to the Austin Scholar newsletter!
For my returning subscribers, I have a new job! Here is what my awesome new boss wrote about me.
David has set some high expectations, but I’m excited to work hard at such a great opportunity. Also, please keep sending me feedback so that the weekly Austin Scholar newsletters live up to your expectations.
For my new subscribers who came from Monday Musings, these are a few of my previous newsletters so you can learn a bit more about me.
Austin Scholar #9: The Accounting Disaster of Sixth Grade – My favorite article :)
Austin Scholar #1: What School Do You Go To? – Foundational background with a prescient call-out to David Perell
Austin Scholar #6: Teenagers Need To Take Control of Their Education – Your relationship with your teen will thank you
Austin Scholar #3: The Sheep God of Catan – Fun, and liked by a SpaceX board member
This week from Austin Scholar...
Where we are now: How my relationship with my parents has improved
Answering FAQs about teen mental health
A letter to the teens
Because today is the first of June, this is the last newsletter in the Mental Health Awareness Month series. In the most recent newsletter of this series, I talked about a lot of the struggles that my parents and I had to work through in order to improve communication with each other. In this newsletter, I will answer some FAQs about teen mental health and at the end, a letter to teenagers, so you should totally send this newsletter to your kid.
In case you missed last week’s disclaimers: I am not a therapist. I am not saying I am a therapist. I am not diagnosing your children. My hope is to draw from my own experiences and the stories of my friends to give y’all a view into the darker parts of a teenager’s mind.
In next week’s newsletter, I’ll talk about Pride Month and what that means for a lot of LGBTQ+ teenagers, so stay tuned for that.
Austin’s Anecdote
I’m not going to lie: I used to believe that I would never be able to have a great connection with my mom. Her interests just seemed to align more with my little sister’s, not mine. They seemed to be able to talk about shopping and fashion for hours, and they are both a lot more extroverted and social than I am.
I could just never seem to create that relationship with my mom that I saw in Gilmore Girls.
When we would do things together, I seemed to always find a way to complain about them. For example, my mom and I are a part of NCL, a mother-daughter volunteer organization. Unfortunately, one part of NCL is group meetings with other teenagers who are in my age group. I hated these meetings. With a passion. All the other girls went to the local high school and knew each other, but I went to Alpha, so I always felt awkward and ended up standing to the side.
I really did not like these group things and would complain for hours before and after each meeting. My mom would sit in the car and listen as I ranted and told her that I wanted to quit NCL, if only to escape these stupid meetings.
A couple of years in (yes– this went on for years. Mom, I’m so sorry.), it was my sister’s turn to go to an NCL meeting.
And wow, my perspective completely changed.
As I listened to my mom and sister argue about NCL, I realized that all my mom wanted was to find some way to spend time with us. And my sister and I just spent the entire time complaining.
It was eye-opening for me, and I realized that if I wanted my relationship with my mom to improve, I had to take steps to work on myself (and my complaining).
After witnessing The NCL Argument for myself, while I wasn’t perfect, I tried my best to stop complaining about the meetings and instead focus on the time I was spending with my mom. And on the days where there were particularly… frustrating meetings, I would complain with her, not at her.
And while I was working on my criticism, my mom began to talk to me about my own interests and tried her best to converse about baseball and Marvel with me.
Now, I can confidently say that my mom is one of my best friends, and we pride ourselves on being the only responsible people in our apartment.
On to my dad!
I don’t know if you could tell from my previous newsletters, but my dad and I have always had a pretty… interesting relationship. I wanted to be just like him and I spent every day trying to impress him and make sure that he would be proud of me.
While I logically knew that he loved me no matter what, he wasn’t always the best at showing it.
For years, I had put my self-worth into what my dad thought of me, and exhausted myself trying to make myself “good enough” for him to love me.
Our relationship had pretty much been doomed for a while. I’d come up with a mile-long list of impossible achievements that I believed I needed to accomplish for my dad to be proud of me.
For our relationship to begin to improve, I’ve had to work on my self-esteem and make sure that I feel good about myself because of me, not my dad.
Once I was able to do that, I wrote my dad a letter (writing is easier for me than talking) explaining to him how I’d been feeling.
I immediately noticed a difference. He started making sure to tell me at least once a day that he loved me and was proud of me. Even when he didn’t, I stopped spiraling into an “I’m not good enough” loop.
Two years ago, I thought it would be impossible for me to ever have a good relationship with my parents.
Look at me now.
I’m so proud of the work that both my parents and I have done to improve our relationship.
Answering Mental Health FAQs
Here are five questions that I received from parents about teen mental health and in this section, I will provide my answers to these FAQs.
Will exposing my kid to all these mental health resources just make them more prone to mental health issues?
Short answer: no. Because of social media and the “gen-z culture,” your teenager is going to find out about (or have an experience with) mental health issues. Whether they see an Instagram post with the caption “gonna kms” or overhear girls in the bathroom talking about how they stopped eating dinner, learning about mental health issues is inevitable.
I believe it is crucial for teenagers to have a positive first experience with mental health. Sitting them down and giving them resources and starting the conversation in a positive manner can help their understanding of mental health come from a place of safety and love, not a stranger on Reddit.
How do I make sure that my kid isn’t hiding mental health issues from me?
I don’t think that you can ever be 100% certain that your kid is or isn’t hiding how they are feeling. All you can do is be there for them and let them know that you are there. Short of forcing your teen to talk to you for two hours every single day (like my own experience I shared in Austin Scholar #15), it’s hard to make your teen talk to you. Being open and non-judgemental at all times is a great way to encourage your teen to feel comfortable sharing how they feel.
If you start noticing warning signs, see if your teen would be willing to talk to a professional – or at least someone who isn’t their parent.
Coming to a parent is really scary, and I always found it easier to talk to other adults because I wasn’t as worried about their reactions. Making sure that your teenager has other adults that they trust in their life can help them feel supported, loved, and more willing to go talk to an adult about what’s going on.
I'm trying to make myself available to really listen to my child, but they don't seem to want to talk to me. What should I do?
This can be pretty hard because forcing your teen to talk to you (as I explained in my last newsletter) usually ends up as a negative experience. There are two things that you can do to help: