If My Parents Only Knew

I had the opportunity to attend an event called If My Parents Only Knew at Valhalla High School on September 26th. This is the second event that Valhalla has had although it is modeled after one that is one in Poway Unified that has been put on for the last seven years. The event was three hours long in total and both students and families were invited to attend. The first hour was a resource fair. The program partnered with San Diego Youth Services, Mending Matters, County of SD Health and Human Services, Eric Paredes Save a Life Foundation, Sandy Hook Promise, NAMI, Rady Children’s Hospital, McGrath Family YMCA, and AFSP. Each of these community resources had a table set up with materials to hand out to families and handouts and other materials that they could take home with them. Following the resource fair, there were ten breakout sessions that families could choose from. There was enough time for each family to choose two for the evening. The breakout sessions included Pressure of Social Media, Making the Grade (pressure to get good grades), Suicide Prevention, Talk with Your Ears, Managing and Balancing Expectations, Trends in Drug Use, #KnowNoStigma, A Mother’s Story: Navigating Through a Child’s Mental Health Challenge, How I Deal with Bullying/Harassment, and Healthy Relationships. It was amazing that each individual session had a panel of students who have been directly impacted by the topic and were willing to offer their perspective and shed light to the adults in the room about what their experience has been like.

            The first session I attended was Suicide Prevention, which was presented by Chuck Price. Mr. Price is a Chaplain of the Coronado Police Department and is part of the crisis negotiating team. It was interesting and helpful for me to be able to listen to how he talked to parents about how they can talk to their students and to hear the questions that parents had. It was also my first opportunity to hear directly from the students what the experience was like for them and what they felt like they most needed for support. Both the students and Mr. Price discussed the importance of asking the students directly if they have had thoughts of suicide. He also briefly went over how to talk to someone “down off the ledge” both literally and figuratively. He said we should first try and build rapport and gain the persons trust and then look for hooks and triggers (mostly resiliency factors) to try and get to the hope phase.  One of the students described her experience of suicide ideation as drowning in a pool and trying to splash and scream but feeling so far underwater that they can’t. It is crucial for us as school counselors and teachers to be consistently checking in with students. The signs of self-harm and suicide ideation can manifest in many different ways and often they are difficult to recognize. The student described that the first time someone asked her if she was having suicidal thoughts she felt relieved and felt like there was someone who cared and who could help to pull her out of the water.

            A really powerful segment of the resource fair was a huge poster titled If My Student Only Knew (pictured below) this provided a space for parents and family members to leave post-it messages for their students letting them know how they felt about them. Some of the most powerful ones I read were centered around how badly parents wanted to be a support system for their student and wished they knew how to be.

            Overall, I was extremely impressed by this event. It is held twice a year so that students and families have the opportunity to attend a multitude of sessions during their four years at the school. The turnout and the level of participation in the breakout studies impressed me as well. While the techniques that were described here were intended for high school age students, they would also be appropriate for all ages. These techniques are appropriate for all grades, genders, and the information should be available to all students as it is highly likely that they or someone in their life will have some sort of experience with suicide ideation.