CAPITAL REGION, NY (WRGB) — As youth mental health concerns continue to rise across the Capital Region, a new program is working to address gaps in care.
Back in March, Saint Anne’s Institute in Albany opened the Beacon Crisis Residence, a new program designed to support young people experiencing mental health challenges. The need is significant: according to a New York State PTA report, 50 percent of mental illness begins at age 14.
Steve Simonds, a coach with Teens 2 Success, says one quality matters most when it comes to helping kids succeed. “The most important part of success is not intelligence or where you went to college or anything else. It’s resilience,” Simonds said.
He defined resilience as “the ability to rebound from defeat,” adding that “that’s the big issue that that needs to be focused on.”
Simonds said one obstacle to building resilience is how some children are being raised. “One of the things that we find is that today’s kids are too impacted by too much helicopter parenting, where the parent does everything for the child and the child never fails or falls or is defeated,” he explained.
According to Simonds, that lack of failure can hold kids back. “What that leads to then is that they never grow beyond that,” he said, adding that “it’s my contention that I think that helicopter parenting has been around a lot longer than we thought, before it was labeled as such.”
Resilience, Simonds said, doesn’t develop overnight. “The key issue in building resilience is it’s a habit. It’s a habit change. And that takes time,” he said.
He encouraged parents to be intentional about how they praise their children. “The best way to approach that is by complementing your child or your teenager at what they did and not using, adding the ‘yeah, but’ thing,” Simonds said, noting that “far too often we’re liable to say to our kids, ‘that was pretty good, but,’ and the minute you insert the ‘but,’ it deflates the entire compliment.”
When it comes to communication, Simonds promotes a strategy he calls “ask, don’t tell.” “I’ve realized in coaching parents a long time ago that teenagers are prone to argue anything,” he said.
He explained that brain development plays a role. “What’s happened is that as their brain has matured now, they see things more idealistically and they want to argue everything,” Simonds said.
Instead of giving directives, Simonds advises parents to ask questions and listen. “So to preempt that, what I suggested was don’t tell them anything, but ask them — kind of the Socratic method — if you ask them and then listen,” he said.
He said parents often notice immediate benefits. “I found parents that I’ve suggested this to are amazed at how much it improves their communication process,” Simonds said.
Preparation is key, he added. “The key issue is be prepared, not argumentative, not challenging, just gentle information gathering.”
Simonds also encouraged parents to think ahead about how their teens might respond. “One of the things that I found in this area is I tell parents all the time to anticipate what your teen is going to say,” he said.
When parents push back, Simonds offers a comparison. “To which I then say, is your spouse predictable? Yeah. Well, how long have you had this teenager that they’re not predictable?” he said, adding, “of course they’re predictable and they’re usually no more than three responses to any question you ask. So why not prepare for all three?”