Back-to-School or Not?

Every year in August, we as parents and teachers begin the ritual of preparing our teens for going back to school. Usually this entails purchasing school supplies, new shoes to accommodate the growth of their feet, setting up rules for safe Internet use, establishing good sleep habits, and for gearing up for sports, performing arts, and science clubs.

To start up the school year, guidance counselors are busy setting up the course work for each student in prep for college entry. Teachers are preparing their curricula to optimize their students’ growth and development to learn. These preps are effective and may work for many teens but not for all, as some fall through the cracks of the educational wall because of lack of skillsets that could help them thrive.

What We Know

For example, we know that the most recent data indicate that the overall US high school dropout rate for those 16-24 years of age is 5.3 percent. This figure represents individuals not enrolled in school and without a high school credential. This has long-term consequences in lower employment, lower lifetime wages, high use of alcohol and drugs, and higher incidences of crime.

Another fact we know is that we live in a tumultuous world, where there are wars, poverty, traumas, and high rates of mental disorders for our population of Gen Zs (born between 1997-2012) where 42 percent were diagnosed with a mental health condition and 90 percent said they did not feel they were set up for success. Evidence of this is seen with 60 percent of college students in a study admitting they have mental health issues, and with suicide being a leading cause of death in college.

What We Don’t Know

In our society, we neglect the fact that for some teens returning to school can be stressful and filled with anxiety that can lead to ER visits for mental health services that don’t exist because of low resources. We overlook gun violence, the leading cause of death of children 1-19, as if shooting incidents are normal events that we must prepare for. We obfuscate the issues that exist thinking that tertiary measures like installation of Narcan boxes in our schools to prevent overdose or suicide hot lines will save our children. Our focus is on treatment of mental illness rather than on prevention of it.

What adds to our US problems is that we tend to discredit our teens, even to a point where I heard an adolescent psychiatrist say to a group of parents that it is an oxymoron to think that our teens even have brains. This is especially true when focusing solely on their erratic or irresponsible behaviors. One challenge we have as parents is that at one point, we think of them as children and the next moment we evaluate their performances as if they are adults. Suffice it to say, they are neither. Adults and parents seem to be unaware of the brain development of teens and why peer relationships are important to them and why they have not yet developed executive functioning skillsets, which lag behind in humans until the age of 25.

We, as adults, seem to have lost our way with 1 in 5 of us having a mental disorder. As a consequence, we do not give our teens the emotional support and the skillsets to help them cope and become resilient in the face of adversity so they can grow and thrive. For me, this is a waste of our natural resources of our young people and does not serve us well as a nation. This is why, in my book, Wrestling Through Adversity, I propose a paradigm shift of our mental health care system that is based on my work and years of research with teen clients.

Included in my proposal as a clinician is to encourage belief in our teenagers, who are equipped with the natural ability to help themselves overcome adversity and build resilience when nurtured and guided on how to use their own innate Mind Power. This is based on neuroscientific facts that teens undergo a natural growth and development process and have amazing brains. This expansion of connections between the right- and left hemispheres in a whole -brained process enhances the ability to visualize and to understand metaphors, which are major ways to access the subconscious mind, where all knowledge and memories are stored.

Parents tell me that they don’t know what to do to help their teens after school shootings, or after they fail in sports or academically. My role is to teach them through the use of Mindful Toughness® skillsets I developed to learn how to cope and to show their teens to do the same. These are portable skillsets that include self-hypnosis, are easily learned and used, are drug-free, and are as natural and free as the air we breathe, once learned. The teenagers I work with love to learn and use them to get ahead, and ask: Why didn’t anyone tell me about them before?”

A fact relevant to parenting is that you don’t need to become a rocket scientist or have a PhD, and you don’t need to be wealthy or be a CEO to raise healthy and productive teens who are well balanced. You just need to be present long-term and supportive both at home and in the community, as well as to commit to teaching young people as early as possible to go beyond the ordinary to the extraordinary by using Mind Power available to us all to win in life as explained below in my parental tips to help teens to return to school in the fall.

10 Tips to Help Your Teen Navigate Going Back to School

1. Be mindful that you, as a parent, are a role model and what you say and do will negatively or positively be reflected in your teen’s behavior.
2. Be aware that when you are anxious, your teen will pick up your distress through empathic transmission of anxiety, so work through your issues before addressing theirs.
3. Place yourself in your teen’s shoes, so you can understand what it feels like to be them. Relate honestly using their own language and encourage them to talk to you.
4. Create a routine before the start of school, to help your teen get back on track with sleep patterns, healthy meals, study skills, and homework assignments.
5. Communicate in an open, judgement-free way that builds confidence and reduces stress.
6. Learn self-hypnosis and teach your young people how to get in the Zone while taking tests, meeting new people, performing in a band, or in a sport on the playing field.
7. Teach them simple breathing exercises to reboot and bounce back when stressed out.
8. Be a model for Positive Self-Talk and show them how to cancel out negative words and substitute positive ones.
9. Teach your young people Mental Recall so they can take a positive experience from the past and bring it forward to the present moment through a power word.
10. Use a feedback loop to show your kids how to improve performances by evaluating objectively what they did, how it worked out, and what needs changing. Use yourselves as an example.

Learn More

You can learn more about my peak performance coaching practice on my website, https://www.idealperformance.net and about my book: Wrestling Through Adversity: Empowering Children, Teens, & Young Adults To Win In Life, on https://www.drchristinesilverstein.com.

The book is available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle and Audiobook. It contains other case stories of interest from my practice and details on how to use Mindful Toughness® skillsets to improve your performance and meet your goals.

I invite you to follow me on my Facebook page, The Summit Center for Ideal Performance and subscribe to my educational YouTube channel, The Young Navigator, to meet me face-to-face. Please download my free eBook: Unlocking Your Child’s Potential: Six Game-Changing Pointers for Sports Success.