Dr. Christine M. Silverstein

Adapted from: Wrestling Through Adversity

Taking the frost out of the bite

During a very frosty winter’s day, a colleague of mine, who is an animal activist, heard the loud cry of a bird outside her home, and since it persisted for some time, out of curiosity, she opened her front door and looked outside to investigate the situation. There on a tree she found a white-breasted nuthatch, which is a small bird with a large head, almost no neck, and a short tail.

The nuthatch was clinging to the bark, which was snow covered. Since nuthatches prefer deciduous trees and eat insects from them in the summer and seeds in the winter, my colleague concluded that the bird was not able to secure enough food to eat in the icy freezing conditions. She readily looked in her kitchen pantry and refrigerator and found nuts, blueberries, and peanut butter, which she spread on a pinecone for the bird to eat.

Afterwards, she placed the food on a small tray under the lowest branches of the tree to hide it from the much larger crows perched high above and went back inside, so the bird could descend the tree trunk and eat the food without fear.

Sure enough, the bird did just that as my colleague watched from her window with anticipation and joy. Soon other birds came to eat the winter feast as well. My colleague believes she saved the birds’ lives just in the nick of time because without her timely intervention, they would have succumbed to the frost and died.

Fortunately, birdwatchers, like my colleague, take the responsibility to be on the lookout to help birds in distress, but first they have to be aware of the situation, hear their cries, and know what to do unencumbered so they can help them. Why is this important? Birds, who are sensitive to pollutants and toxins, serve as an early warning system to let us know that something is wrong in the environment.

Birds are like people

Birds and humans are alike in their brains, body temperature, and hearts, and like birders, we, as human caretakers, have a duty to look out for the welfare of our children, teens, and young adults, who may not only be crying out for food or drink on a cold winter’s day but are hurting from mental distress with high rates of depression, anxiety, drug addiction, and suicide. They’re barometers that warn us what’s wrong in America during a mental health crisis, but we ignore their call.

Or worse yet, we turn a blind eye towards them because either we do not know what to do, or we are too devastated grappling with our own stressors to oversee the needs of others.

This occurs, in part, because of a lack of cohesiveness in our society, even though the words of the 1968 song, “Everday People” by Sly & The Family Stone, remind us that no matter what group we’re in—Yellow, black, brown, red, or while—“We got to live together” within our families, our professions, our workplaces, and our communities.

Societal loneliness is rampant

Often we feel alone in a conversation. Perhaps you, as parents and caregivers, are grappling with personal struggles that negatively impact the mental health of your young people during catastrophic events, such as terrorist attacks, wars, economic downturns, school shootings, fires, floods, and other natural disasters that limit their growth and development and cause trauma.

To make things seem even more dire, maybe you’ve heard “Table Talk” messages from the U.S. President who endeavors to grapple with inflation, the high prices of gasoline and housing, as well as the increased costs of groceries, parental isolation, difficulty managing social media, and cultural pressures. You may work two jobs just to make ends meet, like my dad did to raise five children, and something’s got to give before the ventless pressure cooker implodes.

At times you may find yourselves in situations you did not create, and you are overwhelmed with our mental healthcare system that is outdated, being stuck in the 17^th century with the philosophy of Rene Descartes who said the mind and body are separate—a model that continues to exist in our “modern” medical system.

This is why you may receive care for your mind and mental health in a separate facility than that for your body in a hospital or emergency room. This is why your teens may have to wait hours, days, or even months to get the care they need after attempting suicide, like the cases I wrote about in my book: Wrestling Through Adversity: Empowering Children, Teens, & Young Adults to Win in Life.

A U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory: A pressure relief valve?  

Do you know that the ex-U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy’s Advisory published in 2024 titled “Parents Under Pressure” broaches, in a new way, such topics as the current state of parental stress and well-being and the relationship between parental stress and mental health? It also discusses actions parents can take to improve their mental health and that of their young people.

In this Advisory, Dr. Murthy converses frankly about his challenges with being a parent and the joys of fatherhood as well as the challenges he faces because kids don’t come with instructional manuals. He admits that the mental health of parents is directly linked to that of their children.

Yet, in modern societies, parenting is often portrayed as a less important, less valued pursuit, but Dr. Murthy calls raising children “sacred work.” However, not everyone thinks so highly of parenthood and its responsibilities or believes that the stressors parents face and how they handle them impacts their children’s mental well-being in a negative or positive way.

According to the Advisory, parental mental health issues, such as mental disorders, can have far-reaching and profound implications for children, families, and society, and this is why the Advisory report directs a new conversation to cultivate a culture for parents and caregivers to thrive.

Some items suggested in the Advisory are to:

• Promote and expand funding to support parents
• Equip parents and caregivers with resources to address parental stressors
• Create opportunities to cultivate supportive social connections among parents
• Elevate the voices of parents to shape community programs and investments
• Prioritize preventive measures

These directives the Surgeon General has proposed are more supportive of the circumstances that parents find themselves in today’s world than in the past. However, are they enough to build resilience to manage the adversity they face? To answer this question, consider these facts: The implementation of these strategies is in the beginning stages of development, resources are sparce currently, funding is inadequate, and mental health care professionals trained in knowing how to help young people are few, since large numbers are leaving or retiring from their professions.

The Advisory focuses on secondary prevention, which is the screening of parents and caregivers for mental health consultation after they are already facing the challenges of mental illness. However, we must also consider how to promote primary prevention, where parents and children learn how to bounce back from adversity by using what I call Mindful Toughness® skill sets that they can learn from birth to use the power of their minds, to gain resilience, and to maintain healthy growth and development in body, mind, and spirit.

What is the missing piece?

One major caveat today that we tend to overlook when talking about primary prevention in early childhood is encompassed in a quote from a Dutch philosopher, Erasmus, who reminded us in the 1500s, that: “Prevention is better than cure.” Dr. Wanjiku Njoroge, an infant psychiatrist and medical director at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) is aligned in her thinking with his philosophy because she already sees children ages zero to five that are exhibiting behavioral challenges, such as depression, anxiety, and trauma.

Dr. Njoroge espouses that although it is hard to comprehend that 3- or 4- or 5-year-old children already exhibit signs of mental health issues, she confirms they do. Therefore, she posits that addressing these issues early can have lifelong implications because 90 percent of the human brain develops in the first five years of life and about 75 percent within the first three years.

So, with sound judgement Dr. Njoroge asks this question: Why do we wait until kids are six years old and are already exhibiting signs of mental disorders, when we can use the time to build resilience and help our young people thrive earlier? Here in lies the missing piece of the puzzle!

Listening from a Bird’s Eye View

Like my colleague who saved the life of the white-breasted nuthatch because she heard the cries, knew what to do to help it, and took action, you, too, can be proactive and begin to show your children how to help themselves by first learning about yourselves as adults through self-exploration, by resolving the issues from your past that block your success, and by knowing how to access the power of your mind with Mindful Toughness® skill sets that are natural, cost-effective, portable, and drug-free for you and your kids. To find out more information on this topic of mental wellness, you’re invited to subscribe to my YouTube Channel “The Young Navigator,” and to visit my websites: drchristinesilverstein.com and idealperformance.net where you can view: “Do kids come with an instruction manual for parents?”