By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
Your kid comes home from school and you ask them what they did today and they say "Nothing."
You ask to talk, and they roll their eyes and say "Whatever."
A group in Hays is trying to demystify youth mental health and help parents better communicate with their kids.
The Green Ribbon Hays project led the second in what will be a series of conversations about youth mental health at the Hays Public Library Wednesday night. They focused Wednesday on helpings kids feel connected and understood.
"The process of understanding your kids deserves time and energy whatever kids you are responsible for," said Patrick McGinnis, facilitator. "You can't say it's someone else's problem. I believe it's our problem to figure it out."
It is the quality of our relationships that best predicts our lifelong happiness, McGinnis said.
"You will not find or create happiness for your kids or the people involved in your life if they don't have quality relationships," he said. "You won't do it with great vacations with all of the money in the world with a great education with achieving everything they want to do.
"All the measures show that if there are not positive communicative, supportive relationships in a person's life, they won't be happy."
McGinnis stressed key elements in connecting with kids. They include:
• Acknowledging their feelings
• Empathizing with them
• Making them feel seen, heard and valued
• Giving hugs
• Playing together (Do something that they enjoy.)
• Giving your full attention (face-to-face time with no phones)
• Having a daily debrief (with questions other than How was your day?)
The group discussed how specifically you could do these things with your kids.
You can acknowledge feelings by mirroring their body language and emotional intensity. McGinnis said we often screw up with kids by minimizing what they are feeling. Try to validate their feelings, he said.
"Start out the conversation by saying it's OK to feel what you feel," he said.
Also, realize you can't always fix the problem, he said.
"Dialogue was my revelation in life—when I realized I didn't have to get a conversation to an ending point," he said. "I didn't have to solve a problem in a conversation."
'Kids need a safe place to lose it'
Showing empathy might be saying "If I were in that situation, I would have felt really mad, how do you feel?" Kyle Carlin, director of the local special education co-op and member of the Green Ribbon project, said.
"If they are in a spot where they are mad and truly angry and truly frustrated, they're not thinking. It won't do you any good. You cannot move them to logical thought because it's like your 4-year-old having a tantrum," McGinnis said.
"You've got to let them have time to reset," he said.
McGinnis said you need to give kids a safe place to lose it and then after they are able to calm down and refocus, you can move on to solutions.
The group talked about making time and spaces for kids to be seen, heard and valued. One mother said she used to take her kids for cruises. They would go get a Coke and go for a drive.
"When they don't have to make eye contact with you, they share a lot," she said. "We had rules. Nothing was off-limits on the cruise. You could talk about whatever you wanted to on the cruise. It was hard sometimes, but I have kids who are 23 and 24 and they still like cruises."
It was just a brussels sprouts kind of day
For younger kids, McGinnis suggested giving kids tools to tell you how they feel rather than forcing them to use adult language.
You might have a kid who uses their favorite or worst food to tell you how their day went. It was a pizza day or it was a brussels sprouts day.
Someone also suggested a thumbs up or thumbs down.
You can also say "What I hear you saying is this ...," one group member said. "If they say yeah at the end of it at least I know there's been a connection."
When it came to playing together, McGinnis admitted he didn't know what his kids liked and he certainly didn't want to do it.
"I started to realize that means they are building a language without you in it," he said. "You will never learn how to talk it. It will irritate you when they speak of it because they are creating a whole language outside of your scope. You told them, 'I don't care about that.'"
Even babies know when your neglecting them for your phone
Even infants will stop trying to get your attention if you continue to ignore them, McGinnis said.
"It can be developed early. It can be developed before they are 1 year old. If they are attempting to get your attention and you are on your phone, it doesn't take but a minute and they will stop trying to get your attention." he said.
"If it's true for a 10 month old, it's definitely true for a 13-year-old."
One member of the group said he sees the same thing with his Golden Retriever. If he and his wife are on their phones, she will be tearing stuff up.
"She will growl at you. She will bark at you. You put the phones away, and she's fine. She'll lie on the ground next to you. She doesn't care," he said. "If we're not connected to the animal, we're not connected to each other."
One of the members of the group said she struggles to get students at the middle school to look up even when she is smiling and eager to greet them.
Face-to-face contact lowers blood pressure. It is connected to longevity, and health, McGinnis said
"This effort is running counter-culture," McGinnis said of trying to bring people together to make in-person connections.
He said we have to practice.
"It's like shooting a basketball," he said. "People aren't comfortable with it. It's going to feel weird."
For the debrief, McGinnis said his family talked about highs and lows from the day at dinner with no limit on how many highs you could talk about.
Carlin said he found he had to vary his debrief questions with his son. When he started to get the same response, several days in a row, it was time to switch things up.
The group will have further discussions on youth mental health every two months. In the alternating months, the group will meet for shorter group discussions. The next group discussion will be from 7 to 7:45 p.m. April 26 at the Hays Public Library. McGinnis urged members of the public to suggest topics they would like addressed in the future.
You can follow the group on Facebook or
McGinnis is also considering creating a general parent support group if there is interest.
If you need to speak to someone right away about a mental health issue, call High Plains Mental Health Center 24/7 crisis line at 1-800-432-0333.