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Family Mental Health
This list of resources from The Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds may be helpful as you consider how to make your summer a healthy one.
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What a summer can do
A typical summer offers respite from the plentiful homework, packed schedule, and other stresses teens face during the school year. As school ends, excitement builds: for freedom, nice weather, new adventures, and old traditions.
As the world continues to adjust to the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic, this e-journal will discuss ways in which parents and other adults engaged with students can support them during a potentially atypical summer.
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A socially-distanced summer
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed many of our exciting plans for summer. For teens, this long-anticipated season may now include anxiety about what's to come, extended separation from friends, and grief over year-end rituals gone uncelebrated. New stress follows, which can lead to increased risk for unhealthy decision-making.
Teens consistently tell FCD Prevention Specialists that stress is a top reason they may choose to use alcohol and other drugs. Compared to an adult response to stress, teens' emotionally driven brains make it more likely that their stress will feel unmanageable to them
. We must help them to find healthy coping strategies to manage that stress.
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When summer is a bummer
With patience and understanding, we can start supporting the young people in our lives who may be struggling to adjust healthfully to this summer of uncertainty:
Listen First.
By listening to teens share what's stressful for them now, and validating that stress, we can help young people address specific stressors that may put them at a higher -risk for alcohol and other drug use. Listening also helps us know what questions to ask our teens about their stress. By asking these questions, we work with teens to figure out what they need and how to access supports to manage their stress in healthy ways.
Set a schedule.
Allow teens down time while also highlighting the importance of a schedule. Help them set a schedule that includes multiple activities based on the young person's interests. These can include art, reading, physically-distanced athletics, and virtual meetups with friends.
Keep students learning
. Humans crave growth. Learning new skills and information increases our awareness of the world and our prosocial identity within it, which is a protective factor against substance misuse. There are many social, scientific, political, economic, and environmental issues for the next generation to explore at this moment in history. Encourage your students to learn more about an area of life that interests them. Through formal research, engagement with appropriate pop culture, and deep discussions with friends and family, kids can connect and contribute to their world in meaningful ways.
Share your stress busters.
What have you learned about yourself and managing stress during this time? Take a moment to talk with young people about the options and activities that now bring you relief. When appropriate, invite the teens in your life to try out these stress relievers for themselves! Now more than ever, young people are looking to adults to observe how we manage stress. Pay forward to them what has worked for you.
Make meals the transition.
When we're home every day, the days can feel monotonous and blurred. Consider using meals as marked transitions "between" different aspects of life for teens. For example, self-care time might happen before breakfast, hobby time between breakfast and lunch, social time between lunch and a snack, chore time before dinner, and evening relaxation to follow the last meal of the day.
Structure and predictability will ease the passing of time and give teens a way to anticipate each day.
Add physically distanced "healthy highs."
At FCD Prevention Works, our Prevention Specialists often discuss the perks and protections of a teen's summer spent developing new hobbies and talents, building enduring relationships, and having fun in alcohol-and-other-drug-free ways. An active summertime can still be a key part of keeping healthy kids healthy
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The risks of alcohol and other drug use over the summer
According to the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, more first-time use of nicotine, marijuana, and alcohol occurs during the months of June and July than in any other time period each year.
With safer-at-home guidelines in place, some adults may not be concerned about teen alcohol and other drug use this summer. For some teens, more time at home will mean greater supervision.
While supervision is one protective factor, it may not be enough to prevent stressed young people from making unhealthy choices. Teenagers tend to value instantaneous rewards more than adults. As they struggle to abide by the inconsistent pace of reopening, teens may grow dejected. Isolation, depression, apathy, and boredom - just like stress - are all reasons why teens report using alcohol or other drugs.
To help prevent this use:
Continue to converse with teens about your hope and expectation that they remain alcohol or other drug free. Talk often about how important it is that, when they are feeling down, they can continue to make daily healthy choices. Then support those healthy highs.
Limit isolation in the bedroom. It's normal for teens to want autonomy and privacy. Honor and encourage some time for teens to veg out in their room to listen to music, message friends, or browse the internet. Appropriately limit that time each day and help teens be a part of a greater family life for the majority of the time.
Find the silver lining. Summer 2020 will not meet many of our initial expectations for it. Yet, this an opportunity to try new things, start new traditions, and make new meaning while accepting the loss of what once was normal. Help teens make their way with as much hope and opportunity for health as possible.
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A summer to remember
In all likelihood, young people will especially remember the summer of 2020. During this time, teens will have their own challenges, their own viewpoints, and their own relationship with alcohol and other drug use or non-use. Wherever they are, keep your students engaged in healthy options. Keep listening to them, and just as important, keep modeling healthy ways in which we can all get through this together.
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About the Author
Katie Greeley
joined FCD in 2016 and is a Senior Prevention Specialist and Supervising Field Officer. She holds a Master's degree in Social Work from The University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration. Katie is a Licensed Social Worker and Certified Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Counselor. She recently assisted in the development of the new Substance Use Treatment and Prevention Program in the Division of Adolescent Medicine for the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago.
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