Episode 3: The Parent, Family Role in Student Lives

Mar 16

When it comes to mental health and substance misuse, students are suffering. But parents aren't doing much better. That's why, although The Mayo Lab's schools program is aimed at students, the team hopes to reach their parents, too. By looking critically at their own wellbeing and relationship to substances, parents have the opportunity to take better care of themselves and have more authentic conversations with their children.

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David Magee: I am David Magee and this is The Mayo Lab Podcast.
I'm often asked, when I'm traveling around and speaking in schools or different engagements, people ask me, "Hey, I'm sure you've heard some decent ideas now. How do you think we're going to solve this teen substance misuse problem?" And usually I look back at them because usually that's a parent, and I say, "Well, it starts right here with you."
Because look, I tell parents, "I don't mean to put you in the cross hairs but I speak from experience because I made a lot of mistakes." And I was a parent and all three of my children, a daughter struggled with eating disorder, two sons really struggled with substance use disorder, one of them died, one of them nearly died but, by the way, he found more than a decade of sobriety, in large part because I recognized the significance of my role in the situation, and he tells me all the time how much it helped.
So when we talk about, look, we have The Thomas Hayes Mayo Lab that's inside The William Magee Institute for Student Wellbeing at the University of Mississippi. The work we do, you think, "Okay, we're identified as student wellbeing." But let me be clear for anyone listening, when we talk about students, that means we have to be willing and ready to work through the entire student ecosystem and that starts largely with parents.
Alexis Lee, one thing we know is that the research is showing there is a changing role inside families about who's impacted by substance misuse issues. Increasingly, they're not the easy boundaries you think you can go put your finger on.
Alexis Lee: They're not. Traditionally, people have thought that kids who grew up in a single parent household whose parents were divorced, they're going to have more substance use disorders run into more big T traumas or little T traumas. However, recent studies have shown that it's flipped. Kids who are coming from parents who are still married together, households who are middle upper class, are having the most issues with substance misuse in eating disorders and all these other things and I think we can talk about, there's a lot of things that are going into that.
Magee: I've seen the shift across this country and, look, people used to look to an impoverished neighborhood. Now, I never believed this and it never made sense to me, but they're stereotypes. People could look to an impoverished neighborhood where maybe some signs of substance misuse were more visible. They have this problem. The fact of the matter is this issue is pervasive across all lines of humans. Economics, race, it knows not a single boundary.
And so families, the role of the parent, families that are being impacted by this, we're at a very critical moment. And so Dr. Meagen Rosenthal, we're so thankful you are with us on this journey at The Mayo Lab and The William Magee Institute for Student Wellbeing and you helped me get there early on.
I remember when we first started talking about where do we begin this? I remember you saying, "We have to look at the entire student ecosystem. You can't really help students if you don't dig in to everybody in their life."
And there's nobody more prominent in most instances than a parent and/or a guardian.
Dr. Meagen Rosenthal: And I think that you talk a lot about this in your book, Dear William, that we don't give ourselves as parents enough credit in that space. The kids are watching us, they're watching all of the time.
And so out of one side of our mouth to our teens, we're saying, "Put your device down, it's dinner time. Get off Instagram," blah, blah, blah. But what are we doing? We're answering text messages at the same time from work.
Magee: Or Facebooking Aunt Nancy.
Dr. Rosenthal: Right. And so our kids are watching us and they're going, "Wait, what? I don't get it. You're doing this and I'm not okay to do this, but you're doing this." And you think about that as it relates to all of those different kinds of things. We want the best for our kids. Deep down on our hearts we want them to have better than what we did.
And so in our world right now, better means working harder, working longer, making those kinds of sacrifices and what do we do when we make those kinds of sacrifices? When we're not getting enough sleep, we're not eating well, we're not exercising, we're doing all that kind of thing. Well, substances come up and say, "Here's the solution to that problem."
And so our kids are watching us do these kind of things, unintentionally, but they're watching us. And so how do we then come in with The William Magee Institute and The Mayo Lab to say to our children, "You all need to do better," but we're not talking to parents at the same time. We're not talking to our communities at the same time.
This stuff is all connected and the only way we solve this problem is by taking little chunks out of each of those different kind of concentric circles that come out from our students.
Magee: You mentioned my memoir, Dear William, and there is a scene that's in the book. It's all true, every word in that book is true, but I say a scene because it's a still a memoir and a creative work. So there's a scene that I actually lived through because it involved me, in Dear William, in which I catch him using marijuana in middle school and I am livid. He's late middle school, in some places that might be early high school, I'm livid, and I want to sit down and talk to him after dinner and I'm a little nervous and I say, "Go sit on the chair and I'll put up some dishes and I'll be there to talk to you in a minute."
And I walk over and I pour myself a glass of red wine and I sit down and I'm like, "I need you to explain to me why you are using a substance like this. It's putting everything you have at risk." And the truth is, my son William had been watching me at five o'clock for not just a daily basis for a little while but for as long as he was around, go pour myself a drink and then it became more because one didn't do the same.
And he glared back at me, and we were able to make peace over this before I found him dead of an accidental drug overdose. I was with him the week before and we actually made peace on this one specific thing. And I just told him, "I'm so sorry." That he looked at me like, "You don't understand, I'm doing the exact same thing you're doing." And I didn't get it at the time, but I do now.
And then I look at today where, I'm a young grandfather but I have small grandchildren, and when my first grandchild became three, Wilder is his name, I watched him walk over to the drink refrigerator and it had clear glass and I don't drink alcohol but he sees me drink a lot of Diet Cokes and he calls me DD. And he walked over there and he pointed, "DD's drink," and then he saw an IPA beer that was there from something else and somebody he knew and he walked over here to the window and he pointed, "That's so-and-so's drink."
This is a three year old. So the concept of... Parents call me today and they go, "I don't understand why my child is using marijuana. I've told them not to. It's making me so mad." And I'm like, Well, tell me about your home culture." And a young person, they're like, "Well, if you're drinking every day to change how you feel, hey, I'm not old enough to drink so if they smell it on my breath, I'm in a whole lot of trouble, but I can do this thing and I can get away with it."
So the parent has such a critical role. So when you look, Meagen, at research and how we're going to... Part of what we do, when I go in and speak to schools, we're already doing parents work. Most every school I go to, I will do a parent discussion in the evening and they will come and been getting fantastic crowds and a lot of engagement but how do we take it deeper from there?
Is it going to be finding a way to involve them in some sort of curriculum where they have an educational piece? I know we don't have all the answers. I know we don't have all the answers, if any, but how do we address this parent? Where do we begin?
Dr. Rosenthal: Well, I think about it as it relates to the schools program we're putting together, right? We're putting this program together because it doesn't exist right now in any way, shape or form. So if it doesn't exist right now for our current students, K through 12, through college, it definitely didn't exist when I was in that space so I don't have those skills either.
And so I do agree and think that this is a program that's going to be a parallel version for grownups. A parallel version for parents of students right now that is talking about similar things, that giving this that are our parents a similar set of tools that are our young people are getting, but then also the level up of that.
And I think about hard conversations about suicidal ideation or hard conversations about using substances. Oftentimes there's this idea that talking about it just makes it worse. If I ignore, it'll go way.
David Magee: It doesn't.
Dr. Rosenthal: Or give them ideas that they didn't otherwise have. When you think specifically, I'm thinking about suicidal ideation, the data tells us that's not true. The data tells us that if you talk about it, there's a chance to bring it into the light, to have the conversations, to get the people who need help the help they need. Talking about it doesn't put ideas in their head because they're already thinking about it.
Magee: They're already thinking about it.
Dr. Rosenthal: And you're not making it worse. And so giving parents and guardians and families in general that information and then how to have that conversation. What are the words to use so I don't mess this up? That's what I see in our parents programming.
Magee: And I love that. So my big idea based on our big idea, really is that... So companies today across the country, what they tell me is they're really, in some markets more so than others, they're having trouble hiring. But in some, let's say some regions, they may bump into 80% and 90% of failed drug tests that they can't hire otherwise qualified employees to work.
And so the idea is by coming through the student lens and educating parents on behalf of their students, we might actually be able to have a significant workforce improvement impact, a wellbeing initiative for parents. Whereas if we designed it and took it to them, it's a joke on a joke. We're going to talk to you about your parents, I mean about your students. We're going to talk to you about your students and here's what you should know and here's how you can help them but, by the way, we hope it all rubs off on you and you go find this joyful life.
And I think that's so magical about the work we're doing because it's all about the approach that you take as to whether people are going to let you in the door. We decided we're not going to go into schools and tell students, "Don't do drugs." It's been tried, it doesn't work. I think by the same tune, if we went to parents and said, 'We want to talk to you about your behavior," I think they're going to all shut us off and we'll go.
Dr. Rosenthal: Right, because nobody's ever changed their mind about anything after somebody's called them stupid to their face. It just doesn't work that way. You think about your conversations, interactions, in any sphere and if you get into that, "Well, you're wrong and you did a bad job." And especially for parents because parents never make the choices that they make in their family or guardians, whomever, make those choices in their family because they want to be wrong, that they're trying to do something harmful to their kids. They're doing it out of the best of intentions.
And so coming at this in the way that we are planning on doing this, it's a softer conversation. It's a, "Look, we know you don't have these skills either and we're going to help your kids and we're going to help you simultaneously and then everyone wins."
Dr. Magee: It's a win-win. I think that if I really look at what has given us a first measure of success which is we have schools in many states that want to work with us to help figure out, see if there's a way to figure out some curriculum, some holistic wellbeing curriculum for students and/or parents. I think if we've hit anything right so far, it's merely our approach.
Just like that you're talking about, because I think well-intentioned, I'm sure, I guess how they're designed, government entities and others, they just kind of come at it from a top line with a hammer. Addicted? You can go get help here. Well, most parents are not sitting at the gas pumps when they're reading that placard and even considering themselves addicted.
Here's how I found out I was struggling. I was driving across the country with my college age student and I decided I was going to talk to him about how I thought he was suffering. And so I'm giving him all these lessons about living better, good life and this and that and everything I say to him bounces back at me and through that lens, I was able to realize through my son's lens of that reflection, I need to change my life, and every moment is the new beginning, and I'm starting on one right now.
Such important work that if we approach parents the wrong way, they will shut us off. They will shut us off. Alexis, you're a young person, as we have always liked to say. You're in many ways, the more experienced in some ways because age has nothing to do with experience and savvy in a professional setting and even a social setting.
But for you, you are still a young adult and I have watched you really forge and enjoy forging that deep relationship with your parents in young adulthood and I have a lot of admiration for that because I almost don't even have to ask you because I know what you're going to say but it is a gateway to more wellbeing, right?
Lee:
It is a gateway to more wellbeing. And I look back on my childhood and my parents were the best parents they could be in the moment. They used all the tools they had and they knew, and no parents perfect though. But I vividly remember, we would have family meetings every week. I don't remember what age those started at but I remember sitting on my parents' bed, talk about the upcoming week. Maybe something happened, something maybe I did get in trouble, but that's when we would discuss it. It was just something that happened.
To this day, every Sunday, my parents and I FaceTime. To this day, and it is just something that it was not always easy. I was not always the best child. High school was challenging, college was challenging, but they never gave up on me. They continued to have conversations with me, they continued to check in on me, and eventually that goes both ways.
Your parents, yes, need to be in tune and check in with you. You also need to be in tune as a child, be in tune and check in on your parents because you know when your parents aren't doing okay. You can feel it and you can feel it, even as a teenager, you just know you don't know what it is. But just being able to say, "Hey, how are you?" And mean it, like we've been talking about.
But just those conversations. And to this day, my dad and I have kind of similar careers in a way. He's in the police officer field, and we have conversations sometimes about drugs, and it's just I look back and never in my life would I think that would be a conversation we'd be having.
And it's just incredible what has sparked of continuing to have an open door, open conversation and knowing it's a two-way street. And that I believe should start at a younger age, not just when you're their adult children.
Magee: The studies, Meagen, are very clear on this. And I'll give a qualifier before I say it, that for a lot of young people, the parent role may not be able to look like this. It may look in a non-traditional way, but even in a non-traditional way, whoever the caregiver is and that important person in a child's life is, the studies are very clear, particularly around substance misuse.
The studies are very clear that in any moments when that child begins to pull away from the family and remake their life in a steps away from the family, the studies are very clear that their likelihood of substance misuse go up dramatically. So we know that that family unit in whatever form it looks like is so critical.
The key is we have to think about how do we help foster this dialogue that Alexis is talking about? This kind of coming together and, "I recognize you're human and you may feel certain things and go through things and I also recognize you are human." But we know that that relationship is... I mean, actually the studies show, which is why we're tackling this on one of our earlier episodes of this podcast, the studies are very clear that that factor alone has more to do with whether a teen strays to use substances or not.
Dr. Rosenthal: I think that... How we do that. So the studies are clear, as you said, David, this is a really important thing and I say this all the time to my graduate students, so what are we going to do? How are we going to make that reality? And how do we do that in a situation, in a setting, where parents and families and guardians and everyone are facing all of these different competing factors?
Because as a parent, you are a guardian, you're having a job, you're looking after the house, you have maybe other kids in the house that you need to be mindful of paying attention to and then on top of that, you have your own things that are going on in your life. Whether that's mental health issues, emotional issues, complications with your relationships with other people, maybe not having the greatest role models when you were growing up in those kinds of situations.
And I think that part of this, and we've talked about this before, but part of this is getting ourselves comfortable with being uncomfortable. And I know that has become this really weird cliche but there's truth in that. How do we sit and ask, like you said, Alexis, "No really, how are you? Are you okay? Is this going well? Tell me about your day."
You talk about this too, David. Open-ended questions and then just zipping it. "What's going on?" And then let the information come out as it does and then everybody sit and think about that in quiet and then figure out what you are going to do from there. And recognizing too, and I think I remember that vividly as a young person, because when you think about your parents, they hang the moon. My dad hung the moon and I remember vividly the moment when he couldn't help me with my math homework anymore and I was-
Magee: Happened earlier in my household with me with my children, but yes.
Dr. Rosenthal: I remember. I was like, I think I want to say in junior high, something like that. And I was like, I remember being... I could see it on his face and he was like, "I can't afford this." And then I'm like, "Oh my God," I felt so sorry that I had put him in a situation where he couldn't be that person anymore.
And I think we do the same things with our own kids and with ourselves. We think that we have to be the penultimate being for our children, but we're human beings just like everyone else. And so understanding that ourselves and then helping our kids understand, "Okay, you put mom or dad on a pedestal," or whomever, you're guardian on a pedestal, but we're human too. We make mistakes, we do things wrong and I'm sorry when I mess up.
And owning that, that's a really hard thing to do, but something we can absolutely practice and provide people with the steps to do it so it becomes easier.
Magee: I look at a model in application to help parents understand what you're talking about. Number one, I love the analogy of math homework and your father, which I really feel for him on that because like I said, I just got there earlier with my children, I feel like, but it happened and I felt it.
But in essence, that analogy fits here because that's the problem we're facing in America. Parent things have changed and parents, no matter what savviness they think they have that they understand about substance misuse and whatnot, things have changed so drastically they actually don't know, most of them.
And so they can no longer help with the math homework when it comes to this needed holistic wellbeing because frankly they need some of the same help. So the model though that you really made me think about, I thought, let's help parents understand the model of what happens according to studies when a child takes a step away from the family and is likely to have actually greatly likelier to begin or increase substance misuse.
And the model is such the child or the children are spending a lot of time around the parents. Maybe they hit middle school, perhaps they've hit puberty, they find a new group of friends. And the way family socialization works is there's this unit and when the children are within that family unit, good or bad, they are modeling and learning a lot of behaviors from their parents.
What happens when suddenly if they break away and try to then go spend their time, their free unstructured time, not with family but with a pocket of friends? Socially, social studies tell us they will remake their life and their social habits around that pocket of friends. So then that pocket of friends is a lot more likely to introduce substances, "Have you tried cocaine? Have you tried marijuana? Let's start drinking together. Let's do this." They're in their own family unit, unstructured, and they're away from this influence over here.
The challenge for parents is twofold. Number one, I see and engage with a lot of parents who recognize this is happening but they do want so much for their children. And so popularity is a distasteful word. Acceptance. They want acceptance for their children with peers so they're not necessarily comfortable breaking that up. So that's one challenge.
And then the other challenge is just simply, maybe they're going through their own things, as you mentioned, and they don't know how to do it. So our job, when we think about getting into schools and we think about getting into schools and then reaching up to parents, we have to think about these kind of diagrams and how can we send the messaging in, not just so parents understand that model of what's happening, but also students.
Because when I have told students about this model, they usually look at me and their eyes, it's simple and we know it, but when they hear it, a lot of times I see them think through and they're like, "Oh, actually I do want to spend a little more time with my parents."
Dr. Rosenthal: And I think that, going off what you just said, and this is why we talk about the schools program, having to start out of necessity so early, right? Because if you think about that moment when the children are taking potentially steps away from their parents and rebuilding a new family unit, in and of itself, that's not a bad thing necessarily.
Magee: That's right.
Dr. Rosenthal: But it's this idea that they're doing it and they're doing it with a set of skills that maybe open the door to substance use or bad decision making or whatever, insert potential problem here. That we give them the skills to say, "Hey, you can build a family unit. That's a good thing."
Magee: That can have your best interest in at heart.
Dr. Rosenthal: And how do you choose people to be around or set expectations in your friend group? And this sounds so lame and old peopley, but create that alternative family unit that is the best version of that. Because I think oftentimes young people, and everybody really, but young people feel this more acutely. We think we get in those kind of situations and we give up our power. We give up our capacity to say, "Hey, I can influence this." When in reality you can. Why can't you?
If you want your friend group to be in a certain kind of way and do certain kind of things and be supportive and be, you can build that, that's a possibility and if you can't do it with one group of people, you find yourself another group of people, right? That's a thing that's entirely possible but we don't necessarily set the stage in a way that becomes obvious to our young people and to our grownups at the same time.
And so I think that that's how we start thinking about that. We set them up at an earlier age to think through these kind of things, to take that power back from the people that are in their ears on social media, in their ears with substance misuse, all of those kind of things, and say, "No, you can make this decision. This is yours. This is your group. You can make this however you want it to be and here's some things to think about."
Magee: Yes, no, I totally agree. And then when we help parents understand that role in their role in that, maybe they can be like me and wake up one day and have an epiphany moment and think, "I can have that same freedom and make choices that lead to my wellbeing, that lead to my joy." And then I think we truly will be moving down a road. We have to work and start that and try to figure it out first in Mississippi and then we'll go from there and see where we can take it and go beyond.
But it's exciting work, and I just appreciate you guys being along for it and everybody that is tuning into The Mayo Lab Podcast, we urge you to follow us. Come sign up for our newsletter, follow us on social media, themayolab.com, and tell others about this podcast because this is about a grassroots movement. Everything we've done from this in the beginning, and it will always be that way, is about a grassroots movement.
We're joining individuals and parents and educators in communities in Mississippi and across this country and beyond. People who just really have had enough and realize that it's time that we finally give teens the care and attention they want and deserve. Come back and see us next time. I'm David Magee for Alexis Lee and Dr. Meagen Rosenthal. We will see you next time.
Lee: The Mayo Lab Podcast is produced by Dr. Natasha Jeter, Dr. Meagen Rosenthal, David Magee, Alexis Lee, and Slade Lewis.
This podcast was recorded at Broadcast Studio in Oxford, Mississippi. The show was mixed and mastered by Clay Jones, and our original music was composed by Slade Lewis. The Mayo Lab Podcast is brought to you by Thee William Magee Institute for Student Wellbeing. For more information on The Mayo Lab, head over to themayolab.com and follow us on social media @themayolab.
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This podcast represents the opinions of David Magee and guests of the show. This podcast is not intended to be a substitute for the medical advice of a licensed counselor or physician. The listener should consult with their mental health professional in any matters relating to his or her health or the health of a child.