If you live with a teenager who lives with depression, Mother’s Day might suck. Or, it might be great. Your heart, broken and deprived, might get the lift it needs to get on with it for another day, another week, another month. It’s hard to say which way the cookie will crumble on Mother’s Day.… Read More Lesson #12 Mother’s Day might suck
It’s ok to hate depression. Depression’s a jerk. But hating depression, at least in my experience, won’t help. When Depression first showed up at our door, I actually felt sorry for her. I told my daughter, “It’s ok, let her in. There’s plenty of room here.” I made up a bed and assured her we’d… Read More Lesson #11: It’s ok to hate depression
There’s a learning curve to managing antidepressants in your teenager’s life. Things I hadn’t considered until I was faced with them. If you read Lesson #7, you’ll know I wasn’t immediately sold on antidepressants for my thirteen year old daughter. Almost as soon as I got my head around it, I found a brand new… Read More Lesson #10: There’s a learning curve to antidepressants
As a parent, it’s important to know what to do if you think you spot signs of depression in your teenager, because depression left untreated can get worse. Equally important, in the early stages, common teenage behaviour can aggrevate the illness. If you read Lesson #1: How to Spot Signs of Depression in Teenagers, you’ll… Read More Lesson #9: What to do if you spot signs of depression in your teenager
What to do while waiting for help is one of the most important lessons to learn in parenting depression, because it’s on you, the parent. Whatever happens, however easy or difficult it is to lead your child to safety, it’s on you to keep going. I am so fortunate with a family doctor and means… Read More Lesson #8: What to do while waiting for help to help
There’s a lot of debate about antidepressants for teenagers. So how do you know, as a parent, if your teenager needs antidepressants for their depression. One on the one hand, doctors will tell you that antidepressants, combined with psychotherapy, is a very effective treatment for clinical depression. On the other, studies show that antidepressants may… Read More Lesson #7: How do you know if your teenager needs antidepressants
Parenting a teenager with major depression is an exercise in learning to parent through fear. To be fair, I guess all parents feel afraid for their children. I remember when my husband and I left the hospital with our brand new daughter, less than 24 hours old. We were amazed they let us leave. Didn’t… Read More Lesson #6: Learning to parent through fear
There are few struggles in parenting that have plagued me more than the topic of smartphone use. For those with kids younger than my own, I have some hard-earned parental wisdom: delay and restrict smartphone use for as long as possible. Because once that genie’s out of the bottle, it’s really hard to put her… Read More Lesson #5: Delay and restrict smartphone use
If I’ve learned anything over the past few years it’s that there is no one way to fix depression. For Shawn Achor, positive psychology worked for him. I first learned of Shawn Achor, the author of The Happiness Advantage and founder of GoodThink Inc. at The Globe and Mail’s Executive Performance Summit in 2016. Achor… Read More Lesson #4: Shawn Achor on how to train your brain to be happy
When things were really down and out for me on this road of parenting depression, I started to listen to podcasts. They helped.… Read More Lesson #3: Listen to podcasts
