When my daughter was 14 I walked in on her cutting herself.
I freaked out. I screamed “What are you doing? Stop that now! Are you crazy?” She was distressed and embarrassed. My unfiltered reaction had shamed her. She started to weep and scream at me “Go away. Get out. Get out.” I didn’t know what to do.
I went into my own bedroom and collapsed in absolute despair, weeping. Nothing in my parenting experience had prepared me for this place where we had arrived.
We didn’t talk about this at mother’s group. I don’t remember this being in the chart of milestones. My toolbox was empty. As a parent I felt alone and isolated.
What had started as reckless behaviour in her early teens developed into self-harming behaviours, an eating disorder and then later anxiety, depression and suicidal behaviour. This was not the parenting journey I was expecting for my first born. These were my darkest years as a parent.
Living regionally I was even more disadvantaged because of the lack of appropriate youth mental health services for my girl. But it wasn’t just my daughter who needed help – I needed help too. I needed support. I needed to know that I could do this.
Recently, I read two books by a grassroots youth mental health organisation for young people called Generation Next. The two books are called Nurturing Young Minds: Mental Wellbeing in the Digital Age and Growing Happy, Healthy Young Minds. As I read them, I cried.
Created by Dr Ramesh Manocha, a Sydney University senior lecturer in psychiatry, medical practitioner, educator, author and researcher, Generation Next is a national education program aimed at educating professionals and parents about the mental health crisis facing our young people.
In these handbooks, Manocha and his team have compiled leading experts’ advice on the mental health and wellbeing of young people, tackling issues like bullying, anxiety, depression, alcohol and drugs, sexual abuse, eating disorders and body image. However, they also focus on the most up-to-date aspects of being a teenager: problematic internet use, cyberbullying, social media, violent video games, sexting, online porn and consent.
These are the books I was looking for. I had searched long and hard for these kinds of practical non-judgemental resources that contained skills and information I had to previously dig for myself. But here it was, the best of the knowledge of the journey I had been on brought together in a magnificent series of books.
Here was real practical information on how to manage the many complex situations around mental wellbeing in young people. It may surprise you, but in any given year, it is estimated that about one out of four of young people in Australia aged 16 to 24 will have a diagnosable mental health problem. By 21 more than half of all young people will have experienced a significant mental health disorder. Unfortunately, suicide is the second leading cause of death for young people aged 15 to 24. Suicide across our society is sadly on the rise.
These statistics are a solemn call to arms for parents, teachers and health professionals to get educated.
The best work you can do as a parent is in the years before the onset of mental health issues. The Generation Next books give practical parenting advice on the importance of sleep, on identifying and managing bullying, on negotiating digital technology and how to set up boundaries way before things become out of hand.
Many parents like myself find themselves looking for boundaries years after they should have been set. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to set boundaries for my daughter, I just didn’t know what I should be doing, and how. I didn’t know what was normal and acceptable.
As she is my first born (of five kids), I was often second guessing myself. Like most parents, I did my best and hoped that things would resolve. Instead, as adolescence progressed the challenges just increased instead of decreased.
These are books every parent should read long before their teens become adolescents. No generation of parents have had to face the complexities of navigating parenting in the digital age – how do we keep our children safe on the highways of a world we’ve only just found ourselves?
With rates of anxiety in our young rising, these books give practical information, actual steps on what to say, and what to do. It’s not just health professionals telling you what you’ve done wrong. It’s practical advice and support on how to manage at the coalface of the home.
Generation Next is the lifeline that I as a parent had been looking for. Renowned psychologist Andrew Fuller has even said that each chapter has the potential to be not only "life changing, but quite possibly lifesaving" for young people.
I am so thrilled that for parents facing what I faced, and that for my parenting adventure with adolescents (which continues) that I now have a resource that I can turn to when I’m out of my depth. And sometimes when I’m not. For many who read this, it will be making those changes years before that might make all the difference in the world. You just need to know what those changes are.
Generation Next features a national circuit of educational seminars, live webcasts, an e-newsletter, YouTube channel, national surveys and the two main books I've mentioned.
You can buy a copy of the books here. Mamamia readers will receive complimentary postage and handling.
If you, or a young person you know, is struggling with symptoms of mental illness please contact your local Headspace centre or chat to them online, here. If you are over the age of 25 and suffering from symptoms of mental illness please contact your local GP for a Mental Health Assessment Plan or call Lifeline Australia on 13 11 14.
What's the best piece of advice you have for raising a teenager in the digital age? Share with us below.
This content was created with our brand partner Generation Next.
Top Comments
Mandy Nolan, thank you for writing this, I have wanted to put my experience out there for some time too.
I can identify with your anguish, I went through the same with my daughter, saw her cutting, saw her thighs shredded with bloody open cuts, and I reacted the same as you described. I felt horror, pain, shock ... something like that. I don't think there are words to describe an emotional knee-jerk reaction to witnessing your own child turning on themselves. I know I said the wrong thing. I know I didn't have a book on the subject. I did seek professional help for my daughter. Resentful and angry she turned against me - I was intruding into her private world of self-mutilation.
I exposed her at school too. And her cutting crowd. I snuck into her private social media messages - I became obsessed with learning about this private world she had with her peers, where cutting was a common interest that seemed to bond them. I might as well have sent her to school naked. She felt so exposed and worse betrayed by me. I thought I was doing the right thing. I'm a single mum, my daughter was 14 at the time. There were signs - I had been blind-sided by her cover stories - that she had been cutting from the age of 12, maybe earlier. By age 15 she was running away frequently and causing chaos at home, she put herself in a Samaritans homeless refuge on the advice of a delinquent friend who had done the same. From there she got a social worker, and the walls went up. I would trace my daughter through her friends social media. At 15 no one in authority came to me. No one said, we have your child she is safe. School told me not to come in or she would run. She began squatting in derelict empty houses. Dumpster diving. All the tricks of the anti-establishment crowd. She is 17 now a practising anarchist, following Frontline political activist groups. Sometimes I spot her in activism photos, disrupting mining, logging, parliament, anywhere she can vent her spleen.
My daughter is my second child and my youngest. I adore her, but I can't get through to her. She has an older brother, my son is 19, and we have a beautiful friendship. He has honestly kept me sane during this time. Sometimes I drive him crazy worrying about his sister, where she is..how she is. I have cried rivers. Given myself a chronic cry-induced headache that is now part of me. Most people I meet, the first thing out of my mouth is something about my daughter. I want her so badly to exist. To be part of my life again. She won't answer my messages and she hangs up when I ring (I'm grateful even to hear her phone ring). Last time I saw her was November last year. She said she was travelling up north. She gave me a hug and said she loved me. So that was something.
Oh lovey, I feel for you. I sincerely hope that things get better for you both. Please don’t beat yourself up, you did what you did because you cared enough to do so. I am so upset for you that authorities never allowed you the peace of knowing your daughter was safe somewhere. Good luck