Florida School Toolkit for K-12 Educators to Prevent Suicide

25. How can schools and parents help students develop coping skills? R esilience is arguably the biggest word in our vocabulary since September 11, 2001. What is resiliency? Resiliency is learned. The modeling that adults do in our families is very important to help our children bounce back from adversity. The keys to resiliency are the following: being comfortable venting and sharing strong emotions, being surrounded by loving and caring family and friends, using problem-solving skills, and always remaining optimistic about the future. These are issues and skills that really need to be emphasized beginning at the elementary school level through activities and learning from Americans that have faced incredible misfortune and yet they persevered. One great example is Abraham Lincoln. He had many misfortunes and lost many elections in a row before he finally won one. Schools should highlight successful people who overcame obstacles in their lives. Parents often wrestle with how much they should share with their children about their own obstacles, difficulties, mistakes, and misfortunes. As a parent, you will be in the best position to determine when to share some of those obstacles and adversities you’ve experienced. For example, my own children know that I was kicked out of school. I shared with them in the hope that they would not repeat my poor scholarship in their early days of college, and none did. I think these are important lessons to share in our families. The most important thing about focusing on resiliency and coping skills is the following: the worth of our children—or a student at school—should never be in question, nor should our love for them ever be questioned. This means that we need to be very careful in moments of anger and frustration regarding what exactly we say to them. We should clearly state, “I am disappointed in your misbehavior. However, my love and appreciation for you as a person is never in question. But there will be a consequence.” This means that calling a child stupid and yelling at them should never take place. Only statements such as, “What can you learn from this? Do you need to apologize? How can you do something to make this right?” 26. At what age should we begin talking to our students about suicide? U pper elementary school counselors all across this country have emphasized that even fourth and fifth graders often have expressed suicidal thoughts. However, most adults have never thought we needed to talk to 9- and 10-year olds about the problem of suicide. In 2012, I was involved as an expert witness for the school in a legal case, Myers vs. Blue Springs School District, in Missouri. Sadly, in that case, a 10-year-old child drew a picture of himself hanging and wrote, “If someone doesn’t stop me, I will hang myself at 4:35 p.m. today.” He handed that note to a fifth-grade classmate. I’m sorry to tell you that the classmate did not alert an adult because no one had ever talked to them about suicide and no one had ever anticipated them being in that position. The child died by suicide that afternoon. Most suicide prevention programs are aimed at students in middle school and high school. One program at the elementary level is the PAX Good Behavior Game (GBG), which focuses on appropriate behavior and social skills. It does not focus on suicide prevention directly, but it has demonstrated promising results for suicide prevention. I believe strongly that we have to get across to elementary students that if something doesn’t feel right, something is giving them a bad headache, or a feeling in the pit of their stomach because something really bad could happen, they need to get adult help. 155