Florida School Toolkit for K-12 Educators to Prevent Suicide

Presentations and Prompts for Parents Additionally, schools are encouraged to provide developmentally appropriate presentations regularly for parents of children of all ages that emphasize being involved in their child’s life, knowing their child’s friends and the friends’ parents, recognizing the signs of anxiety and depression, separating their child’s misbehavior from their worth as a person, recognizing technology is a privilege and not a right, ensuring technology-free times in their homes and regularly eating meals as a family, avoiding putting children in the middle of divorce, realizing the importance of both parents staying involved in their child’s life regardless of the circumstances of separation or divorce, and modeling coping during difficult times. Parents are encouraged to have deep conversations with their children about what is going on in their lives and to be careful not to question too much but focus instead on listening. Parents who have any reason to think their child might be suicidal are encouraged to ASK them directly about hopeless and suicidal thoughts. Scott Poland has a presentation for parents of children of all ages entitled “Parenting in a Challenging World” that can be emailed to school personnel in Florida upon request. He can be contacted at spoland@nova.edu . He frequently presents on parenting, and more than 2,000 parents in Pembroke Pines, Florida attended his presentation on “Raising Positive Children.” It is available at youtube.com/watch?v=gObY3C97JW4 . Specific Suicide Prevention Videos for Parents Society for the Prevention of Teen Suicide has an 18-minute video for parents entitled Not My Kid, which is available free at sptsusa.org/not-my-kid . Florida S.T.E.P.S.