You’ve been looking forward to this since the day your child walked through the door for his or her first day of Kindergarten. Maybe it was earlier than that, maybe it began when they started preschool or maybe you started imagining it while you were still waiting for your child to be born. In any case, it is a major milestone that every parent looks forward to – hearing your child’s name called, seeing your child walk across the stage in cap and gown, seeing the diploma be presented.
Things aren’t turning out as anyone expected this year. Thanks to COVID-19, students aren’t in school; they’re at home, doing classes on their computers. Large gatherings of people have been prohibited and no one knows when it is going to be safe to lift that restriction. In the meantime, that means no graduation ceremonies.

Students who are seniors this year have been affected by a long list of losses. Competitions of all sorts (sports, robotics, speech and debate, academic challenge, just to name a few) have been cancelled as have band, choir and play performances. Standardized tests, college admission exams and military qualifying exams have been cancelled. No prom. No spirit week. No senior ditch day. All those events that make senior year special aren’t going to happen.
SO WHAT YOU CAN, AS A PARENT, DO TO SUPPORT YOUR HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR?
- Don’t minimize what your child is going through. It may be tempting to say that, compared to people dying, these losses are trivial. Even if you’re thinking it, don’t say it out loud! Your child’s losses are real. If they think it matters, it matters. This may actually be the worst thing that ever happened to them and it is totally appropriate to grieve for the losses. Acknowledge the losses by saying something like, “I know how important that was to you” or “I know you were really looking forward to that.”
- Let your child know it is Okay to express how they’re feeling. Some young people don’t want to say anything because they’re afraid of seeming selfish or they’re aware how much stress their parents are under and don’t want to add to the load. Validate their disappointment, anger, hurt, frustration, sadness or whatever they’re feeling. Remember that all feelings are valid and it is healthier to express them than to hold them in or to try to pretend they don’t exist.
- Don’t say you know what they’re going through. Unless you are a high school senior in 2020, you don’t know what it’s like. This has never happened before. When you say you know what they’re going through, it feels to them like you aren’t willing to listen to them because you think you already know. Every adolescent wants to feel special. Let them tell you what it is like.
- Don’t say that big events like prom or graduation are overrated. In your experience this may be true but it doesn’t bring comfort to anyone else. Instead it implies that they were naïve or foolish for looking forward to them in the first place. And again, it shows you just don’t understand.
- Reassure that future plans have not been destroyed. Your child’s school isn’t the only one that closed. Schools all over this country and in countries all over the world have closed down to limit the spread of the virus. Universities, the military, training programs and employers are going to be familiar with what happened and are going to be willing to work with them when they eventually start to open back up. This is a major bump in the road but not the end of the road.
- Encourage your child to socialize with peers online. That’s right. After years of trying to limit screen time, you’re going to do a total 180 and encourage more of it. High school seniors are supposed to be transitioning to needing their parents less and their outside relationships more. Don’t try to fight this. It’s healthy and developmentally appropriate.
- Collaborate with your child to plan some sort of ritual for celebrating graduation. The truth is graduating from high school is a big deal. It marks the culmination of years of hard work. For many people it is the symbolic transition into adulthood. We need to mark important events in our lives with celebratory rituals. So maybe the traditional rituals have been cancelled (or postponed to some indefinite future date). Create something else. Acknowledge that it’s not the same and is probably going to be a pale substitute, but it is something. Let them know that you are proud of what they’ve accomplished and of the person they’re becoming, and that you want to celebrate that with them.
Mary Kreitz is the Trauma Program Manager at Child and Adolesecent Behavioral Health. If your child is struggling with the loss of his/her senior year, please reach out to C&A at 330-433-6075.
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In the film, I’m Not Racist… Am I? as introduced and explored in first of this three-part blog post series, the participants engaged in multiple workshops that address race and racism. Interpersonally, the group of students grapple with their own differences and similarities, which impact the content and emotions they share with each other. There are several moments in the film that demonstrate the clear differences in the participants’ understanding of race. In the first workshop, the students were exposed to the idea that all white people are inherently racist seeing as American society was founded on principles meant to support white people (see more on structural racism here, here, and here for further understanding). Several white students in the film became emotional during that workshop. Most students remained quiet. Following this workshop, a black student and a white student were filmed independently of each other in their own homes and discussed the workshop and what they learned with their families. The white student discussed the differences between structural racism and bigotry with her mother and struggled to identify with the principles taught in the training. The black student stated to his mother how almost everything spoken in that workshop applied to him. The student further discussed his feelings by stating how overt racism is and yet how “subliminal” it is at the same time. How can something be so in your face and yet under your feet simultaneously? I immediately reflected on the dialectic of something being so clear and yet so vague. The film continued to grapple with student differences. At the beginning of the film, one white male student discussed with his mother how he feels that all individuals, if they apply themselves wholeheartedly, have the same chance of success regardless of their skin, gender, sexuality or other demographic factors. As a white man myself, I must confess that when I was in high school, I had the same mindset. How could it be different? Especially when I was reading mythic bootstrap literature in high school classes. Sure, the harder you work the more you deserve, but that statement does not work for all Americans. I had not accounted for racial factors that inhibit the growth of others, not to mention socio-economic factors, nationalities, citizenship status, gender and age. I continued to reflect on these statements and connected them to my experience in high school in New York City. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement responding to the murder of George Floyd, multiple private progressive schools in New York, including the one I went to, suffered scrutiny from students and alumni who identify as black, indigenous people of color (BIPOC). Multiple Instagram accounts surfaced with the handle “BLACK AT [school name].” I read the posts in 2020, and again before writing this post, and remembered feeling horrified knowing these acts of racism, bigotry and microaggressions happened all around me. This was subliminal to me, yet overt to others.
When I first came to Child and Adolescent Behavioral Health (C&A), I was unsure what to expect regarding race and diversity at both the organization and in Ohio. Having grown up in Harlem in New York City and attended graduate school in San Diego, CA, I had heard stereotypes about Ohio, specifically that Ohio was a very white state. At C&A during orientation, we discussed the role of first impressions for clients and discussed how the front desk staff are considered, “the directors of first impressions.” I loved this term. After orientation, I wondered, why we didn’t discuss demographic factors such as race and gender? We generally pick those up upon first impressions and have implicit biases and judgements in those first impressions. It was odd to me that we did not discuss these demographic factors. As the summer and fall progressed, I noticed that there were few discussions about race as it impacts C&A and the kids and families we serve. I noticed the number of white staff at C&A and reflected on my own privilege as a white man who can easily avoid the discussion of race because I do not suffer discrimination on an individual or systemic level. I reflected on my first experiences discussing race in high school. When I was in high school at the Calhoun School, my father received a grant to create a film and workshops that addressed race and racism seen through the eyes of high schoolers in New York City. My dad had completed a training hosted by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. This training opened my father’s eyes to his own white privilege and motivated him to teach kids, specifically white kids, about their privilege earlier in life. I first saw the film, I’m Not Racist… Am I? (see more here ), toward the end of high school after it had come out in 2014.
Ohio is at a crossroads once again with marijuana on the ballot next month. The following article is from Every Brain Matters, an organization that believes that the THC in marijuana is a dangerous and addictive drug. Every Brain Matters is a trusted source of educational material based on the latest scientific evidence. One of the major criticisms of expanded marijuana legalization is that it makes the drug more accessible to minors. A brand-new study just published in JAMA Pediatrics shows that it has become a valid concern.
For the last few months, C&A has been diligently preparing for the 18th Annual Let Your Light Shine – Southern Nights presented by The Repository by organizing auction items, printing tickets and using their creativity to make sure that eventgoers feel as though they are walking into an evening in the south, with barrels and lanterns to boot. The committee, led by chair Jen Frey and co-chair Molly Sperling and auction chair Stacy Remark are hard at work, it’s crucial to remember that this event raises awareness and dollars to support the agency’s programs and services amid suicide prevention and awareness month.
I have grown up as a parent for the last four and half years! As luck would have it, a little more than four and a half years ago, I started at Child and Adolescent Behavioral Health (C&A) in the mission advancement department with my responsibilities being the marketing and development coordinator. Some might say, I did a good job of raising my two kids, who were teenagers at the time. But, boy, if I had known of the services C&A offered and even some of the parenting tools for my toolbox, parenting might have been even better.
This summer I attended a Marijuana Prevention conference near Denver, Colorado. I was curious to know what the locals were saying after 10 years of legalization. The speakers included a Denver Police Commander, school resource officer, medical doctor, residential treatment program CEO, deputy from the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA), Executive Director of the National Drug and Alcohol Screening Association and others related to educating the community and defending children’s rights. In the audience were parents, professionals and advocates for children from all over the United States. The conference was geared toward the protection of children.
When I arrived on campus, I tried to immerse myself in college culture. I joined a sorority, the speech and debate team, and two other clubs which were extensive time commitments, factoring in no time to relax or focus on bettering my mental health. This lack of attention to my mentality, combined with my low self-esteem that prevented me from making friends led me down a dark hole in which some days I thought it would be better if I wasn’t here. About four weeks into school (at Ohio University), I realized that I had to do something, as I knew it was not safe for me to continue down the road I had been on. From there I moved home and attended an inpatient treatment center where I worked with counselors for five hours a day, learning coping skills and other ways in which I could help mend my suffering mental health. Through the lessons I learned I was able to get the skill set and help I needed and returned to school three weeks later.
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