Podcast Episode 406: When Teen Stress Turns Silent: What Parents Miss (and How to Catch It) Transcripts

Please note: Transcripts for the No Guilt Mom Podcast were created using AI. As a result, there may be some minor errors.

JoAnn Crohn (00:00)

Welcome to the No Guilt Mom podcast. I’m your host JoAnn Crone. Joined here by the brilliant Brie Tucker.

Brie Tucker (00:08)

Hello, hello, everybody, how are you?

JoAnn Crohn (00:10)

We are in the middle of suicide prevention month right now. And to honor that, we’re bringing to you a topic about suicide prevention, teen depression and stress, what to look for, when to seek help. It is a topic that’s really close to mine and Bree’s heart, both having struggled with depression and anxiety ourselves, as well as we live in a school district where the rate of teenage suicide is rather high compared to the rest of the nation.

Brie Tucker (00:39)

I believe it’s one of the highest in the country, isn’t it?

JoAnn Crohn (00:42)

one of the highest in the country, Chandler Unified School District, yes. So this episode is all about teen depression and stress and what to look for. And to help us go through that is Elliot Callan. He’s the president of A Brighter Day, a nonprofit he co-founded with his wife in 2015 after the tragic loss of their 19 year old son, Jake, to suicide. Inspired by Jake’s hidden struggle with depression, the organization is dedicated to preventing teen suicide by providing families with vital resources to manage stress and mental health. And with that, let’s get on with the show.

Elliot, welcome to the No Guilt Mom podcast, being one of the only few dads who have ever been on the podcast.

Elliot Kallen (01:28)

Thanks for having me.

Brie Tucker (01:30)

Thank you for coming!

JoAnn Crohn (01:32)

Yes. So we know your foundation, A Brighter Day, was born out of a deeply personal tragedy. Would you be willing to share your son Jake’s story and how that experience shaped your mission and how you support families today?

Elliot Kallen (01:46)

Absolutely. This is why we’re here in business, so to speak. Yeah. They could tell you it’s 10 years now, almost 10 years and almost 10 and a half years now. He was a sophomore at the University of Montana and I didn’t see it coming. His mother didn’t see it coming. None of us saw it coming. No drugs, no alcohol. We were frantically looking for him on a Friday. His phone was turned off. Didn’t feel right. Something just felt really off and wrong. And we could talk about that, what symptoms were or are. But it was just felt wrong.

And at about 6.30 at night, Federal Express showed up with a six-page suicide note.

Brie Tucker (02:21)

my gosh.

JoAnn Crohn (02:21)

Aw man.

Elliot Kallen (02:22)

And the first paragraph was the main paragraph. And it said, Mom and Dad, I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I never would have told you how I felt. I never would have asked for your help, and I never would have taken your help. And with that, we flew to Montana to go get his body, to bring it back. They did a wonderful job at the university. We brought it back. And it was on the way home. And I read that suicide note on the way there. They talk about the stages of grief.

When your child dies, you’re not in grief yet, you’re in shock.

Brie Tucker (02:53)

Yes.

JoAnn Crohn (02:54)

I imagine.

Elliot Kallen (02:55)

So you do get the grief and you go through all the stages by the way But I was in shock and on the way home with his body under the plane now I had a couple days to think about it because state of Montana wouldn’t let us leave with his body for 48 hours now I just focused on that paragraph and I turned to his mom and I said We’ve got a start a charity. We’ve always been very charitably inclined. We’ve got a start a nonprofit that helps Families from going through the devastation and destruction and we’re about to go through And she said that she couldn’t do it, but my wife got involved with it, obviously second marriage. And we started a brighter day charity to create resources on stress and depression for teens and their families with the singular goal of stopping teen suicide. So that’s what we’ve been doing since day one. It’s about a nine and a half year old charity on that. And I literally have, we just uploaded to the website about 150 texts and email comments from teens or families saying thank you for saving my life or thank you for saving my child’s life. I can’t tell you how many people we saved. It’s a lot and it’s significant, but most people aren’t going to tell us anyway, know, Annette, but it’s significant. So we’re here making a difference because you’ve got to make a difference. You’re always going to be a victim of this as a parent. I don’t care who you are, always going to be a victim. And the question is if you’re going to be a bystander victim or an active participant changer.

Elliot Kallen (04:23)

of your victimhood, but your victimhood won’t go away. No matter how many lives I may change, it’s not going to bring my son back in my life. He’s still my spring saver. I still go to the cemetery and have conversations with him. The view doesn’t change. The conversation really changes, but I know we’re making a difference.

JoAnn Crohn (04:40)

Yeah, I mean, it’s a huge life change to go through. And you say like, it doesn’t change your victimhood as a parent because all parents out there, we all feel incredibly vulnerable, especially when our kids are going through this stress and showing some signs that maybe like we don’t know what to look for. So in your foundation, Elliot, for some parents who may feel unsure, what are some of the subtle signs of stress, anxiety, or depression in teens that get overlooked?

Elliot Kallen (05:10)

You know, JoAnn, that’s a great question. We get asked that every single day. And we put them on a website. We’ve got thousands of pages of materials on the website, primarily written for parents, not for teens, because we all know that teens don’t read. They text. We have something for them, But we have it on the website. And here’s what to look for, in my opinion. And speaking to you, Maria and JoAnn, as a father, I’m certainly not a trained expert, but I probably know more about or as much about teen suicide as any father in the United States or any parent in the United States, because…

I made it my mission now to learn and to talk about it weekly, daily, monthly, podcasts, whatever it is. But here are some symptoms that you can begin to look for as a parent. And one of the problems you have as a parent is the difference between quote unquote a dumb teenager. Sorry about that word, but dumb teenager, because I was a dumb teenager. And a depressed teenager are just shades of gray. It’s hard to tell that. So as a parent, you certainly don’t want to overreact and start polarizing your child and you don’t want to under react and miss the signs. Yeah, exactly. a very fine line you’re walking.

Brie Tucker (06:14)

Yeah, I feel like for a lot of us parents, this is like that worst nightmare. And it can drive you crazy trying to figure out what the signs necessarily are or aren’t. And when you were talking about Jake earlier, you said that there were some signs that you guys didn’t see at the time, but now you understand them. Can you share with us some of those signs that you had saw that you didn’t see, but now you know were some red flags, morning lights.

Elliot Kallen (06:41)

So here are some of those popular signs out there. And that is the first thing they would do is they withdraw from the things that bring them joy. Social settings, sports, friendships. So my son was a hockey player. Okay. And he played for the University of He played in high school. They retired his jersey for setting all types of records. The local arena retired his jersey as well. I had parents that came up to me after he was gone.

It said, you know, I probably should have said something in that after he scored multiple goals in a game, he wasn’t really enjoying the locker room. He was sitting by himself. And even right before he died, the week before he died, he had a seven goal game. What’s a record game for him. And his coach told me that he sat by himself. said, I just figured he was quirky. He couldn’t enjoy it. He was pulling away from the joy that it brought. So that’s something that I didn’t see.

Brie Tucker (07:27)

That’s amazing for hockey.

Elliot Kallen (07:40)

You withdraw from friends. His friends told me after he died that he was awake when they were asleep and he was asleep when they were awake. He was pulling away from them and they wish they had discussed that with somebody who was professional enough to see that. He had lost some weight. He simply just lost interest in eating. That’s one of the side. You either eat too much and you just can’t put away the potato chips because you’re trying to almost be self-destructive.

And you know, there are lots of eating disorders that have nothing to do with suicide. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But in his case, he simply said, I’m not going to eat because it was a self-destructive thing. Those are the first signs that I saw he was getting very different advice his mom and dad about his future. OK. His mom wanted him to go into science and nonprofit with science and particularly like wild kingdom type of thing with animals. OK. I didn’t think he had it in him. I was giving him advice, do something, you don’t really care for science that much, so do something in business and we’ll figure it out. And you can always turn a nonprofit for animals if that’s what you wanna do as a board member or as a volunteer. But his mom had a lot of power and a lot of grip over him and he didn’t wanna tell her that, he didn’t like science. So rather than discuss with her, mom, I don’t like science, I wanna pull out of science, I wanna get out of science, which he discussed with me. And I said, let’s go down to the bursar’s office, let’s go down to registration to the registrar’s office and let’s get you out of science and get out of the courses that you’re not doing well in and you don’t enjoy. You couldn’t do it, so we simply stopped showing up to the classes.

Brie Tucker (09:17)

I’m definitely hearing this and I can see this in behaviors that I myself had gone through when I was in college. So you’re saying that you even like offered to come and help him with it and he was like, nope, nope.

Elliot Kallen (09:29)

No, because he couldn’t face his mom with the guilt. And she did have a power over him of guilt because she had gone through some suicide and cancer herself. And so he just couldn’t tell her how he was feeling because he didn’t want to hurt her. But share it with me. And then he would say, Dad, please, you can’t tell mom. You just can’t tell mom. And I took it as, OK, I’m not going to tell mom. That was obviously a mistake. I should have confronted the situation and attacked it head on. Of course, if you lose a child to suicide,

Elliot Kallen (09:59)

or parent or anybody to suicide. There were a hundred things you would do differently right off the bat. That is on my list. The outcome is the outcome. I learned a little bit of counseling that I took is that no matter how guilty you feel of things that you wish you did differently, the outcome is not going to change anymore.

JoAnn Crohn (10:17)

This is such a tricky area too, because a lot of times, like he was a college student, he told you not to get involved with his relationship. You respected those boundaries with it. So it’s really difficult in this situation to figure out what as a parent do you step into and you help and what as a parent don’t you help? Because along like all the lines of parenting, you did what was to like help create an autonomous individual, someone who is in control of everything.

Elliot Kallen (10:49)

Yeah, and these are learning lessons too. But when I was at Rutgers in my sophomore year at a statistics class, it’s probably one of my least favorite classes ever in my four years at Rutgers. And I’m a math guy. I love math. And I’m pretty good at but I just had a block towards statistics. So I showed up the first day of class. I showed up for the midterm and I decided, okay, I don’t need to take this class. I’ll just study the book. And then I don’t have to show up anymore. Of course, that’s the one class at Rutgers I have to repeat.

Brie Tucker (10:59)

Yeah

Elliot Kallen (11:17)

⁓ I got a D in it because I deserved it. But that was a learning lesson for me to not be stupid like that. So in a way, I never told anybody what I was doing, but I learned from that. So he was kind of doing what I did in a way, but he wasn’t learning from that or growing from that. He was withdrawing from that. Yeah. Same kind of road, but very different travel experience on that road. Yeah.

JoAnn Crohn (11:43)

which is typical when people deal with depression and anxiety to not be able to have the same kind of outcomes to normal everyday stressors that people without depression or anxiety have. And you talked a little bit about the pressure that your son was facing and I want to get more into that pressure that kids face right after this.

Elliot, today’s teens, face a lot of intense pressure, especially in our area that we live in. There is the expectation they have to get perfect grades, that you have to be, look good for colleges, that you have to excel in sports to get all the opportunities, they have to be involved in every opportunity and activity. How does this constant drive to be the best affect their mental health and what can parents do to ease it?

Elliot Kallen (12:31)

Well, this is a question that you’re asking me, JoAnn, about the helicopter parent thing that we all heard that phrase. I don’t want to tell you I wasn’t a helicopter parent. That wouldn’t be honest. We also live in a very good school district in Northern California. It’s the number one school district or number two in the whole state, which is amazing. And they all talk about how many kids go to college. So I had my kids in private school through eighth grade. I remember I picked them up in fourth grade, third grade, somewhere around there. I picked them up and we’re talking about how their day was. And I had a special person come in and talk to them.

And all three of them said, Dad, we’re going to Harvard when we graduate from high school.

JoAnn Crohn (13:04)

Not that young

Elliot Kallen (13:07)

And I said, you asked somebody to come in and talk to you from Harvard today, didn’t you? I said, yes. And we had a whole conversation about Harvard. But look at that. That was third or fourth grade and they’re being indoctrinated and culpated that if you don’t go Ivy League, you’re a loser.

JoAnn Crohn (13:20)

That’s an insane thing, especially when Harvard has less than a what, 8 % acceptance rate right now. Like it’s pretty much impossible to get into Harvard.

Elliot Kallen (13:29)

Even at Harvard, when you come to the West Coast, it’s odd for them to take more than one or two students from any high school period. They just have a number that stops. But see, they were taught like that. I was always taught, you go to college. I went to Rutgers. Rutgers is not Harvard. But I went to Rutgers and you just went out to college. Every kid was expected to go to college. That’s what I expected from my kids. What I didn’t care about so much was what they majored in. I just had a requirement for them. I you could major in anything you want.

as long as the major leads to one of two things, either graduate degree.

You cannot major in philosophy or communications and it’s such a big broad area that you end up working for Macy’s as a sales clerk. There’s no other jobs for you. ⁓

Brie Tucker (14:15)

I understand that concern. I can understand the concern there.

JoAnn Crohn (14:18)

I want to say today for college students, just because I have a kid about to enter college and just looking at my college life too, is that even whatever you major in, a job isn’t guaranteed now for kids entering college. And so I think that that might be another hard thing that this generation has to go through, knowing that even if they do go to college, nothing is guaranteed afterwards for any sort of position.

So like this pressure that kids have on them to succeed, what’s another thing parents can do to kind of ease it? You said a little bit about like not telling them exactly what they have to major in. What about like parents who have kids right now who are in high school who are being told they have to do all the APs, they to take all the things, they have to do everything to succeed. What can those parents do?

Brie Tucker (15:07)

throw this in there too real quick. Like, cause I don’t know if this happens out where you’re at. And I don’t know if all of our listeners and podcasts land have the same thing, but like what JoAnn was just talking about, I think it’s important to articulate that it’s not just and or the parents saying those things to the kids. They’re getting that information from their teachers. Teachers are telling them like you have to be above and beyond. If you want to get into XYZ counselors, like the college counselors are telling them that, especially if you have a child that wants to take AP and, you know, dual credit classes, AP all the way. It’s not even necessarily a message coming from the parents. Like they’re even getting it from their schools. So what can we do when it’s not even coming from us?

Elliot Kallen (15:48)

Brie, I was listening to a podcast when my son was, I think my older son, my twin son, was a sophomore at Washington University in St. Louis. And it was all about the experience of high school. It’s exactly what you’re talking about. Okay. And he said, or she said, I don’t recall the person who was doing the podcast. And he said that, now he graduated as valedictorian. Every AP class you could think of, he got into Harvard, he got into Dartmouth, he got into Amherst, and he got into Washington University in St. Louis and Northwestern.

He picked Washington University in St. Louis and good for him. Turned out to be a good experience. And he said, you should ask your child who you pushed or they pushed themselves into the AP world because he had a 4.6 and he had 50 straight, he got awarded some award. had 50 straight A’s in high school. And so I called him up and I said, Cody, I just listened to this podcast. They were talking about your experience in high school. He was on.

He was a goalie on the ice hockey team and he was on lacrosse and cross country. I was super active, three page resume, you know, it’s whatever college wants out of a kid. And pardon my language here. And I said, so what did you think of your experience? He said, well, dad, it sucked. And I said, why do you say that? had to, dad, I will never, I know you didn’t do this to me. I did this to myself. I understand that, but I’m never going to let my child go through what I put myself through because I was sleep deprived for three straight years.

Elliot Kallen (17:17)

And it wasn’t worth it. So it is a really tough experience. He’s one of those people that puts a lot of demand on themselves. I put a lot of demand on myself.

JoAnn Crohn (17:26)

Yeah, I do too. I could be right there with you. A lot of demand.

Elliot Kallen (17:29)

We have a lot of self-imposed guilt. I used to think that was a Jewish guilt thing, but I’ve learned that boy that crosses a lot of lines.

JoAnn Crohn (17:36)

It’s everywhere.

Brie Tucker (17:38)

There’s lots of guilt to go around. As parents, think they handed out and like, you know, huge sacks of guilt they hand us when we have our first kids.

Elliot Kallen (17:47)

We give our kids way too much guilt. We also don’t ask the right questions. If you want better answers, ask better questions. I was one of those people who, when my dad was in high school, actually when I was in high school, I didn’t have my mother. She was sick for two years of my high school career, and dead right into that. And my dad had two kids in college and was working and paying for a nurse that he never thought he’d have to pay for. And he came over to me and he said, when this whole thing started, he said, listen,

If you don’t screw up your grades and you don’t mess it up on the football team, I was a high school quarterback, I’m not going to bother you. Just don’t mess it up. And so he would just come home from work and he’d say, how you doing? I said, fine. Or, okay, everything right? Yep. That was our conversation. He wasn’t being mean. He wasn’t uncaring. I felt loved every minute of my world. I don’t feel in love. He just was busy. You can’t do that to your children anymore like my dad did with me.

You have to find out what their favorite class is and why. What their least favorite class is and why. What’s going on in chemistry that they’re not doing well? What’s going on with your best friend in those classes too? How are they doing in the social world? Because their social world is not just about dating. It’s the whole gamut of friendships, same-sex groups, nothing about sexual relations, just about interactions. How’s that going?

The only in our world was a fist to your face. in today’s world could be exactly what we’re doing online right now in a very different way than it could be in a thread that they got that made them feel horrible about themselves. So things have changed and you’ve got to find better answers only by asking better questions. And maybe the most important thing, in the old days, we used to eat, you ate with your family. Sometimes you were a taxi driver like I was, like you probably are JoAnn right now.

JoAnn Crohn (19:40)

Sometimes I have a driver now, so that’s great. My daughter drives, so that’s taken off a lot of my taxi responsibility.

Elliot Kallen (19:47)

A little bit too much to In N Out burger in California. But you know, at least we talked a little bit in the car. But today, that cell phone makes kids withdraw into their phone. And so you’ve got to turn your phone off, get your kids to turn your phone off in the car. You got to keep your phone off in the car. Dinner table, no phones, including you. No calling the older sibling in college. No calling grandma at dinner. Nothing while dinner’s going on. And you’ve got to get into old fashioned conversations.

And here’s the hard part that we do it as parents. You’ve got to create an atmosphere that’s non-judgmental. And as a man, that means don’t fix it.

JoAnn Crohn (20:25)

Yeah, well, let’s talk about that. We’re going to get into that right after this.

So Elliot, before the break, you said that as a parent, you have to be non-judgmental. And you’re like, as a dad, don’t fix it. And I have to tell you, moms have the same tendency. We want to fix all the things. So I want to hear from your perspective, though. What are you telling not to fix?

Elliot Kallen (20:48)

Let’s assume that because we had this happen, the best class that they’re having is let’s call it English or history, right? They enjoy that. I’m a history guy. I got lit up when you talked about history. And if I could do my world over again and money didn’t mean anything, I would teach high school history because I enjoy it so much. The class that my kids hated was chemistry. Turns out they just could not only could they relate to the teacher, you couldn’t relate to the where am I ever going to need history or chemistry in my life. I’m never going to Mix hydrochloric acid and baking soda and come up with something.

Brie Tucker (21:20)

100 % support that thought process of your kids. I hated chemistry.

JoAnn Crohn (21:25)

cooking! But I didn’t like chemistry either. I had a really hard time in chemistry so I’m just being the devil’s advocate here.

Elliot Kallen (21:32)

I consider myself an amateur chef, but I can’t bake my way out of a paper bag because I didn’t like chemistry. Baking is all about chemistry. Anyway, and so it turns out with my kids, they didn’t like chemistry, even though my son got an A in chemistry, my daughter, that’s the class she had to do over. But I thought when I talk about chemistry, oh, you’re not doing well in chemistry, I know how to fix that. I’ll get you a tutor. I hired a tutor right away.

Brie Tucker (21:39)

Yeah, is. It is.

Elliot Kallen (22:00)

That’s what I mean by fixing it. It turned out that what she was doing for my daughter, not my son, what she was doing is she withdrew from chemistry class because her best girlfriends also withdrew from chemistry class mentally and were skipping it half the time or fooling around or even worse they were getting high before chemistry class.

Brie Tucker (22:20)

my God, that is a recipe for… I can’t even imagine trying to do something that makes you forget things in a class where it’s really important you remember things.

Elliot Kallen (22:29)

Self-destructive. That’s self-destructive behavior. And so instead of me hiring a tutor when she’s getting high or they’re getting high, I should have said, let’s talk about what’s really going on behind the scenes and said, how’s Mary or Jennifer doing? How are they doing? Well, they’re not doing well either. so are you guys showing up to class? And now you start finding out better answers because I would have asked better questions, but I didn’t ask it. I immediately went to fixing that by hiring a high school tutor.

to work with them and that wouldn’t have been the right, that wasn’t the right answer.

JoAnn Crohn (23:00)

It’s a lot of what we talk about with our No Guilt Mom community about asking questions to make sure that you are finding the root of the issue instead of assuming, which we always, when we assume, we always get it wrong, always. And that’s when we go into fix it mode and we create this disconnection between us and our kids. My question for you, Elliot, is like, how much education should we give to our kids about suicide prevention? Because when you talked about your son and how he was withdrawing and all of his friends said he was withdrawing,

and how he wasn’t eating, it’s one of those situations where we can’t be there as a parent. So we kind of have to rely on our kids more so. Like, what do you say about that? How can we reinforce our kids to help them notice the signs for when they need to seek help if we’re not around?

Elliot Kallen (23:49)

Well, I think that’s a great question that I’m so glad that you actually are engaging in that question because it’s a question that scares parents. does. principles have been taught that if you talk about depression or pre-suicide, that you’re sanctioning it. Yep. And they’re totally wrong. Yeah. That’s the same thing as when I was a kid. It’s not changed in 50 years. So they’re completely wrong. The more you talk about it, the more they understand that there are

phases in your life when you’re happier and sadder and that’s acceptable and when you’re elated or depressed and that’s acceptable and that’s not clinical that’s just part of life. I mean your dog dies you’re depressed grandma died you’re depressed. These are somebody died in your family these are reasons to be and it’s okay you don’t need a pill to make you undepressed because grandma passed away at 74 years old.

JoAnn Crohn (24:48)

because there’s a situation that happened that caused the depression. And I think what we get into as parents, that kind of like crazy line that goes through is when there isn’t a situation that happened and yet you feel this complete depression and you’re not quite sure how to get out of it.

Elliot Kallen (25:05)

Right. It’s okay to talk about when do we need to get some help? When do we talk to a professional or to say, how are you feeling? Now, as a parent, if you can ask that question in a non-judgmental way and create an atmosphere, you might have the opportunity for them to actually answer that honestly and say, you know, I’m a little bit sad. Or they might say, I’m okay, but my best friend, Joey, he’s really sad. But they’re really talking about themselves. They’re just doing it for their best friend.

Brie Tucker (25:34)

I had that my nephew, the first time he had major depression and had a suicide attempt, he called me because he was in a different state and he was asking me about his friend that had taken pills. And I was just like, well, you need to get your friend to the school nurse right away because they were at school. just finding out later that that was him. It is like such a punch in the gut. And you come back and you ask yourself, why didn’t I know? Why didn’t I see that?

And like you were talking about, if I had asked more questions in the moment, I probably would have been able to get there because I did think it was a fishy conversation.

Elliot Kallen (26:12)

So Jake said to me, this is Christmas break, he died in the middle of January. And he said to me as I was cooking dinner, he was on the couch, and he said, you know, Dad, I want you to know that when I was in high school, I considered suicide. Now I put the knife down, whatever I was cutting, and I just looked up at him, I said, so where are you now? He said, no, that’s behind me, I’m in a good place now. Now he died two weeks later, so he wasn’t in a good place. He was trying to come clean.

JoAnn Crohn (26:25)

Hmm.

Elliot Kallen (26:40)

He was trying to approach me and I said, okay, do you want to talk about it? Do you want to get some help? He said, no, I’m over it. Now, apparently he made a comment similar to that with his mom because we’re divorced in two different homes. And she asked a similar question. If she had come to me and said that, he brought up the word suicide and or I come to her and said he brought up the suicide, we might’ve thought at that moment, huh, maybe he’s reaching out for help, but we didn’t put it together. And it was reaching out for help, but we missed it. We’re not trained professionals.

But I think that as a parent, you should talk about, you know, there are signs that you’re feeling so sad that you should get some help or talk to me about it. And I do it this way. I said, I want you to think of your life as a six-sided box, four walls, top and bottom, six sides. And for most of us, those walls are colored blue or green or gray, depending on the mood you’re in. Really good mood is blue sky all the time. Crappy mood is kind of gray and rainy. We know that gray turns to blue and green is kind of in between there. Pick a different color besides green if green doesn’t bother you, whatever. But I think suicide is those walls become black. And now there’s no light coming in. And when all those walls are jet black, you’re now in suicide mode because today’s really bad. Yesterday was just as bad. Tomorrow’s gonna be even worse. Why bother? No one’s gonna miss me anyway. That’s suicide.

That’s the track they’re on. So what we’ve created, we have a team crisis texting line that we created that’s on our website. You type the word brighter, B-R-I-G-H-T-E-R to 741-741 24-7 all 365 days, Christmas, birthdays, weekends, three in the morning, midnight, the middle of chemistry class, whatever you want to type that word in and you will within two minutes or less have a texting partner who’s a trained professional and they will work with you 45 minutes at a time. Then you can hang up and do it again. We’re only licensed to do this 45 minutes at a time before you get to state licensing. And I want you to know we get 60 new teams a month that do this, which is amazing. And they ask the same question in the first five minutes. Am I the only one feeling this way? They’ve totally isolated themselves socially from the world and they’re wallowing in this sadness.

JoAnn Crohn (28:56)

That’s a question.

Elliot Kallen (29:08)

Whatever you want to think of a six out of box black or just sadness or umbrella over whatever your metaphor is for this, it’s a moment of sadness that they are stuck in. Yeah. Yeah. And that they need help getting out of. Sometimes you as a parent can help them. Sometimes you can do things with them. Taking a weekly walk with your teen is a tremendous thing to do because we’re all trained to walk and talk at the same time. Yeah. That’s great. Eating dinner or pizza as a family that may get you to talk over that in good ways and maybe

Show me a little bit of vulnerability from your life. I you two have stories to tell that you opened with, that you have some history in your life where you hit some walls in your life. And obviously here, so you overcame these walls or these obstacles. Talk about that. You give permission for your child to be sad, but don’t get permission to go so far that they don’t ask for help.

JoAnn Crohn (30:03)

Yeah. Well, when you talked about your son saying, I thought about suicide and you said you wish you would talk to his mom or his mom has talked to you, what can parents do in that moment? If their kids are like, I’m fine, obviously, just bringing suicide up is the warning sign. What’s like the next step as a parent?

Elliot Kallen (30:22)

I would have immediately called his mama and either we would have gone out, which might have been awkward for him, we would have gone out for ice cream, just the two of us. I would have put my other two kids aside and taken him and said, let’s go do something together, you and I. Just us. Now he was a sports nut. I could have taken him to any sporting event out there and he would have enjoyed it because he was a sports enthusiast. Matter of fact, the best major would have been for him, something in sports management. That really would have been the right major.

That’s one of my biggest regrets of raising him is why didn’t we go to a school or look at the, even that school had a sports management program for you, where you could have been working for a sports team when you graduated, because that probably wouldn’t have been his perfect job. We would have gone to something and just talked about it. I had even said to somebody when he was a freshman in college, I said, you know, I hope I get along with his wife one day, if he gets married, because I know that if I don’t, something happens, I don’t get along with him, I can drop into where he’s living and we can go to a football or a basketball or hockey event, and we will immediately click with each other. Because that’s the kind of kid he was. And so that’s what I would do differently is find out what can we do right now to click because it turns out that teens hit a crisis wall when they are depressed that lasts 90 days or less. It doesn’t last three years. It’s 90 days or less. That doesn’t mean they’re not depressed for life. But the crisis of hurt and maybe self-hurt abates within 90 days.

And that’s the first crisis you have to get over and then to begin to tackle it long term.

JoAnn Crohn (31:57)

So connection right away.

Elliot Kallen (31:59)

And then ask questions and say, hey, what’s going on? know, hey, if I know, if somebody told me that you’re in a locker room, you’re kind of isolating yourself. What’s going on? What are you thinking of at that time? You know, I said, you know, when I was in a locker room with football and ice hockey growing up, man, we just had so much fun. We beat each other up. We had good time. We put each other in headlocks. We played some hockey in this big shower room where, you know, sometimes kids got hurt in that, you know, worse than the game because they fell. And it was a hoot. It was so much fun. It some of my best memories were going to White Castle after a football game. We had more fun going to White Castle than we did playing football because we were horsing around. Why aren’t you doing any of that? What can I do to make that better? Have you talked to your other friends about just going out? Do you want to borrow the car? about if I pick a cool four kids and I’ll take you guys out and drop you guys off somewhere and go have some pizza somewhere? How about that? We could have talked about that, but we didn’t do that because we didn’t have those conversations.

JoAnn Crohn (32:52)

So connecting with kids, getting into their world, seeing what they’re struggling with and sharing your own struggles too, just to let them know that there is a light, even if you’re going through a sad time right now. Elliot, I wanna thank you so much for coming on and sharing these ways that parents can connect with their kids and also the signs that they could look for to help prevent teen suicide. And we like to end every episode on a high note.

And so I want to ask you what’s coming up for you that you’re excited about.

Elliot Kallen (33:24)

Well, actually, the charity is moving forward and we’re finally hiring a new executive director, which I’m super happy about. A young lady, she’s 30 and she gets it, which I’m really happy. On the personal note, I own two financial advisory businesses and I got them both up for sale and it looks like it’s going to happen. So that’s my goal is to start another company because I’m an entrepreneur. That’s what I love to do.

JoAnn Crohn (33:42)

It’s exciting.

That’s awesome.

Brie Tucker (33:50)

We’re so glad that you have shared your story with us. I mean, I know that that is not an easy story to share. And I was just telling JoAnn before we interviewed, before we all got on here. I don’t know if I would have had the kind of strength to do that after losing my child. To go, we’re gonna make something of this experience that’s going to help others to not be in this again. And…

I just want to say like, I really think that A Brighter Day is an amazing organization and I love what you have been able to do with us and thank you. Thank you so much.

Elliot Kallen (34:28)

You know, I’ve interviewed both my children and they have said to me after the each interview and said, dad, please don’t ever interview us again. This is too hard. I don’t know how you do that.

JoAnn Crohn (34:36)

Yeah, yeah, it is hard.

Elliot Kallen (34:38)

I will give you a recommendation for any parents that are going through what I’ve gone through is find a centering place for you that can bring you back to earth. Because if you have other children, you need to be present for your other children or grandchildren or whatever you end up doing. And my center place, and I’m really surprised my temple or my sanctuary or my church is actually the cemetery. I go there and the way it’s built, have to stand on his grave because there’s a plaque on the ground. It’s the it’s made. I talk, like I said, the view doesn’t change. The conversation doesn’t change.

But when I leave, I’m much more grounded than when I showed up.

JoAnn Crohn (35:14)

To find that centering place. Yes. thank you so much, Elliot, for being here today and for everybody out there. Remember, best mom is a happy mom. Take care of you and we’ll talk to you later. Thanks.

Brie Tucker (35:15)

Thanks for stopping by!

JoAnn Crohn (35:29)

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