Get help.

With COVID and now extraordinary uncertainty about the future of the United States, it's important for parents to know that there is help available. The following statistics were written BEFORE recent events:

“...approximately 2% of children and at least 4% of adolescents suffer from depression at any given time. By the end of high school, approximately one young person in five will have had at least one episode of depression.

“Children and adolescents who are under stress, who experience loss, or who have attentional, learning, conduct, or anxiety disorders are at a higher risk for depression... The good news is that depression is a treatable illness.”

CLICK HERE for the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry’s online depression resource center.

Give Yourself Grace

I haven’t posted a tip for several days, and that’s okay. As Stuart Smalley, Al Franken’s beloved SNL character, always said, “I’m good enough. I’m smart enough. And doggone it, people like me!”

Try not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. None of us is perfect.

But most of us are pretty darn good.

So do your best to be consistent in your efforts to tame depression, but recognize that sometimes inconsistency or improvisation leads to amazing discoveries and breakthroughs. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” And I make it a practice to always take seriously any sentence that includes the word “hobgoblin”.

Because I’m pretty sure I do not have a little mind, and because I believe these tips may help someone, I will have to try to do better in the consistency department.