Belen Schools offers mental health help

BELEN — One local school district is offering parents free resources to help with the mental health of their children.

Belen Consolidated Schools has partnered with the Cook Center for Human Connection and its website, parentguidance.org. The free online resources cover a variety of topics, such as living with a child with depression, identifying anxiety and coping with grief and loss. The courses offered are delivered by licensed therapists.

In May, Parent Guidance held the first of six mental health webinars on social media and protecting your child. The remaining five webinars will be offered through the rest of 2024, with the next one scheduled for 6 p.m., Tuesday, Aug. 20. The topic of that webinar hasn’t been announced yet.

During the May webinar, Macy Cass, a facilitator for Parent Guidance, led the session with prerecorded segments from Dr. Kevin Skinner, the clinical director for Parent Guidance and a marriage and family therapist with more than 20 years of therapeutic experience,

Cass said according to a national study done by Pew Research on teens and their cell phones, 45 percent of those asked felt addicted to their cell phones and devices.

One way parents and families can protect children from the negatives of many social media apps, such as bullying, easy contact and exposure to “role models” who really aren’t and inappropriate content, is to limit screen time.

“Families can disconnect to reconnect. Put away the screens and find an activity you and your child or whole family enjoys, take a family walk, eat dinner together,” Cass said. “Research shows regularly scheduled family dinners has an effect in reducing cyber bullying.”

While there are many apps, both free and paid, that can limit screen time, the two dominant operating systems for mobile devices — iOS and Android — have features already built in, she noted, that can be accessed in the phones settings. Both Apple and Google also offer tools that help families manage screen time, set digital ground roles for kids and more at apple.com/families and families.google.com, respectively.

During the video segments, Skinner said it’s key for parents to stay engaged with their children, even though that may be difficult.

“It’s easy to go home and tune out. Your kids might be doing the same thing, so it’s easy to push it along and say, ‘I’ll talk to them tomorrow,’” Skinner said. “By communicating regularly and monitoring their behavior, your giving them the warmth and connection they desire. You can monitor your children, but if they don’t feel connected and involved in a loving way, they are going to resist and fight back.”

That’s why it’s crucial to involve your children in any kind of plan to limit screen time or monitor their social media use, he pointed out.

“Monitor things consistently and always keep the child involved,” Skinner said. “Don’t be afraid to invite them into the conversation and let them know what you’re doing and why.”

The therapist also said it’s important for parents to look at and own up to their own screen time, so family guidelines can be established.

Cass said as a family, you have to decide what technology boundaries you’re willing to implement in the home, such as screen time after certain tasks are done, for a certain number of hours a day or making some places in the home, such as the bedrooms, tech-free zones.

In regards to social media platforms, Skinner and Cass said some ways to keep children safe is ask them to only connect with people they already know in real life and possibly limit those connections to 200 people or fewer, emphasizing quality of friends over quantity.

Skinner advised parents to have what he called “fire drills” with their children in terms of bullying, threats and other negative interactions online.

“Ask them if they encountered a certain scenario, would they come talk to me? If you got a threatening email to ‘do what I say or I’ll hurt your family,’ what would you do?” Skinner said. “You have to let them know they can come to you and talk to you. You can’t put your head in the proverbial sand and hope it turns out OK.”

In addition to the webinar series, Parent Guidance offers parents monthly live sessions with a licensed clinical therapist with expertise in youth mental health who can directly answer parents’ questions during the session. The next live session is at 6 p.m., Wednesday, July 31.

The website also offers “parent coaching” with a trained parenting coach, more than 50 free on-demand courses on a wide array of topics and pre-recorded, frequently asked questions submitted by parents and answered by licensed therapists in the “Ask a Therapist” section of the site.

For more information about Belen Consolidated Schools partnership with the Cook Center for Human Connection and upcoming mental health webinars, visit beleneagles.org and click the “Mental Health” link on the homepage. If you have questions, contact Deborah Baca, BCS health services coordinator, at bacads@beleneagles.org.