 Everybody, we're just going to wait one more minute to let people come into the into the meeting. Okay, so in the interest in time, we are going to get started. Good evening everyone and welcome to what's next helping our kids transition into the new normal. My name is Catherine for our, I'm the program coordinator for the Bedford, Louisboro, Conbridge drug abuse prevention council where group, which aims to raise awareness about substance use and mental health struggles and the different risk and protective factors associated with both. So if you'd like to learn a bit more about what we do or the resources we have available to the community, you can visit our website at the dapc.org. We're very proud to collaborate on tonight's program with the Bedford Playhouse. We have Dan Friedman from the Playhouse here with us tonight. Hey Catherine. Thanks so much for being here. So I wanted to say quickly, I want to thank everybody in the community for their support on the playhouse is now reopen. We've got first run movies and a whole host of additional really cool programs coming up over the next couple of months, especially outdoors. We've got some great live music and other other types of programming. So I want to just invite everybody if you're so inclined to check out our website, which is bedfordplayhouse.org. It's a brand new website to be a little patient with us, but you can list you'll see a list of all the upcoming programs and I want to call out just two highlights that we have coming at the end of this month on July 31st. We have a lawn chair theaters coming back to do a show called the Midsummer Nights Queen, which is exactly what it says. It's Shakespeare's a Midsummer Night's dream with the music of Queen interspersed into it. And then on August 6th, we have live comedy, the return of live comedy, which we're going to be doing outdoors also both those programs are outdoors and we're very happy to collaborate on the let's talk program. It's part of our mission ongoing to do these things for the community in appreciation for everything that we do. Catherine does a really great job with everything she does and thank you for taking some time out tonight to join us for this is going to be a great program. Thanks so much, Dan. So just a couple of quick housekeeping issues before we begin. There's a Q&A box at the bottom of your screen. Any questions you have, you can type them in there and we'll have our presenters answer them. During the Q&A, the end of the presentation. We also just want to remind the audience that the content of tonight's program is not intended to be a substitute for professional health or diagnosis or treatment. If you are a family member need assistance finding a qualified health provider to address an issue with substance use or mental health. Please contact your physician and you could also email the DAPC at the DAPC at gmail.com and will be happy to provide a list of some of the local treatment providers. So as Dan mentioned tonight's program is part of the let's talk series which deals with a variety of topics pertaining to mental health and substance use. We have a brief video to just tell you a bit more about this series that I'll share with everyone now. Sometimes I think pediatricians struggle, people with substance use disorder struggle to involve family and we know that nobody can change in isolation. And you know that does something to your life when you don't pay your bills, when you're away from your family, when you're socially disconnected. More we can talk with each other, not professional to patient, but human being to human being. But doing something with that notion of I'm going to be chilling a little bit. Having parents not tell kids what to do, but to ask them what are you thinking? Hopefully that was able to tell you a bit more about the series as a whole. Now I'd like to introduce our presenters. We have Dr. B. Hibbs, a family psychologist who has held faculty positions for more than 15 years in graduate programs for psychologists and marital and family therapists. We also have Dr. Anthony Restein, a nationally recognized expert in child and adolescent psychology, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics, and the chair of psychiatry and behavioral health at Cooper University Health Care. They are also co-authors of the book, The Stress Tears of Their Lives, helping your kid survive and thrive during their college years. We're so excited to have them here tonight. So without further ado, I give you Dr. B. Hibbs and Dr. Anthony Restein. Hey, thank you. I'm waiting to see Dr. Hibbs' face, too. Hi there. Katherine, thanks so much for introducing us. We're happy to be here with you this evening and Tony and I are going to give a brief presentation and then welcome, you know, your questions. We wanted just to begin by telling you a little bit about how we got together to write The Stress Tears of Their Lives. My son, my older son, had a very serious depression during his freshman year of college and I, you know, was fortunate enough to be able to get Dr. Restein to treat him. And along, you know, the course of his treatment, which was about probably about two years, I joined my son, who in the book is called Jensen, and Tony and I share a family systems orientation. And so I found that really, really helpful just to understand that parents are really important in the process of a young adult's recovery. And during that time, Tony and I decided, hey, why don't we write a book? And my older son gave his permission in the typical way he did, he does, which is to say, why would anyone want to read that? It's so depressing. And I said, because you got better, like it's a, you know, it'll help other people. So let me ask Tony if he'll give his input before he began the slides. Well, no, just to say that we had a great time coming up and giving a presentation at the Harvey School, you know, in the fall, I believe, of 2019, before the pandemic arrived. And, you know, we've been going around the country at up to that point, talking with parents and with teachers and and with other other professionals. And we really love the interaction that we've gotten because, you know, one of the goals of this book was not just to have people read it, but to really use it as a springboard for discussion. Because just like the video said, you know, there are things we need to talk about, we all need to share what we're going through with one another. And, you know, parents, parents, especially nowadays, are especially burdened with a lot of responsibilities that, you know, weren't anticipated, especially now with the pandemic. So I think B and I really wanted to participate in this workshop with you all, because we think that this is an important time where, you know, we're moving sort of to a different phase of the pandemic. And a lot of things are coming up and we want to share our understanding of that and also, you know, hear from you about your questions and your concerns. Thanks, Toni. Katherine, could you begin the first slide? So as we were thinking about updating this for the COVID era, we thought, well, what is normal? What's going to be normal? And one of my clients said, well, normal is setting on a dryer. She was quoting a movie character. Toni and I decided, well, actually what's going to be normal is tolerating uncertainty. And so part of what we want to talk about this evening is how people can best tolerate uncertainty and also to remind you that uncertainty has always been part of our lives. It's just that we're very aware in an incredibly poignant, sad and different way about the things that we used to think we're certain and take for granted, including how we have a pandemic. So we're going to talk a little bit about stress in America in the COVID era. And while the photograph is your child emotionally ready for colleges, from an article that we wrote for the Wall Street Journal in 2019, what we're really talking about is your child really emotionally ready to go back to school, whether it's college or high school or middle school, and certainly this includes what has been going on and predated COVID, which was the mental health crisis that had seen rapidly accelerating numbers of kids reporting high levels of anxiety and depression from really from teenage years, mid teenage years on into their 20s. And in addition to that, what were the effects on parents, educators, and how did they respond to their worries about the children as well as what kind of strategies they found might be helpful. And then we welcome your questions and answers as, you know, as we're going forward after our presentation. We want to, I want to set the context a bit historically but also help you recognize that, you know, just newsflash Vanessa just told me this evening right as we went on that California has just instituted a mask mandate again. And so part of what we're going to be going through we've seen it in different countries sadly with the Delta variant are lots of uncertainties. There's so there's on the one hand some relief that we've gotten through in the United States. Many states are more vaccinated than not, but some aren't. And as kids returned to classrooms, some will be vaccinated, some won't. And, and so there's, there's still this sense of like, are we safe in terms of our physical well being. And then, again, we're going to talk about like what were the other uncertainties that we just kind of took for granted and what maybe can we learn from this period of uncertainty. So if you, if we can go to the next slide Catherine, I want to just remind people that pre COVID, we were in a period historical swerve of rapid social change. And part of that came with self branding by teenagers because of the advent of social media, and the also just constant pressure harsher competition globalization, a sense of constant striving in the Gen Z and millennial age of constant striving and yet really an uncertainty about like what will my future be. And if I make a misstep won't won't, you know, won't that spell ruin and so an enormous amount of pressure that teams were putting on themselves and parents were putting on themselves in order to reduce many, many, many activities and, you know, kind of CV packing and that sort of thing. But one of the problems then is for parents anyhow, as their anxiety went up, what happens in these parental areas of anxiety historical is that parents exert more control. And what happens in is that children have less independence less chances to practice autonomy, and yet it's autonomy that children need in order to be able to get it kind of kind of launch into not only college away from home, but also the adult world because this is the world that they're inheriting in which they have to be autonomous. So anxiety in the COVID era, COVID-19 era really was on top of a baseline of a civic culture we certainly saw that in politics, and in many areas where there's been a lot of a lot of fear enormous uncertainty. And that kind of affect leads to cognitive distortions in other words kind of fearing the worst thinking the worst like and having a sense of pressure about it. And that then translated into enormous anxiety, really on everyone parent child educator alike. And so this pre existed COVID and then COVID ratcheted up obviously and revealed many inequities in our society that were pre existing but to some degree hidden in terms of economic inequities health care inequities, racial discrimination and inequities and minority disadvantages. So this awareness climate change like has, you know, even the last couple of years with wildfires out West and storms. has has really been a revealing of things that were pre existing but we're now aware of in a different way, which gives us an opportunity to face that challenge but also can be overwhelming. And the next slide part of what we want to talk about is the fatigue that can occur when we are overwhelmed with COVID with so fatigue pre existing COVID, but COVID had this extra layer obviously of health health care what I mean it was only a year ago that we were, you know, washing our hands. So many times a day which by the way I never caught a cold during that time. But it was also, should I touch a package, what's safe what isn't safe so there was just in just unbelievable uncertainty. Not even a year ago and now there's much more certainty about what we can do to be safe and practice safely. So to an extent tolerating uncertainty, promoted resilience, because how people tolerated the uncertainty around their health. And those who did well, and remained healthy. It was by practicing uncertainty and vigilance, but that level of vigilance was exhausting to people. And so when Tony and I were first doing these slides, we were really talking about how youth. The demands went up, you know, they became more and more and more, you know, irritable and burned out, and the demands of that era with demands for academic excellence and high functioning and getting to the best college. If we look at this slide today, how I think of it now is that will COVID introduced an unprecedented level of boredom and frustration that's on the far left. And I think when I think about like the population of, you know, teens and young adults I've seen, and then their parents, I would say the teens operated more and I'm bored out of my mind and I can't stand online school. I'm frustrated, I want to see my friends they had a lot of social distress that way, and they were stimulation seeking, which sometimes backfired in like taking too many risks, and taking healthcare risk that adults were upset about. On the right hand side, the parents, I would say, were heavily representative of the right hand side of this curve, they were totally overloaded by demands to both work remotely and be their child's remote teacher if they needed to what was the assignment of the day. I had so many sessions interrupted by kids going, I can't get my camera to work, you know, and a parent would go fix a camera. Are you on this line which class are you supposed to be on so this was happening live, the way it never had. And we certainly bet about more and more and more mothers who either left their jobs, couldn't do their jobs remotely because they were also double duty with their, basically managing their children's schoolwork. So parents I think on the right side of this curve. Usually it's one individual on this curve and where are they, but we saw it as a society I think this year. Parents were on the right side of the curve totally overloaded incredibly irritable often with each other. And, and, and what resulted. If you look at both sides that of the spectrums that the kids and the parents occupied is everyone got burned out. Everyone was like, Oh, get me out of this. And there was a sense of, you know, we were running a marathon but the markers kept moving we had no idea when the marathon would be over. And if we used, you know, the, the black death of the 13th century is any marker, it was going to take at least two years. And we could, we could lose an enormous part of the, the world population and sadly of course, some of that is still happening. You are incredibly fortunate to have science produce a vaccine in unbelievable record time. However, it's left most people exhausted deeply tired and trying to manage to remain resilient whenever, you know, that means it means that things are different people. Sometimes it's just what you do to relax and make the world go away watch a movie. I weed my garden. It's different things just to kind of have a break from the relentlessness of hyper vigilance. So Catherine with the next slide. What I want to remind people is pre COVID Gen Z was the was more stress than any of the other generations. This is an American Psychological Association 2019 survey that we're showing you. And on as we go down the list of what were they worried about there. They were. So when you look at the first figure 75% versus 65%. Gen Z 75% of them polls said yes I'm very, very worried about mass shootings mass school shootings, they were experiencing it you know it was it was a horrible number of mass shootings and basically within the first month of the country being open we began to see things happen again. So the 75% versus 65%, 65% represents the highest level report from any of the other generations. In order, if we look at the order of generational distress before COVID it was Gen C was the most then the millennial generation was next, then their parents Gen Xers were were next boomers were doing really well like hey no worries, like, you know, I've gotten this far and maybe I'll even get to retire. The great, the greatest generation as they're called was also like a really good shape. They weren't worried at this level. So, Gen C was also so 2019 as you remember, enormous deportation of immigrants, breaking up of their families. This was also the hashtag me to, you know, era, it still is but I mean it was prominent in 2019 2019 was also the year before we had a presidential election. So there's enormous amount of fear about what would happen to the country and the country was so polarized there to poor mental health 27% of Gen C reported that versus 13% of their parents reported that personal debt Gen C was actually quite worried about personal debt and housing instability. And now it's gotten worse because of COVID. So, not for everyone but for certain segments of our society. So Tony is going to take over from here in terms of talking, walking you through some of the statistics that have occurred with COVID in terms of the stressors, both parents and teenagers have been experiencing. Next slide please. Yeah, so, you know, there is now, you know, data to show that the for the for the Gen Z teens that over half of them say that the pandemic has made planning for their future feel impossible. And that that it's actually not just planning for the future but has actually disrupted their plans for the future. So if you stop to think about it teenagers if anything should be feeling really excited and looking forward to what's going to come down the road and getting ready for college and thinking about future careers. And what we're seeing is a large number are reporting this sense that, you know, this future of mine is not only hard to plan for it. It actually has. This has disrupted everything for me. Now, why is that okay we could look at the number of factors number one, that the pandemic itself is so unpredictable and its ebbs and flows have really been, you know, the the the surges and then the surges and then the surge again and then relaxing. I mean, you know what could say even though this was done earlier on in the pandemic. I would suspect that if we went back to talk to teens now these numbers actually might be worse, because we've seen both the surgeons in certain sectors of the United States now with the with the variant and the delta variant, and the as you as be just mentioned, mask mandates are coming back certain states are actually experiencing major major surges. So that's one factor of the impact of the pandemic just on everyone. Secondly, is how disrupted schools have been. And I can't say enough how no one was not only not where people not prepared for the pandemic in terms of responding to it from standpoint of public health. But our our educational systems were really thrown out of whack. And kids felt that kids have felt throughout this whole time that they're not learning as much there's evidence to suggest that academic performance has gone down, especially in those with less access, you know, to reach to schools and but but even in high performing high achieving schools, which we now understand to be places of tremendous stress. So we can talk about that a little bit later in the Q&A but this this I think these data here reflect an altered landscape for for teenagers that we have to address all of us parents, teachers, mental health professionals because it's not going to suddenly vanish as people start to emerge from this summer and go back to school. There will be great things about being back in school, but there's also a lot of uncertainty and a lot of anxiety about that. And finally, I'd say the last thing about this fear of the future has to do with, even before the pandemic, a sense that the United States in the world is now in a different place. And, you know, how solid is the economy going to be how good will jobs be what about globalization. What will that mean for young people's abilities to live a life comparable to the ones that that they saw the, you know, the people ahead of them the generations ahead of them have. So I think this is a very perilous time in the eyes of teenagers and you can see it in these data. Next slide. This is not just teens, right, we can see that almost eight, almost eight and 10 Americans said that the pandemic was a source of stress in an alive that the pandemic itself is a source of stress and that two thirds say that there was an increased amount of stress. And once again, I don't have to, you know, you don't, it's not rocket science. It's altered our lives in the ways that be was describing immeasurably, and we've had to spend a tremendous amount of energy, trying to figure out how to keep ourselves going and adjust and adapt constantly to this changing landscape that we find ourselves in everything from daily schedules, you know, how will I get my kids ready for school. Can they even attend school, will their camera be working, will they be able to stay on on on and learn what they need to learn will I be able to do and then you know a host of other questions like what about the summer like what am I going to do this summer will my kids be able to go and do the things they want last summer was horrible because you know the usual activities like camp and and and and other other other activities for for kids were thrown off and parents couldn't take the usual trips they wanted to with their kids. So we see a tremendous disruption in all facets of life. Next. And again, I mentioned this before but but you can see how you know they think that the school year parents of kids found the school year to be tremendously stressful. And I mean we can quibble about 65 versus 76%. But look, this is a substantial number of parents experiencing the disruption that I mentioned. And even though we don't have a slide to describe this, what we also saw is increases in drinking among Americans, alcohol consumption went up substantially. And I just heard today, the sad news that the deaths from opiates has went up to 93,000 last in 2020. A huge bump. Okay, a 30% increase from the year before. Oh, my God, this is like, this is a sign of a society that is stressed out. By the way, it's not unique to the United States. I think every society on the planet right now is on edge, because of the pandemic because of all of the disruptions, and all of the suffering that's being widely, widely felt. So what do we do? What is the, what's the path out? And next slide. So, we're not going to tell you what you're going to, what works for you, you're going to tell us how you've managed what you've done to make life, both, you know, less stressful but also fun in the midst of all this because even though we're not emphasizing the stress and the negatives, we also see evidence that Americans were actually quite resilient. So for example, the family routine of sitting down and eating, believe it or not, family meals were actually being eroded there were fewer and fewer families having meals regularly together, prior to the pandemic, and one interesting thing in family life was because people were home more, and there was more cooking at home people started to eat more together as well so one routine, like eating to get preparing meals, eating together and cleaning up talking, wow, talking together. This was something that I think of as a, as a sign of resilience. Another was people started to find ways to do things together in a, in a COVID safe way so riding your bike, going for walks. Many of my patients and their families said that, you know, for the longest time they hadn't gone and done things like go to the park together and just be there in the outdoors. So I think eating right and and having enough exercise is part of the part of the deal, setting expectations for those routines, not becoming, you know, super super, you know, perfectionistic about it. But yeah, getting people to wake up at the right time because that was another thing that happened on the pandemic was sleep cycles shifted, especially in adolescence, they were staying up later and later and waking up later and later. And we don't have time to show the data, but that's going to have to change when people return to a more quote normal unquote lifestyle. Next slide. Finally, the challenge here of because we've been spending so much time on screens. I mean, we're on screens right now with you screens are what kept us connected through the pandemic. Zoom calls and zoom classes and and social media, all of this were incredibly important for managing our social networks on our, our work, you know, and, you know, far be it from any of us to say, I would have been fine without this stuff. No, I think it really made it much better for all of us that we were able to stay connected. However, there was also a tendency. And I think this we could talk about later for the screen time to become almost excessive for people to become to getting zoom fatigue would be what some people called it. I know at the end of a day of me seeing patients through through this interface. I'm exhausted. I think that for kids who are not particularly sensitive to normal sleep wake cycles. We heard I've heard stories about parents going to bed and waking up in the middle of night and seeing at three in the morning, their kids still online playing games or doing or doing whatever they like to do, watching YouTube sort of talking and chatting with their friends who were also up all hours. And then of course, as you all know that some of these games have role playing games have people from around the world playing so hey, I'm playing this fortnight with someone from Korea. And you know who cares what day or night it is because, you know, doesn't matter we're all in different time zones we're going to play this game. So, I think the challenge is how to maintain a healthy sleep wake cycle, because as we've learned more and more, if the sleep wake cycle is radically disrupted. It's hard to have both physical and mental health sustained so so I just pose those as a couple of ideas and be and I have many others but we don't want to talk to a blue in the face here I think we want to hear from you and have some questions and answers on the side. Oh, okay, I have one more slide but it doesn't matter. It was just saying questions and answers. So we're ready for that. Great well. Thank you so much that was absolutely fantastic I'd like to go into basically what you're talking about through your presentation, the whole idea of trust. What do people believe and what can people kind of hold on to now you talked about these things before about, you know, making meaning and all this. The whole idea of the altered landscape but what can, what can kids and parents kind of rely on, I guess would be the best best way to put it. Well, I guess I'll start just by saying trust has to be earned right so you know one thing that we need to learn to do is to trust ourselves right like that if I'm not feeling okay. That doesn't mean I'm crazy. Can I express to someone else, hey I'm feeling unhappy, or I'm feeling scared. And then, to whom do we say that well hopefully people in our family and our closest friends, and can they respond to us in an understanding and I guess trust starts within the family with ourselves with the family. And then, in terms of who do you trust source wise out there. I guess that's something that's a lot more complicated Vanessa because we see evidence that people are not trusting science for I absolutely agree with you in terms of how sad it is really that the atomization of our populace has, you know that even basic health information and scientific information has become politicized and polarized to that extent. But I think if we think about this and what's really encouraging about a good education whether that's in high school or college or that sort of thing is that they teach kids how to analyze sources. I insist on, you know, helping that's partly educational model is analyzing sources, where this come from what do we know about it, why would you believe it, why wouldn't you believe it and kids are top things like, are you looking for confirmation How is, you know, how are you asked to support your position. Are you only looking for information that supports your position, could you, you know, can you argue it from another perspective. Education inherently, I think one of the, the terrible like underfunded parts of America is how much is pulled back on on funding public education. You know, whether it's in a high school community or our college levels, you know, especially those that are public universities which used to produce some of the like, you know, really, you know, kind of stars of my generation anyway. But I think beyond that part of what I would ask people to think about is that we are basically tribal and that has influenced us to like, kind of just stick within our comfort zone of what do you think what do you think with people we know, rather than saying well, let me listen to people I don't know let me try to understand why they believe this or that, and actually the most success that in the psychological field people have had with changing bias is to not just argue with someone especially it doesn't work on the internet to just argue the case, but to care about telling me more about what you believe and why you believe it. So that the person in essence has to analyze their own and evaluate their own thinking. So at a parental level what I would say to parents here in the audience is that that's a good question to ask your kids. So it's very hard to learn not to just keep giving advice because we think I know more than you and I'm going to tell you how this works. But really if your kids come up with something that you think this is goofy. Okay, but, you know, ask thoughtful questions about it, help me understand it. Tell me what, you know, you know, guides your thinking on this. What about that, like, you know, kind of, what about that is popular within the base column. I emphasize this conversations with each other, kids with parents and parents with one another and parents with teachers. I mean, how do we restore trust in our public institutions is what I'm really most concerned about trust in, in, in, in, you know, everything from voting to information to, you know, the sources of information from like the CDC. And we know, in the case of the early days of the pandemic, Americans lost a lot of faith in the sources of their of the news, because a they were told this wasn't a big deal. All right, when it was. And the CDC. Its first tests were flawed. Okay, and if you're basing, you know, rates of infection on a test that's contaminated, you know, you're losing ground there. And so everybody's got to acknowledge then in order to maintain trust is, hey, I made a mistake. And that, and to me, that's how you gain trust back if, if the things you said turn out not to be true. Like if I say something to someone and it turned out to be false. And not because I was lying, but because I was wrong, or I didn't understand something I have to own it. I have to say, well, I made a mistake and, you know, this is important so that we can maintain a trusting relationship. Yeah, I think that's a great point I just want to add to that a little bit. So there's the societal and institutional level, but I would also say to parents. It's important if we want our kids to own up to things we have to own up to things too. That was a mistake. I'm sorry. Here's what was going on. I did that really, really often it made it easier for my kids to own up to their mistakes. And so I'd say be a role model in that way. You know, and, and it's humbling in a sense just to recognize, okay, like, that is tolerating uncertainty, like, I think it's this but I could be wrong. You know, I'll let you know when I find out more. So that's, that's a baseline establishing of an aspect of social maturity that Tony often talks about in terms of one of the ways that maturity aspects of being ready for, you know, success in life in a way. I know there might be other questions but I want to reflect on back on the other point here. So nowadays sources of information are no longer given from older generation to younger generation if anything kids probably have more access to internet and other source of information at least faster access than their parents do because they're digital natives. So one important question would be to just open it up and say, so what do you think of X and if people have an opinion, it's like, well, where did that opinion come from and just to inquire like he was saying, oh, you read it on your Facebook posting. Ah, okay, well did you know that a lot of the news that's that's being, you know, put on Facebook isn't necessarily accurate. So let's go see if we can find another source to validate that. Okay. And if there's more validation from other sources fine if not, we have to ask ourselves, maybe this is a made up story, which people are really good at, you know, a lot of people believing in something that is quite clearly, you know, fiction, but here the same thing over and over again here a lie over and over again, you start to believe it. There's a lot of there's a lot of stories a lot of misinformation exactly but and you're answering that in this. It's about interpersonal relationships it's about everything. It's about misinformation it's about social media it's about the overuse of everything. So let me ask a question, going into this is from an audience member this sent me. So for example, now we're going into the second year. So people have been through this. So what, what kinds of conversations are going to be new, and maybe differently charged than they were year one, because this is the everybody's been through this but this is different now. What what do you suggest parents and kids ask one another. Talk about differently, look at differently. There's going to be reentry in a way that there wasn't any reentry in the past year. And timing reentry there was a 10th entry that well yeah yeah so yes thank you. So, so some of the reentry is whether you know if you're kid it's like, oh I get to go to school full time as opposed to one day a week or two days a week or that sort of thing. So part of it is just the reentry conversations in the anxiety around reentry because we could say oh that's a wonderful thing. But it's also brings up, you know, kids are out of practice, whether it's the sleep wake cycle, or also, you know some kids truly truly preferred being remote, because they weren't picked on and you know there is some correlation between a quite high correlation between if you're picked on a school you're also picked up on online, but at least they were not picked on half the time, you know so some kids preferred the online life and now they have to go back and they may or may not want that or like that. So I think that those are some of the talking points I think the others will be how long do the vaccinations last so some of it will still be I think very health focused. Let me just play off the one thing you just said so it starts with a conversation. What do you imagine it's going to be like to go back. Exactly. What are you looking forward to what are you afraid of. How can you, how can we help you deal with what you're afraid of, or what what might you not like may not be afraid of it but you might like, like for example, I'm not going to like having to get up at seven o'clock again or 630 because it was fine to roll out of bed at 930 and good from being class at nine you know now I have to get up at seven or six. So yeah we're going to have to make some adjustments right, and I do think that changing back reentering is not just going back to what was. So the other piece is that we might call it reentry but the reality is a new reality. So it's not going to feel the same it's going to feel strange. So in some ways good, but in some ways it's going to be odd. And I remember this just not like two months ago, first time my wife and I went out to dinner and a restaurant first time in a long time. It felt weird. It felt nice to be out, but it was a little uncomfortable and you know when and how do you wear the mask what do you do. I don't think normalizing the notion that reentry is not just oh drop in everything's fine, but rather drop in see what's going on. What's what is it like. Is it is it is it. Is it the way you expect it. If not, why not. Once you get there. And I do think that would be was getting at which is, we don't know how much the virus is coming back in the fall and whether we're going to have to re, you know, regroup and go through our caves. And I think that that's a very scary thought for people right now so if you ask me what's the biggest fear I have is the fear that the pandemic is going to surge back, and that people are really going to have a harder time, this time around, even though we know what we need to do. The motivation is going to be different, because we're not going to be motivated the same way we were the first time. It's going to feel a lot worse, since we've got to do the same old thing So that's I think part of the conversation is, how do you stay healthy, and how do you try to guarantee that the surge isn't back, you know that they've the COVID doesn't surge back. Just to add to what Tony's saying in that conversational like hypothetical, one of the, one of the dilemmas that I think parents face that seems very benign, and it is tricky is overly reassuring bright siding, you know, don't worry about that or like, that won't be a problem. Because if, if your child however old your child is you know from like childhood to like teenage to young adult has a concern or has an anxiety and you've asked them, like, or maybe they just volunteered. If you want them to keep talking with you, you take it seriously. Thank you for telling me I hadn't thought of that. Huh, what do you think. So again, it's getting out of the parental advice giving mode or like, because how a kid's going to hear that like oh don't worry about it is, we're not going to talk about it. That's the end of the conversation and that's not what you want as a parent you want a kid to keep talking, even if what they're saying is kind of distressing to you. And one of our kind of mantras is to parents it's like, manage your own anxiety first, and then your kid will be better off. Yes, it's like the oxygen mask put it on you and then get the other mask and give it to your kid. Right. The one other thing that I think, speaking about reentry is I think parents have to also think about and discuss their own fear of reentry wherever they have to reenter. Because it may actually end up being easier for kids, because kids have an automatic peer group that they're going back to. So they're going to look forward to that right the biggest loss for kids was the loss of their social connections and they're, you know, hanging out in the after school, going to each other's houses, sports teams, all of that. So the re the rebirth of those things I think for the majority will feel very reassuring, very, very much, you know, resilience promoting. But what about parents well what's going to happen going back to the workplace or if you're not going back to the workplace and you're going to work from home. How is that going to be for you in this in this in this transition. May I ask you what are you hearing from parents when they're talking when they're talking about their issues. First, what are their issues before the kids even get into the mix. Well one one issue they I've heard a lot about is have I gained too much weight do I need to lose weight, you know, now that was a joke, but it's true people are feeling like I have not been out in a long time in, you know, the work setting. I just think parents mostly are worried about the will the pandemic come back or not. That's what I'm hearing. Yeah what I'm hearing is a variation on that which is my employer is not requiring vaccinations. I'm uncomfortable going into that setting, because like I've been very vigilant or I have an older family member at home, you know, I'm uncomfortable going back and I've also heard business owners who own independent businesses. They're very low to tell their employees who do not want to get vaccinated, that they can't come in. And I just think we're in trouble here. Yeah, there are going to be. I have heard the other fear from parents like you said be, and I don't know if employers. They're of two minds right because they don't want to lose employees right by insisting everybody has to be vaccinated. Right, if they don't insist everybody's back and they're gonna. Yeah, yeah. Well and it's so interesting with schools where you have some schools, you have to be vaccinated other schools it's. And so in a school that where it's where it's variable. I would think there's a lot of trust issues with people who have been vaccinated saying I wonder who's vaccinated here I wonder what's happening so it's it's just such an interesting landscape I want to ask you. And if that's alright talk I mean and I'd like to ask you to talk about anything you'd like to talk about but the whole idea of this really altered landscape. Again, what do you hear what are you hearing from your patients and families you're dealing with about the main, the main topics the main issues the main, the main change, the big change. There are a lot of families who've had their children who are young adult children return home, and how sometimes that has been something they've been very kind of glad to incorporate want to be helpful. I've seen family situations where one parent and sometimes it's a step parent sometimes it's a biological parent. Just feel like get on with it and so parents have become more polarized in terms of parental issues, partly because their own expectations for the certainty of I thought we were done raising children. Hi, hello. Not sure that that has time stamp on it. But a lot of families reincorporated their children for lots of different reasons and of course we read a lot of stories where that was, you know, had a really positive outcome, but I've also seen families where, you know, it almost blew up marriages and it was tricky, it was tricky. So I'll say, Vanessa, I'll say there's no one answer because my patients are so varied for the group that are in some way developmentally challenged have learning issues, ADHD or autism spectrum. It has been horrible to try to have them learn or group and have no access to in person. They're learning but social skills groups and supports, and for the more afflicted to not be able to go to a program during the day so the parents have are just playing over just they're over it. They can't wait for these programs to open up again. Now it's different from state to state. New Jersey's programs have opened up sooner than Pennsylvania's I don't know what it's like in Connecticut. So, one group of parents are just simply saying, I cannot wait for the schools or and or the programs and the after school programs and everything to open up again, because I have been working overtime this is not. I've been more than just a parent I've been a teacher I've been a counselor I've been a, you know, 247. And I think, you know, this is this. So what they're afraid of is that there's going to be a backslide again. Okay. Now, the other, the other thing I'm hearing from the kind of the parents of of these kids going off to college is that they feel awful for the kids who feel unprepared especially seniors who are starting as freshmen next year. You know if you poll most American high school seniors who are about to start college. What I'm hearing from other colleagues and other college counseling programs is tremendous anxiety about will I be able to make it in school. So whereas our the book the stress years talked a lot about this natural anxiety that's been growing over years and years in America about will I make it in school. Well this entering freshman class. On the one hand they've had the benefit of of saying well we're all in this together right none of us really had the best high school senior year because of the pandemic, but I do think that they're afraid that they don't have the academic skills they need. They may not have had enough time, you know, learning and buffing some of their writing skills and analytics skills, and the one the one that the skills that be it was referring to is the self management skills you know being in charge of your day and managing from the time you get up to the minute you go to bed. That hasn't happened either because everybody's been on top of each other so I just think that for that group I'm talking to them already this and have been in the spring into the summer is how do you prepare yourself you talk to other people you're going to go to school with you begin to figure out who your roommate is you start to like look at your classes and talk with other people who are going to all say the same thing is well. It's time to go back to college and this is this is it I think colleges are really going to try very very hard to to normalize the abnormality of not of being back in school. And to do it with you know a lot of with trying to they're going to spend much more time socializing kids to into school than they normally do. A lot more effort during orientation to get people comfortable to talk about the virus and what you need to do to to talk to parents about what's good. I just think that things are going to be. To all the anxiety I do think the schools are coming on with with additional efforts at orienting people. Yeah, and emphasizing emotional intelligence and emphasizing emotional intelligence and social connectedness. Right. And there was one thing that from those that were away in school and doing all the line online learning. There were some breakthrough moments for them. I knew they weren't really meeting the people and having the fun experience so the ones who are the saddest. So the ones who are most anxious so the ones entering this coming year, the ones who are saddest with the freshman, who felt like, crap, I have not had a normal freshman year, I've been robbed. One thing that I heard is that, because they're so adept at their social media stuff is that they began to meet each other and meet after class and they began to have little conversations in their small groups and said things like, Hey, you want to meet up later, as though they were going to go for coffee and they weren't, of course. So they found, they found ways to make friends, these freshmen, and they're they're positives and silver linings to everything. And the, I think Gen Z, despite all the anxiety they're feeling, they're also feeling like we got to start taking care of ourselves and the world. I think. And they want to make a change if I'm going to predict anything about the Gen Z generation is that they are not going to sit back and let things happen. They are going to be very, very in your face, in your face. This has to change. We can't accept this anymore. That's my hope. It's fantastic what anything else you want to say. I mean that's a great way to end but anything else you want to add this has been fantastic. What else you're parting your parting words. You know, I would just encourage parents and kids alike to recognize that uncertainty has always been a part of life. Life is very curvy. It's not linear we think we plan and it doesn't turn out as we hope. And, you know, and just to learn that like, well, that's, that's just human that's just part, that's just part of our lives now. And it has been it's just that we had the illusion that it wasn't. They learn skills like mindfulness and, and trying to break out of habit loops that aren't good for you, you know, start to, if you're overeating, eat slower. Look at why are you doing the things you're doing ask yourself it might really need to do X or Y that's not good for me, so that we can, and I think both parents and kids. We're, we're in a sense, we're such hope we're so hyper vigilant right now that it puts puts us in a situation where we're not even aware that we're hyper vigilant like we've almost become adapted to an abnormal sense of constantly having to check and recheck and recheck so I would hope that, you know, once you've got the right amount of hand washing or keeping distance that you can enjoy and start to get outside of that hyper vigilant state and begin to learn to relax again and I think whatever gets people to relax for some people that's mindfulness for others it's rock climbing for others it's listening to music or all of the above. And I do think that the pandemic did help people start to learn to find ways to do that. And for some to prioritize what's really important to really make sure that you do what's important and do it first. Yep, it's been an existential. Yeah, yeah. Well thank you so much for this and I know Catherine's going to come on down and Dan's going to come on but thank you so much for your great to be here. Incredible words, incredible words and their next book I'm going to put a plug in for them their next book is being born as we speak it's on its way we'll be sure to tell everybody about it but thank you and Catherine and Dan are going to conclude but thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thank you back on that. Thank you so much. That was wonderful and I as a parent myself learned a lot of new things. I really do appreciate it. And thank you so much to everyone for tuning in. We will share the recording. If anybody care wants to share it with other people or to reference it or whatever you'd like we will put it up on the Playhouse YouTube channel. And you'll be able to access it there. We'll email it out to all of the registrants tonight. Great. Thank you everyone. Thank you so much. Have a good night. Thank you.