The most important conversation you will have with your kids | Jason Reid | TEDxLakeForestCollege

In March of 2018, my 14-year-old son committed suicide in the attic of our home while we were away on vacation. My seemingly perfect life was shattered to pieces. I was raising beautiful, smart and happy kids in my eyes. But what was really happening behind the scenes, deep in the soul of my son was hidden. We are never given a parent manual, but we are given the tools to help one another. I am on a mission to help parents change the conversation they have with kids. Jason Reid is a the Co-Founder of National Services Group, a nationwide company that employs over 2000 people at the peak of it’s season each year. He is also a partner at CEO Coaching International. Jason has written seven books including 2 kids book and a book about family conversations. He is also and Ironman and black belt. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

It was March 21, 2018. I was in Mexico with my wife celebrating her birthday. We just finished a wonderful dinner, we were talking about how great our lives were, our kids, and the next phase of our lives as kids get older. It was 11:03 PM when the text message came in. My wife screamed, I fumbled my phone and read the text, it ended with, "Sorry, love you. Bye." I freaked out, and I called the house, I woke up my mother-in-law, and I yelled, "Find Ryan." She ran out of the house and she finally found him. He was in the attic, she screamed, it'll be in my head forever. She said, "Jay, he hung himself." The next couple of hours was a blur. There was text messages, and phone calls, and ambulances, and police, and doctors, and they revived him and they brought him down to Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego.

That started what was supposed to be a three hour journey, that became a 15 hour nightmare as we tried to make our way back to San Diego. Ryan was in a medically induced coma for the next three days. The doctors and nurses did a wonderful job of trying to balance hope with reality, but at the end the CAT scan showed that he was brain dead. We were able to spend the next 36 hours with him saying our goodbyes. I actually got to watch our favorite TV show, the last three episodes of it, where I had one earbud in mine and one in his. My oldest son snuck in a bottle of wine the last night, and we toasted Ryan while we hid the bottle from the nurses and doctors. The next day they came to get us and they brought us to a special place in the hospital where we all surrounded him, and they took him off life support. We watched as whatever life was left in his body drifted away, and the color of his skin turned to ash. And they pronounced him dead.

I want you to imagine a world where a disease exists that is attacking our children. Where a half a million get so sick they come close to death, and where 5000 die every year. What would you do as a parent to protect your children? What would be on CNN 24/7? What would they be talking about? And what would be blowing up all over social media? I want you to imagine that world because that world exists. Depression is that disease, it's the number two killer of our children. It too often ends in suicide. And depression is a disease that we do not talk about like it's a disease. We don't treat it the same way as we treat cancer. We treat it as something you're supposed to shake off and it'll be fine, or maybe it doesn't exist. It's almost like we're in the dark ages, where you don't want to tell people what's going on with your family or your friends, because you're afraid that they might judge you.

Well, on March 26th 2018 that disease took my son. How was that for a cold opener? You know, even the darkness, there's light, there's funny things that happen. I'm going to share a couple with you, and you can laugh if you want, it's okay.

I was in such a rush, I got home that afternoon, I wanted to start a foundation, I wanted to change things, because that's the kind of guy I am. So I said, "Choose life." That's what everybody should do, they should choose life, and chooselife.org was available, so I bought it. I didn't know why it was $10,000, I just paid it. And then I got some of those rubber wristbands that said, "Choose Life" on them and I'm ready to go. And the next week a buddy of mine says, "Hey Jay, you know that's the old antiabortion website from the eighties?" I'm like, "Oh." And that was the first $12,000 I spent.

Ryan texted all of us at 11:03. He had them all pre done. Including my daughter's boyfriend. He said some really nice things and he said, "If you are not nice to my sister, I will come back and haunt you, Mister." Now, even I feel bad for that kid. My daughter on the other hand, she thinks it's awesome. Ryan researched everything, that's the kind of kid he was, and in his suicide note he talked about the different ways he planned on doing this, and one of the ways he said he was going to throw himself out of my attic office window, but then he said, "You know, I'm only 76 pounds, and I was afraid my clothes would act as a parachute." And that was Ryan.

So if I'm sitting in the audience right now I'd be going, "Jay, this is a tragic story." And yeah, it is a tragic story, but I'd be thinking, "That would not happen to me, I know my kids." Well, I thought I knew my kids too.

Let me introduce to my family, my wife Kim, 25 years of marriage, stay at home mom, doted on our kids every day. My 21 year old son Derek, my daughter Ashlynn, me 17 year old son Kyle, and Ryan, my youngest. I wrote the Protector Bug books for Ryan. Stories I'd make up and tell him as a kid. As a family, dinners were our thing, we would sit around the dinner table for hours and talk, and funny things would happen. There'd be no computers, no phones, none of that, right? And then funny things would happen, I turned it into a book called Dinner Conversations to try and encourage other families to spend more time together. I took all my kids on individual 'only with dad' trips. Ryan and I were working on his trip to Boston that was supposed to take place in June, and his next year's trip to Dubai a week before he killed himself.

This is Ryan. This is how I remember Ryan. Happy kid, light up a room. That there what he wore until he was almost 13. At some point he changed. 13, be a little bit more withdrawn. As I look back on it I see it, I didn't see it then. A little more quiet, a little more grumpy. I thought he was just another grumpy teenager, I have four, I thought that's all it was. After Ryan passed I was going through his room and up in his drawers in the top right hand drawer, the top drawer, it was empty except for two notes, two sticky notes. One note said, "Here's my username and passwords." The other said, "Tell my story." That's what I'm doing.

So if I'm you I'm going, "Okay, Jay, now what do you want me to do?" Well, I'm going to give you a few things that I think we should do. We have to first realize that we're living in a world and parenting in the way our parents used to parent us, but the world has changed. Suicide amongst teenagers is up 70% since 2006, and Facebook started in 2004. I'm not blaming social media. I don't want to get into a battle with any of you PhDs about causation versus correlation, I'm not going to do it. I'm just saying the world has changed, and we haven't changed. Our kids are bombarded with social media, and so much more stimulus than they ever were when we were kids.

I was bullied as a kid. I was sickly, I was an easy target, but you know what happened? At 3 PM every day when that bell went off, I went home to a very safe place where the bullies could not reach me. For kids these days, the bell never rings, and the cool kid ... I'm sorry, but the bullies are in the room with them 24/7. And the cool kids that sit at the lunch table, well now they're not at the lunch table, they're in your room, and they still won't let you join. So we need to understand our kid's social media. We need to understand who their friends are, or so called friends are. Who are they following? We need to understand that for some kids, not all kids, but for some kids it's too much. You need to make sure that your kids understand that everyone else's life is not better than theirs, and the real fake news is that Instagram post they just looked at.

Second thing you want to do is you want to watch for change. What was your child like three years ago, two years ago, one year ago? Whatever the time frame is. Are they different? Are they more withdrawn? Are they more quiet? Are they more combative? Are they arguing with you more? Are they not hanging out with their friends? If you see change you need to address it, and you need to get them talking. And when you say, "Hey, hoe are you feeling?" And they go, "I'm fine. Yeah, I'm okay." And your gut says, "No you're not." You can't take "yes" for an answer, "Yes, I'm okay," for an answer. I took, "Yes, I'm okay," for an answer. We need to get them talking, and part of getting them talking is to be approachable as a parent.

Ryan likely saw me as a CEO, as an entrepreneur, and as an author. As an iron man who's a black belt, a guy who'd get anything done. You give me any problem, I'll solve it. A guy who never, ever complained, and above all I never cried. He saw that of me because that's the image I showed him. That's the image I thought as a dad I was supposed to show my son. What did Ryan show me? The same thing. A kid who had his act together, good grades, always smiling, always happy. I wish I was a more vulnerable with my son. I wish I shared with him my fears and my concerns, and what I was afraid of, and maybe, just maybe he would have shared that with me. I spent so much time trying to be my son's hero that I missed out on being his dad.

You know, as parents we want the best for our kids, and sometimes we want them to toughen up, and we'll say things like, "When the going gets tough, the tough get going," or, "You think you had it bad? Shake it off, you're going to be fine." And you know what? Some of you are going, "Jay, they need that." And yeah, some of them do. Some of them do. But in those kids that are truly depressed, in those kids that are truly sick, that doesn't help. And yeah, I probably said some of those things. I have parents who'll tell me, "Jay, you want me to go talk to my kids, you want me to say, 'Have you ever thought of hurting yourself, have you ever thought about suicide?' I can't do that, Jay, because I don't want to put that idea in their head." Well, the reality is, that idea is already in their head. Not talking about it is the problem. Not talking about suicide with your kids, not talking about hurting themselves, well it's like not talking about the elephant in the room. The only way to help this is to get them to talk.

Next thing I want you to understand, and this is hard for me, people who are depressed, kids who are depressed do not see the world through the same lens that we do. On the sunniest of days when the sun is shining and there's not a cloud in the sky, they will still see gray skies, and we don't get that. Those of us who have never been depressed will never understand that.

My journey started on March 21st in Mexico. It brought me to this stage, and the next phase of what I'm going to do is a documentary film called Tell My Story, about teen suicide. In hopes that I can get all of you to see it a little differently.

So what can you do? Well, I want you to take action now. You need to understand that suicide is at an epidemic level amongst teenagers today. I need to pay attention to their social media. You need to look for change, and if they're changing you have to address them, you have to talk to them. Be their parent, not their hero. Talk to them, make sure they know it's okay to feel sad. Realize that they see the world through a different lens, and if you're worried get them to talk to a mental health professional.

Half a million kids a year try to commit suicide, and 5000 succeed. We need to change that. I need you to go home and hug your kids, and ask them how they feel, not in the tummy, but in their hearts and their minds. I need you to get them talking, and don't just take "yes" for answer. Don't take, "Yes, I'm okay," for an answer. Dig deeper.

One more thing. It's kind of like a superhero movie, you think I was done, I'm not quite done. People ask me, as I've been doing this they say, "Jay, this must be really healing for you to go through and prepare this talk." The answer is no. Over the last 60 days I've had to relive my son's death at least a thousand times. There is nothing healing about this. So why am I doing it? I'm doing it because Ryan asked me to, and I'm doing it in hopes that at least one of you, maybe a whole bunch more of you will go have that conversation with your kids that will change their lives and save someone. And I need your help, because I can't change this world by myself, and this world needs to change. I need you to start the conversation, and I need you to share this talk with anybody and everybody you know. Thank you.