The Dr. John Delony Show - Teen Suicide, ADHD, & Blaming Others vs. Taking Responsibility

Episode Date: October 16, 2020

The Dr. John Delony Show is a caller-driven show that gives you real talk on life, relationships and mental health challenges. Through humor, grace and grit, John gives you the tools you need to cut through the chaos of anxiety, depression and disconnection. You can own your present and change your future—and it starts now. So, send us your questions, leave a voicemail at 844-693-3291, or email [e-mail]. We want to talk to YOU! Show Notes for this Episode 2:45: My fiancée is super competitive. How do I support his desire to be "awesome"? 14:39: My son is a senior in high school - how do I help him deal with his anxiety & ADHD? 34:53: My niece has mentioned thoughts of suicide - how do I help her? 47:29: Lyrics of the day: "Blessings" - Chance the Rapper tags: competition, crossfit, contentment, self-worth, fight club, ADD, ADHD, anxiety, teenagers, responsibility, kids, suicide, self-harm, sexual abuse, family, social media, responsibility   These platforms contain content, including information provided by guests, that is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The content is not intended to replace or substitute for any professional medical, counseling, therapeutic, financial, legal, or other advice. The Lampo Group, LLC d/b/a Ramsey Solutions as well as its affiliates and subsidiaries (including their respective employees, agents and representatives) make no representations or warranties concerning the content and expressly disclaim any and all liability concerning the content including any treatment or action taken by any person following the information offered or provided within or through this show. If you have specific concerns or a situation in which you require professional advice, you should consult with an appropriately trained and qualified professional expert and specialist. If you are having a health or mental health emergency, please call 9-1-1 immediately.

On today's show, we're going to be talking about how to love somebody when they emotionally beat themselves up all the time. We're going to be talking to a mom about ownership and responsibility and dealing with a teenager with anxiety, ADHD, and a history of working with school systems. And we're going to talk about our responsibility when a teenager, when a child cries out for help. Stay tuned.

What is up? I'm John, and this is the Dr. John Deloney Show, where we take your calls about your life, about the things that are going on in your homes, in your schools, in your marriages. And hey, here's the deal. The goal of this show is to help you rethink, re-examine, reconsider your lives. How you talk to yourself, how you talk to your kids, how you talk to those that you love. And how to honor those people that you just can't stand. How to unhook the chains of those people who have hurt you in the past, and how to take next steps for the rest of your life. My goal is to take the mental health

and relationship challenges, the confusing and ever-changing science, those basic ways of living that have been way over complicated, way over professionalized, super far removed from normal people like you and me. And my goal is to bring it down, speak common sense, help you get to tomorrow and get to the next day and build a future that you can be proud of, that you can be whole, you can laugh a lot and be a person of joy. All right. And so on today's show, we're going to be talking about relationships, relational IQ,

your mental health. We might even talk about elderly neighbors who see little kids next door and they go out of their way to say hello, even when it's weird, even when they think they've they've separated from, quote unquote, that generation. And I think back to Miss Tarver, 93 year old woman who made best friends with my little son when he was five and six and seven. And I just, it warms my heart on this cold morning here in Nashville, Tennessee. And I love it when people step out of their comfort zone and say, you know what? I'm going to befriend you anyway. So we may be, we're going to be talking about everything today.

So whatever's going on in your heart, in your mind, your universe, I'm here to walk with you. Give me a call at 1-844-693-3291. That's 1-844-693-3291. And of course, you can email me at askjohn at ramsaysolutions.com. That's askjohn at ramsaysolutions.com. We've already got people on the phone, so let's go to Joanne in Seattle. Good morning, Joanne. How are we doing? I'm doing good. How are you? Very good. How can I help this

morning? My fiance is very competitive. He's competed on a professional level in the past, and he has a very high expectation and standard for who's going to be in his life. And when he feels like he's failing at that, he gets really upset and negative towards himself. And I just want to know how I could be a good support system for him since we're going to be getting married. Like I want to be able to help him do that. Not necessarily like take over it for him or anything, but make it a little bit less of a issue when it, those episodes come up.

What did he do professionally? He was a junior national mogul skier. A mogul skier. So he's like, he's a gangster, dude. He like goes up and down the big bad boys, huh? Yeah. He even, he used to do front flips when they flipped and that was something that they didn't do because it was too dangerous. Yep.

I'm going with a nope on, I don't like to, I don't like to front flip into a pool, man, by myself where no one will even laugh at me when I belly flop out. Man. So what do you love about this dude? Pretty much everything about him. He was, he's very generous for other people. He goes out of his way to do things for other people. He just has always been helping.

So, like, his parents have always taught him to be like if something needs to be done you see someone moving something you go over there you offer to help them move it regardless if you're on your way to somewhere that's what you do um and he's just he's very kind he's a little bit more um i want to say a little more traditional that we no longer have in our society, I guess. He's just, he's an old soul, right? He opens doors for you. He tips well. He says, thank you.

So you mentioned two things that I couldn't tell what you're struggling with. Is it that he's got high expectations of the people that he allows into his life? And so I'm going to interpret that as he expects you to be in great shape. He expects you to eat in a certain way. He expects you to fill in the blank. Or you don't like him beating himself up. When he gets negative on himself, man, he just spirals out and really struggles. It's more the second one. He's more than happy to help when

I'm asking him to help me eat better or make sure that I get to the gym, those kinds of things. He's more than happy to help with those things, but it's not I have to or he doesn't mention you need to eat better or you need to go to the gym more, anything like that. But he's like there to help with that. So it's more, he just beats himself up really bad. Give me an example of the last time he just went to war with himself. So he, since mogul skiing, he kind of changed his competitiveness

into the CrossFit world. Oh, sweet. Does he have awesome sayings all over your house, like on chalkboards and stuff? No, he surprisingly doesn't. Oh, good for him. Awesome. He doesn't really tell people that he CrossFits unless they ask. I heard a great joke the other day.

Here's what it was. An atheist, a CrossFitter, a vegan, and a keto person walk into a bar. How did I know? And the punchline is, because they all wouldn't shut up about it. So that's awesome. Okay. So he is a unicorn. He is a crossfitter who's a former professional athlete who doesn't tell everybody about it. You may have found the snowflake that can complete your soul, right? So he goes to a CrossFit workout, he's struggling, but he what? So recently we haven't been able to train as hard or go to the gym as hard just because of life. And he had a previous shoulder injury from mobile skiing. And so when

it comes up to, um, bother him in a workout and he can't perform the way that he's used to, or the way that he wants to, he gets really upset. And this last conversation we had, he was, um, like, I don't want to be just another person walking through the world. Like I want people to see me and think, I want to be like that guy. He's like, it's not necessarily for the validation from other people, but I want to, I want to matter to the world and I want to do something. And he's, and I'm like, well, you're also going to school to be a nurse. You know, you can't be a, you know, games level CrossFit athlete and a nurse at the same exact time. You can work on both, but not, you know, because that's a lot to spread out over how much time we have in a day. And he says that he understands that.

And so I tried to ask him, like, oh, well, have you thought about things you could do in the community to matter? Like people can know your name without, you know, really knowing you or without you knowing about it and things like that. And he just, he just struggles. He doesn't know like exactly what to do when he gets in those situations. Sure. So this is a common challenge of folks who were high school heroes, who were even mediocre college athletes around the right crew, those who were great college athletes, those that were former professional athletes. And I'll even extrapolate this even further. I think this is a broader cultural illness.

With professional athletes, with especially collegiate athletes, that takes up so much of your time and so much of your headspace. And you get so connected to those teammates and to that, that world. I understand wholeheartedly that that winds into your identity. That becomes who you are. That becomes your tribe. That becomes your gang. I get that. But stepping back further, this is a little bit beyond that. And I first remember hearing this back when I was in college when the movie Fight Club came out. And when Brad Pitt, when Tyler Durden is talking to this crew and he's telling them, we were all told we were going to be rock stars and movie stars. And we were all going to be rich. We were all going to be something important.

And we're not. And there's this idea in our culture that if you aren't a quote unquote influencer, if you aren't quote unquote better than average, if you're not able to walk down the street and people look at you and whisper about you, then you're nothing and you don't matter. The challenge for you, Joanne, is you can't fix that. What you can do is you can love him the best way that you can. And what I'll tell you is it sounds like he's a person of character, and it sounds like he was somebody who was raised right, and it sounds like somebody who works really hard.

And so there will come a season, there will come a moment when he, that hard work, that ability, if it doesn't turn into self-loathing, he can turn that on himself and really begin the mining process of who am I outside of being an athlete? What is my value outside of being recognized and quote unquote better than you guys at doing front flips while going down a hill, right? There will come a moment when he's able to turn that on himself and really go through an introspective process. It's usually pretty painful. It's usually uncomfortable, but it usually it's a blessing for that person.

But it can be really tough to love that person. I've been there. I've worked through that. Of course, man, like I say, I wasn't a downhill athlete, but I lived for so many years wanting to be looked at when I walked into a room. I wanted people to turn their head and be like, oh, there's that. You know what I mean? And what I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell everybody listening to this, that's a hollow, hollow way of living. What you can do, Joanne, as somebody who loves a guy like this, who's clearly a good person, who's clearly exciting and fun and does great things, but has that untethered part of their soul, which again, all of us have in some shape, form, or fashion, is you can sit him down and say, I don't care that you won some medals. I don't care that you used to be able to go down a hill really fast on a couple of sticks. I love you. And you can show him that you love him all of the time. You can, when he starts

talking about, hey, I've got this PR, you could say, I don't care about that. How are you feeling today? How's your heart doing today? Let's go for a walk together. Let's just hold hands. And you can begin to slowly move his relationship with you to not something special out there, but something special between the two of you. This is going to be a frustrating thing, a hard thing to love somebody making that transition. It sounds like he's worth it. It sounds like he's awesome. You can also let him know, man, I'd love to talk to him. I'd love to hear directly from him, why he beats himself up, how he beats himself up. And man, I could maybe save him 15 years of self-inflicted soul wounds because I've been there. I've walked through that awful nonsensical treating myself like crap.

And there's millions and millions of people who have. So thanks for that call, Joanne. Love him dearly. Let him know that you love him, not because of the stuff he's done, but the person who he is. And I was going to say guys, but men and women, people don't value you. They shouldn't value you. You shouldn't value you because of the things you accomplish. You should be worthy of value. You are worthy of value because you are you. Not because you're a snowflake and special and kumbaya and angels float down and snow globe stuff comes. But I mean this in the most base sense. You're a person. You've got value. You've got dignity. I don't care how fast you were in high school track. I don't care if you were a two-year starter. I'm a JV football program. I don't care about any of that stuff.

Let that stuff go. Put that stuff down. Oh, I've got an idea, Joanne. You know what you should do? You should have a funeral with him. You should have a funeral for his skiing career. I've been doing a lot of reading and writing on grief recently. Have a funeral for his skiing career. I want you to go have a process with him. I want you all to write a letter about what it meant, what it means that it's over now. And I want you to have a process where you put those letters in a fire or you frame them and put them on the wall,

whatever ceremony you two have, have a funeral service for skiing so we can put a period at the end of it. And then I want you to have a process for what's tomorrow, what's the future going to look like? What's it going to be like for Joanne and a former professional athlete to get out of nursing school together, to think about getting married, to have a family. Who are you going to be? What are you going to build into these kids? And let him know that the past is the past. It's great, but you love him for who he is and where y'all are going.

I like that idea. And again, thank you for letting me think through this here while I'm just sitting here running in my head. Have a funeral for it. Put a period at the end of it. And then he's going to have a time of mourning, a time of grief, probably a time of aloneness. And then he can start building from there because he's a guy of character and he knows how to work hard. So that's awesome. Thanks for the call, Joanne.

Let's go to Nora in Washington, D.C. Nora, good morning. How are we doing? Well, first off, thank you for taking the call. Absolutely. Thanks for calling in. And I wrote it down so I could be very precise. Son, senior in high school, diagnosed with ADD between third and fourth grade, also diagnosed with anxiety, has an IEP, has a therapist, had all the special education teachers,

and some were good, some were bad, and no matter what we did, it still seems like they're making him feel like it's just sort of glossed over, his ADD. And so now that he's a senior in high school, he's, you know, kind of miserable, and I don't feel like he's learned the executive skill set that he needs. And I actually started to resent it somewhat. But your broadcast where you had the adult ADD and his wife really spoke to me, and that's when I was able to release that resentment. So I'm trying to help him now.

What can I do? Awesome. So walk me back to your beautiful little boy at third grade, fourth grade. What was going on in your heart and mind that let you know he's struggling? Well, we were blessed. My husband is the son of educators. Okay. And my husband has some anxiety issues as well, so we could spot it pretty easily in our oldest son.

And so we privately had testing done between the two years. But what about what caused the testing? What was going on in your son's life that made you think he needs to be tested for something? Oh, he was very sensitive in third grade. They, thinking that he had something wrong with him, they put him in this class with people who weren't being looked after, if you know what I mean. They had issues, but for whatever the reason, the family wasn't available or whatever, I don't know. But it was, he, like in kindergarten, he would cry.

That was normal. Later on, he would cry, and that wasn't normal or considered normal, and so he switched it to anger. So there was a difficulty being able to manage whatever stimuli was in front of him. And if he was very frustrated, um, and then my husband looked at it and said, we are pulling him out. We're going to send him over. We're getting into better school. And then also we had him tested and we had, um, you know, and we moved forward from there. So what was going on in your home environment during that time? When I think of anxiety, it's an alarm system. When I think of ADHD, it is just a biological and neurological response.

It's a natural response to chaos. What was going on in y'all's home? And this isn't an accusation. This is just a mining process. We're just going for a walk together in the woods. What was going on there that let this little boy not feel like he could be heard or feel like he was disconnected?

What was going on there? Well, there wasn't anything in particular. We were living in a townhouse and everything was reasonably okay. We were concerned for him because of this. But, I mean, from the day he was born, he was always sensitive. Okay. And to be honest, I don't know if you even want to go there, but I feel like he's an empath as well.

I don't know if that makes it worse or not, but we can move on from there. Sure. from there. But the environment, I mean, it was more stimulated because we were near a highway. But otherwise... But you told me his dad was anxious. So how does dad deal with anxiety? He went to a therapist and was on medication and is still on medication and still does the therapist. So please hear me here and everyone listening to this. I've met with folks who just break down in tears when we have these conversations. And it's not about accusations. It's about awareness, right? It's not about blame. It's about trying to just say, oh, okay, I see that. Because that's the only way we're going to solve

the problem down the stream here. So if you've got a dad with anxiety, how does dad deal with stress? Does he disconnect? Does he get loud? Does he go for walks? What does dad do for stress management? I would say that he disconnects more than anything in the same room. Yeah, and that's the way I do it, and I have found over the years that may be the most insidious way. Because when somebody disappears out the front door, you know there's a break. You know they're gone. When somebody's with you, it's like almost this ghosting gaslighting.

I'm with you, but I'm completely disconnected from you. And it makes people feel crazy because you're with them in body, but you're not with them in spirit. How do you deal with stress and frustration? I'm still working on it. How do you deal with it? Oh, I somewhat disconnect as well. Okay. So take me back to 15 years ago. What was going on in y'all's world where something would come home, your husband would get frustrated, or he would take some medication, he would sit like a zombie or a disconnected person who's with everybody in the living room, and then you come in and things haven't been done, you're frustrated.

What's your internal response or external response? Well, first off, I was at home. I was an at-home mother. Okay, great. So when Dad would come in, he would talk to me. He would play with the kids. He would play with the dog. And then he would sort of check out.

You know, we would have dinner. Sure. You know, I really want to answer your questions, but I'm not sure I know the answers. And again, I'm just trying to give myself some breadcrumbs to follow here into the woods. So fast forward me now, you've got a son. How old is he? 17. 17. So he's, is he a senior now? Is he a junior now? He's a senior. Okay. So this is his last year before he starts heading out. So what does anxiety look like for him now?

What does ADHD look like for him now? You're talking about checking out. He uses the computer to check out. Okay. And that's pretty much his only thing, although he does do a little gardening. Okay. In terms of ADHD, it's a lot of anxiety. It's a lot of trying to figure out how to do work without having a bunch of people nag him.

Because to be honest, that's what the school system did. They basically just nagged him to get his work done. And I feel like that's not really teaching executive skills. How did you guys support him? We did what we could. I tried to learn what I could, but I tried to rely on the school system because I didn't want to get in. It's that catch-22. You want to help, but you also don't want to get in the way of what, excuse me, what the professionals should be doing.

And now that he's in high school, he has his special ed teacher, and the guy's really, really nice, but he's not teaching any skill sets that my son really needs. So listen, a lot of your response is super common for folks with special needs kids, for folks with young kids or for older kids who they are just butting heads with or they are just kind of at a loss. But every time I'm asking you a question, you're pointing to somebody else as the problem. And so what I want to get from you is over the last 10 years, over the last five years, over the last five months, how are you encouraging him to get his work done? How are you reconnecting with him? How are you setting up situations where those alarms are going to come down? Because here's the deal, anxiety, ADHD, those are contexts. They're not an excuse. You still got to get your work done.

Sure. Right. You still got to go do those things. And blaming all these external systems, while it's real, it's hard, and it's annoying. Some schools are super equipped. Some teachers are extraordinary. Some maybe aren't. Nobody can replace the mom and dad in this situation. And so your school system isn't going to solve this problem at age 17. The healing is going to come from you.

But it's got to start with you being reflective, saying what am I bringing to this situation because it's my son. So I only can talk to you, Joey, and you're the only one on the phone with me. When your son is struggling, when he is like having mythical thinking about time or he is real frustrated because he's procrastinating again, or he can't find his hat again, or his keys are missing again, how do you participate in what happens next? For the last couple of years, I think it's been difficult to be patient, but at the same time, I am his sounding board. I am the one he comes to. I do work with him as best I can. I also work with the school system.

I was writing emails going, give me advice. Tell me what to do. You know, talk to the administration. Who or anybody I could talk to to get more insight into what to do. Now, these two years were the hardest. It turns out that the freshman year and the sophomore year, my son was doing much better, really grasping, really enjoying school. And school was done at school, and then home was home.

And then the way they have it set up here, the junior year, for whatever the reason, is meant to be the hardest. And so it really taxed all of his abilities. And we got tutors, and we got whatever we needed, but it was very hard for him. And then, of course, COVID came in, and everything turned upside down. But listen, hard is a good thing. Hard is a great thing. It can be challenging. And some schools can be failure factories.

But hard is not a bad thing. Taking a kid who is able to skate through his freshman and sophomore year and then runs up against the brick wall that is your junior year, that's pre-cal, that's all that, you know, that's getting into some really complex things. It's getting past the social studies stories. and now we're getting to the depth. That's good stuff. And when a kid runs up against hard and we're in a system where it's like, man, the school is not helping enough or we've got to fill in the blank XYZ. We've got to get this expert and that expert. Walk me through what is it that makes you uncomfortable about your kid

struggling right now? Because he should be. He's a senior in high school. I want that to be hard because then next year is going to be college and that's going to be real hard. It's living with it. It's making sure that he has what he needs. He doesn't want us to do things.

It's that age where he doesn't want us to... Okay, you're on it, Nora. You're on it. So here's the thing. You are uncomfortable with how he's struggling. How is he doing? Well, he doesn't like it either, obviously. Of course he doesn't.

He's not supposed to. But how is he doing? I'm not sure. We are about to approach midterms, and he's not telling us anything. I ask him broader questions like, okay, are you getting things done? Is there anything I need to be concerned with? Is there anything you need help with? And so forth like that.

I ask those kinds of questions so that they're broader, so it's a little bit easier for him to answer without getting into the weeds because he doesn't want to tell me the weeds. Okay, so here's the deal, Nor. He doesn't get a choice. And you don't get a choice. Okay? He doesn't get a choice.

You don't get a choice. He's He doesn't get a choice. You don't get a choice. He's your kid and he's at home. Hard is good for kids. It's good for them. And when parents rush in to try to swoop and save them, it undermines their efficacy. It undermines their ability to think about how good they're going to be at something. It undermines their ability to fail and realize that's not the end of the world. It sounds like you're the one in this discomfort gap. You're the one that doesn't like to see your kids struggling with. And he's, and he's,

since he was little, since he came out of the womb, you guys have labeled them as sensitive, as needing a little extra help, as somebody who needs a diagnosis, as somebody who needs – he's probably going to need – he cries a lot. He's a little bit more sensitive. And instead of owning that relationally, it sounds like there's just been this gap where it's, that's a problem. That's a thing we've got to fix. We've got to get special people here. We've got to do special things here.

And now he's 17, and you still are feeling this weight on your heart and your mind. And so asking generalized questions to a kid that's had learning challenges, asking broad questions, no, man, you've got to get in the middle of it, Nora. You've got to take him out. Forget about the assignments. Forget about all that stuff. You've got to take him out and say, how are you doing? I am your mom. I am forcing you to talk to me. You have to be in my life. You have to be in my heart. You've got to let me know what's going on in your heart, and I'm going to talk to you. And so if we're just going to go for a walk every night, great. I'm going to make you hold my hand because I am your freaking mom and moms all across the country are laughing at me right now. And I do not care. You're going to tell your son, you got to hold my hand because I'm your mom and you have to. My mom is 70 years old. And when I see her, she says, you have to hug me. And I'm going to anyway, but she just

gets to say that because I'm her kid. I'm her son. So a 17 year old doesn't get vague questions. A 17 year old that you're worried about, you're worried about how they're processing things. You're worried about their anxiety, their disconnection. They don't get generalized questions. They get specific. Show me your work today. And is it a pain? Oh my gosh, yes. Having kids is hard. Is it a struggle? Yes. But what's going to happen is you're going to spend a semester. What's going to happen is you're going to spend a semester saying, how are things going? You got your assignments done and your kid's going to go, yeah, I got it. I'm good. And then you're just going to go back to the computer. And the next day, how's everything going? Good, fine. And then you're going to keep going and they're going to keep going.

And then you're going to get to midterms and they're going to have four zeros and two C's. And what you're going to do is get mad and you're going to call the school. And you're going to say, nobody called me. Nobody did this. Nobody. It's your responsibility, but it starts not with the assignments. It starts not with the diagnosis. It starts not with the other people are challenges. It starts not with my kids broken. It starts with, Hey, good boy. Good morning. How are you? Hey, good boy. I love you. Come over here and give me a hug before the day even starts. It starts with, hey, what's today going to look like? What's one awesome thing you're going to think about before you leave?

It starts with, have you got your homework done yet? Because we got our nightly walk and we do not miss nightly walk time. It starts with, if you don't get off that computer, I'm going to throw it off the roof and we're going to watch it smash into a million pieces because my relationship with you is more important than you plugging into some dumb box. And I know this is hard. I was an ADD kid. I was an anxious kid. I still struggle with anxiety now. It's a conscious, constant battle that I've got to stay in front of. I've worked with countless college students, high school students,

struggle with ADD, anxiety, and it usually starts from chaos in the home, disconnection in the home, moms and dads who are trying just to keep things plugged in. This isn't a blame conversation. This is hard. Parents who are just trying to get the bills paid. Parents who are just trying to get to tomorrow. They're dealing with their own junk that their parents gave to them and that their parents gave to them.

Or that their community gave to them or their country gave to them. However that works. But when you start at age four telling a kid that, hey, you may be broken, you're probably going to need some special stuff, they're going to live into that. And if you do have a kid with special needs, stay on top of those teachers, stay on top of those professionals who live in those worlds, and never, ever, ever think to yourself, well,

I don't want to get involved. Get involved. Get involved. One of the terms I hate the most is the term helicopter parent. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. And here's why.

Your kid is the most precious thing on planet earth to you. It does not ever occur to me to not get involved with my kids, ever. I worked at colleges for years. I loved it when parents called. That meant that they cared about their kid, but moms and dads, brothers and sisters, you gotta let your kids fail too.

You gotta let them experience consequences too. There's a difference between saying, hey, I'm worried about my son. Are they okay? And this is your fault. This is your fault. Nora, I know you love your boy. I want you to back out. I want you to back way out 30,000 feet.

You got a year left with him. Or now you're down to nine months before he goes to college. Or who knows how long COVID is going to last. Maybe he's going to live at home for the next few years. For the next 30 days, I want you to tell him you talked to some knucklehead on the radio who said, every morning, we have to start the morning with a hug. Every morning, we have to start with me looking you in the eyes and telling you, I love you, and I'm so glad you're my son. Every morning you start with, I'm so glad that people in the world were made to feel like you do. Every morning you talk about, hey, what's today's plan? I want you to make a list with him. This is going to be for 30 days. You're going to

be annoyed by this by the end of it. Make a plan for today. When he gets home at the end of that day, I want you to say, what's one awesome thought you had today? At the end of the day, I want you to hug him before you start talking to him about schoolwork. At the end of the day, I want you to say, what assignments do you have today that you need to get done? How can I help you? I want to see them before you're done. And before you get on the computer, we go on for our walks. And that means we don't get on the computer tonight. That means we don't get on the computer tonight. We're going to go out and garden together. We're going to go out and kick the soccer ball.

I'm going to go out and do some stuff together. And I want you to try to put the assignments down. The, well, what about what? I want you to try connecting. Try connecting first. Just try. For 15 years, you've tried other things, try this. And that's not a matter of coming in and playing with the dog and saying,

I want you to connect, connect, connect. And Nora, I want to honor you for being a mom that still cares about her kid, who still loves her kid, who's still trying to figure it out, who's not giving up on their 17-year-old and their 18-year-old. Millions of parents do. Thank you for being a parent that cares. Take full, full ownership of your boy and start with connecting. He's worth it.

All right, let's go to David in Austin, Texas. David, what's up, brother? How we doing? Hey, John. I appreciate your work. Thank you, good man. I appreciate you giving me a call. How can I help? So, yeah, my niece has been saying a lot of suicidal thoughts on her social media and talking to her closest cousins about it.

Me and my wife are currently on military orders in Texas, and my niece lives in New Jersey. I just want to know what can we do from here. So when you say suicidal messages, what's she posting? What's she putting up? So she has been posting. My wife found her account on TikTok. And she's been posting things about her past with her bad relationship with her father. What do you mean by bad?

Uh, so she, two years ago, recently found out from her school that from her father's side, her father's younger brother, uh, was sexually assaulting her for a few years, and she recently came out and confessed as a school counselor two years ago. Since then, the father took the brother's side and pretty much is out of the picture of her life. Is that brother in jail? I think the case is pending, yes. Well, good. I hope he goes to prison. All right, so now she's living

in the aftermath what was dad's response afterwards what was mom's response afterwards her her parents so her her dad too when when they found out was uh he didn't believe her um the mom believed her and you know called the cops and and when they went to therapy and stuff like that. But the mom is not, I think her mom has some troubles too as well, has a lot of other issues and things like that. So forget their moms and dads personal issues. How did they deal with this young lady? So dad said, I don't believe you didn't happen until finally he came around and believed that it did uh no he didn't he didn't really either even believe that it did he just

kind of he's he's not he's he's kind of uh one of those guys who are pretty much like uh into drugs and um running around the streets and things like that he's never been involved he's a burnout okay yeah yeah great great great father there okay so you have this young lady how old is she running around the streets and things like that. He's never been involved. He's a burnout. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Great, great, great father there. Okay, so you have this young lady. How old is she? She's 13.

You have a 13-year-old on TikTok and social media. What is she saying? So the latest thing I saw was her saying how sad she is, how her mother doesn't reach out to her, talk to her, how when she went to counseling with the state and all that, that they were just making her relive what happened. They didn't seem like they even cared about her. So it discourages, it's discouraging her from trying to get help. And then the latest thing recently now is she's asking what are some painless ways that she can kill herself, I guess. Yeah. Not I guess.

When a 13-year-old's asking for painless ways, that's the definition of crying for help. Yes, and that's what's really concerning me. Yeah, you should be super concerned. When a dad doesn't believe his daughter, when a mom doesn't comfort her daughter, when the whatever mental health professional wasn't able to connect there, yeah, that's a recipe for disaster. And so what this young girl is doing is using the only tools 13-year-olds have these days, which is social media, right or wrong. And she is screaming out to the world, somebody help me. And so who have you called? So, um, my wife, um, her, it's her, her,

it was related to her mother. Um, we, she does, she doesn't have a great relationship with her sister because, uh, her sister feels like my wife was always telling her how, or bickering at her or saying, trying to control her or something. So. Hold on, hold on, hold on. I don't, I, I don't care anything about anybody's relationships with anybody. What I'm asking you brother is who have you called? So my, my called um the only person that her sister listens to and she sat down and talked with her sister and she said she was gonna get help with her she said she was gonna help her uh get counseling and things like that but um the way her sister is she's not one to really follow through with it and that's where i feel really uneasy about it. Okay, good. So she will, but she never follows through. You know, she won't. Right. So here's the famous saying, not by your hand, but in your lap.

And this isn't something that you asked for, but you're a caring, compassionate guy. You clearly are about serving people beyond yourself. That's why you're in the service, why your wife in the service. You guys are givers and servers. And so I want to free you. I want to free every listener from any qualm, any like, I don't know what to do next. If you are walking down the street and you see a teenager crying out for help, if you have a third cousin,

second removed, and their biological mom is in jail and their biological dad was mean one time at Christmas and y'all haven't talked for a few years, or in a messy situation like the one you're in, I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. All that nonsense peels away, brother, and you've got a 13-year-old girl yelling in the only way she knows how, saying, help me, please. Mom doesn't count. Mom doesn't work.

She doesn't do anything. Mom is not helpful. She's not going to follow through. Daughter wouldn't be in this situation. Daughter wouldn't be crying out for help in these ways if mom was responding in the right way. You know what? That's not fair to even say. I'm not going to say that. That's not fair. That happens. If mom was present, there would be different responses going on here. Okay. So here's the deal. You call 911. You call local school.

You call the local child protective services. You call everybody you can get their number. Yes. Okay. And I don't care about the relationship violation. I don't care if your wife's sister is going to be mad. I don't care. There's a 13-year-old good girl saying, help me, please.

You know what I mean? Now, I want to tell you this one story, okay? I worked in crisis for years. This is what I did. I showed up to suicide scenes. I showed up to shootings and car wrecks. I showed up to all kinds of different situations. And I also worked with young people and college students for years and years.

And I remember a situation where a couple of people all at the same time told me they were worried about a college student. And I couldn't get a hold of them until finally the young person texted me and said, I want you to know that you've been awesome. And something along the lines of, I'll see you on the other side or take care. Something that made me, it wasn't a direct suicide threat, but it made me uncomfortable. So I did something weird that I don't normally do. I got in my car and just drove to their house. This is an adult student. The student was 25 or so. It was an adult student. I drove to their house, knocked on the door, and their roommate was inside. The roommate said, oh, they're just sleeping.

I said, I want to see them with my own eyes. So we went in their room. They were asleep. The room looked real not good, man. There was nothing on the walls. There was a couple of trash sacks. It was just a mattress on the floor. There was a bottle of pills by the bed.

And there was a gun in the room. And I knew the room didn't look good. And I leaned down to talk to the student. They were snoring in a really deep way. And I leaned really close. And I yelled as loud as I could, nothing. Yelled again, nothing. And I just said, man, what?

Like, they're clearly asleep right now. The bottle's still full of pills. They're in Texas. They're allowed to have guns, right? I mean, the math I was running through my head for some strange reason, and I've done this over and over and over again. I couldn't make this one add up. So I called a friend of mine and you can talk about providential I called my friend who was another crisis responder and she happened to be at lunch with the number one college crisis counselor on the planet Brian Van Brunt

they're having lunch together and I'm walking her through here's what I'm looking at and Brian yells at the table. I heard him through the phone. What are you doing? Call 911. And I went, oh my gosh, call 911.

And I had gotten so deep into the relationship part. The roommate was saying, no, man, he just sleeps really heavy, man. He snores like crazy all the time. He's fine. He's just sleeping. Turns out he was in the middle of a suicide attempt. Turns out he was, had been crying out for help. And I was somebody who does this for a living. And I was sitting right there and I let all the

other variables cloud the one central judgment, which was, I need to get this kid some help right now. And so I want to tell you that to tell you this. I'm not judging you. I'm not blaming you. I'm not mad at you. But at the end of this phone call, one, somebody from my team is going to make a call because that's what we do.

At the end of this phone call, you need to get with your wife and y'all rally up. And before this day's over, probably before you have lunch, you got to start making some calls to make sure this young girl's got some adults in her area looking after her because the adults who've been assigned to her by God aren't showing up. And I want you to know, I know that there's a lot of relationship dynamics. I know there's a lot of this is in that. And so I want to help you the same way Brian and my friend helped me

cut through all that stuff. You got a 13-year-old girl saying, please help me. And you need to get on the phone and make those calls. Okay? Sounds good, yeah. Is that fair? I understand completely, yes. And listen, David, I want to commend you for being an uncle that cares.

I want to commend you for being a person who loves his wife and who sees something that's not right and says, I've got to get involved no matter what. I've got to get involved no matter what. I just don't know the right thing to do. Everybody listening to this, here's the right way to do it. You run out in the street with a pot and a pan and you start banging them together saying, hey, listen, listen, somebody needs help. That's what you do. And I hear people ask like, well, what's my legal responsibility? What's my obligation?

Here's the deal. When we start letting the state or we start letting the federal government define our baseline for how we're going to treat one another, we're in a bad mess. Churches, schools, workplaces, friends. When our first thought is, well, what do I have to do to care for somebody? God help us, man. God help us. Get involved, especially when it's a child.

Especially when it's a child who suffered sexual abuse at the hands of her brother, her dad turned his back on her, and mom's not showing up. Get involved. Brother David, I'm grateful for you, man. I'm grateful for everybody out there. There are people out there right now who have been thinking for a while. Should I make that call?

I don't want to get involved. I would much, much rather make a call, much rather make a call and have someone be like, dude, what's the matter with you? I'm fine. I'd much rather that call than the one that you don't make. And then you find out, hey, I hate to break it to you, but so-and-so took their life. So-and-so's in an institution now. Make the call.

So, yeah, man. Heavy show today. All right. So as we're wrapping up today's show, I've been digging through the Spotify's. I've been digging through the Internet's trying to find the greatest rap song of all time. I've landed on it. Chance the Rapper from his 2016 coloring book record. The song is Blessings.

And Chance writes, I'm at war with my wrongs. I'm writing four different songs. I never forced you to forfeit it. I'm a force to be reconciled. They want four-minute songs. You need a four-hour praise dance performed every morn. I'm feeling shortness of breath, so Nico grab you a horn. Hit Jericho with a buzzer beater to end a quarter, watch a brick and mortar fall like dripping water. There are obstacles in

life, many, many trials and tribulations that come up, but you got to realize and know that every Jericho walls must fall. Fall, Jericho, fall. I'm going to praise him till I'm'm gone this is the dr. John Deloney show