When the scariest parenting moment happened, I didn’t know where to turn. After months of talking with experts, we’re on the path to healing.
On a cold Friday afternoon last fall, my 8-year-old snapped. After losing a board game to his younger sister, he reached for the wooden block of knives on the counter and pulled one out. “That’s it,” he said through clenched teeth, “I’d rather be dead than play with her.”
My heart pounded. “You don’t mean that,” I said, forcing control into my voice. When I stepped closer, his face softened. He carefully returned the bread knife to its slot, then threw his arms around my waist. “I’m sorry, Mommy.” I held him and pushed the block out of reach.
When my son is happy, he’s exuberant. The first time he held his baby sister, he cried happy tears. He loves school and behaves on play dates. But when he’s mad, he can be inconsolable. Anger pours out in torrents of “I can’t do anything right” and “This is the worst day ever.” Sometimes, he stays mad for hours.
Still, the suicide talk was new — and terrifying.
I emailed a therapist my son had seen before, asking for help. Given that he had expressed remorse in the moment, she said, it sounded as if my son had experienced “emotional overwhelm” rather than true suicidal intent. The event was likely a signal that he felt flooded with emotions we needed to better understand.
During the pandemic, many children have felt more anxious, isolated and sad — just like adults. We needed to keep close tabs on our son, his therapist said, and she needed more frequent Zooms with him, but she didn’t think he was in imminent danger.
Days later, my son again said he wanted to die. He was upset that his sister accidentally tossed a Lego brick, which he had worked hard to find, back into the tub of loose pieces.
“You found the piece once, buddy,” I said, mentally confirming all cutlery was out of reach. “You can find it again.”
Desperate for more information, I turned to Google. I couldn’t find much about suicide in kids my son’s age.
Diana Whalen, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Mo., said that little research on suicidal thoughts in young children exists, but some evidence suggests it can happen in those as young as 3. “People have a bias that young children can’t think that way,” she explained, “that they don’t have the cognitive understanding to make a suicidal thought.”
But, she said, “the fact is, it does exist, and we need to start recognizing this as a serious problem.”
In one 2019 study of 79 depressed 3- to 6-year-olds and 60 healthy 4- to 7-year-olds, Dr. Whalen and her colleagues measured how well the children understood death by asking them a series of questions: Can you tell me some things that die? When a person is dead, do they need, food, air, water? Can they move around? Do they have dreams? If a person dies, and they haven’t been buried in their grave for very long, can they become a living person again?
“Not only do they understand what it means to die,” Dr. Whalen said, “but the kids who have suicidal thoughts have a more advanced understanding of death than those who don’t.” (All of the children in this study who had suicidal thoughts also had depression, but not all those with depression had suicidal thoughts. And while suicidal ideation is more common in kids who have depression, Dr. Whalen said, it can also occur in those who aren’t depressed.)
In other words, my Lego-obsessed 8-year-old could conceptualize his death as final.
“People have one of two extreme reactions when children talk of self-harm,” said Dr. Joan Luby, a professor of child psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, who was a co-author on the 2019 study with Dr. Whalen and who has researched brain and emotional development in young children for three decades. “They either dismiss the threat, assuming the child doesn’t know what they’re saying, or they freak out.” Experts say a better response lies somewhere in between.
According to Alison Yaeger, who directs a youth outpatient dialectical behavior therapy program at McLean Hospital in Cambridge, Mass., it is critical to validate your child’s right to their emotions.
“Never say ‘just,’” Dr. Yaeger advised. “Parents think ‘Just take a deep breath’ helps, but it might escalate the emotion.” The same rule applies to, “It’s not a big deal” and “Why are you so upset?”
In my family, this small change made a big difference. When our son’s engine starts to rev, even if he’s being unkind, we notice. “I see you’re hurting,” I say. We stopped sending him to his room (which Dr. Luby said translates to, “Go deal with it on your own”).
We’re also working to build his “self-regulation,” his ability to understand and manage his emotions and reactions to feelings and situations. According to Dana Dorfman, a psychotherapist and parenting specialist in New York City, some effective, real-time coping strategies for those big, fiery moments include things like encouraging physical activity (stomping, hitting a pillow, or punching a bag); lying flat on his back on the floor “like a starfish” to feel his own body weight; or slow, paced breathing. The key is to test a few to see what works.
But we can’t just tell our son how to cope, nor can we rely on validation alone. Dr. Yaeger said the culture of a household is powerful. “Caregivers need to be willing to learn alongside the child, and they need to be modeling the behavior they’d like their children to exhibit.”
In other words, if my son is in the room when I am about to lose my cool, he’s watching — and I’m teaching — whether I like it or not. My husband and I use “Christian Bale” and “Tina Fey” as code words for when one of us isn’t demonstrating healthy coping. As in, “Ahem, you’re onstage here, get your act together.”
Beyond modeling, we encourage our son to choose his strategies for calming himself down. One go-to? Baking. It works because he feels competent (he makes a mean oatmeal cookie), he’s in control and he’s having fun. We praise his good choices descriptively: “You calmed yourself without hurting your sister’s feelings.” As our son’s therapist reminds me regularly, our words will likely become his inner monologue.
We’re talking more openly, too. After a bad day, I ask him, “How are you feeling? Any knife thoughts?” At first, I worried that being so direct would encourage suicidal thinking. But according to Dr. Luby, “Research shows that if a person doesn’t feel that way, asking doesn’t influence them.”
When parents accept their child’s reality and seek help, they can steer them toward a healthier place, which can help prevent dark feelings from bubbling up later on. “Young children’s brains are much more influenceable,” Dr. Luby said. “Issues are easier to treat when we address them younger.” Even when children’s talk of suicide isn’t true intent, it is something to take seriously.
As for that dearth of information on Google, it appears the tides are turning. “Childhood suicidality is a very high research priority right now,” Dr. Luby said. “I don’t think it’s being met with the same resistance we encountered 10 years ago.”
In the meantime, we’re shifting. My son is learning to express his overwhelming emotions without it meaning something dire. When he’s struggling, we snuggle or bake or sit shoulder-to-shoulder, hovered over a tub of Legos. We’re learning that when peace feels out of reach, together, we can find it again.
After a rough day recently, I asked my son if he was having any thoughts about dying. He nuzzled so close to my body that his thick hair scratched my neck. “Nah, not really,” he said. “I’d rather be here with you.”
If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK). You can find a list of additional resources at SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.
Nikki Campo is a mom of three and a writer. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Good Housekeeping and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. She is on Twitter @nikkicampo.
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February 25, 2021 at 10:43PM
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My 8-Year-Old Threatened Suicide. Here’s What We’re Learning. - The New York Times
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