Pandemic Schooling: How To Help Your Kids Thrive

Daniel Amen, MD:

Welcome to the Brain Warrior’s Way podcast. I’m Dr. Daniel. Amen.

Tana Amen, BSN RN:

And I’m Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body.

Daniel Amen, MD:

The Brain Warrior’s Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain SPECT imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com.

Tana Amen, BSN RN:

The Brain Warrior’s Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com.

Welcome everyone. Today we’re going to talk about college preteens and their mental health. And we are going to start by answering your questions, and we’ll just open it up to discussion. But before we get started, do you want to read a couple reviews?

Daniel Amen, MD:

I’m so excited about this one. This is Lauren in Atlanta. “I’m a recent Brain Health Coach graduate.” Our Brain Health Coaching certification course just been on fire. “… While studying the course, I suffered a mild traumatic brain injury. So I’m now also a patient. I’m so grateful to you both. There were two things that were so helpful for me in this podcast. One was that when you addressed grief. My family suffered a tragedy in May when my son’s best friend and roommate passed away unexpectedly. The second, when you reinforced how serious the virus is. I see and hear so many people dismissing the seriousness of the virus.” Thank you, Lauren. Another one from Jessica. “You don’t know what you don’t know. I learn something new from every Brain Warrior Podcast I listen to.”

Tana Amen, BSN RN:

Love it.

Daniel Amen, MD:

“… The information is relevant and extremely helpful. I would highly recommend you stay tuned.”

Tana Amen, BSN RN:

That’s awesome. And so today, if you learn anything, please post it. If you want to take a selfie, or a screenshot rather, and post it and tag us, that would be awesome. You can also go to brainwarriorswaypodcast.com and you can leave a message or a comment or a question in the comment section. And that will then give us the opportunity to read your questions and comments, which we love to do. And it will also enter you into a drawing for one of our books, either my cookbook, The Brain Warrior’s Way Cookbook or your book, The End of Mental Illness. So please, we love your reviews. We love your questions and comments. But tell us what you learned. So we want to know how… Think about this before we get started, how could your life be better, how could your life be improved, what would you do differently if you were able to address some of the issues that have been hounding you or following you for years?

Daniel Amen, MD:

All right. Let’s answer questions. So we’re going to talk about preteens and-

Tana Amen, BSN RN:

I’m going to do my librarian look today.

Daniel Amen, MD:

… College students and their mental health. So we have the preaching here. I mean, she’s 10, but she’s going to be 11-

Tana Amen, BSN RN:

We have a 10, a 15 and a 17 year old. The 17 year old, she hasn’t been able to tour colleges. So we are getting ready to go on, in about a month, a little tour to go check out colleges, which she’s been super anxious, talk about anxiety. She’s got to plan everything yesterday or two weeks ago. And so this lack of ability to plan has been driving her crazy. And that’s kind of what we’re talking about today. So I don’t know if anyone else is experiencing that, but getting your kids ready for college can be challenging, especially right now.

Daniel Amen, MD:

Well, the most important thing you can do is take care of yourself.

Tana Amen, BSN RN:

Right.

Daniel Amen, MD:

Because if you’re anxious, if you’re afraid, if you’re angry, COVID concussions with the level of anger going on is breathtaking, right? Divorce went up 34% because this is stressing us all. And so one, take care of your own mental health. Model it. That’s critical. Listen to them, empathize with them. Because kids have lost a lot, from friends to Chloe’s boyfriend really didn’t have a graduation.

Tana Amen, BSN RN:

No and he lost the thing that is his coping mechanism. I often talked about how exercise is mine. Well, he was on the tennis team and he got onto the tennis team in college and he played four hours a day. That’s his stress relief. He hasn’t been able to play at all. And that really sent him into a tailspin. So noticing these things and not just getting irritated with your kids, but understanding why are they acting this way. So question, “Why are they acting more anxious, more depressed, more irritable, more all of these things?” As soon as I saw him not being able to play tennis, I knew it was going to be a problem because I know how I get without my one hour of exercise.

Daniel Amen, MD:

I know how you get without your… “Please, go exercise, go, go, go.” Teaching them. So you have to model this, so not believing every stupid thing you think. Learning how to kill the ANTs, the automatic negative thoughts, that steal your happiness. Whenever you feel sad or mad or nervous or out of control, write down what you’re thinking. Have the kids write down what they’re thinking and help them turn those thoughts around to something that’s healthier, that’s more positive.

Tana Amen, BSN RN:

Well and spending a little time explaining to them, and I think it’s way harder when they’re teenagers, really teaching them about how food affects their brain and supplements. Supplements aren’t as difficult, I think, as food, because they’ve got so much peer pressure. We think of peer pressure for drugs. We don’t think of peer pressure for food. And I got to tell you, it is way more difficult with a teenager than it was when they’re little. Because I just controlled the food when she was little. So one of the things we do in our house with food is, I know it sends Daniel into just having a conniption fit sometimes when bad food comes into the house, so I’m like, “What do we do?” Because at this point my daughter works full time. She has her own money, right? She’s 17. So we have a deal. It’s like, “We’re not going to buy that stuff. We have done our job training you. You understand why we feel this way. We love you. But if you’re going to choose to eat a certain way, you are going to have to pay for that.” And so that’s really the best thing we can do on that one. But helping them understand why, and not just we’re just being mean or extreme, but it actually affects your brain.

Daniel Amen, MD:

So you model it and you don’t reinforce it.You make it their decision and then they have to pay for it.

Tana Amen, BSN RN:

And they pay the consequences.

Daniel Amen, MD:

I remember when we did this, when we were doing the Daniel Plan and we went and cleaned out someone’s kitchen, who basically said she was a healthy eater, and I’m like, “So why the Frosted Flakes?” She said, “Oh, well, that’s the only thing my son will eat.”

Tana Amen, BSN RN:

And he was 17.

Daniel Amen, MD:

And what did you say?

Tana Amen, BSN RN:

I’m like, “It takes 30 days for kids to starve to death.” So now, granted, I had a younger child and it was much easier to control the food. Now I understand teenagers are harder. But I still stick by my values. And it’s like, if you get allowance, you work, you make your own money, I just can’t… She’s about to be an adult. So I can’t tell her that anymore. She understands the principles, now she has to make the choice, she has to pay the consequences. And here’s the thing, we know, even my daughter and my two nieces, they do understand the principles. They might pull away, they might push back because that’s what kids do when they’re breaking away from you at a certain age. But I notice whenever she starts to feel bad, she comes right back to it. So she’s pulled away, she comes back. So I know eventually she’s going to come back to it.

“So how do you look after your mental health at college?” So this must be from a college student, I’m thinking.

Daniel Amen, MD:

Or a parent?

Tana Amen, BSN RN:

Or a parent.

Daniel Amen, MD:

So hopefully you’ve planted the ideas ahead of time. And going away to college now is just so weird because-

Tana Amen, BSN RN:

Well most people aren’t.

Daniel Amen, MD:

Well no, there are a lot people going away and some people are really anxious, so they don’t come out of their room, so they’re likely to get more depressed. Other people, it’s sort of a fight; the virus is real, the virus is not real. And there’s this tension and you have to be careful. And as we’ve said before on previous podcasts, the virus is real. But there’s an interesting new study that shows that 90% of people who are positive, who test positive for COVID-19, are actually not infectious. Now you don’t know who you are, but it’s because the tests are so sensitive that it’s picking up people who even have very low levels of the virus. And so we shouldn’t be freaked out, but we should be thoughtful. And wearing masks, it’s controversial.

Except if you think about it, the places where mask wearing is not controversial; Singapore, Japan, China, Taiwan, even though they’re either in or right next to the epicenter, have had dramatically fewer deaths. So Japan has a third of the United States population about 120 million people, but they’ve only had 1200 deaths. So it’s like 2% of the United States death. And I think thinking about other people, wearing the masks, not shaking hands, being thoughtful is just an important part of keeping yourself safe.

Tana Amen, BSN RN:

And I like that as far as addressing right now what’s going on with the virus. But in general, one of the things that I would say about, “How do you keep your mental health intact, going away to college?” Some of the stuff we just said; food is huge. Sleep. I think one thing that changes when kids first move away from home and they’re going to college and they’re all of a sudden responsible for everything on their own when they never have been, they don’t sleep. For many reasons. They’re studying, they’re socializing, they’re worrying and they don’t sleep.

Daniel Amen, MD:

Right. And it’s also one reason I’m a fan of homeschooling. And when Chloe did homeschooling starting in eighth grade-

Tana Amen, BSN RN:

So much better.

Daniel Amen, MD:

She got an extra hour, at least, a day of sleep.

Tana Amen, BSN RN:

More like two.

Daniel Amen, MD:

And children who sleep an hour less than their peers have a higher incidence of depression. So sleep is just critical.

Tana Amen, BSN RN:

And we have podcasts just on sleep, so I would highly recommend you listen to our podcast on sleep hygiene with Dr. Creado. We actually have a course on sleep hygiene as well. So super important. And that’s where I would start is with sleep. You always say, “Fix sleep first.”

Daniel Amen, MD:

Especially when you’re dealing with grief. Fix sleep first. You just feel so much better.

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Tana Amen, BSN RN:

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Daniel Amen, MD:

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