Parenting Pitfalls

Fear of going to camp...or is it? Toothpaste flavors, chicken nuggets, and friendship drama are all up for discussion in this episode of Parenting the Mental Health Generation.   

Our hosts, Amy and Lisa, talk with Dr. Natalia Kaczmarek, licensed clinical psychologist and founder of Indigo Therapy Group, Northbrook, Illinois about the challenges of parenting, the pitfalls we experience, and how to course correct in a way that really benefits our kids.

SHOW NOTES:
Dr. Kaczmarek's Practice - Indigo Therapy Group

So put in your earbuds, take this 30 minutes for you and join our conversation because mental health matters.


Music credit Tune 2 go / POND 5

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Transcript

Amy O. (00:07):

Knowing how to respond to our kids, what to say, what to do. It can be tough, and we certainly don't always get it right. On today's episode of Parenting the Mental Health Generation, we will hear about some of the most common parenting pitfalls and what we can try to say or do instead. Welcome, I'm Amy,

Dr. Lisa (00:28):

And I'm Lisa, and we're the hosts of Parenting the Mental Health Generation. It's difficult to parent a kid struggling with their mental health, and it can be really lonely. Here we lay it all out together and discuss the topics that concern us on our parenting journeys.

Amy O. (00:44):

Today we're speaking with Dr. Natalia Kaczmarek, a licensed clinical psychologist and founder of Indigo Therapy Group, a thriving therapy practice located in Northbrook, Illinois.

Dr. Lisa (00:56):

Dr. K. Is here to share with us some of the completely well-intended mistakes that parents often make. She'll help us better understand why we might be making them, and share some wisdom about how we can adjust our approach to better support our kids in the long run.

Amy O. (01:12):

So put in your earbuds. Take this 30 minutes for you, and join our conversation with Dr. Kaczmarek.

Dr. Lisa (01:21):

Hi Natalia.

Natalia Kaczmarek (01:22):

Thank you so much for having me this morning.

Dr. Lisa (01:25):

Thank you for being here. We're so excited to have you. We want to pick your brain today about all things related to what you see in your office, some of those common challenges, and where we could go from here. I want to start today with something that I see a lot in my practice, which is this idea that part of our role as parents is to help keep our children safe, but it's really hard to define what safety really means and how to do that in the most supportive way. And I think sometimes we may be over protecting our kids which may not be the best for them. Is that something you see?

Natalia Kaczmarek (02:04):

I see that so much that actually my introduction with kids and families and parents, I usually actually say that I'm an imperfect therapist, and the reason I say that from the get go is because I actually model a lot of making mistakes. It's so inherent to life, and I see so much perfectionism, especially in our kind of culture here on the North Shore that I, from the very beginning sort of set the stage to talk about that, to talk about, you know, it's okay that things are not handled perfectly or that we get upset or that, you know frustrations happen. Just it's the nature of life.

Dr. Lisa (02:48):

I think the biggest problem is that parents get so uncomfortable when their kids are uncomfortable. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. And so to avoid that feeling, they do everything they can to keep their kids in that comfort zone. Right. To avoid anything that's going to hurt them to swoop in before they've even fallen or made that mistake. Yeah. But of course, you know, that's then not teaching them how to fix their own mistakes, how to problem solve effectively.

Natalia Kaczmarek (03:17):

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> You know, I have

Amy O. (03:19):

Can we step back two seconds here though? Why is it important for our kids to sit there and feel uncomfortable? Why isn't it okay for me to want to ensure that my kid, you know, if he says he's got a stomach ache and he doesn't want to go to school in the morning, why isn't it okay for me to say, "You know what? You can have a day off, buddy. It's okay." Like, what's important about sending him?

Natalia Kaczmarek (03:47):

Well, Amy, let me ask you this. How as a parent, how would you define, not even as a parent, but maybe as a person, how would you define emotional resilience? What does that mean to you? How do you live that out?

Amy O. (04:01):

Emotional resilience to me means being able to get to the other side of feeling lousy, being able to get to the other side of feeling nervous or scared or sad. It means living with all the things that come at me and still being okay.

Natalia Kaczmarek (04:21):

Beautifully said. I would agree with you. My definition's probably super similar. And Amy, how did you learn to do that?

Amy O. (04:29):

Are you suggesting that it wasn't from reading a book? <Laugh> <laugh>

Natalia Kaczmarek (04:33):

It certainly could have been. I read a lot of the these are the 10 tips for life kind of books. Those are helpful. But I'm assuming that you've had a fair amount of life experience prior to reading any material. So is there a moment that you remember that you were emotionally resilient or is there somebody in your life that you credit or something, maybe an experience that helped you build that resilience yourself?

Amy O. (04:57):

Yes times about 25,000 <laugh>. Sure, of course. Yes. There are definitely experiences in my life of almost 61 years that have allowed me to prove to myself that I have the emotional resilience to be here and talk to you today for sure.

Natalia Kaczmarek (05:15):

Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> You know, for me personally, I think a little bit about being a first generation immigrant. Like my parents came here from Europe and they have been in survival mode since they got here. They never will have the privilege of just coasting because they aren't, you know, native to here and there's a lot of acculturation stress. So inherently in my growing up, that was the message in the family. Like, you have to push through, you have to, you know do this, follow the rules, this kind of thing. And the reason I'm asking you that is because in my family, it was a natural part of the setting. Right. There was kind of no other way to be. That was just part of the immigrant journey. But that's not every family. And Amy, to your point, it's helpful to have emotional resilience. It's helpful to be able to bounce back.

Amy O. (06:03):

I wasn't really expecting this conversation to go here, but I'm going to take it here for one second. It occurred to me when you were talking that I think that part of the way my husband and I might have defined being good parents or like providing for our children a good life, is that our kids had it easy. And we learned quickly that that was not true because of things that happen obviously in our journey. But, you know, part of what you try to do is like, provide for your kids more than maybe you were provided for, provide for the kids the best way you can mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and maybe inherent in that is this sort of sense of ease,

Natalia Kaczmarek (06:48):

Amy. I love how you said that. I think that's right. And I, I see that a lot in the parents I work with. What comes to my mind now is you know, I think last summer or so, I was working with a family where there was a lot of social concerns for their daughter, school age daughter. And there was a lot of fret about to go to camp or not go to camp. You know, we live in a place where everybody goes to camp. That's a huge milestone. And this child really was just not into it. And the moment it would come up at home, there was a lot of fighting. And so the parents came to me and I thought we were going to discuss like a level 10 crisis issue. They come in very serious and they're like, okay, we need to discuss camp.

Natalia Kaczmarek (07:34):

And so, I have the child wait in the waiting room and I have the parents kind of go over with me and they felt as though their child was going to be missing out on this camp experience. And they couldn't understand why. And they were sort of replaying back all the arguments that had happened. And I said, "Well, have you asked the kid, you know, why they don't want to go <laugh>?" And, and they said "No." They just said that she just keeps saying she doesn't want to go. So I said, okay, I'm going to bring in your kid and this is how we're going to do it. I'm going to frame the discussion and I want you to ask what her concern with camp and we're going to see if we can compromise. And so I bring the kid in. Calm as a cucumber, but they do put on their best face for me.

Natalia Kaczmarek (08:14):

You know, parents have a whole other child sometimes at home, I recognize that. But the kid comes in, sits between the parents and I frame the discussion of like, you know, "Hey kid, I'm so confused. You know, parents really want you to go to camp. It seems like they got a list of fun activities and I just don't get it. Can, can you help us understand?" And, the parent asks, you know, what's the concern with camp? And you know what the kids said, very reasonable. I don't like swimming. And we swim all the time. <Laugh>. And it's just too loud. But she was like, I like these other things. And so I said, okay, well if five days a week seems like too much and is actually stressful, would you be willing to do maybe three or I said, maybe two. And the kid goes, yeah, can I pick the days? And the parents looked at me wide eye. Yeah. <laugh>. And, when the kid walked out, the parents were so happy and they were like, "Man, we should asked for three days. We shouldn't have settled on two <laugh>."

Dr. Lisa (09:16):

<Laugh>.

Natalia Kaczmarek (09:18):

I share that because there was so much fret about, you know, an all or nothing thinking about to go to camp or not to go to camp. And we didn't actually just listen to what the issue was.

Dr. Lisa (09:29):

I mean, when I hear that story, I think so much about giving our kids decision making and agency and control in some ways over their own lives. And it's a really hard balance to strike, right? Because Amy, I go back to your question about, you know, the kid who every morning says they have a tummy ache. Well, we can't let them stay home from school every day. We know that. Right? And we know that if we let them avoid the anxiety-provoking situations too often, then it actually is going to exacerbate their anxiety. We have to expose them to the things that make them uncomfortable and help them see that they can move through that discomfort and still be okay. But to your point, Natalia, if we do that too much without giving them any say or buy-in into the process, then they feel controlled. And that can cause issues as well. And,so here we have all these problems, right? <Laugh>

Amy O. (10:29):

Parenting is fun. <Laugh>

Dr. Lisa (10:32):

It is hard.

Dr. Lisa (10:33):

<Laugh> It really is.

Natalia Kaczmarek (10:35):

Yes. I mean, basic brain wiring, right? Like if we avoid it teaches the brain that there is something to be scared of. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And if we want our kids to learn, Amy, to your point, that they can have a hard experience and work through it, that they're still okay, they need to be exposed to that. I wonder if the challenge and maybe the trick is making sure that the level of challenge matches what your kid is ready for. Yes. You know, so things like you know, I'm thinking about anything from bringing up a concern to a teacher, right? Maybe they don't want to do it on their own. Maybe a a parent wants to tell you know, the teacher what's going on, maybe a nice medium is the parent sends a heads up that the kid maybe wants to tell you something. And that's an agreed upon thing with the kid and the kid brings up in their own words and narrative the actual concern, right? So it doesn't have to be I either do it or they do it. There can be a compromise depending on what the kid's frustration, tolerance, and skill level is.

Dr. Lisa (11:45):

I see that a lot as just another common parenting pitfall is that the parent's expectations don't match the kids' ability level. And so inadvertently we're setting our kids up for failure and then everybody's upset at the end <laugh> that the expectation was not met.

Amy O. (12:03):

Yeah. I think it's important to share that when my daughter was in treatment for an eating disorder, she had exposure therapy for 15 weeks. And so every day I had to drop her off at this place that she absolutely hated. And I would cry in the car driving home and then I would pick her up at night and she would have had a very rough day. And as we experienced this treatment over these, the course of these months, each day got a little bit easier, a little bit easier, a little bit easier. Until at the very end my daughter was looking forward to going because she knew that this was helping her get better. And I bring that up because that was the hardest thing probably I've ever had to do. Was watch her go through that. And yet it was clear to me and the lesson learned is getting through that discomfort and knowing that she could get to the other side brought her a sense of freedom. That's an extreme example because she got to the point of being really sick. But watching kids struggle, not rescuing them from their pain makes a difference. Right?

Natalia Kaczmarek (13:08):

Thank you for sharing that. I mean, it had to be so tough. I have the visual of you crying in the car. How did you do that part? Because that's the bit that I always have a hard time understanding because it seems to be so parent specific of what helps them sit in that really uncomfortable place. You know, knowing that your kid is having a hard time.

Amy O. (13:29):

I had to trust more than I've trusted before. I had to trust that the people who knew what they were doing knew what they were doing. And that, you know, what they told me was true. That this was really the best for her. It was not easy for me to do because literally all I wanted to do was take her home, hold her in my arms and pretend like this wasn't happening. Yeah. But I trusted, I trusted that the professionals knew that it was what had to happen. Just like people have to trust you when they come into your office and you say, No, we can get this kid to camp. Yeah. Yeah. It's trust, it's letting go.

Dr. Lisa (14:02):

And I think it starts even younger than we think about, you know, this idea of exposing our kids to uncomfortable things. You know, here I am a clinical psychologist, like, okay, I know that what I'm supposed to do with my two little boys is let them feel uncomfortable and make sure that I'm not over coddling. And so I feel like I'm doing such a successful job because every time my five year old comes into my room at night, I say, Nope, go back to your room. I'm not letting you just sleep with me even if you're scared. And I'm like, Ah, I'm winning. And then I read this book that was on this topic and some of the examples really cracked me up. It was talking about how like this day and age we have 30 different toothpaste flavors for little kids because they don't like the taste of mint, It's too strong in their mouth.

Dr. Lisa (14:53):

And here I am with like four different options of berry and bubble gum and whatever toothpaste for my five year old son trying to make it the most comfortable experience for him possible <laugh>. And simultaneously the kid has a bandaid on his arm from his COVID shot that he refuses to take off because he thinks it's going to hurt too much. And so here I am going, all right, let's just let it fall off in the shower in two weeks. I don't care. We're not going to, you know, force the issue. And I'm like, Oh, I'm not doing it all right.

Amy O. (15:24):

<Laugh>, <laugh>.

Natalia Kaczmarek (15:26):

It'll be a rude awakening when there's mint toothpaste or foam or whatever they use at the dentist.

Dr. Lisa (15:31):

Yes indeed. You know, but I really think it is so ingrained in us. We are, Yeah. Our society seems to be so largely built for keeping our kids comfortable. And you look ahead and you see what that does when invariably they're going to come across those uncomfortable things, whether it's when he's five mm-hmm. <Affirmative> or when he's 10 or when he's in high school. Or maybe if we've done a good enough job of protecting them until they're off in college and then we can't anymore and that's suddenly they're rude awakening.

Amy O. (16:04):

But you know, I think we have to challenge ourselves here because, and I'm not trying to put you on the spot Lisa, but the choices of toothpaste are actually in some ways to make it easier for you too. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. Because if you had mint toothpaste and you said, son, it's time for you to brush your teeth. And he's like, Mm, I don't like that toothpaste, I'm not doing it. Then you have to deal with the fallout there, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And that's something you don't want to do. You'd rather say, well let's go with the strawberry, let's go with the, you know. And I think we do that a lot because we don't want to not only feel the discomfort, but deal with the discomfort. Yes. You think that's fair? Mm-Hmm.

Dr. Lisa (16:43):

<Affirmative>, I think it's very fair and I think it also speaks to how exhausted we all are as parents right now and how something's gotta give. For sure. I do constantly think about like, am I inadvertently doing him a disservice by not pushing a little more in that realm? It's a tough balance.

Natalia Kaczmarek (17:02):

Yeah. That topic reminds me a lot of food issues that come up in my practice. I don't know, I feel like every pediatric nutritionist probably implicitly sort of hates me because <laugh> parents come in and they're just flipping out on the food, right? Whether it's the, you know, the food's not nutritious enough, they're not eating enough because they're on some medicine or maybe they're eating a little too much. I have never seen an obese child in my practice ever. Like that's just not the population I treat. But if you were to like look on paper, all the notes documenting concern around eating particularly with overeating you would be really kind of surprised. And I always say to parents, when the power struggles start to ensue really, you know, what to let go of. You know, I asked the parent once, you know, they were really concerned about nutrition at dinner and I said, well what's your daughter eating? Gluten free chicken nuggets.

Natalia Kaczmarek (18:03):

And I thought to myself, I eat those <laugh>, you know? Yeah. They're not going to sit down and eat some big chicken and broccoli, but you know what, that's okay. They're consistently eating some protein. And Amy, I don't mean to be insensitive at all to your family's history and at all. And I'm sorry if there's something I said that is triggering or offensive just from another side, and that's not true for every family. You know, kind of figuring out, you know, what issues do we let go? The toothpaste example reminded me of that, of do we really need them to, you know, acclimate to mint?

Dr. Lisa (18:38):

I think that idea of how do we pick our battles and what do we let go of? And you know, even in the specific areas that we decide are the important ones, how do we move forward in supporting our kids and does it need to be a battle? And I'm certainly going to pick right now from some of our favorites Strixrud and Johnson, who just came to speak and gave an incredible presentation in our community. But they talk about how it's more helpful to be our kids' consultants mm-hmm. <Affirmative> than it is to, you know, come down on them or be too firm with them or, you know, try to control the situation. And I think about how that applies with food, as you mentioned with our picky eaters, with homework, with college applications, with really anything. You know, how do we be there to help them through those challenges if they are the big enough ones worth dealing with, but still giving our kids more agency in those situations so that they can start to learn how to problem solve on their own.

Amy O. (19:44):

Doesn't' it come down to, in a lot of ways trying to truly understand or wrap your head around what you value, what you want in your children at whatever phase of life they are. Like the picky eater kid. What you really want is your kid to have enough energy to do his life and to be able to put some agency into whatever it is he's involved in. And I don't know, food's tough for me, but I guess my point is like the question is why are we engaging on this particular topic? Why is this important to us? Like where are we trying to get to? You know, and thinking about the whole college application thing you mentioned, what do we really want for our kids? Where do we want our kids to be and how do we want them to get there is as important. I don't know. I don't even know exactly what I'm trying to say except that somehow we have to get, we have to envision what we want at the end so that we can decide how we want to get there and how we want to help our kids get there. Does that make sense?

Natalia Kaczmarek (20:46):

Yes. To me it was clear Amy and the example that popped into my brain as soon as you were saying that are all the friendship issues. I see, right? I see kids become so devastated that a conflict happened and that somebody doesn't like them at school. It becomes why don't they like me? And I often see that value for parents of like, I just want my kids to have a lot of friends. And I come back to, well what if your kid just had two or three really good friends and that felt super good to them? You know, and I sort of sell that idea because when it comes to conflict resolution, what happens is I empower kids to be like, you know what, you're not going to like everybody and not everybody's going to like you and that's normal and healthy and okay.

Natalia Kaczmarek (21:35):

You find the people that you know you really vibe with. You know, you invest your time into those friendships instead of investing all the time into being really nice to someone that makes you feel insecure and questions what's not right about you. Because there's nothing wrong with you. You are who you are. There's just, you know, it could be a personality thing, it could be some drama. Who knows. There's 110 reasons why it's not the person themselves. Right. And you know, I see parents get so distressed that their kid isn't the most social butterfly or isn't liked by everybody or isn't always giving other people the benefit of the doubt. Kids are mean. Not every kid always deserves the benefit of the doubt. Like the kids need to learn boundaries and always be respectful. But sometimes you know, I find that we're training kids in some ways to keep letting bad behavior happen when friends constantly cross their boundaries and hurt them. No, you need to set a boundary and say, yeah, I don't want to be friends anymore and that's okay. We do that as adults. We have to do that as adults.

Amy O. (22:44):

And so what you're saying is that the value there is the value of someone who treats me well, who respects me, the value of me in response treating them well and respecting them and that kind of a friendship is the value rather than this, you know, larger sort of fitting in doing. Yeah, that makes sense to me. Yeah.

Dr. Lisa (23:07):

And inherent in that, Natalia, what I'm hearing is that you're also teaching your child self-advocacy if you do that appropriately. Right. And you're teaching them how to stand up for themselves. You're teaching them you know, who they should be spending their time with and who they they shouldn't be. Right. You know, for larger kind of safety protective issues later in life as well.

Natalia Kaczmarek (23:31):

That's right. A lot of these ideas of what we think we are, what we expect from others, what we expect about the world, those are all consolidated. I mean they say by ages five to seven, right? So if a kid has a model that, you know, other people walk all over them or other people hurt their feelings and they're just expected to apologize and move on, they're going to grow up and potentially date people that cross their boundaries and hurt them all the time and they stay in the relationship. Right. And so really just thinking about years down the road, what kind of idea is this consolidating about what relationships are? They'll soak that in very early on very, they like they're learning language, they're learning a lot of things. They're absolutely learning these social emotional principles as well, even if they can't verbalize them. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

Amy O. (24:21):

So that means that whatever they're seeing within the family dynamic too, they're soaking in as well, right?

Natalia Kaczmarek (24:28):

Oh absolutely.

Amy O. (24:29):

Relationships that your parents have, relationships that they have with their friends, the way that they navigate in their social circles, in their marriage and their Yeah. That's interesting.

Natalia Kaczmarek (24:39):

That doesn't mean that parents need to be perfect because nobody is, I'm the imperfect therapist. There's going to be the imperfect parent.

Amy O. (24:45):

I am the imperfect parent <laugh>.

Natalia Kaczmarek (24:49):

What it means is that if a mishap happens to always come back and try to make it right, you didn't listen to your kid coming back and owning that and saying, You know what? I should have heard you, I should have listened a little differently. Let's try that moment again. There are so many opportunities to repair. It's not about avoiding that because actually those repair moments are what ends up being a lot more inspirational and healing for kids. Because then they learn, oh, mm-hmm <affirmative> people can hurt me, but people are reliable and trustworthy to come back.

Dr. Lisa (25:22):

And it's also modeling for them how to do that themselves. How to repair their own relationships when they make <laugh> their imperfect moves in this world.

Natalia Kaczmarek (25:32):

Absolutely. And they're not devastated when they've wronged somebody or hurt somebody by accident. They don't think, Oh, I'm the worst person ever. Which is what I see with a lot of kids with self-esteem issues. They have a shame corner around that they think that, you know, if they've made a mistake or hurt somebody that they're ultimately bad no kids with that are modeled what you're saying, Lisa, they can kind of tolerate that to their confidence a little more. They can tolerate the idea, Oh, I wrong somebody, but that's not characteristic of me. That was just a misstep. Yeah.

Dr. Lisa (26:04):

And Amy, I I think so much about this idea of like value-based parenting, right? And we're talking here about the values of, you know, maybe a parent values the quantity of friendships, whereas the child values the quality of the friendships and some of those differences. But I think too, you know, something that I see as another one of those common parenting pitfalls is just the value of like the, the name of what college your kid goes to, Right? And that's a big one around here. And how a lot of our behaviors and how we parent around our kids in elementary, middle, and high school is, is based on that outcome as though that's the end game. You know, you send your kid off to college and that first day out of their house and end game over. And we see time and time again that that's really just the beginning for them. And if that was the ultimate goal is what school you go to, then we've missed the mark on all those other values of teaching our kids independence and teaching our kids self-sufficiency and teaching our kids hard work and teaching our kids how to balance work with social life with downtime for themselves. Like those are the values we can, you know, accidentally miss along the way.

Amy O. (27:18):

It's interesting when you think about, you know, we always think about like the kids flying out of the coop and emptying the nest, you know?

Dr. Lisa (27:26):

Yep.

Amy O. (27:27):

And if you reframe it within the conversation that we've had today, you know, it could just be literally that they are now without shelter and food, but all of the other things they have developed and that they're ready to go when instead, I think what we're ending up doing so often is failing to develop that self confidence, that self-awareness that, you know, understanding of one's self, at least as best as you can have when you're 17 or 18 mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And we're letting them fly the coop without any of that because we've caught them all these times. We've rescued them, we've made sure that they're okay. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. And I guess maybe what we want to try to do is to have birdies that have a lot of those things already started, you know, ready and ready to go when they fly.

Dr. Lisa (28:13):

I don't know if there's a better note to end on than that one

Amy O. (28:16):

Flying birdies

Dr. Lisa (28:17):

<Laugh>. Yeah, Flying birdies. But I mean, and it, and it starts young. Like I said, you know, I see it in my littles, but it's also never too late. I mean, professionally I see it all the time with parents, you know, picking up on these things as their, as their kids get older. And certainly, you know, when they're teenagers and they're fighting for that greater independence. And there's more of a struggle there with how do I continue to be a supportive present parent, but also let my kid make those mistakes. And the mistakes are higher stakes oftentimes when they're in high school. The mistakes can involve substance use, The mistakes can involve failing a class. There's a lot, you know, more that can happen at that age. And I think it, it's, it makes it that much harder for parents to give their kids that chance. But it's that much more important that their kids get the chance to figure it out.

Natalia Kaczmarek (29:09):

Wise words Lisa.

Dr. Lisa (29:10):

Natalia, any last thoughts from you?

Natalia Kaczmarek (29:13):

Honestly, just having the courage to be imperfect and having the courage to be authentic and vulnerable with your kids, to treat them, you know, with some independence and respect. And it's not about avoiding things and handling it perfect. It's so not about that. It's really about can you be there for them? You know, it's not about orchestrating life to be perfect and comfortable all the time, but can you be there for them and model for them, you know, appropriate support when the time comes. And the answer is yes, you can.

Dr. Lisa (29:48):

Thank you so much for coming on and sharing some of those stories and that wisdom with us. <Laugh>, It was such a pleasure to have you here and Amy and I have absolutely loved this conversation.

Amy O. (29:59):

Thanks Natalia.

Natalia Kaczmarek (30:00):

You're very welcome. Thank you.

Dr. Lisa (30:02):

Thank you to our listeners for tuning into another episode of Parenting the Mental Health Generation. Stay current on all CATCH programming by liking us on Facebook @CatchisCommunity, or by visiting our website. Catchiscommunity.Org.

Amy O. (30:18):

We are glad that you joined us to continue the conversation. It's important to talk about our mental health. Reach out for help if needed.