Question: How do I teach, guide, and model for my daughter navigating away from suicidal ideation?
Dr. Kevin Skinner: That's a really important question, and I think to this parent, I would say: what have you learned about your experience that you can share with your child? That kind of vulnerability is a very important message of "I'm choosing life."
So your model of how to say that and how to communicate that might be the best model that you can give, because you're not talking about something that you've studied or read or learned about or watched. You're talking about your own life experience. So I think it's important that you learn how to share that vulnerable space and talk about why you're choosing to live and what it means to you. So you're trying to actually model that.
The other part of it is, I wonder what you've learned about yourself as you've gone through this experience choosing to live. What's it been like, and why are you making that choice? What is it that's helping you through those times? And so the reason why I ask this question is, as you do that kind of self-reflection, you learn a lot about yourself. You're actually modeling for your child the importance of life.
And I also want to say that I want to acknowledge the difficulty of what you're experiencing. Usually, when we have suicidal ideation, it's because we don't want to be in the pain—emotional or physical pain—that we're in. And so choosing to live is choosing to figure out, "I'm going to figure out a solution. I don't know it right now, but I'm choosing to." That's a very courageous thing.
And so I applaud you for that. And may you be blessed as you deal with those thoughts, but also as you model for your child how to choose life. So thank you.
