Doing It for the Kids

Doing It for the Kids

While our own mental health might be fine, it’s our kids we worry about the most and when they are not okay, it impacts not just home but our performance at work and how we show up. In this important conversation, three Rise leaders share the practical steps they took when they realised their kids were not okay and how the experience changed how they lead.

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Kylie Davis:

It was such a great presentation by John. And what we wanted to do is give a little bit of context as to why we're going to do this next panel, which is called doing it for the kids, because one of the things that happens when we present on the RealCare app to real estate groups. And when we have this message about what mental health is, it can be quite polarizing right?

Some people like, well, it's not. You know I have presented to so many audiences like this like, ”What have you got to say, girlie? I'm not interested in talking to you about mental health. My mental health is completely fine.” But when we take a step back, and when you start to say, “Look, the app's there, for when you need it and you may not need it, and we hope you never need it.” But maybe, like John was saying, if you call lifeline to get some help on someone that you're worried about.

We see a ripple effect go across the room, and what we see a ripple effect go across the room is when you say your mental health might be fine. That's fantastic. But you might be worried about someone, and that someone might be one of your kids and we find that the whole, the whole conversation then changes.

And so over the last couple of years we've had some, you know, we committed at Rise in 2020-2021 that we would at the 1st Leadership, that we would knock on the doors and open the doors inside our lives at Rise, that we didn't want to open the room in the dark cellar.

And so one of the conversations we wanted to have today was about mental health and kids. And so Nick and Leanne, and one of the reasons that I'm here is because of my youngest son and some of the conversations I've had with him which led, which I was very grateful to have had the experience with Rise over. And so we're going to kick off.

So Nick, I'm going to start off. Tell us about your kids and when you noticed something wasn't quite right.

Nick West:

So I've got 3 kids. Emily's now 23. She's a schoolteacher. She's got an eating disorder. The trigger for that was being weighed at school in Rowing and then social media, and that's played out in our lives. Tom is now 19. Tom's got severe OCD. Boarding on clinical psychosis and the result of that is he's just completed year 12 without looking at a computer because he feels someone's watching him, and that's the result of having that worry about just being looked at and watched and phones and so that's how that's played out.

Kylie Davis:

How did you notice? Like, what was the moment when you thought? “Hang on? Something's not right here?”

Nick West:

Yeah. For Emily, it was around eating challenges, body image, her not being happy with her image, her reducing her food intake, and that resulted in her behaviour changing quite dramatically. You'd see peaks and troughs in her behaviour, so that led us to seek help, which we did, and with Tom, Covid, he retreated and was just a different kid, unbelievable, and as a parent. It was very worrying so he completely retreated. During Covid, developed some unusual habits. His right hand started using his left hand and wouldn't hold the conversation, say words but not have a conversation, and we thought, we're in some trouble here to the point where I rang Patrick Mcgory, who's the strain of the year. He's a client of mine who says we can't see a psychiatrist. We don't know what's going on. He agreed to see Tom out of hours and give us a plan around and understand what the challenges were and how to deal with it.

Kylie Davis:

And so Leanne, tell us about your kids.

Leanne Howard:

So, I have 3 children as well. I have 2 boys and a girl. My 1st son, Oscar, just turned 20 this week and he's in 3rd year University doing a Double Science-Maths degree at Sydney Uni. I have another son who's 19 next week so, they’re almost Irish twins. He's 1st year Uni doing another Double Science-Maths degree as well at Sydney, Uni. And then I have a 14-year-old daughter Grace, who's in year 9, and she's the one that's had the challenges, so I was sort of in danger of being quite a smug parent when they were young, and all doing well. And then Grace sort of aged 12 years 6 towards puberty it all started to change, and my life started being something I never thought it would be. You thought it happened to other parents. And so for her extreme add eating disorder. Not this, not to the extreme, or binge eating, constant running away, self-harm, they all sort of go together as well. You often get eating disorders with self-harm and depression anxiety.

So they all kind of yeah go together. So she's had all of those. It's been about a 3 year journey, and we'll talk more about how I've changed my approach during that time. We're not out of the woods. We are in a much better place than what we were, but it is something that we may deal with. I don't know. I mean, as John spoke earlier. It could be a lifetime. It could be something that she grows out of. We don't know that.

Kylie Davis:

And so when was it? When was the 1st time that you noticed it? Was it gradual?

Leanne Howard:

And I was just chatting to a couple of people out there. You don't know, and I'm sure you'll agree. You have a few signs that are kind of normal, like teenage years are hard for anybody.

Kylie Davis:

They're full of hormones.

Leanne Howard:

Like, even if you've got incredible kids, they're hard and you don't know. Is this a sign? Is this just a bit of a phase? Or is this a trajectory that they're on my looking back? It was a trajectory. It wasn't just a phase, so we had binge eating and then cutting, which is very common getting in trouble at school, and then, by the time you know, it can take 6 months to get your 1st psychology appointment, or you had luckily had a contact by the time you get to the doctor it's 6, 9 months and it's actually gone out of control a bit, because it's really hard to get appointments. So it starts off. And then, yeah, all sorts of.

Kylie Davis:

It can start off subtle, I know, because my youngest Charlie, now 25, has his own band. He's very musical, always a really star performer at school, but at 19 went very quiet and just suddenly wouldn't come out of his room. I thought he'd just, you know, gone through a whole lot of Uni stuff, and he was just sort of resetting. But Mark was like. “No, there's something wrong with that kid. You need to take him for a walk. You need to find out what's going on.”

And as part of that walk, confessed to me like John was saying that the thoughts in his head were terrifying, and he thought that he was going to hurt himself. And the hardest thing I've ever done in my whole life was to not freak out, tackle him to the ground and just rock with him, which was my desire you don't do that with a 19 year old boy, but the hardest thing I've ever done was to keep walking. Take a breath and say, that sounds really hard and he says that the fact that I didn't freak out now that he says in return was that was the bit that made him realize that it was okay to tell me what was going on in his head.

But as a parent, that's a really really hard thing to do. So what was your and you know, obviously from there we began the journey to get him some help, but it is hard to get help. What was your response as a parent? Nick, you called a friend.

Nick West:

Yes, so I called Patrick Mcgory, and we got we, I suppose, wanted to understand. Why was Tom behaving this way, and he gave Covid, he said, well, you know, I've seen kids, unfortunately, who've been impacted dramatically and so sought help to understand how severe it was. What was the strategy to put in place at home? And we ultimately Tom went to boarding school, and we felt he needed some energy around him which was the right call. That was a great environment for him because at home his 2 siblings had sort of left home, and so he needed a bit of energy around him in the right environment. And so that strategy has helped him get to a better place. And with Emily again, going to see people, dieticians, psychiatrists, psychologists, and the various help out there that could give us some strategies, understanding, and some strategies. So we could then talk about it with our kids, and that certainly has helped.

Kylie Davis:

And what were some of those strategies that you put into place?

Nick West:

Well, they were different for Tom. It was around encouraging him to be normal and encouraging him, and to also pull him up when he was doing unusual things, and to encourage him to look at his phone and start texting his mates again. And that sort of thing with Emily. It was around trying to normalise body image and try and get her to initiate eating food and those sorts of things. Those were the strategies that we sort of adopted to try and overcome those challenges. And what about you, Leanne?

Leanne Howard:

So I think in the beginning, when it starts to, you know, it's the snowball my nature is. I'm a problem solver. So throw everything at it. We had, you know, a dietician, we had a psychologist, psychiatrist, GP, working with the school. So you throw everything at it. It got to the stage where I took 4 months off work because it was. This is my approach in the beginning. I just thought I need to throw everything at this and try to figure out how to solve this problem. And some things work, some don't. And you keep pivoting because I think you know, mental health is really complex and complex problems often have complex solutions.

So there wasn't just a, “Wow, that's it.”

Kylie Davis:

“Fix it.”

Leanne Howard:

There's not a “fix it”. It’s something –

Kylie Davis:

It's not like antibiotics. Right?

Leanne Howard:

No, that's what I had. There's not a “fix it”. But you have measures, and honestly, you're just grateful for them. So for me, I don't worry. I mean, I worry a little bit about her academic performance. She was really bright when she was younger. She doesn't perform well at school now, but for me it's mental health. I focus on making sure she's part of a community. We have a tutor, we have a mentor, we have a psychologist, and we've got all of that in place.

So I threw everything at it. And then I realized, this is probably a longer journey ahead and I still give her all the love and support, and we've got a team around that. But I also compartmentalize it a little bit now because it cannot consume my whole life forever like it consumes a lot of my life, but I also have other children. My former husband died, so I'm the only provider to my 3 kids. I have to keep going. You have to actually keep going and find. So it's not a problem to be solved. It's the way I live, and it's part of my life, and like I said, I throw everything at it still but I also put energy into other other things, and it's important for me to look after my other kids, my relationships to be a good performer at work and great leader at work. They all mean a lot to me as well. So it's been a 3 year journey, so it's gone from consuming every minute of my day to consuming a lot. But it's in a compartment now, and it doesn't define my entire life.

Kylie Davis:

And so you mentioned before that you were guilty of being a smug parent before this happened.

Leanne Howard:

Yeah.

Kylie Davis:

Did you ever have any? Did you ever wonder? And I know I did when this was happening to me? It's like, Did you ever wonder like, did my parenting cause this? Like, was this my fault? Is this like something I did?

Leanne Howard:

I think everybody does. You go over? And I mean, the reassuring thing is, you have, like other kids they are okay. And they all grew up in the same house. It's like, Oh, well, it can't be just yeah, you do. And you. I think you know you take ownership of it for sure. But sometimes there's not always an answer, and because you can have all sorts of situations that another kid might not be the same.

So you do. You go through that? I've read every parenting book. I listen to podcasts. A lot of soul searching as well. Yeah.

Kylie Davis:

One of the things I did because I've had a few challenges at different times is that when my eldest was 14, I don't know why I did this, but we had a conversation where I said, well, you know what I'm like as a mother, and you obviously met your father you're about, you’re hitting your teenage years, and there's probably going to be times in your life now where things are going to happen, and you're going to need to talk to someone about it, but that probably won't be me or your dad. And if you don't want to talk to us about that. Then that's completely okay. And I framed that along the lines of. So I just want you to know. Put some money aside for counseling, and we did it as a little bit of a joke. But when Sam was 21, he came to me and said, “Mum, I want. Can I access that?”. And was very proactive about his mental health, and this was around about the time when Charlie was going through his same thing. So it gave us a reference point, because I had the same conversation with Charlie when he was 14. So when I was walking up the you know, we were walking the dogs, and you know how you think about things. I could see the dog's butts walking up, and so I will always remember this conversation and the wiggling of our dog's butts as they walked up the hill, because you remember strange stuff. But I remember saying to him, after taking a deep breath, Remember that conversation, do you think now would be a good time for us to get you to talk to someone, and it kind of created a whole profession.

So, Nick, what did you do? Because, like some did. We talked to Alex Owens last year, and you know, and the support that he got from Owens Cassley when his son had cancer. But I think sometimes this sort of idea of shame is around well, is my child right? And how did you –?

Nick West:

So it's been interesting, because, as we know, work, life blend into your home life. Home life blends into your work life, and if something's out of kilter, it impacts. So it was interesting for me. I shared at one of our company gatherings company events that we catch up, and I shared with our company that Emily had an eating disorder, and Tom had severe OCD. And 2 things happened. One of the staff members came up to me and said, you've got some shit going on in your life. But you're the positive guy. You've got some shit going on. And I said, Yeah, I think everyone has some shit going on.

Secondly, and as recently as last week. What's happened by being vulnerable and sharing in a leadership environment? And the whole team is, I get people in our company who ring me and say, I have a son. I have a daughter who's got this, and as recently as last week and they see because I've opened up about it. They come to me now, and I don't give professional advice other than I said. I understand it. Here's what I'd recommend. You. Do go and talk to someone, so I direct them either something with the RealCare app, or go and talk to someone or give them a recommendation. So it's been quite profound in that respect, and I didn't expect that the amount of people who now communicate with me because I shared my story, that they're feeling open and comfortable with coming to share their story with me and look for a direction.

Kylie Davis:

And, Leanne, how would you? What was your experience at sharing with work? And what was your advice?

Leanne Howard:

I haven't shared a lot at work, and a lot of friends here probably didn't know a little bit, but not all of it. I say, I have got some challenges with my daughter, and obviously at its peak, which was a couple of years ago. It did have more impact, I think.

I think. And that's why I'm speaking today. Because I think it's really important. There's a bucket epidemic of kids with mental health issues, especially in teenage years, and even though, like I'm lucky I'm wired to be, I'm quite resilient and positive, and I don't have a predisposition to depression.

But, as Milo said, it can really impact your prefrontal cortex and your decision making. There are nights where, if you've got a daughter with an eating disorder, you might have to go out at lunchtime to watch them eat. If you've got a child with suicidal tendencies, you're sleeping on their floor at night and you're rocking up to work the next day, and I remember having a chat with you and Sadhana just saying, no one talks about this like I can handle divorce and aging parents, and all the sorts of things that life brings. Life's not always easy. But having a child and a lot of these mental health issues, they can be fatal. They can have very scary outcomes.

If you don't know if your kid's going to be alive at the end of the week, when they're at their worst, it really does impact you, even if it's not your own stuff. So I think so. I haven't talked about it a lot. But that's why I'm talking about it today, because I do think it's such a big problem.

Kylie Davis:

And so what are your tips for employers or for you know, if you're leading a team, and someone comes to you and says there's some stuff going on. What are your tips?

Leanne Howard:

I think the best thing you can ever say to someone is that it must be incredibly hard. How do I support you?

What would that be for me? That's the biggest thing, because no one understands until you and we've all been through it, and I know a lot of people out here as well until you're in those shoes of a parent with a kid that's on a path of self-destruction. Whatever way it is. It's really hard to comprehend.

It's not the time to share knowledge about your children. Don't give advice, don't give advice, don't I mean, you've had people say, Oh, maybe it's a cry out for attention, or you need to set some boundaries, or you just need to tell them they have to eat what's on the table. That's what I do at my house if they don't eat it. And you've got a kid that hasn't eaten for 3 days. You're going to make them whatever they want. So I would refrain from advice that must be really hard. How do I support you? Flexibility as well like we will deliver. I never have. I hope that you know I always turn up. I will always deliver, but I might need to skip out for a doctor's appointment or a psychiatry appointment that I've been waiting for 9 months for. That just comes up like that can sometimes happen. So that flexibility and just that understanding that it's something that it's very hard to control another human being. We can help ourselves. And when they're younger you have a lot of influence. The older they get and more. These disorders are kind of taking place. It's very hard to get a 15 year old that says I'm not going to school today to go to school. The child's 11, and you've got school refusal. It's like Nope pulling you out of bed. You go to school at 16 years old, it's different. So the older they get, the harder it is to influence early intervention. If you're a parent, and you see signs. It might be a phase, but it might be a trajectory and go early, I'd say.

Kylie Davis:

Nick, what are your tips? Look! What helped me was to talk about it. I've got a great peer partner, James Keenan. I've got great mates here, Duncan, Charlie, and Tom, so I've spoken about it, and as a leader I'd encourage anyone to be a bit vulnerable and share something with your people because it gives them permission.

One, they say you're human and two, It gives them permission to come and talk to you about something. So that's been pretty profound. I'm a big journaler, so I get stuff out of my head, and I write it down. And that's been something that I'd give as a tip just to really journal, because all the good stuff and the challenging stuff. It really helps you rationalise your feelings and your strategies. And then the 3rd thing for me was meditation. I took up meditation, and that's been a very important way for me, processing a lot of things, not just these things, but just, you know, when there's stress and anxiety and decisions to be made. I found that that's also been a very, very strong thing that I've implemented has helped me just navigate my way through and not panic. Those 3 things.

Kylie Davis:

Awesome!

Ed, can we just slip to the next slide because we did have some tips written up?

I wanted to thank both of you for sharing it. I wanted to share with everybody, too, that when we redid the RealCare app, the navigating the mental health system like how to go if you're trying to go straight to a psychologist or a psychiatrist is often very difficult in this, but going to a GP first and getting a recommendation and then going through that, we put all of that into the app to help with these sorts of conversations, and I wanted to thank you both for your vulnerability. Another click, please, Ed, there's 3. Thank you. One more. That's it

And also like, so the app is there and these conversations are not just, for when you're observing, you know your staff members or members of your team, although absolutely use them for that. But the tools inside the app are also for home, and wish everybody good mental health, and look after your family.

Thank you so much!

Nick West:

Thanks.

Leanne Howard:

Thanks!