Some of the toughest parenting challenges one can face are those that involve drugs, alcohol or other substances. It can be confusing and often feels like a wild-goose chase trying to find ways to connect with your children on these subjects. Luckily for parents of the Castle Country Area, there is the EveryDay Strong Resilience Training, which will take place on Monday, Oct. 28.
To learn more about the event and its importance, Castle Country Radio sat down with Health & Wellness Prevention Coordinator Josie Hatch.
Opening our conversation, Hatch described the purpose behind EveryDay Strong and what it provides for the community,” EveryDay Strong is an evidence-based program developed by a psychologist when he saw that more kids than ever before are experiencing depression and anxiety. We see this on the SHARP survey that’s administered in Utah, and we’ve just seen these rates of kids who are experiencing depressive and anxious symptoms. It’s almost doubled since 2011,” Hatch continued,” so he developed this program to try to figure out how we can build more resilient youth and how parents and caregivers and adults can be supportive and help the youth in their life kind of develop resilience.”
This event is aimed at giving parents the tools to help tackle this crisis within their own homes,” This is so that parents and guardians can work with their children afterward. So we’re teaching the parents the skills to help their kids. So this is for anybody in Carbon County who’s 18 or older who has a youth that they want to come and learn how to help.”
As with any event, the organizers have arranged several incentives to gain more public interest, which Hatch explained in depth,” this will be at USU Eastern at the Jennifer Leavitt Student Center. So there will be a taco dinner for everybody. And then we also have all of the PTAs in Carbon County who have offered to supply prizes for an opportunity drawing at the end. And so if you stay clear through to the end, then we’re going to do a drawing and win some cool prizes. We’ve got some Amazon gift cards and some other fun prizes. So we hope people will stay and enjoy those.”
The last major topic we discussed with Hatch was why it is important to discuss topics like anxiety and depression with our children. “We find that building these protective factors, building up these resilient youth, it helps protect them against future substance use and maybe some future coping strategies that wouldn’t be so healthy, you know. So we just want to empower parents and families with the tools and skills to just help kids be strong for the future.”
In closing, Hatch stated,” I just hope that all the parents and guardians know that they are welcome to attend this event. We would love to see them there. I’m super excited about this training.”
The EveryDay Strong Resilience Training will take place on Monday, Oct. 28 in the Jennifer Leavitt Student Center on the Campus of Utah State University Eastern. To register for the EveryDay Strong Resilience Training, you can follow the instructions on the group’s event page, or you can register directly at Eventbrite.