The Summit Ranch

Researchers asked 108 hospitalized teenagers what they wished their parents had done differently when they finally said they were suicidal.

The most common answer was not more resources, or faster action, or better questions.

It was: manage your own reaction.

The teenagers described their parents as extremely anxious in the moment, then sad, then angry, then shocked. Some described being called manipulative or told they wanted attention. Some described being guilted, or blamed, or ignored.

They also described the opposite. Being understood. Being supported. Feeling loved.

What they asked for came down to three things. Emotional support before problem-solving. Parents holding their own feelings during the conversation. And help actually getting to treatment.

One more number from the same study, and it is the one to sit with. More than half of these teenagers had not told their parents directly before they were hospitalized. When parents found out, it was usually from another adult, or from finding something.

This was a hospitalized group, so it is not the average teenager. It is a group whose parents all eventually found out, which makes what they say about how that went worth listening to.

If you need help right now: call or text 988, any time. In Kansas, the Family Mobile Crisis Helpline takes calls and texts at 1-833-441-2240 for anyone 20 and under.

EVIDENCE: Ackerman et al. (2023), Journal of Adolescent Health. 108 psychiatrically hospitalized adolescents 12-17. Over 50% had not disclosed directly to a parent before hospitalization. Free full text: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10524440/

We spend a lot of time thinking about how to support our kids through big emotions and help them regulate. But our own regulation matters, too.

Not because parents need to get it right all the time, but because kids learn so much from watching how we navigate our own hard moments.

We get to practice, too.

Back-to-school struggles don't always sound like, "I'm anxious."

Sometimes it's "I don't want to go." Sometimes it's irritability, avoidance, needing more reassurance, or pulling away.

When something feels off, we don't always have to jump in with a solution. Getting curious, listening, and giving kids some choice in what support looks like can go a long way.

The goal isn't to remove every hard feeling. It's to help kids build confidence that they can move through hard things with support.

A study published this year asked 154 teenagers who had experienced suicidal thoughts a question researchers rarely get an honest answer to. Who did you not tell, and why.

They could answer anonymously. Parental consent was waived on purpose, so nobody was answering with a parent in the next room.

Two findings are worth carrying.

Twenty-eight percent had told no one. Not a parent, not a sibling, not a friend, not a partner. They had people available. They chose silence.

And the ones who told no one felt closer to the person they were not telling than the teens who had confided in someone. The researchers think that closeness may be part of the mechanism. If you believe you are a burden, the person you protect hardest is the one you love most.

The top two reasons they gave were not what anyone expects. Not fear of hospitalization. It was wanting to handle it themselves, and fear of how the person would react.

So the quiet reassurance many of us carry, that our kid would tell us because we are close, is not something the research supports.

This is a small study, mostly White and mostly girls, and it is asking teenagers to explain their own reasoning. It is also one of the only studies that got teenagers to answer this honestly.

Related, and on our blog: a longer piece from the 10th on what distress looks like when it does not look like distress.

If you need help right now: call or text 988, any time. In Kansas, the Family Mobile Crisis Helpline takes calls and texts at 1-833-441-2240 for anyone 20 and under.

EVIDENCE: Spears et al. (2025), JAACAP Open. 154 US adolescents 13-17 with lifetime suicidal thoughts or behaviors, recruited anonymously with parental consent waived. 27.92% perpetual nondisclosers. Perpetual nondisclosers reported greater closeness to their primary confidant, p = .008. Free full text: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12414306/

The most effective thing in su***de prevention is also the least interesting.

Not a conversation. Not a program. Locks.

Across a decade of research covering 164 studies, restricting access to the means of su***de is the strategy where the evidence got stronger, not weaker. When access goes down, deaths go down. That has held across countries, methods and decades.

For a household that means two things, and the American Academy of Pediatrics is direct about both.

Medications get locked up. All of them, including the over-the-counter ones, and especially anything you have in quantity.

Fi****ms get stored locked and unloaded with am******on separate, and if there is a kid in your house who is struggling right now, the safest option is temporarily out of the house entirely.

Nobody enjoys this conversation. It is also the one with the best evidence behind it, and it is entirely inside your control, which is more than can be said for most of what worries you at 2am.

Temporary is fine. Temporary is the point.

If you missed it, we published a longer piece on Thursday about why the standard warning sign list misses neurodivergent kids and what shows up instead. It is on our blog.

EVIDENCE: Zalsman et al. (2016), Lancet Psychiatry, 164 studies. AAP Blueprint for Youth Su***de Prevention for the household guidance.

Their silence on the worst night of their life looks exactly like their silence on an ordinary school night.

That is the trouble with the standard su***de warning sign list. It works by asking you to notice a change. For a kid whose baseline already includes shutting the door, going quiet, and needing two hours before they can talk to anyone, there is often no change to notice.

The 988 Lifeline hosts a warning signs guide written specifically for autistic people, and its most useful line is about threshold. A sign counts when it is a marked change from what is usual for that individual.

Not different from other kids. Different than usual for yours.

Today's post is up: what actually shows up, what the research supports and what it does not, and how to ask a direct question in a way your kid can answer.

https://summitranch.org/blog/warning-signs-quieter-in-our-kids

If you need help right now: call or text 988, any time. In Kansas, the Family Mobile Crisis Helpline takes calls and texts at 1-833-441-2240 for anyone 20 and under, and they can send a team out to you.

Summit Ranch is not a crisis service. If your kid is in danger right now, use the numbers above or go to your nearest emergency department.

Su***de warning signs in neurodivergent kids | Summit Ranch — Summit Ranch: Children's Counseling and Executive Function Coaching The standard su***de warning signs were built for a different nervous system. What actually shows up in neurodivergent kids, and how to ask the direct question.

Most su***de warning sign lists tell you to watch for withdrawal.

For a lot of our kids that advice is hard to follow. A kid who has always needed two hours alone after school does not trip a withdrawal alarm when the reason changes.

The 988 Lifeline hosts a warning signs guide written specifically for autistic people. It is free, and the most useful sentence in it is the one about threshold: a sign counts when it is a marked change from what is usual for that individual.

Not different from other kids. Different than usual for yours.

Here is one thing that looks like. A kid who is normally verbal, losing words in their worst moments. When a kid goes quiet in the middle of getting upset, most of us read it as the storm passing. Sometimes it is. Sometimes the words are gone and the distress is not.

This week is National Su***de Prevention Week. We are publishing a full piece on Thursday, September 10: what actually shows up, what to say, and how to ask a direct question without making it worse.

If you need help right now: call or text 988, any time. In Kansas, the Family Mobile Crisis Helpline takes calls and texts at 1-833-441-2240 for anyone 20 and under, and they can send a team out to you.

Summit Ranch is not a crisis service. If your kid is in danger right now, use the numbers above or go to your nearest emergency department.

Reading homework takes ninety minutes and ends in tears. Again.

You have tried the reading log. You have tried the sticker chart. You have tried sitting next to them for every single word. The school says give it time, they are close to grade level, they will catch up.

Meanwhile you are watching a smart kid slowly decide they are stupid.

Dyslexia has nothing to do with effort or intelligence. It comes down to a brain that handles written language differently, and a system that missed it. More practice does not change that. The right kind of support does.

The parent and kid (8+) dyslexia group meets Tuesday, September 8, from 5 to 6pm. It is free.

There is no agenda for this one. School just started, so the plan is to sit down and talk about how it is actually going. Parents talk with parents. Kids head off with Summit Ranch staff and do an activity, so you get an hour to finish a sentence.

No tutoring, no evaluation, no diagnosis required.

Register at summitranch.org/groups. Questions go to [email protected].

The first three weeks decide whether your kid's 504 is a real thing or a PDF nobody opens again.

Get a current copy in your hands. A paper or PDF you can read, not a note that it's in the system somewhere.

Ask who your building's 504 coordinator is, by name. Any district with 15 or more employees is federally required to designate one. That's who you go to when something isn't happening.

Ask the school to confirm every adult who teaches your kid has read it. PE, art, band, and whoever writes the sub plans. Middle school is where this falls apart, because it's seven people now instead of one.

Update it for this building and this schedule. A plan written for third grade does not survive a seven-period day.

Then watch October, not August. The first few weeks are the honeymoon. What the plan is worth shows up when the novelty wears off and the work gets real.

Big weekend for Summit Ranch. On Sunday at the AdventHealth Championship, our founders Brad and Anne Botteron received the Grayson Murray "Be Kind to One Another" Legacy Award.

The award goes to people who put kindness to work for others. After Grayson Murray's death, his parents started the Grayson Murray Foundation to fund mental health and addiction awareness, services, and research.

Brad and Ann started Summit Ranch in 2021 because they wanted Kansas City kids to have a place like this.

They funded it and they stayed with it, and now it is a place where kids and teens learn how their brains work and families get support that holds up at home and at school.

Congratulations, Brad and Ann. We cannot think of two people who fit this award better.