The Moos Room™

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Emily: Welcome everybody to The Moos Room. We have the gruesome twosome. Myself and Joe are here. [onomatopoeia]. We are joined by another guest for our May mental health series. We are joined today by a colleague of ours in extension. She is the extension educator for Goodhue County 4-H. Aly Kloeckner is with us today. Welcome, Aly.
Aly: Thanks for having me.
Emily: I'm really excited to have Aly here. Her and I get to work pretty often on some projects together. I will say we've known each other since college too, so it's always fun to have a good friend on too. We are going to be talking about a project that Aly has been working on for the past year and a half, maybe two years now. I've gotten to help with it a little bit, and I think it's a really important topic for our listeners. Again, it is May, Mental Health Awareness Month, so we are doing our mental health series. We're going to switch it up a little bit and talk really specifically today about youth mental health.
Aly has been working on a project working with rural youth on things like recognizing stress and building resiliency, and how to be leaders, and how adults can recognize signs of stress or mental health issues in youth. Lots of cool things. We'll get to it and get to the questions and let Aly talk a little more about herself and her work. Before we do that, Aly is a new guest. We have two super secret questions that we ask all of our guests. Joe and Bradley will tell you that they do have correct answers, but they are wrong. There are no wrong answers to these questions. You answer with your heart. Question number one, what is your favorite breed of beef cattle?
Aly: Shorthorns.
Emily: Okay.
Aly: They're fluffy, really fluffy, and they have really cool patterns, and they're a little less psycho than some of the others.
Emily: [laughs] Dr. Joe maybe has a rebuttal to that. Shorthorn, good choice. Yes, I agree on the coloring. A beautiful roan shorthorn, you just can't top that in my mind. It's like the perfect color pattern. Anyways, Joe, so we keep a tally of what all of our guests say. Joe, what is the tally for the beef breeds at now?
Joe: Okay, I'm just re-arranging some things because I did hop a spot. All right, Black Angus still in the lead at 15, Hereford's at 10, Black Baldy's at 4, Scottish Highlander at 4, Red Angus at 3, Shorthorn now at 3, Belted Galloway at 2, Charolais at 2. Then all with 1, Stabiliser, [unintelligible 00:03:12], Brahman, [unintelligible 00:03:12], [unintelligible 00:03:13] Jersey, Normande, Belgian Blue, Brangus, Piedmontese, and White Park.
Emily: All right. Now we're moving on to super secret question number two, which you've maybe figured out. What is your favorite breed of dairy cattle?
Aly: Holsteins [unintelligible 00:03:30]
Emily: [laughs] I may or may not have known she was going to say that.
Aly: When you grow up on a Holstein farm, you better have the right answer to that question.
Emily: See, tthat is why Aly is really here. Her and I both grew up on Holstein farms, so--
Joe: Garbage.
Emily: I needed her help to stir the pot a little bit.
Aly: What's your favorite, Joe?
Joe: It's Jerseys. The only answer is Jersey.
Aly: Except they crawl through fences.
Emily: [chuckles]
Joe: I'm not saying they're smart, they're just the best. It's well established that they're goofy and weird and they have weird tendencies. That's fine. That's personality, which a Holstein does not have.
Emily: I would beg to differ, good sir. All right. 'You know what? We don't have time for this to turn into, like, a telenovela podcast here, so we'll move right along. Where are we at on the tallies now, Dr. Joe?
Joe: Unfortunately, Holsteins are still in the lead at 23, Jersey's at 14, Brown Swiss at 8, Montbeliarde at 3, Dutch Belted at 3, Normandy at 2, 1 Guernsey named Taffy, and another Guernsey for them at 2, milking Shorthorns at 1, and Ayrshires at 1.
Emily: All right. Shout out to Taffy, the Guernsey.
Joe: Always.
Emily: A favorite here in The Moos Room. All right. Well, now that we got all the important business out of the way, we can move on to the other important business. Aly, maybe just to start, why don't you briefly just tell us a little bit more about what you do. Obviously, you do more than just work on the mental health side of things, but share briefly what you do and how you got started with the mental health stuff, and then we'll dive into some more details.
Aly: Like Emily said, my name is Aly Kloeckner and I am a 4-H educator in Goodhue County. I started in this role about six years ago now. We are a heavily livestock-oriented 4-H program, still pretty rural communities. We're floating a line between Rochester and the cities and so a lot of commuter towns. Also agriculture is still one of our main economic bases.
How I got into the mental health piece is, and I'm actually pretty sure this is the same situation that really prompted Emily to dive into this work, a0 friend of ours from college lost a father to suicide, and we all were reeling from the reality of how close to home that it had hit. The question was starting to get asked, why does it seem to be hitting our communities and what can we do about it?
At that time then I started thinking more onto the youth side because it was something I could do through my work, and I had resources available to me to build some of these pieces. After a while, we did create a pilot program to help prepare adults in the community to work with youth who might be impacted by some tough economic situations, realizing that the farm youth tend to be more aware of their family finances than a lot of other youth potentially are. Then those youth withdrawing from activities and trying to help the situation, but probably only making it worse, really trying to equip the adults in our communities to recognize those youth and know how to work with them.
That pilot project then garnered some recognition from Dean Durgan at the University. At that time, then we got shuttled over, our work shuttled over into the [unintelligible 00:07:31] grant that was provided by Minnesota Department of Ag to the extension. From that work, then we started moving into more youth centered peer-to-peer work and expanding our work with the volunteers.
Emily: All right. Awesome overview. I have 5 million questions, but I think I'm going to start with the very last thing you said. I know the newest part of this is the peer-to-peer, so youth helping each other. I'm curious, as somebody who is not a youth anymore, what has been the reception of this from kids? Does it seem like, yes, there's really a need and a hunger for this, or it's like they're interested, but it's a little awkward at first. I'm really curious to know what the kids are saying and thinking about this.
Aly: What surprised me the most was that there is a clear need for it. It's not the kids that think that there's not. The adults were really the ones sweeping under the rug. We've had youth come up to us after programming and say, "We're talking about this in school. We're talking about this in our extracurriculars. It wasn't something that was getting touched on in our 4-H clubs or in our 4-H community." It's really nice to hear it being addressed also in those spaces for a more wraparound approach to youth mental health. If they feel supported in every area of their life, it's only going to have better outcomes for them. It surprised us a little bit, but that's truly the response we've gotten is it's about time.
Emily: You touched on a really important point, which was also going to be one of my next questions. That was, I know when I talk about mental health specifically for youth, adults say like, "Oh, kids don't have real problems. They're just being dramatic, or they want attention, or it's because social media." I was curious if you ran into some resistance from adults, and it does sound like you did. I'm going to flip this question a little bit and ask instead if you could condense it down into a single message to adults, to parents, that you want them to know about kids and their mental health. What would it be? What is your view on this now?
Aly: I think it's really important for all adults to look at the bigger picture when speaking with a youth. If a youth is opening up and wanting to have the conversation, it's not because they're flying by the seat of their pants. It's because they've finally decided that there's someone they can trust and talk to about it. I think the key part is they're not going to talk about it unless they're ready to, and so now that they are ready, you need to be ready to listen.
Emily: I absolutely agree. I always say everyone's mental health journey is their own, and so we can't really sit here and make excuses for other people to discount them from potentially getting help that they really, really need. Something I run into in my work is people say like, "Oh, well no. So and so, they could never be suicidal. That's just not them." Unfortunately, we don't get to decide that. I think we want those types of things to be true that no, they wouldn't, that's not like them, they're okay. Recognizing that, that happens for anyone, including young people.
Yes, being an adult is hard, taxes, and mortgages, and all that, very stressful, but being a kid is hard too, It's stressful in its own way. I think from when we were kids to now-- God, I sound like I'm such an old person, but-- I'm 32 by the way, just for people who are curious. [laughs] When we were kids, it was different. There wasn't all this social media pressure and there wasn't all these other things happening in the world that we have all this access to. I think you make a great point, Aly. If our kids seem to be wanting to say something, we need to be ready and willing to listen.
Aly: Another thing that you just brought up is, things have changed in the last 20 years. I think about my middle school experience. I am 30 so it wasn't that long ago. For my middle school experience, there was really tough days with really mean people, but I left it. You were able to go home to your safe spot with your parents or whoever was in your corner. For those next 12 hours that you were at home, you didn't have to face that. Now with social media, with how connected our society is as a whole, these kids can't just leave it at the door at school.
They can't leave it at the door at a program because it's following them. They're receiving messages, it's coming to them from all angles and not just when that person's physically in front of them anymore, and so that's a really important distinction to make when you're thinking about why this seems to be impacting kids more. Yes, there's always been bullies. Yes, there's always been situations, but kids have always been able to remove themselves from the situations and now they can't as easily.
Emily: There's a lot to process with that. Joe has been taking a lot of notes. I'm curious what Joe has to say here, and if he has a question.
Joe: Well, I've got plenty of opinions on social media and how I feel about it. I've personally chosen to disengage myself as much as possible, and that's my answer to it.
I guess the first question is, when we're talking about this age of how connected we are, how much connection we have, where does social media fit in this? Is there a healthy way to be on social media anymore in your opinion for youth? Is it not possible to be on it and have it be healthy?
Aly: I think it truly depends on the youth. We see kids in our rural communities who maybe don't fit the mold. Maybe they're struggling with their own identity. They don't feel like they want to live in the town of 300 people anymore. They don't really seem to have any friends, and I've seen social media in that way be a lifeline. They're able to engage with people who are similar to them. They are able to engage with people who have a broader worldview, and it helps them to build their own community, so I've seen it be a lifeline in that way.
I've also seen it go the other way where they're the recipient of nasty messages, and yes, the parents then need to step in and say, "This is not okay, and we're going to put some limits on this." I don't think that there's one answer to that question. I think it depends on the youth and the situation and their family structure.
Emily: I definitely agree with you on that Aly, that it depends on all of those things. Especially that family piece or whoever that adult, her guardian may be, are they aware of what's going on? I have a niece who's 15 now, and she has a smartphone. She has Snapchat and TikTok, but my sister monitors it, there are rules, and also, my niece, unlike me, she would never break a rule, so it's pretty easy for her.
I think the biggest thing there is there's a lot of communication, and I know that a few times my niece has seen things that she wasn't sure about or made her uncomfortable, and because my sister has been so open with her, she would go to her and say, "Hey mom, this is going on, what do you think?" I think that parent communication piece is so important.
I don't think it's a matter of spying on your kids, but it's really a matter of letting them know they have boundaries, but also being there, like Aly said, to be that safe person for them, so that is something does make them uncomfortable, they don't think, "I can't tell mom or dad because I'll be in trouble." They'll think, "I need to tell mom or dad because they'll know what to do." That's a really important piece in all of this, I think too.
Joe: Something you said earlier, Aly, about when someone or especially youth decides to open up, it's completely intentional and not spontaneous and that you have to be ready for that conversation. Couple questions about that. If I'm not ready and I screw it up, did I blow my one chance at having this youth trust me? If I do that, what do I do? Let's start there and then I'll expand on that.
Aly: I think it's hard to screw it up to the point where that kid's never going to come back to you. I think if you show us some genuine compassion and concern for the situation or even say, "Hey, this isn't the time or place, but can we talk later?" I think that's important too, is recognizing that they might be ready to have the conversation but doing it at dinner at grandma's might not be the right idea or having the conversation in the parking lot after t-ball practice, probably also not a great place to be having the conversation.
I think as long as you're responding with some compassion, then you're not going to screw it up. They're going to see that it's okay to talk to you yet, and then it gives you time to get ready to have that conversation as well.
One thing that we did find when we were working with our volunteers is that they didn't know how to have the conversations. As part of the grant project, we did end up building out what we called a crisis response guide for volunteers. A youth comes to you in crisis, here are some steps that you can follow. Is it a critical point that you need the hotline numbers or your local hospital? Here they are. Are you ready to progress through making a referral? Here are key points to keep in mind during the conversation.
We built that out and gave it to all of our volunteers as a resource so that if they find themselves situation, they can just grab it and go or find it and go. That has seen some good reviews that that was a piece that was missing when trying to prepare adults to work with kids.
Emily: Aly, we see that everywhere with people working with any age of people. I'm afraid of saying the wrong thing. I don't want to upset them more. To Joe's point in his question too, I don't want to break that trust with them. That's a lot of pressure, and I will be the first to admit, in some conversations with people who are really struggling. I've definitely said the wrong thing before. Yes, that might start to fracture some trust.
The biggest thing you can do is just apologize and say you were wrong. Aly, you and I have had this conversation that is so important with youth. Some adults may have an attitude that they shouldn't admit that they're wrong to kids because they need to be the adults, they always need to be right. Tell kids when you're wrong. Maybe you reacted badly to a situation or said you didn't have time. Then later on, just say, "You know what? I'm really sorry, I was wrong. I dismissed what you were saying before and I shouldn't have done that. I want you to know that I do really care about you and I want to listen. I messed it up and I'm sorry. I want to know about this. I care about you. I'm ready to listen." That's a big part of it too, is don't focus on, "I have to be perfect and not mess it up. If I'm going to mess it up, I'm not even going to try to-- if I mess up, just admit that."
That's going to put people at ease always when you just say, "You know what? I messed up. I wasn't giving you enough attention. I didn't take it seriously and I should have because this is serious." Another thing to think about with that talking to youth piece is that sometimes you will mess it up and that's okay. The best way to move forward and, and to mend any trust issues from that is to just say you were wrong and apologize for it.
Joe: One of the other things you had talked about was especially when we're talking about economics being an issue and that being a problem, the environment and the situation that that youth is in is creating stress and potentially affecting mental health. That usually means that the adult then is also in similar circumstances or in similar environment so they are also stressed or potentially have poor mental health. What does that adult do in that situation? The temptation is to hide it, hide it from your kid, and hide your stress and your mental health from your kid. At least from what I've learned from Emily, that might not be the right choice. Should I be sharing that stress and talking about it, my own stress with my kid? How do you interact that way?
Aly: I think that heavily depends on the age of the child. If your child has, has indicated in some way that they know more than what maybe you're trying to let onto them, I always think it's the appropriate thing to sit down and say, "Listen, this is where we're at. I think that you are hearing things and I want you to know that this is exactly what's going on." If they're old enough to perceive that from maybe the local coffee shop gossip wheel, they're going to be able to have at least a cursory understanding of the conversation when they have it with you.
That also is that trust building. It's important to build that trust within the family unit so that people can feel comfortable bringing their issues to light or their concerns to everybody in the family unit. It is hard when the adult and the child is also-- everyone's struggling. Everyone is under stress. That's where I think it's truly about making sure the community is ready to wrap around that family unit, to provide supports outside of the family unit to youth so there are more than just one place for them to find safety in conversation.
That's where it's so important to equip not just the teachers, not just the families, but to equip our youth workers to equip even our banks. You think about everybody, who is going out to those farms and seeing people in their home territory. Those people in those professions also need to be prepared to have some of these conversations because they're also frontline and they're also supports to those families.
Joe: One of the things I've noticed with my own kids, they're very young still, but you can say whatever you want, the toddler's going to repeat pretty much everything you say. It may or may not stick, but he will copy anything you do and it sticks hard. Even in older kids, I imagine it's fairly similar. If you handle your stress poorly and you act out and you do certain things, I would guess your kids going to pick up on that. How important is it that you model that behavior of how to deal with it?
Aly: Oh, that's the base of it. If you are modeling good behavior, I think I feel like this goes just back to parenting 101. Your kids will model the behavior that they are around, and so how are you surrounding them with the best behavior possible? Are you throwing things against the wall in the barn? They're also going to throw things against the wall in the barn. Are you going for a walk? Then they're also going to go for a walk. Making sure that you're modeling healthy coping mechanisms with your stress is going to be one of the most important things that you can do around your child of any age. Are you reading a book in the evening? They're going to read a book in the evening.
They want to be like their parents. Really trying to model healthy coping mechanisms of any type is going to be important. Personally, I'm the go-for-a-walk type. I got to walk it off. Had a bad day, it might be negative 10 out, guess who's wearing Carhartts and hiking up and down the driveway? That's my coping mechanism is being outdoors and getting fresh air and clearing my head, and so making sure that we're modeling those types of behaviors instead of I've got an uncle who likes to throw things.
[laughter]
Emily: I have another fancy nerdy mental health term I want to throw in here, after our big, what was it, Joe? Oh, the adjusting mastery thing. Now I'm giving more terms. What you were getting at Aly, yes, with how we cope and reflecting that for young people to see, that's part of-- it goes down to and you'll hear people say it, self-regulation. As we become adults and our brains are fully developed, we get better at regulating our own emotions. We get better at being like, "Okay, I can feel myself getting angry so I need to walk away before I start yelling."
That's a personal story from my own life. We learn to do that and that's called self-regulation. With kids, they need to learn how to do that and so for them it starts with what we call co-regulation. It's exactly what Aly was saying. You need to regulate side by side with this child. If the child is really upset, instead of getting upset yourself and exacerbating it, co-regulate with them, say, "Okay, well why don't you take a deep breath in through your nose and push it out through your mouth?" And start to teach them those coping mechanisms like Aly was talking about, and really doing it side by side with them.
Then as they age, they learn to do it on their own but they need that co-regulation piece to start because otherwise they're these big bursts. The highs are really high and the lows are really low when you're a kid. Then as you learn to self-regulate that's starts to even out a little bit more. That's a really important piece of it that Aly was saying and I just thought I'd add some additional scientific jar into it.
Aly: I'm always good with a little bit of extra verbiage. [laughs]
Joe: Always. Being a parent, one of the things that I think about a lot, kids go to daycare, kids go to school, it feels like there's a huge portion of the day I have zero control over. What does that come down to? How do I help in that situation where I know I can't be there to help them co-regulate, I can't help them in that way. I'm not physically there for a huge portion of the day. Where do we go from there?
Aly: That's a tough one. Just recently started sending my daughter to daycare. We're on week one of daycare. For the record, have not cried yet. I'm feeling really good about that.
Emily: I am impressed. Bravo, Aly. Good for you.
Aly: I'm just going to break that out. We are almost done with week one and I have not cried. There is, you feel like you almost have to have that trust that that institution or place, wherever you've decided to entrust your child's care, you have to have some trust that they're going to have similar philosophies, that they're also working with these kids on co-regulation. If they're not, then I think it is your place as a parent to say, "This isn't working," and address it either with the administrator or whoever might be able to make that change.
It's good for all kids to learn to co-regulate. It's good for all kids. It's good for society as a whole for these youth to be able to learn these coping mechanisms and apply them appropriately. I don't think there's a perfect answer to it because I also know that in some places there's very limited resources but if it doesn't start with you, then who is going to have that conversation? I'm always a proponent of-- Emily knows this. I'm going to open my mouth.
Emily: If Aly's got something to say, she'll say it. Don't worry. [laughs]
Aly: It might not always come out nicely, but we'll get there. [laughs]
Joe: I think that's good advice. It's too important not to say something. One of the things we've talked about on this show a lot and Emily has helped Brad and I learn about is building resilience and doing that. We've talked about that really on the context of an adult. How do we do that as an adult? Is there anything different when it comes to youth and building resilience or is it similar?
Aly: I would say that the largest difference between a youth and an adult is that often a youth is not going to be able to get a resource like talk therapy or medication without first going through a parent. That's going to be a really big piece if a youth really does need those resources, but they haven't been able to get them because maybe the parent doesn't realize that they need the resources or there might be a financial barrier to it. That's something that's the largest difference that I have found is kids saying, well, ''I would love to talk to somebody, but I can't," or, "Insurance doesn't cover it.'' Something that I think is really started to gain a little bit of steam, at least in our area, is that our school districts are starting to have what's called school linked mental health resources.
There are therapists in the schools. There still needs to be parental approval. They are still running things through insurance, but they're on site. They can see things. If that kid needs to drop in and say, "I need this resource, how can I get this resource?" They're in the building. That's been helpful. Again, that's not going to be available in every community. It really depends on your population center, it depends on if they can find a provider to actually provide the service. There's a lot of provider deserts out there right now and communities really needing to talk about, "How do we get a provider to come here, and we need one. How do we get a provider to leave the immediate metro area?" That's another access barrier. It's pretty big.
Joe: Emily talks about getting back to the basics a lot when we talk about. We talk about, "Okay. We're experiencing stress. We're going down this road towards burnout," whatever the topic might be. We need to sleep. You got to eat. You should have a community around you that supports you. Especially when we talk about economics and things like that, there's a lot of barriers to some of those things. Especially for kids when we say, "All right. Yes, they got to eat," but if the money's not there, the money's not there. How do you approach that topic when it comes to kids? When we can't even get to the basics, how do you even start with the rest of it?
Aly: There are hungry kids literally everywhere. It's there. People have blinders on. People need to take their blinders off. People need to realize that, "Hey, when we're providing a snack at our 4-H meeting, it's not just a snack." Some of these kids, this might be what gets them through the night." When an after school program is providing meals. Why wouldn't we continue that resource to kids of all people? When we're talking about free and reduced lunch, why would we take that away from kids? I can tell you that the people that are using it are not using it just because they want to. The basic need is there, and it's in every single community. We have the resources to fix it, but people need to take their blinders off. As a youth worker, you can tell I'm having a moment with this one.
Emily: Yes. I was like, "Girl, get off your soapbox. Jesus."
[laughter]
Emily: Aly, most of our listeners of The Moos Rooms are more likely parents versus the youth themselves. What would be one or two tips you would give the parents we have listening as far as ways to support their kids or things that they should watch for in their kids that might prompt a conversation? What are your one or two big pieces of advice for parents listening?
Aly: Well, as far as just being aware and knowing when to have a conversation, I think it is really important to think about your youth's normal social structure and when they start to withdraw from it, or when you see a substantial shift in it. If they used to hang out with the same six kids, and now you're not hearing any of those names anymore, it might be worth having a conversation about what may have happened there. Or, if they're just naturally moving on to different interests, then that's fine. If something happened, then you need to be cognizant of your youth's social structure as much as your own.
The other thing, to reiterate, it's you don't have to be right all the time, making sure that you're circling back to those conversations that you might have shoved your foot in your mouth and say, ''Hey, that was wrong. We need to do better. How can I do better?'' If your kid's going to come back and say, "I just really don't want to talk about it," great. Don't push the issue for right now. If they're ready to have a conversation, then it's time to sit down at the dinner table or in the living room and have a conversation.
Emily: Well, I think that's a great place to wrap this episode. I'll just add my one final thought. Whether you are a youth struggling with your mental health or an adult, just remember that you are not alone. There is help out there. Talk to somebody that you can trust. Especially for our kids in our lives and our communities, being that adult that they can trust and go to is so so important.
With that, Aly, thank you again so much for being on The Moos Room. I'm excited we finally got you on. Thanks for helping us cover this really important topic. If you have any questions, comments, or scathing rebuttals about today's episode, you can email these to themoosroom@umn.edu. That's T-H-E M-O-O-S R-O-O-M@U-M-N.E-D-U. You can find us on the web @extension.umn.edu, on Twitter @umnmoosroom and @umnfarmsafety. Find Bradley on Instagram @umnwcrocdairy.
Joe: Bye.
Emily: Bye.
[00:36:44] [END OF AUDIO]

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