'It takes a village'

FINDLAY — St. Marks United Methodist Church is teaming up with area counselors, social workers and mental health professionals to create a community of support for parents. "The world has never been an easy place for a teenager to grow up in, but maybe even more so now," said the Rev. Dan Metzger, senior pastor at St. Marks. Just the advent of social media has made it a whole different way of growing up than 5, 10 or 20 years ago, he said. "It's all new, and students are struggling trying to figure out how do I navigate this? And parents are struggling trying to figure out how do I navigate this with my child?" he said. "We've all heard the phrase, 'It takes a village to raise a child,'" added Metzger. "And so we're bringing the village together to try to say, hey, how do we do this, how do we raise these kids together?" The church will host a panel discussion, "Stronger Together: A Parent Support Event for Youth Mental Wellness," from 4-6 p.m. Sunday in the DOCK, 800 S. Main St. The event is free and open to all parents with school-aged children. Panelists will include: Laura Dyer, counselor at Donnell Middle School; Emily Greer, counselor at Findlay High School; Chris Biltz, prevention education supervisor with Family Resource Center; Scott Bieniek, a board member with NAMI Hancock County; Stacy Shaw, executive director, Children's Mentoring Connection; and Metzger's wife, Holly Metzger, youth director at St. Marks. Metzger will serve as the moderator. Topics to be discussed include recognizing signs of depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts; understanding patterns that may signal your child is struggling; tools and resources to help support your child's mental wellness; and guidance from local counselors, social workers and youth directors. The Metzgers said the presentation is something the church has been thinking about since earlier this summer. "We know that there's a lot of times where parents, as their students are starting to get ready to go back to school, there's a lot of different stresses and anxieties that can pop up, especially whether you're going into high school or middle school or elementary, it doesn't matter," said Metzger. The goal, he said, is to offer parents some best practices for how they can help their child be successful. "And as a youth leader at our church, I talk to parents a lot about the different struggles that their kids are going through that they see," said Holly Metzger. "And then the kids are very vulnerable and share with me a lot of the things that they're going through. So obviously we invite the parents into the conversation." She said that in turn leads to the resources they can connect with in the Findlay. "Obviously I'm not a mental health professional. I can talk to folks to a certain point and so can Dan. But at some point there are certain instances where we need to refer folks to trusted resources in the community," she explained. Kellie Bibler, the church's new director of outreach, was asked to help with the event by inviting some community partners who are experts in mental health come and talk to families and parents. "We have a lot of resources in our community and we're very blessed in that aspect," Metzger said. "It was great that we were able to reach out to them and to counselors at the various schools and say, this is a need that we see. We're here to just facilitate the conversation. Would you be willing to come and be a part of it? And they jumped right in and said, absolutely." People will be able to write questions anonymously at the presentation. Metzger will then read the questions. Parents can also send their questions ahead of time by going to stmarksfindlay.org/events and emailing Bibler under "Stronger Together." "I think the conversation will be important and people's questions will be important because even as a parent you can feel all alone. You can feel very isolated in whatever situation that you're going through with your teen," said Holly Metzger. "So to hear that people probably have the same question or the same worries or concerns as you, getting together to try and get the answer can bring a lot of peace just knowing that you're not alone," she added. "You're walking through it with other people who are in the same phase of life as you, who have the same worries, the same concerns. You're not the only one." Grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, neighbors and people in church can also benefit from attending, she said. "I think the more people who are part of the conversation, the more the merrier, the more we'll be able to help the teens and the youth," she said. They also want to make sure that no one leaves without knowing what their next step will be in helping their child. "I think it's important that we as a community, as the church, as the school, as these different nonprofits, we all work together," Metzger said. "We all want the same thing. We all want our kids to be healthy and happy and successful. We all want parents to have the tools and resources they need to feel like, as much as any parent can ever feel, like they're doing a good job in raising their kids. So we just want to show, hey, we are a united front on this and we're all here for one another. We're stronger together."