Just in time for Back to School, I have to update my whole suicide thesis.

Up to now, I’ve been arguing the biggest opportunity to save the most teen/young adult lives from suicide is to tackle the “it’s not my problem” problem: the thing that keeps us from connecting a “problem out there” to someone we know and love, so we can get them help.

My argument has gone: we think suicide is something that happens to other people, so we tune out the information and education, and then we’re shocked when we didn’t see the signs right in front of us and someone close to us dies. That is my lived experience, and what I believe was the greatest miss behind losing Manny. (This doesn’t apply to all situations, but it covers most so let’s start there.)

However, this summer I had the opportunity to speak with several college-age groups, and it’s time for an update.

The whole “not my problem” problem? I still think that’s the number one problem with us: parents. But for our kids? Nope. They know they have a problem. I now believe our kids are actively wrestling with mental health struggles and the lurking threat of suicide, if not for themselves then for someone they know, far more than I previously thought. The “not my problem” gap is ours, not theirs.

I’m still processing recent experiences when young adults lined up after my talks to share some version of:

Thank you for bringing this topic to our group. I’ve attempted suicide on two occasions and I’m so relieved to finally be able to talk about it.

Or

Thank you for getting this topic out in the open. I’m wrestling with how to process the guilt I have from my girlfriend’s suicide following our breakup. What do you suggest?

Or

My friends know they can come to me and talk about mental health, but it’s getting overwhelming. I have my own issues and I can’t spend all this time being emotionally available to so many friends. What should I do?

Or

A lot of my friends come to talk to me about suicide: do you think I should share with them that I’ve attempted, or do you think that hurts my credibility as a friend they can talk to?

Or

We have to do something, this can’t keep happening. What can I do?

And

Thank you. I lost my ________________ to suicide.

I now believe our teen/young adult kids don’t view suicide as a rare, random, tragic lightning strike. They view it as something that has and will touch their lives in one way or another. I believe every college-age student is no more than two degrees of separation from someone who died by suicide. The risk is right there, front and center. Almost like the inherent risk of driving a car.

A fair pushback: someone who lines up to share a story with a speaker after a talk has a story to share. I’m getting biased feedback. Granted. But after dozens of young people coming up to me to share exactly this, it leaves a mark. One I’m admittedly still processing.

My takeaway from the summer is our kids know there is a problem, they have questions, they want to talk, and they are looking for help. They’re talking to each other. They’re scrolling social media. They’re talking to Chat and Claude.

What’s missing?

You.

They need their parents.

They’re getting some suicide prevention education in the schools, and it all ends the same way. They are taught to “talk to a trusted adult.” So here’s the question for my adult peers: can you be trusted?

Let’s take a little test and find out. Review the six questions below and enter a number in dollars or hours in the corresponding box. Then total up Column A and Column B:

Got your totals?

OK, so about the same number of our kids die from suicide as from automobile accidents. In 2023, Americans ages 15-24 lost 7,738 to motor vehicle traffic deaths and 7,733 to suicide.1 So if A kills the same number of our kids as B, shouldn’t loving and caring parents’ time and dollars in Column B roughly equal the time and dollars in Column A?

And it’s cheating to say “well, our Caribbean cruise vacation was about our mental health.” That’s as valid here as saying going to see a Fast & Furious movie counts as teaching your kid to drive.

If you’re driving your kid to their freshman year of college this month, you’re taking them from the protected streets of your neighborhood to the eight-lane mental health superhighway of college (see my other essays). Have you prepared them to drive? Or do you think they’ve learned what they need to know from a movie? Or worse yet, they’ll learn to drive once they get there?

I believe our kids don’t want more t-shirts, bracelets, info-tents, and social media posts telling them “it’s okay not to be okay.” They need real ears, real skills, and access to real resources to help them wrestle with fast-moving and dangerous mental health superhighways of being a young adult. And like driving a car, riding a bike, and tying their shoes, this one starts with you, with us parents.

The teaching from mental health professionals is to speak openly, directly, and honestly about suicide: to use the word, to ask the question. The science tells us you will not “put the idea in their head.”2 It’s already there.

If you’re paying for their phone, you’re paying for all the conversations they’re having and all the (mis)information they’re getting about suicide, all driven by someone else’s algorithm, without you in the car.

Your kids want and need you to join the conversation. So while they’re still in the neighborhood on your local streets, sit down next to them and turn the ignition. Start the conversation about mental health and suicide before they get on the interstate and the traffic gets crazy.

Need some suicide prevention driver’s education? Check out Manny’s Band Practice. Free to host or attend.

Time to proclaim how wonderful fathers are, how they do so many unrecognized things, and how grateful we are for all they do. Yes, yes, and yes.

And ... leaning into all the clichés and stereotypes and in pure locker room talk …

Dads, you suck.

Bro, it’s time for an ass kicking.

Let’s get straight to the bottom line and look at the numbers.

So far through May of this year, 307 people have been certified as QPR Gatekeepers through our Manny’s Band Practice QPR training session. Manny’s Band Practice is a small-group suicide prevention program. The purpose of the program is to teach parents (1) what to look for (2) what to do and (3) most importantly, practice having difficult new conversations. There is no cost to host or attend. Of the 307 participants, 242 were women, 65 men.

A key strategy of our program is that it is conducted in someone’s home with a small circle of their friends in order to facilitate conversation among peer groups. We believe this is a significant difference maker compared to similar programs offered in institutional settings like school or work. It doesn’t cost anything to host. The host just takes the leadership of scheduling a date and inviting 10 friends, Manny’s Band Foundation handles everything else. Male hosts this year: less than 15%.

Over the past year, I’ve been invited to give about a dozen talks to various school and community groups about suicide prevention. Inevitably, not more than 20% of the room will be men, if that.

As far as showing up to learn about preventing the death by suicide of your children, it’s not even close dads … you’re big time losers. You’re worse than the 2024 White Sox. You make the 2017 Cleveland Browns look good. You’re like the Chicago Bulls the year after Jordan left.

But while showing up may be half the battle (which you’ve lost), that’s not even the real important game.

According to the CDC’s most recent data, nearly 80% of all suicide deaths in the United States are male. While girls are more likely to report mental health struggles and attempt suicide, it is boys and men who die by suicide at roughly four times the rate of females.

If your portfolio was trailing the market by 4X, you’d fire your advisor. If you didn’t show up to show up to 85% of your company’s meetings, you’d be fired. If only five guys from the team showed up for the softball game, you forfeit.

Here’s what I think is going on. It’s not that you don’t care. It’s not that you don’t love your kids. Rather, it’s just that you’ve relegated the mental health of your children and the prevention of their suicide to that bucket of touchy-feely stuff that you think a woman handles. As I warned, leaning into the stereotypes, many dads are blessed with a loving and supportive partner to whom they’ve abdicated much of the running of the household and raising of the children. Ask many of us if we can go out for dinner Saturday night, and the answer is: I have no idea, you’ll have to talk to the boss.

That may work for managing your social calendar, but with suicide that doesn’t cut it. Several mothers have told me: my son just won’t open up to me. I ask him a question and he shuts down. Maybe that boy needs to talk to his dad, or a male father figure. And when that moment comes, when that child reaches out, or looks to his dad to have a conversation about what he’s wrestling with, dude, you can’t say, talk to your mom, she knows what we’re doing Saturday night.

Dads, we cannot abdicate mental health and suicide prevention to the women who may run everything else in our lives. In any particular moment, for any number of reasons, they may not be the right person or they may not even be here. The burden (the opportunity) of that moment will fall on you.

Do you know what you’re looking for when it comes to suicide? Or were you busy at work the night of that talk at school?

Do you know what questions to ask to determine if your child is suicidal? Or did your wife go to the QPR training because you had to coach baseball practice?

Have you practiced having difficult conversations with your children in a supportive environment where you can make mistakes with peers before an urgent spotlight is on your child? Or were you practicing your golf swing when the class was offered?

Sure, that golf swing needs practice. As does that baseball team. As does everything else that is new, difficult, and requires improvement. So tell me… why haven’t you practiced talking to your kids about the second most likely cause of their death?

Good chance you were the first one to sit in the passenger seat the first time your kid got behind the wheel of a car. That merited your time and attention because driving is the single most deadly thing your child will do. So you stepped up, faced those fears, had those conversations, and taught those lessons.

But for the killer in a very close second place and what may be the leading killer of college freshmen, where are you? Are you too scared or too busy or just too weak to face this one?

Dads, you do so much. You make so many sacrifices. You are so awesome in so many ways. And in the negotiated division of parental responsibilities between you and your partner, I have no commentary on how your household decides who keeps the family calendar, who does the grocery shopping, who brings home the bacon and who does the frying.

But when it comes to being an educated and prepared parent regarding the mental health of your children and the prevention of their death by suicide, there is no excuse for passing that off to someone else.

It is well past time for you to step up and show up. Next time your kid’s school offers some version of “mental health information night” - show up. If you’ve been invited to a Manny’s Band Practice QPR training or similar program - show up. And if you’re a real leader, go ahead and host one yourself.

Show up especially if you don’t think any of this applies to you or your family. Where is all this coming from? It’s called lived experience and it’s experience I pray you never have to live.

So here’s to you dads on our day. Kick back a beer or savor that bourbon. Cheers to a Happy Father’s Day this year, and next year, and the year after that. But if you want those Father’s Days to be all happy in the future, you gotta step it up now.

Consider your ass kicked, bro.

Most of my writing has been about prevention. What can we do as a community to make sure another family doesn’t lose their Manny.

But what happens when they do, as someone does in this country every 11 minutes. In that moment, prevention has missed. And Monday morning quarterbacking isn’t what’s needed. It will likely come across as tone deaf, if not hurtful.

Speaking only from my own personal experience, not from science or research, here’s what I would have wanted my friends and community to know in the immediate aftermath of the shock.

Your job is not to make me feel better at this moment. There’s nothing you can say or do that will accomplish that right now. But you can be immensely helpful. Your job is to support the survivors. Here’s how.

Don’t say “there are no words.” Of course there are no words. So if you truly believe that, stop talking. Silence is okay.

Don’t tell me about the loss of your grandfather or your dog and how you understand the pain. I know you mean well. You don’t know how this feels. You can’t. Don’t try.

Don’t ask me what you can do. Asking me what you can do shifts the burden of your wanting to help from you onto me. Don’t do that.

If you know this family well enough to know what they need — just do it. Worst case, you bring over a dinner that gets passed to someone else or thrown away. That’s fine.

If you don’t know what they need, ask someone else who does. But don’t burden the family with question to satisfy your own need to do something.

Someone is likely already on point for food coordination. Find that person and ask them. If you’re looking around wondering if that person is you — it’s you. Huddle up with the people around you and get to work.

In the days ahead, someone other than them needs to make sure the trash goes out. Someone other than them needs to make sure the bathrooms are clean and there’s toilet paper where it should be.

If you’re close enough to have been in their home for the good times, you can be there now — just go. Don’t call. Don’t ask when a good time is. Unless the word has been sent to stay away, just go. If they’re sleeping when you get there, sit in the living room and wait. Maybe they’ll come down, maybe they won’t. But they’ll know you were there.

Other kids in the house … siblings, teenagers? Load them up with DoorDash and Uber Eats gift cards. In a couple of weeks, all the casseroles will be gone, no one will want to cook, and they’ll still be hungry.

Beyond the gift cards, the surviving sibling needs their own team, their own focus of attention. The community may first look to support the grieving parents — there’s a brother there too, who just lost his brother and his parents may not be in a place to give him much right now — you’re up.

Don’t ask what happened. Don’t ask for details. If they want to share, they’ll share.

Don’t ask me “so, how are you doing?” Shitty! Miserable! Devastated! What do you want me to say? But if you do ask, be prepared for the answer and have time to hear it.

If you’re a work colleague, relieve them of every professional burden you can. They’re going to tell you they’re fine, they’ve got it. They don’t.

Are there pets? Figure out whether the dog needs to get out of the house for a week or just needs someone to walk it twice a day. Is there dog food? Is anyone picking up the backyard? It’s the furthest thing from their mind.

Put multiple reminders in your calendar to keep your love and care going over the next several weeks and months ahead. In a week or two, it will get real quiet, real fast. The crush of attention will pass, everyone will go back to their normal lives, but your friend will stay in pain for a very long time.

And while the immediate attention first focuses on the immediate family, remember that there are other survivors who need care too. The best friends. The close friends. The girlfriend or boyfriend. The immediate family isn’t equipped to extend support to others who may desperately need it right now. That may be on you.

Say his name. If and when the time feels right, share your stories and memories.

There will be a time to channel anger and grief into action and advocacy. That time is not now. Right now, your job is to bring calm and still water to those hit by a tsunami.

Don’t tell them there’s a reason. Don’t tell them it’s God’s plan or that it will all make sense someday.

Don’t tell them they will heal or get better or move forward. They don’t want to hear any of that right now.

But as you sit next to them in silence, or hold their hand, or let them cry on your shoulder, you can know that by simply being there, it will.

Graduates, parents, family, distinguished faculty:

Thank you for the invitation to speak to you today at your graduation. It is truly an honor to be here, even though I know that none of you are paying any attention.

Years ago it used to bother me when I’d be invited to give a speech and then no one paid any attention. I would stand up here, look out at the audience and see everybody talking to each other or scrolling on their phones. It seemed no one was listening, no one was paying attention. Sometimes I’d feel invisible and irrelevant. I’d even wonder, why should I even bother being here.

But that was back then. Over time, I’ve learned. I see things now I didn’t see when I was just getting started. With the passage of time, I’ve gained experience and developed the ability and strength to see things differently and to not be so offended. It no longer bums me out like it used to.

Understanding this, I sent a copy of this speech to your parents by email and will post it on Substack with the hope that in a couple of days, after things have calmed down, when all the graduation parties are done, and when all the thank you notes have been sent, or not — in that lull before the storm of whatever comes next, maybe you and your parents or you and some friends will find a moment to pull up the copy of these remarks and explore some of the ideas that you’re not paying attention to today.

Over time I have observed that commencement speeches, in addition to not being listened to, tend to follow a few common themes:

First, there’s the “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” speech. Inspired by the Dr. Seuss classic, we paint a colorful picture of the vast open sky of opportunities that lie before you, the corners of the globe, the sciences, and the arts waiting for you to explore. We commencement speakers know your parents love this speech, and we can make them cry just by inviting them to go back and remember themselves in your seat, knowing now what they did not know back then.

Another category of the commencement address is the “fail forward” speech, which points out that for the past several years in school you’ve been in the pursuit of excellence, a race for grades and trophies and getting it right. The fail forward speech argues that starting today, it’s actually getting it wrong that matters most. To grow, to learn, to improve require us to fail, fail often, and fail forward. The opportunities to make mistakes and experience failure become ever more valuable from today on.

And then there’s the third category of commencement speech that tells you just how special you are, how desperately the world needs your unique contributions, and how the world is waiting for you to leave your mark. We tell you just how successful you will be, or at least how successful we think you should be. In this speech we throw in an admission of how our generation has messed things up, and how you will be the ones to fix it and make the world a better place.

So the people who plan your graduation ceremony and the speakers who stand on these platforms routinely mark the culmination of this chapter of your life with some version of . . . the world is your oyster, go fail your way to success, oh, and by the way… the fate of the world depends on you… so hurry up and get going you rock-star!

That, I now see after some time and experience doing this, might just be too heavy a load to dump on you today, my dear graduates. That is a lot of pressure, and that may be why no one pays attention to commencement speeches … all the fluff, flattery, pomp and circumstance … it’s just too much pressure right now … in this moment.

And that is completely understandable, especially when we — your parents’ generation — have generally not prepared you to manage a natural and frequent response to so much pressure.

Up to this point, we’ve done everything within our power to make you happy. We’ve micromanaged your choices. We’ve managed your every hour, signed you up for camps and classes and lessons, and chauffeured you from here to there… all in the name of giving you your best life. We’ve helicoptered above you, and plowed the road in front of you — so you can be happy and successful.

So it’s understandable that you’d arrive here believing that happiness and success are what life is — or at least what it should be … and, therefore, how you should be.

Yet those of us who have lived a little more of this life know that life is not always what we think it should be. And here’s where I think we’ve done you wrong — we’ve given you the fail forward speech, yet we haven’t spent much time at all teaching you how to fail or even suggesting that there are some skills and some muscle required to deal with negative thoughts and feelings.

On this beautiful campus, there is an office with the mission to share with you what you need to know in order to get to the next school or job. Yet have we offered you any guidance on what to do when you get there and fall completely on your face?

You may have taken classes here to help you make money or make a difference or make an impact, but have we offered you any guidance on what to do when you lose money or feel irrelevant?

Of all the accomplishments we celebrated here today and all the awards that were handed out on this stage — was there an award for the greatest screwup from which a student persevered? No. Was there a trophy for victory over the greatest obstacle? No. See, we may tell you failure is an important step along the journey to success, but we spend almost no time preparing you for it.

And then there’s the other thing we haven’t prepared you for.

Oh, we’ve told you there is a mental health crisis out there. We’ve put up the posters and worn the t-shirts and told you “it’s okay to not be okay.” Okay, but have we actually taught you how to do that?

Just exactly how does one do not okay?

Have we taught you how to deal with anxiety and depression as part of the normal human journey? Have we taught you what to do when you’re feeling anxious, overwhelmed, or depressed? Or have we just handed out labels so we can just keep going? Further stigmatized it? Further putting the unknown and scary in a box that we should be okay with someone else suffering from?

If we haven’t given you the tools or the permission to be in that place which is a known experience along the journey of life, then dumping on you the additional pressure of saving the world might just be a bit too much to pay attention to right now — it’s understandable why you might just tune out the commencement speaker.

But here’s what’s going to become clear real soon — in a few months it will be completely and totally normal — rather, it can be expected — that as you go off to the new places that you will go and as you seek to make an impact on the world around you, that you will find yourself from time to time completely and totally overwhelmed. You will feel rejected. Lonely. Depressed.

And that my dear graduates may just be normal. That may not mean you are broken. That might just mean you are human and on the journey.

There will be a moment when your best friends from high school seem to have moved on without you, when everyone on Instagram looks like they’re living their best life but you’re not, when you feel you’re not special anymore, when your parents just don’t get it, when you don’t know what you’re doing, when it’s not working, when you don’t get the invitation, when you fail the test, when the professor won’t give you an extension, when you don’t get into the program, when you don’t get the interview or the audition or the job or the role, when they break up with you, when you don’t make the team, when your article is rejected, when you don’t have the money….

There will be a moment when you think you’re not cool anymore, when you feel a dark cloud hanging over your head, when you feel like you haven’t lived up to everything your parents wanted for you, what your teachers expected of you, and what all the commencement speakers challenged you to be.

There will be a moment when you feel it is all out of reach, that it’s simply not in the cards for you —

So here’s the part I’m going to ask you to pay attention to for just a minute, to put your phones down, and to look up. Actually, who am I fooling — if you’re going to have any chance of remembering this moment go ahead and take out your phone and video the big finish …

When those moments come, and they will.

Please remember,

In that moment, it doesn’t have to work,

In that moment you may not need to understand it,

In that moment you may not need to feel anything other than horrible.

However, in that moment, when you think no one is listening to you, no one is paying attention, when you feel invisible and irrelevant and the thought crosses your mind — why should I even bother being here…

In that moment, the one thing I beg you to remember, is — get to the next moment.

That difficult and painful moment, with time, will be an important part of the places you will go… places you don’t know anything about yet… and places you cannot see from where you are now.

Let me ask you … as you sit here right now, do you know and understand things that you did not know or understand back in eighth grade? As you sit here right now, do you see and appreciate things that you did not even know existed in fifth grade?
Yes, of course.

Your job in that difficult and painful moment may not be to figure it all out or to fix it… but to give yourself the time to see and appreciate things that you do not even know exist right now. Time to build some skills and muscle so that one day you can look back on that moment as something that was — back then.

If you remember one thing from this graduation ceremony… please let it be...
when you find yourself in what you think is the worst moment of your life…
get to the next moment.

I have not given this speech.

It’s just one I wish Manny had heard.

I doubt I’ll ever be asked to give it at a graduation because who wants to be a downer? Who wants to tackle failure and depression on what should be such a happy occasion?

But isn’t that the very problem? If we run from one party to another. If it’s never a good time. If we never want to be a downer, then we will never prepare our kids to face the inevitable difficulties, challenges, and feelings of the life we’ve worked so hard to give them.

Do they know how to do “not okay”?

Yes, failing forward from their mistakes is an opportunity for our kids to learn and grow. But there is one mistake they cannot learn from — one tragic moment that offers no second chance.

Suicide is a tragedy the victim cannot learn from.

But you can.

www.mannysband.org

Manny’s 20th birthday would have been March 21st.

I woke up that morning with no game plan. I just got up, packed some water and a lunch, grabbed Flynn (Manny’s best canine friend), backed out of the driveway, and ten minutes later … I was at the baseball park where Manny played the game from the time he was five years old.

I walked first to the T-ball field, then to the Rookie field where the dads start to pitch, then to A, AA, and AAA where the kids start to pitch to themselves, and finally up to the Majors field where the 11 and 12 year old big boys play.

Manny spent so much of his life on those fields. He was a rockstar athlete out there. I’m told he holds the all-time home run record. I can’t confirm that (maybe someone reading this can). From the little field where Manny led his teammates in dugout line dances, all the way to the Majors field where he once hit three home runs in a single game — Flynn and I walked the whole park slowly, field by field, age group by age group.

It looked pretty much the same as when we left it. Same beautiful fields. Same crazy parents. Same wonderful game.

And as I stood along those outfield fences I heard the familiar calls: Hit it hard. Keep your eye on the ball. Follow through. Keep working. All the way. Lock it in. You’ve got this. Go go go go go.

The coaching dads were out in full force — those guys who leave work early and trade their evenings and weekends to teach the next generation. Dads who hold onto the quiet dream that maybe, just maybe, their kid will play beyond whatever level they did. This is how many fathers bring up our sons, and relive certain aspects of our own childhood. We think we’re wiser now, we know more, we can help them go further.

I was one of them. We father-coaches use baseball in our parenting as the metaphor for life that it is. Countless lessons, countless analogies. That book has been written hundreds of times and you know how it goes.

But I’ve been thinking about two ways in which all this baseball (and you can swap in softball, volleyball, football, tennis, soccer, or whatever your kid’s game is) may be part of the mental health and suicide story in a way that most of us have not considered.

I’ve said a few times in these emails that I believe Manny fell from a very tall, unstable tower built from many contributing bricks of anxiety and depression stacked on top of at least one significant trauma. I’ve been cautious about studying any one brick too hard, because of where that path leads: blame, guilt, if only I had done this differently. That can be dangerous.

But it can also be helpful for others. There’s value in the postgame huddle, if it helps us play the next game better. So here is the coach, coaching himself, using a coaching analogy to challenge our role as coaches and pointing out the danger of too many coaching analogies. OK team, take a knee and listen up.

First — what happens when it’s not a game?

For all of us, there are times in life when we don’t think we’ve got it. When we can’t make contact. When we’re not locked in. What if a kid’s life off the field starts to feel this way, and the only message they’ve ever received is: you’ve got this, keep going, go go go go go?

Have they built the mental fitness for those moments? Do they have the tools to recognize that life sometimes requires us to not go, to stop, to sit, to struggle, to ask for help? Do they even know that’s allowed in the real game of life? Or is the only thing they’ve been coached up for is to rub some dirt on it and tough it out … because there’s a game to win.

Second — what happens when we confuse our roles as coaches and parents?

My fellow dads, what is the dominant model of our parenting? For most of us, it’s the coach. We come from a world of: see problem, fix problem. Observe what’s not working, make an adjustment. Fix it. We have the experience. We have the clarity of observation from the dugout. Father knows best, so we think.

Despite the powerful analogy, life is not actually a baseball game. In baseball, there is always another game. It is practically a commandment of coaching: there is always another inning, another at-bat, another season.

In real life; however, we only get one. And the painful truth is that your player has the ability to take themselves out of the game permanently. No coaching plan, no action plan, no pep talk changes that truth. So coach dad, be careful.

I can hear the pushback: So we’re not supposed to push our kids anymore? We’re not supposed to set high expectations? Everyone gets a trophy and nobody loses?

No. That’s not what I’m saying at all. Go ahead and push them hard on the field. Set high expectations in the dugout. Yell if that’s your style. None of that is what I’m questioning on the field.

What I’m questioning is what happens when we parents carry the coaching model out of the dugout and into the house. For some of our kids, in some seasons of their lives, it may be doing real harm.

To a kid who feels overwhelmed by the game of life, who sees no way forward, quietly drowning in his own head, your detailed game plan, your strategy of attack that’s so clear and obvious to you, the let’s adjust your elbow and get back in the box response may just be adding more bricks to a tower that he already believes is too high to climb down from.

Maybe they’re not struggling because they haven’t been coached enough. Maybe they’re struggling in part because they have been coached too much. If the only response they’ve ever seen modeled is: identify problem, make plan, execute — and for whatever of many reasons they feel they can’t execute, and no one has ever told them that not executing is something a person can survive, they may quietly conclude there is simply no way out, other than to take themselves out.

Coaching Manny’s AAA Scrappers and the infamous Phillies are among my life’s greatest memories. The car rides before and after practice. The warm-up drills. The huddle before the game. The explosion of joy at a sudden win. The quiet walk to the far corner of the outfield after a tough loss. The - it’s okay, you’ll get ‘em next time. Some of the most special time between a father and a son.

I was flooded by these memories standing with Flynn at the fence on Manny’s birthday. As I watched the coaches shout their commands and the kids try to comply on those same fields, I thought about what I would do differently if I had one more inning with Manny.

Maybe I’d give fewer instructions.

Maybe I’d leave the clipboard in the dugout.

Sit down next to him, not after they “take a knee”, but next to him.

Ask how his game is going.

Let the silence hang until he hinted at his next play.

And then in that intense moment of the game of life, resist every instinct to coach.

Information about Manny’s Band Practice QPR Suicide Prevention training [HIT HERE]

Last month I wrote about the traps parents and kids fall into after college acceptance letters arrive — how the spring semester of senior year sells us a bill of goods: you’re about to begin the best four years of your life!

I wrote about how dangerous that story can be when reality hits in the first semester of college. This month I want to back up further — to a problem that starts much earlier than senior year.

I want to suggest the larger bill of goods is the unquestioned assumption that our kids should go to college in the first place.

The Momentum We Don’t Question

Most parents believe everything we do is in the best interest of our children. And believing that, we spend the better part of our kids’ first eighteen years preparing them for college.

For many, that starts with finding the right preschool — maybe something like Ivy Prep Learning Academy (yes, that’s a real name of a real preschool) — or pulling out all the stops to get our kid into the “right” private middle school, which feeds into the “best” high school, which will set them up for college admissions.

The same momentum and peer pressure that sells our kids the “best four years of their life” story also blows right past a fundamental question that most of us never stop to ask:

Is college the best next step for my kid?

What I experienced with Manny and see in all directions around my community is parents being carried forward by momentum rather than intention. The system moves. The calendar fills. Tours are scheduled. Applications are submitted. Deposits are paid. And somewhere along the way, the question gets answered without ever being asked.

The American Dream Has a Long Memory

For our parents and grandparents, I understand why college was the winning path. College unlocked the professions, the jobs that didn’t require backbreaking labor or factory work. A tie, a desk, and a white-collar job meant you’d made it. For many families, mine included, college was the gateway to stability, a different respectability, and financial security.

So college became part of the American Dream, and it has largely maintained that vaunted status ever since. But in our blind march to college, I believe we’ve lost sight of at least two important realities which are contributing to the youth mental health crisis we’re watching unfold.

Reality One: The Professions Aren’t for Everyone

Being smart doesn’t mean you should be a lawyer, an accountant, or a doctor. Talent and intelligence show up in many forms, and for some kids, they’re better expressed outside the structures college prepares them for. A lot of very bright kids would make better founders than employees, better problem solvers than test-takers, and better creators than resume builders.

We recognize this in theory. We celebrate the outliers. We can all name famous people who skipped college and went on to do extraordinary things. But few of us translate that knowledge to our own kids.

Have any of us sat across from our high schooler and said some version of: “You’re smart and talented enough to do many wonderful things — college might be one of them. What do you want to do?”

Rather, for the kid who doesn’t like school and doesn’t do well in school, we say, “Let’s get you through.” And then we bring out the tutors, the test prep, the accommodations, whatever tools we can afford, to force a round peg into a square hole designed for someone else.

That was Manny.

For most of his life, I described him to anyone who’d listen as one of the smartest people I knew — deeply talented, creative, curious, with gifts I was absolutely certain would translate into success of his own choosing as an adult. But he was also someone who did not like the school part of school, and didn’t easily succeed in the classroom. And yet, like so many parents, I marched him right off to four more years of it.

In his senior year of high school, I said the right things. I told him he didn’t have to go to college. I told him he could take time, focus on music, take a gap year, or pursue something else entirely. But I don’t think he believed me because my actions over his eighteen years sent a different message.

From a young age, Manny went on a lot of college tours. Everyone around him went to college. He couldn’t look backward or sideways in our family and find a single person who hadn’t. Sure, his high school offered career night in addition to college night, but I suppose we always assumed that was for someone else. And without realizing it, that’s exactly what I modeled for him.

The momentum toward college kept Manny and me on one track, and I never counterbalanced it. I never took him to visit a trade school. I never arranged a shadow day with an entrepreneur, an artist, or a real estate mogul who hadn’t gone to college. If you’d asked him to name one person he knew personally who didn’t go to college, I’m not sure he could have.

So by senior year - yes, Manny sincerely wanted to go to college - because that’s the only reality he knew.

As I’ve said before, I don’t believe there is one cause of Manny’s death by suicide. I believe he fell from a very tall tower built of many contributing bricks. But one of the biggest bricks near the top of that teetering tower was this: once he was finally at college, he discovered that charm and personality could only take him so far. When he found himself failing classes, on the other side of the country, having not yet established a new close support circle, with an undeveloped prefrontal cortex, under pressure and likely the influence, while carrying the weight of past trauma, hopelessness set in hard.

That conclusion sounds absurd to those of us with the benefit of age and perspective. But to a teenager standing alone on top of that shaking tower, unable to see any way down, it felt like his truth. We are instructed to “educate the child according to his way.” I fear I did not do that. I don’t think I’m alone.

Reality Two: The World Is Changing

In just the short time since Manny went to college, the outlook for many “good jobs” has shifted radically. Artificial intelligence is tearing through white-collar professions. In law, accounting, medicine, design, and journalism. Friends of mine across all those fields tell the same story: fewer junior hires, more automation, and a growing realization that AI can do large portions of their jobs better and faster than they can.

For decades, college was the ticket to those jobs. There is a very real chance that by the time Manny’s freshman classmates graduate from college, many of those jobs won’t exist in the same form, or at all.

Meanwhile, Outside the College Pipeline

Opportunity is exploding in places our college-track thinking tends to ignore.

Our economy desperately needs skilled tradespeople, technicians who understand complex systems that universities don’t teach. I hear of a business owner in the trades who is ready to fully fund the technical training of motivated eighteen-year-olds today and pay them in excess of $125,000 a year by the time their college-graduate friends are first collecting their diplomas.

Recently on vacation in the Caribbean, we found ourselves seated at dinner with a diver who had skipped college to follow his passion for the ocean. He worked for an undersea gold mining company. By 35, he literally struck gold and had funded a comfortable retirement. I was there for a one week vacation. He was there because he is now retired in his thirties and enjoys diving for fun.

And then there was the kid at the tailgate.

Last football season we’re at a tailgate on campus — tents, coolers, music — and this kid drops into the chair next to me: worn boots, ripped jeans, old T-shirt, and an epic wicked mullet. He pulls out a pack of Marlboros and offers me a cigarette - which I declined.

If you had frozen the frame right there, while I wouldn’t have admitted it, sure, every single negative stereotype in my head would have written this kid off to King of the Hill central casting.

Press play: I ask if he goes to school here; he says - oh no, college isn’t his thing. Okay, so what’s your thing. He says he’s in a high school pipeline into an FAA-approved aviation technical program, plans to earn his certificate and go straight to work. He was confident he would have a job with Delta waiting for him - good salary, good benefits, and…with real passion he says - they’ll pay for me to go to flight school!

This kid had a confidence, a calmness, and a clarity of direction that I don’t see in his college aged counterparts today. He was certain that by the time all these other drunk kids graduate from this fine institution, he’ll be making more money than any of them and will be on his way to his dream of flying the big jets. And then he offered me a beer - which I accepted.

I’m not arguing that Manny should have been an undersea gold diver, an electrician, or an aviation tech. I am arguing against the unquestioned march to college that we put our kids on, especially the kids for whom that march may be doing real harm.

What are the ultimate dreams and aspirations you have for your children? What are theirs? There are different ways to get there.

The Suicide Connection

If there is a formula for suicide, hopelessness is a major variable.

Sending a kid who dislikes school to four more years of school, in pursuit of a job he fears may not even exist by the time he’s ready for it, can seed a profound sense of hopelessness. As parents trying to do what we believe is best for our children, we may be assembling the very conditions we fear most.

College will still be a wonderful place for many kids. For students who love learning, who want to stretch their minds, who thrive in the structured pursuit of knowledge, or have their eyes set on one of the professions that require it — college can be exactly the right next step. But there are also many kids who go to college because they don’t know what else to do, because it’s expected, because it’s where the parties are, or because they incorrectly believe it’s the only path to a stable future.

For those kids, the honest conversation — the one we keep not having — may be one of the most important conversations of their lives.

I think you know this. I think you’ve heard of these alternatives to college. And I think you think that’s for someone else. I wonder if you also think suicide is not your problem? I understand, that’s what I thought too.

A Suggestion

This spring semester window - right now - after the acceptance letters arrive, before the graduation parties begin, may be the last chance for a critical conversation.

If you have a kid who truly does not like the school part of school, who didn’t do well without a lot of “partnership” on your end, who got through more on personality and charm than academic rigor — this may be the most important season of your parenting.

Have the courage to pause. Have the presence of mind to look past assumptions, past appearances, past what your neighbors will think. At least give your kid the benefit of an honest conversation and the genuine opportunity to seriously consider some alternatives. There might be real gold out there worth flying for.

Your senior is under intense stress to post on their high school “futures” Instagram. The graduation parties will be here soon enough. Yards and social media will soon fill with flags that say UGA, UF, UA, FSU, CU, and every other something-U.

I would applaud the parent who has the guts to stand up to momentum, peer pressure, and appearances — and proudly wave a flag that says:

FU

Not for Furman or Fordham. And not to all college itself. But to the idea that blind momentum and appearances know the next best step for your child.

You’re in an exciting season. Acceptance letters are arriving. Decisions are being made. It feels like the culmination of 18 years of work — yours and theirs. You are both on an intense emotional roller coaster. The anxiety of acceptances and the disappointment of rejections. But that’s not what I want to talk about here.

That struggle is often visible. We think we know what it looks like, and we tend to feel prepared for it.

I want to talk about something else.

What No One is Watching

Once your child is admitted to college, something shifts. Suddenly, you are both being courted. You are subject to an intense sales campaign. Schools roll out the red carpet — admitted-students weekends, receptions, swag, stickers, banners, and endless reminders of how special your child is and how much they “belong here” – all designed to convert your child from an “accepted student” to an “enrolled student.”

After a year of feeling like you were begging to get in from the outside, the emotional energy flips in the second semester of senior year. You hold the cards. It feels good. It’s fun.

Meanwhile back in high school, it’s award season. Senior nights. Banquets. Speeches. Trophies. Applause.

For the girls, bed-decorating parties. For the boys, fraternity rush has already started. And it’s all playing out publicly on social media.

Then the grad-party season. Calendars fill up fast. Choice dates are negotiated, and the gifts start pouring in from all the fans and supporters who have been on this journey with you. Your kid finally gets to put on the well-earned sweatshirt.

It feels good. It’s fun.

And behind all of this celebration, your child is being sold a very specific story:

You are about to have the best four years of your life!

We’ve told them that. We sincerely believe it, don’t we? If only we could go back and do it all again!

But while all of this is happening outside them, something very different may be happening inside.

The Reality of the First Semester

In just a few months your child will leave the highly structured life you’ve curated for them — a day-to-day environment you still largely control.

They’re about to enter a world that is far less structured and far less supervised. Where no one will check if they go to class. No one will tell them where to be or when to be there. No one may notice if they’re drifting. They enter this world as legal adults, which means you are legally barred from most of the helicoptering and snowplowing you and they are accustomed to.

They’re entering a world saturated with alcohol and drugs — far beyond what most of us experienced in our day. Meanwhile, their brains are still years away from full development. The part responsible for planning, emotional regulation, delayed gratification, and rational decision-making? Yep, that part isn’t fully baked – it is literally biologically immature.

And perhaps most importantly, they will enter this new world without the friendship network they’ve navigated the past few years.

Even the highly socially skilled, outgoing kids — even the social stars — can feel deeply lonely for the first time in their lives. Even kids who pledge fraternities or join groups may suddenly have dozens of acquaintances but in their first semester have not yet made a single close friend.

Even kids who go to college with a lot of friends from high school may find those relationships turned upside down by dorm assignments, bid night, or just being in a different time and place.

But we did it. We survived. Maybe, but we did it in an entirely different world – one without social media overwhelming our yet undeveloped brains with every detail of every person from every corner of the world and every tragedy, aspiration, comparison set, and every dancing cat – all day, every minute of the day.

We’ve played a different reel for them. We recreate our “best of” memories, edited by decades of hindsight. When we talk about “the best four years of our lives,” we’re usually not remembering the first semester — before we met our lifelong friends, before we found our footing, before college eventually felt like home.

That first year of college is often lonely. Loneliness can fuel anxiety and anxiety can fuel depression and depression can end in suicide.

An Important Clarification Before I Go Further

Before I share something personal, I want to be very clear: I don’t believe there was one cause of Manny’s death by suicide. I don’t believe there was one conversation, one decision, or one missed moment that explains it all. I don’t think suicide works that way.

I think Manny fell from a very tall tower of anxiety and depression — a tower built from many contributing bricks, stacked over time, from which he concluded he could not climb down – and no one saw it.

But I do believe there are important lessons in studying the individual bricks of that tower so you can see what I did not.

One Lesson I Learned Too Late

Manny called me in late September of his freshman year and said he didn’t feel right — that he didn’t want to be there. He asked if he could transfer.

My response came straight from the baseball dugout life coach playbook. A version of rub some dirt on it – let’s get through this first inning – you’re going to be amazing – you’re just homesick – look where you are – be grateful – be happy.

I suspect many parents would have given the same response.

In hindsight, I wish mine had been different. I minimized his pain. I reframed it to fit the story we had all been sold — that he was supposed to be having the time of his life, and that if he just pushed through, all would be great.

Looking back, I don’t see that phone call as the moment it all went wrong. But what I do see more clearly now is that the preparation for that moment should not have started in September. It should have started months earlier — during his senior year of high school — during the season filled with celebration and pride, when we were creating the illusion that everything was going to be amazing now that he finally got into his dream school.

Here’s the Takeaway

• Enjoy this senior-year celebration season. Buy the sweatshirt. Go to admitted-students weekend. Go to the parties. Celebrate your child’s accomplishments — and your own.

• And at the same time, talk about the entire picture of what’s ahead.Talk about how nobody posts the strikeouts — only the hits — while every baseball player knows most at-bats don’t end in a hit. Prepare them for the fact that college may be great and fun — but it will be a major adjustment, certainly at the beginning. Indeed, all beginnings are difficult. Tell them they may — very likely will — feel lonely, confused, or overwhelmed at times. And that this is understandable and a normal part of the growth and development that is supposed to happen in college.

• When you’re on campus together, go see the stadium, the dorm, the dining hall, the rec center. And also walk with them to the counseling center and the medical center. Touch the door. Go in if it’s open.Not because you think your child needs it now — but precisely because you think they don’t. You’re opening the door to those resources and those conversations before they’re needed.

• Talk about what happens when we feel lonely, depressed, or like we don’t want to be there … or even Here. Let them know you are — and will remain — open to those conversations.

• Dig through the scraps on the editing-room floor of your college highlight reel. Pick one up and share it. Let them see that you too were human—that you had ups and downs, false starts, and moments that didn’t make the final cut of the stories they have been hearing.

• Put a note on your calendar for a few weeks after drop-off. Prepare yourself for the call when your child doesn’t sound quite right. And when the emails about mental health resources arrive from the school, don’t assume they’re “for someone else.” Those emails are for you. Because your child’s mental health and risk of suicide are not, not your problem.

• And when that call comes, resist the urge to dismiss it or talk them out of how they’re feeling — or to remind them how much “fun they’re supposed to be having.” That’s part of the problem.

Why Timing Matters

The high school senior celebration season starts now and these last few months of high school actually give you something that will very soon be very rare: quality time together.

The car rides and the flights to those admitted-students weekends and visits to campus – that’s a precious opportunity to have these conversations.

August is too busy. By October, you’re too in it. And by December, as it was with Manny, it may be too late.

Preparation for the “I’m lonely and having a rough time” phone call doesn’t happen in the fall when you get the call. It happens now — this semester of high school — somewhere between senior night and graduation parties.

Walking through the college campus gate in that new sweatshirt with a more honest and complete story of what’s on the other side — beyond the story they’ve been sold — will feel good.

And it just may be what allows them to reach the fun beyond that first semester.

.Manny's Band Foundation, Inc.

I’ve told that story publicly many times now, but this isn’t going to be a place where I just repeat it over and over. This is something different.

Like most parents, I thought I was aware of mental health. I cared. I paid attention. I went to the talks. I shared the posts. I believed — sincerely — that suicide was tragic, but abstract. Something that happened to other families.

What I didn’t realize until it was too late is that awareness isn’t the same thing as preparation.

Knowing suicide exists is not the same as knowing what to look for.
Caring deeply is not the same as knowing what to say.
Good intentions are not the same as practice.

That gap — between awareness and practice — is where Manny’s Band came from. The idea is simple: the way you get better at hard things is by practicing them with other people. Conversations are no different.

This Substack is part of that practice.

Most of what I write here will connect back to parenting, mental health, and the work of Manny’s Band — helping parents have conversations we tend to avoid until we think we have a reason. Sometimes I’ll write more broadly, about grief, pressure, mistakes, or things I’m still figuring out myself.

I’m not a clinician. I’m not an expert. I’m a dad who learned — painfully — that waiting for “signs” is often waiting too long.

If you’re a parent, or someone who cares about kids, or someone who’s ever thought, suicide is notManny's Band my problem — you’re who I’m writing for.

I don’t know exactly where this will go. I just know that staying silent isn’t an option anymore.

Thanks for being here.
Ben

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