Furious Seasons has a fantastic blog entry about children who fall in-between normal kid behavior, and serious mental illness, children he refers to as the “in-betweeners.” It’s great because it’s personal and I find the most interesting blog entries are the ones that are personal and draw from personal experience. There’s nothing like writing about what you know, first-hand, versus the usual twice-removed commentary about some injustice or random mental health news item.

And maybe it resonated with me, personally, so much because I can identify with what he’s talking about. I was a kid with problems too. A great student, bright, but bored. And my boredom got me into trouble (like many, many teens). Did I grapple with depression back then? You bet I did, even to the point of considering suicide. Luckily I had good friends, even if I didn’t feel like I ever really “fit in.” It was because of caring friends — not adults, not any type of adult program or adult-created system — that I made it through that time.

And it makes me realize that no matter how much we want to solve the world’s problems, especially for our children, we will inevitably fail. We should support our kids and their friends and their support systems and not try and replace them with “something better,” something more resourceful, something more… adult. Kids and teens are kids and teens. We should let them be.

Dr. John Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

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    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 22 Mar 2007
    Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.