I’m Making Sure My Latina Teen Prioritizes Her Mental Health Ahead of Senior Year

I’ve been mentally preparing for this moment since my daughter was born: the day she would leave the nest and venture out on her own. But there was nothing to prepare me for how quickly this time would arrive. It feels like we fast-forwarded through her childhood, and in the blink of an eye, she’s now 17 and enjoying the summer before her senior year of high school.

I’ve always prioritized discussing mental health with my daughter. I introduced practices like journaling, affirmations, and meditation early on – only the latter never really quite stuck, but two out of three isn’t bad.

But still, senior year is a uniquely stressful time. It’s when you’re on the cusp between childhood and adulthood, when life decisions are at the forefront. To be sure, it’s an exciting time, but also a very scary one filled with confusion, anxiety, and pressure to get things right.

Related: Visiting the Dominican Republic as an Adult Helped Me Understand My Father’s Sacrifices

To add to the stress, we also survived a global pandemic. Like many parents of Latine teens, I witnessed my daughter’s mental health suffer during the nearly two years she attended online school. Basically, her entire middle school years were completed through virtual classes. This took a huge toll on her, and she wasn’t alone. In 2020, Latinos For Education surveyed Latino families from three states about the ways COVID-19 affected their children, and mental health was a top concern. Not only did these families report witnessing a decline in their teens’ mental health like I did, but they too noticed a loss of socialization among their children.

It was important for us to prioritize therapy for her, and she started online therapy as a freshman. It gave me a sense of peace and relief that my teen had an objective party to whom she could express her thoughts, ideas, and the challenges she faced. I felt good knowing she had an outlet who was not Mom, someone she could work with to make sure her mental health was in good shape. Therapy is something consistent in her life now, and without giving too many details, she’s expressed that she’s learned a lot of coping skills and confidence-building techniques, especially when it pertains to her communication with me. As her mom, I also work on being a better listener so I can support her more than just offering unsolicited motherly advice.

Physical activity also plays a role in keeping her mentally healthy. As a child, we enjoyed evening walks after dinner. It was a beautiful time when we just talked about whatever came up. As she got older, her interest in our evening walks waned, but her desire to be physically active continued. She works out at the gym during the summer because it offers free admission to high schoolers, something she discovered on her own.

This summer, she begins her third semester of college courses while also working part-time at an ice cream shop and preparing to enter her last year of high school. She’s expressed how stressful yet exciting this time in her life has been; she has watched as her older friends have entered college, and she’s well aware that she is next in line. I offer my support by asking questions about what she envisions her life to be and how she thinks she could get there. If her answer is that she doesn’t know, I let her know that that’s OK too, and that at 17, knowing everything is nearly impossible. In fact, even as an adult you learn new things.

Before September, we’re planning to sit down and write a goals list for her senior year. We’ve done this nearly every school year, and we’ll hang the list on the fridge or somewhere visible so that it’s a reminder all year long. Even if she doesn’t reach every goal on the list, it’s likely that she already took the first steps to getting there, and that’s just as important.

As we explore different colleges and universities, I support her in what she is looking for in a higher education institution and what she wants to study. And it can be difficult to teach independence as she prepares to live on her own for the first time, but thankfully, that’s something I’ve been teaching her since she was 5. I let her choose what clothes she wore, and I started letting her walk to the corner store by herself as a tween. By the time she reached 14, I was confident that my daughter could navigate this big city we live in on her own.

While my daughter isn’t on a yoga mat with me or meditating every day, she has embraced many of the things I’ve taught her when it comes to prioritizing her mental health and loving herself. The self-love is still a work in progress, but I’m confident she’ll get there. In the meantime, she finds solace in her artwork, in laughing a lot, in expressing her deepest thoughts and emotions about life and the world, and in seeing the beauty in herself that I’ve seen all along.

At 17, she still has a ways to go before truly swimming in the waters of adulthood. But she is well prepared, and as she spreads her wings to fly away from the nest, it is bittersweet. I remember the sweet little girl who would curl up on my lap and fall sound asleep. Now, she’s taller than me; she surpassed my shoe size years ago. Life is beautiful, and rainbows exist beyond the rain clouds. I pray she carries the lessons I’ve taught her with her as she enters this next phase of life, and discovers things along her path that make her journey all her own.

Zayda Rivera is a POPSUGAR contributor. She has been a professional writer for more than 20 years. Z is a certified Reiki Master Teacher, a yoga and Zumba instructor, a mindfulness and meditation guide, a tarot reader, and a spiritual mentor.