When My Son’s Friend Surprised Me

I couldn’t believe what Chris1 had just said.

“Did you like Ms. H.?” I asked. “She was supposed to be the best fifth-grade teacher and won all those awards.”

Chris sat at my kitchen table, while Mark, Ben, and my son William hung streamers across the windows. All four of them had just finished their freshman year at college. I had just “kidnapped” them from Chris’ house to help me decorate for my youngest daughter’s birthday, with promises that William could have the car (and therefore stay out late). They paused their epic video game to tumble into my car for an adventure.

Somehow we had gotten onto the subject of elementary school teachers, as their tall, broad-shouldered bodies and deep voices filled my kitchen.

Chris swallowed a tortilla chip and looked me squarely in the eye. “Well, we didn’t know about my challenges back then, like my OCD

I tried not to let my eyebrows raise or my eyes widen. While I knew all about Chris’ challenges, thanks to years of text messages and coffee dates with his mother, I doubted Chris knew that I knew. He had never dropped mental health terms in my presence. But he had just mentioned it in a matter-of-fact tone, as if we were discussing whether he preferred ham sandwiches to turkey.

“That must have been super hard,” I replied slowly. “I’m so glad you got help in high school and now you know.”

“Yeah,” Chris said airily. “High school wasn’t easy, either.”

I nodded. Chris, William, Mark, and Danny had formed a tight-knit group, a friendship quartet, in junior high, which had stayed strong for the past eight years. On weekends, they could get lost in complex strategy board games or obscure conversations about post-calculus topics. We moms carefully scheduled birthday parties around when the whole quartet could show up. When William and Mark each chose to express their Christian faith through adult baptism, Chris and Danny arrived in pressed collared shirts, although neither had ever darkened the doors of a church before and weren’t quite sure what baptism even meant.

During their junior year, Chris pulled the group together in a phone call to reveal some intimate truths. William returned with downcast eyes; all he could say was that Chris had been hospitalized but had asked the group not to share the details.

Chris is one of millions of teenagers, including my daughter Ellie, who wrestle with mental health issues more than any previous generation. In 2023, more than 20% of teenagers (ages 12-17) had a current, diagnosed mental or behavioral health condition, an increase of 35% since 2016.3

Eventually, I learned about Chris’ diagnoses, his treatment center experience, and the challenges of reentry. Chris’ mom worked harder than anyone I know to secure the right school accommodations for her son. Two years later, Chris is successfully navigating both the rigorous academic demands and the social dynamics of college life.

But at that moment, I was shocked, in the best possible way, by Chris’ quiet understanding of himself. Somehow he and his family moved out of a place of shame and careful self-protection to acceptance. By his admission at my kitchen table, Chris communicated, in essence, this is how my brain works, this is what I need, and that’s all okay with me.

A few minutes later, Ben stopped blowing up a balloon. While he hadn’t grown up with the friendship quartet, he had become close to William through sports and occasionally joined their social events. He shrugged as he admitted, “Well, I have autism; so I get being different.”

The conversation paused for a beat.

I couldn’t catch William’s eye but I guessed he was unfazed. After walking alongside Chris for the past two years, along with his older sister’s mental health issues and autism diagnosis, all of this was familiar territory for William and me. As the guys looked at each other, I heard the unspoken response: it’s all okay. We’re all okay. Mark grinned at Ben and clapped him on the shoulder.

“What should we do next here?” Mark asked.

The guys studied the scene. Thirty minutes ago, they admitted they had never hung birthday decorations before and weren’t sure how to do it. Apparently their moms and sisters had always led the way.

Eventually, they created an awkward curtain of short streamers hanging down from a doorway. Chris ate more tortilla chips as he watched. When they finally drove away at 10pm, I pondered our conversation while collecting dirty dishes.

As I rinsed plates, I found myself back in my teenage years, when I spent most of my energy pretending to be someone I wasn’t. Thirty years ago, I buried my mental health diagnoses as deeply as possible to appear “normal” to my high school friends. When I transferred from a public to a private school, halfway through high school, the last thing I wanted to reveal was my eating disorder or depression. A mental health struggle wasn’t an attractive accessory to add to your wardrobe in the 1990s. For many years, the only spaces where I felt safe enough to share the truth were a therapist’s office and a support group.

As I think about the spiking rate of mental health diagnoses for today’s teens, I believe we need more spaces where teens and young adults can talk openly about their differences without shame. If only all of us could treat mental health challenges and neurodiversity with such acceptance, especially in the company of friends. I suspect that Chris and Ben’s admissions came from a place of internal security and maturity. Chris’ courageous vulnerability paved the way for Ben to share his own neurodiversity. After two years of professional help and personal growth, Chris knows his challenges don’t define him, but he wants his friends to know him fully. Chris got there faster than me; it wasn’t until college when I developed both that internal security and enough trusted friendships to share the most vulnerable parts of myself.

Share Evidence of Grace

As my kids become young adults, I have an accelerating loss of control over their tribe: who they choose, how the tribe operates, what its values are, and how they treat others. But I can offer the same empathy to my children and their friends that I hope they will come to expect from others. If it’s normal in our family to talk about mental health recovery and neurodiversity, perhaps my kids will look for places where differences are welcomed rather than feared. I hope they will lead their peers through their own vulnerable stories.

Chris’ and Ben’s courageous admissions in my kitchen built a new, quiet bridge within their friend group and with me as a trusted (I hope!) adult. Each month, I’m surprised yet not surprised when another person gingerly shares about mental health struggles - their own or their teenager’s - in an unexpected conversation. Whether we carry these diagnoses ourselves or love others who do, our journey can help us offer loving compassion. May we hear someone’s scary truth, share our own without judgment, and go back to hanging purple streamers together.

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