Our Why is Kyle and Children like him!

In Feb. 2019, our 15 year old son, Kyle, came to us telling he didn't want to live anymore. As a parent that cuts straight to your heart. We told his psychiatrist and got him on some medication. A week later, he began to self harm. So much that we took him to the ER. He was in the children's psych ward at the hospital for a week. A month later, he self harmed again and was in the psych ward for another week. Two months later he ended up in the psych ward again for another week. At this point, we knew we had to do something drastic to save his life. We got him into a residential treatment facility where he stayed for 28 days. When he got out he then went to day treatment. This day treatment was from 8am to 5pm 5 days a week about 30 mins from our home. This is where he received additional therapy, family therapy, etc. He did that for 6 weeks. He seemed to be doing better for a few months with seeing a therapist every week. But then we noticed his grades slipping and he was withdrawing from the family a lot. He slept most of the day. 

We got him in online classes to see if that would help him. Even got him a tutor when he said it was too hard, We did everything we could for him. But in March of 2020, we knew he needed more help. On March 13th, 2020, two days before my birthday and the day Utah shut down because of Covid, we told him we were driving down to Paparazzi to visit the Founders. But instead, we took him to a long term residential treatment facility just outside of St. George, Utah. That was the hardest day of our lives. We drove the 4.5 hours home with an empty back seat. It crushed us.

The only form of communication we had for the first 8 months was letters. At 8 months he had earned his way to therapy calls with us and his therapist. We have those every other week. It took over a year for us to have our first visit with him. We went 13 months without seeing our child. For me (Debbie), that was the most challenging time of my life. I was missing one of my babies. I fell into a deep depression that I didn't think I would ever get out. 

That first visit we got with him was a 1 day visit. It was a great day! We reconnected and loved on him so much! It was so hard to take him back to the facility. We then got visits every 6 weeks for a while. 

We are proud to say that Kyle is doing very well in the program. The facility he is in and the therapist he works with are AMAZING!!!! We are blessed to have been able to get him into this facility when he needed it. His letters have changed from negativity to positivity and hope for the future. We aren't sure how much longer he needs to stay at the facility, but we are so proud of the huge steps he's taken to learn to love himself.

Because of him, we have seen what mental health care looks like for children. We feel there needs to be more resources and more open dialogue about it. 1 in 5 children in the US suffer from some type of mental disorder. We need to talk about it and get these children help!

We have decided to dedicate 20% of all our Facebook Live sales to fund help for children with mental disorders. Download our app so you don't miss our FB lives!  Click here to download.   We will personally see that this money goes towards funding children into programs like Kyle is in. We will make sure those facilities we choose are good ones.