I wish I had a dollar for every kid I’ve heard say this week, “I’m tired!” As parents, we have the best of intentions, planning every summer’s end to start the early bedtime long before school starts, get into a routine again. But it is easier said than done. Between the change in sleep and day routines, and the beginning of new classes and new teachers, new friends, new schools, adjustments, rules, homework…it can be a lot to take in (Back to School Bipolar Survival Guide). And while some adjust very well, some don’t at all. Here are some ideas to help with the transition.

Unfortunately kiddos get depressed too. Sometimes it is a chemical imbalance, clinical depression that may benefit from medication. But other times it is situational, environmental, or an inability to handle what is going on around them. Telling them to “stop” doing a negative behavior is not enough. What they need is for us to teach them and show them what to do instead.

What helps change your mood?  A sad song? An upbeat song? The smell of cookies baking? A warm towel from the dryer wrapped around you? Right now as you are reading this, imagine a small plate in front of you with a lemon wedge on it.  Imagine you pick up the lemon wedge and take a bite out of it. Is your mouth actually watering from the thought of it? There are many ways to change our emotions, and the senses play a big part.

What's it like inside the depressed mind, you ask? Sometimes, with depression, we just want to pull the covers up over our heads and wish away the pain. Sometimes we want help but don't know what help to ask for. Sometimes, we don't even know what we need. Sometimes, asking for help is the hardest thing to do.

This is not to say that anger is not real or normal. It is. And often justified. But anger comes second after a primary emotion comes first. Sometimes that primary emotion isn’t even recognized or realized because it is below the surface. Imagine a tree, with its trunk and branches tall and large above the ground, and the roots under the Earth. What do those roots do for the tree? They feed it, right? So imagine the trunk and branches are the anger on your outside, the part that people see. But below the surface is the root of the anger, fueling it. If a student was walking down the hall at school and someone tripped him, he might jump up in anger ready to fight, angry. But right before that, he might have felt embarrassment. If a teenager is late for curfew and her parents have been pacing the house, when she walks in late they might argue and be mad and punish her. But right before that, they were worried. There can be any number of emotions below that surface that trigger anger, and depression is one of them.

That which doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger. We’ve all heard the cliché. That may ring true for some, but not for me. My depression has been raging these past few weeks, putting me through a hellacious test. Only it hasn’t made me stronger. It’s made me weaker. It’s made me tired. And it’s frustrated me to no end.

Depression is a family disease. Not just because it runs in families—but because it can ruin families. Yet it doesn’t have to be that way. I am a happily married man with three wonderful children, and yet I suffer from depression. And my depression affects the whole family. Children are incredibly perceptive. My 8-year-old picks up on it even when my bouts with depression aren’t so severe. My 10-year-old keeps things inside, so he rarely comments about it, but he notices.

Anxiety can motivate us to move faster, but left unchecked it can paralyze us.

So I found some tips to counter holiday depression in a WebMD article. Clearly, the article’s author is not depressed and does not have anxiety issues. If you are like me, events with large crowds make you anxious. During the holidays, they can be especially daunting if you are the only one there not drinking. That’s why the first tip, “do socialize” is almost funny. When I am depressed, I’d rather have bamboo shoved under my toenails than “socialize.”

Depression is an illness. It is not a sin. Some well-meaning Christians who have never experienced depression might tell us otherwise. They might tell us we’ll feel better if we just have more faith. They might even tell us that God has the power to heal our depression, so antidepressants aren’t necessary. That is a dangerous and shallow view of mental illness.