- June 3, 2026
- Jennifer Salerno
Across the country, school lets out in a matter of weeks.
For most families, that means logistics: camps, childcare, summer jobs, travel plans. The calendar fills up fast. And somewhere in the shuffle, the conversation that actually matters — specifically the one about how this summer is going to feel for the young person in their home — doesn’t happen.
That’s where you come in.
Youth-serving professionals are uniquely positioned to do something right now, before the last bell rings, that could change the trajectory of a young person’s summer.
This is best achieved not by talking to the youth, but by talking to the adults around them — and equipping those adults to show up differently when they have more time together than they’ve had all year.
Summer is not just a risk window. It’s a relationship window. And most families don’t know that yet.
Why Teen Mental Health and Youth Risk Behaviors Escalate Over Summer
Let’s start with the risk picture, because it’s real.
Reduced school structure means reduced supervision. Idle time is one of the strongest predictors of risky behavior in adolescence, and summer delivers it in abundance. In fact, youth who lack structured activities, strong family connections, or a trusted adult to check in with are significantly more vulnerable during these months to substance use, social isolation, and mental health deterioration.
According to the CDC’s 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 40% of high school students report persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness. That doesn’t evaporate in June. For many youth, the loss of school-based routine, peer connection, and access to trusted professionals actually intensifies it over summer.
But here’s what often gets lost in the risk conversation: Summer is also the longest uninterrupted stretch of time that families have together all year. No homework battles. No early morning chaos. No packed extracurricular schedules pulling everyone in different directions. This creates real breathing room that simply doesn’t exist during the school year.
The question is whether families know how and are enabled to make the best possible use of it.
The Very Real Barriers to Having the Best Summer Ever With Youth
Parent-youth communication is hard under the best of circumstances. In adolescence, it gets harder.
Young people are neurologically wired to pull away from parents during this developmental stage, testing independence and investing in peer relationships to construct an identity separate from family.
Parents often experience this as rejection. They back off. The eye rolls get met with silence. The “fine” gets accepted as an answer. And slowly, the relational distance that feels like a normal part of teenage life becomes a gap that’s very hard to close.
By the time summer arrives, some families have been operating on parallel tracks for months. They share a home, but not much else. And now they suddenly have six unstructured weeks together. Without good information and clear intention, this can deepen the distance rather than close it.
Here’s what makes this moment particularly important: According to a CDC fact sheet on adolescent mental health, youth who feel connected at school and at home are up to 66% less likely to experience health risk behaviors related to mental health, substance use, and violence, with effects that last well into adulthood.
That trust doesn’t build itself. It’s built in small, consistent, low-stakes moments — exactly the kind of moments summer makes possible, if families are prepared to use them.
Most aren’t. Not because they don’t care. Because nobody told them how.
What Professionals Can Do Right Now Before School Lets Out
You have a window. It’s open right now, and it will close when the last day of school arrives and families shift into summer survival mode.
Here’s how to make the best use of the time between the end of the school year and the onset of summer break:
- Have the summer conversation with the parents in your care. Focus not on logistics but on intention. What does this parent want the relationship with their teen to look like by the time school starts again? Starting with the parent’s own hopes rather than a list of risk factors opens the conversation in a completely different way.
- Frame summer as an opportunity, not a warning. Parents are already primed to think of summer as a period of elevated risk. If your conversation leads with danger, you’ll get a defensive or overwhelmed parent. If it leads with possibility, you’ll get an engaged one.
- Give them something concrete. Parents don’t need a lecture. They need a plan. What does one meaningful conversation per week look like? What are low-pressure environments where teens are more likely to open up, such as car rides, cooking together, or walks? What are the questions that actually land versus the ones that immediately shut a teenager down?
- Connect them to resources before they need them. If your organization uses screening tools like Rapid Adolescent Prevention Screening (RAAPS) or Tell-Talk-Vent (TTV), summer is a natural moment to share what those tools have surfaced, and to help parents understand what their young person might be carrying into the break.
What Strong Summer Relationships Actually Look Like
When professionals ask parents to “communicate more” with their teens, parents often picture a formal sit-down conversation about serious topics. But that’s not what works.
What works is presence. Consistency. Low stakes.
It looks like a parent who puts their phone down during dinner — not every night but more nights than before. It looks like asking “What was the best part of your day?” instead of “how was your day?” This is a small shift that opens the conversation rather than closes it. It looks like a shared activity that neither person has to be good at, so the pressure is off and the conversation can flow.
It looks like a parent who has learned that the goal isn’t to extract information from their teenager. The goal is to be someone their teenager wants to talk to.
This is exactly what Possibilities for Change’s Teen Speak® curriculum is designed to build. Teen Speak® equips parents and caregivers with evidence-based communication strategies drawn from the same Motivational Interviewing (MI) principles that professionals use and delivers them in short, accessible modules that busy families can actually complete. It’s parent skill-building that works because it meets parents where they are, not where we wish they were.
Trusted Adults Play a Critical Role in Summer Outcomes
According to our youth screening system data, among youth who were identified through screening and connected to services, 61% no longer reported suicidal thoughts or actions following mental health services.
That outcome doesn’t happen without a trusted adult in the picture — someone who noticed, said something, and made the referral.
Summer is when that trust is built. Summer is also when that trust quietly erodes.
The youth in your care who are most vulnerable going into summer are the ones whose family relationships are the most strained. These are the young people who need professionals to advocate loudest for family skill-building, structured summer activities, and community connections that can supplement what’s missing at home.
ΛDΛM is our trauma-responsive technology, that gives professionals real-time insight to which youth are carrying the highest risk load as the school year closes. This data isn’t just for clinical decision-making — it’s a roadmap for where to focus your family outreach energy in the weeks before summer begins.
Nearly 80% of the youth we serve are located in fully or partially medically underserved areas. For these young people especially, the relationships built over summer may be the most significant protective factor they have.
The Bottom Line
Summer is coming in hot. And for the youth in your care, what it looks like on the other side of June depends in large part on what the adults in their lives do right now.
You can’t be in every home. But you can equip the families inside. Start that conversation this week and create positive change before this crucial window of opportunity closes.
Ready to learn how Possibilities for Change can equip your team and the families you serve for a stronger, safer summer?
About the Author
Jennifer Salerno, DNP, CPNP, FAANP, is the Founder and CEO of Possibilities for Change and a nationally recognized clinician, researcher, and social entrepreneur. A passionate clinician, visionary leader, and devoted parent, Dr. Jen is on a mission to change the odds for at-risk youth by blending evidence-based clinical practice with research, radical partnership, and unwavering empathy. With more than 30 years of experience in pediatric care, adolescent development, and school-based health services, she developed RAAPS (Rapid Adolescent Prevention Screening) at the University of Michigan and launched Possibilities for Change to scale that methodology nationally — supported by trauma-responsive technology and a comprehensive approach to youth wellbeing. As a mother of two, Dr. Jen brings both professional expertise and personal commitment to every aspect of this work.