I forced myself to watch Netfix’s hit series “13 Reasons Why,” even though I knew it would dredge up decades-old, unsettling memories.

Nearly every tween and teen has either watched or heard about the graphic and controversial show, in which a teenage girl is raped by a popular classmate and commits suicide. She leaves behind 13 cassette tapes, each one dedicated to a person she implicates in her death.

My junior year of high school, three students committed suicide. I remember hearing the details of how each one of them died, the shock and questions afterward. The aftermath of a friend’s suicide is nothing like the revenge fantasy that unfolds in the series.

School districts across the country have sent warnings and letters to parents about the problematic ways the show portrays suicide. One Colorado school district, grieving the deaths of seven students who have committed suicide, briefly pulled the book upon which the series is based from its libraries.

Nearly every parent I spoke to about the series confessed that their child had seen it without their permission. Some had forbidden their kids from watching it, but discovered later that they’d watched it anyway.

So, what should a parent say to a tween or teen about the show, especially if they aren’t interested in watching it themselves?

For answers, I talked to two experts -- Jane Smith, director of Life Crisis Services at St. Louis-based mental health counseling agency Provident, and Marian McCord, executive director of the CHADS Coalition (Communities Healing Adolescent Depression and Suicide) -- along with researching tip sheets from various suicide prevention programs. Here are 13 things parents can say to their kids when trying to mitigate some of the potentially harmful messages in this series:

1. If you come to us with thoughts of self-harm, depression or anxiety, we will respond calmly. We will not freak out. We will listen and help.

2. If you have ever self-harmed or been a victim of sexual abuse or assault, or have had suicidal thoughts, the show can trigger those painful feelings and thoughts. If you start having suicidal thoughts, the National Suicide Prevention hotline is available 24/7: 1-800-273-8255.

3. If you or someone you know is dealing with the trauma of a sexual assault, there is also a National Sexual Assault hotline: 1-800-656-4673. It’s important to talk to a trusted adult about it.

4. A friend’s suicide is never the fault of surviving friends or loved ones.

5. Unlike the character in this show, people don’t get justice or revenge against bullies after they’ve killed themselves. That’s fantasy, not reality.

6. The teens on the show often made a mistake or bad situation worse by lying and keeping it secret. That never solves a big problem.

7. If you turn to an adult, in your school or elsewhere, who discounts or minimizes your story of bullying or abuse, there’s another adult out there who will listen and try to help. Keep trying until you find that person.

8. If a friend expresses suicidal thoughts to you, immediately tell an adult. It is not a betrayal. You might be saving someone’s life.

9. The main character on the show is the victim of false rumors that damage her reputation at school. This feels completely isolating, but lots of people have rumors spread about them at some point in their lives. Many of us have gotten through it, and we can help you do the same.

10. Depression and other mental illness can be treated with therapy, medication or both. There are also millions of people who suffer trauma and survive and live healthy, normal lives despite it.

11. A person who commits suicide doesn’t continue having a relationship with people once they are dead.

12. The sooner a person reaches out for help, whether for themselves or a friend, the better. It might take a few tries to find the right counselor.

13. It’s common to feel a lot of anger, frustration and anxiety about difficult situations you might face growing up. Mental health workers are reporting epidemic levels of anxiety and stress among kids. But suicide is never the answer.

It can be scary to talk to young people about suicide. If they’ve already watched this series, though, they’ve only seen a Hollywood treatment of this important issue.

They need a reality-based discussion, too.

Sharon Wildey spends holidays, especially this one, calling mothers whose phones won’t ring otherwise.

She knows how painful that can be. Personal experience has led Wildey to self-publish two books about parental abandonment, which is when an adult child cuts off ties from a parent for seemingly inexplicable reasons.

In the first book, “Abandoned Parents: The Devil’s Dilemma -- The Causes and Consequences of Adult Children Abandoning Their Parents,” she sought to validate the trauma felt by parents who experience this. There’s no data on how widespread an issue it is, but there’s an increasing number of support groups online devoted to the problem. Wildey’s Facebook page for abandoned parents has 5,000 followers, and she also moderates a Yahoo group with over 300 members who share their heartache with one another.

“This is a global problem of adult children simply walking away,” she said.

Outsiders who have never experienced such a situation have a hard time believing grown children can simply walk away without legitimate reasons, such as abuse.

“They are just so sure that it is something you have done,” said Cathy Brandt, 69, who lives in Huntington, Virginia, and helps run another Facebook support group for estranged parents.

But Wildey says that 95 percent of the parents who turn to her for advice say that they tried their best as parents, provided a loving and good upbringing for their child, and cannot understand why they have been cut off. Her second book offers a path toward healing from the overwhelming grief she has experienced firsthand.

Wildey had a child die of cystic fibrosis, which was devastating, but she says the pain of losing her other adult children to estrangement has been even worse.

“We are talking about horrendous grief,” she said, which most parents are too ashamed or embarrassed to discuss with their friends. There are abandoned parents who still drive by their children’s houses or search for ways to contact them once they’ve been cut off.

Brandt says her daughter has blocked her on Facebook and ceased contact with her more than four years ago. They share a mutual friend on Facebook, who tries to sneak Brandt pictures of her daughter and keep her updated on her whereabouts.

For years, Brandt beat herself up about the lost relationship. She talked to several therapists and read dozens of books on the topic, hoping for a reconciliation.

“Now, I am trying to reconcile myself that I will probably die with this unresolved,” she said. “I will probably die without my child being there. I have to prepare myself for that.”

That can be too bleak an outcome for others in her situation to accept. And some psychologists recommend that estranged parents continue to try to find ways to reach out to a child, even if they have been blocked from phones and social media accounts. Sometimes, there are grievances from childhood that need to be acknowledged in order to repair the broken bond, even if the reaction seems out of proportion to the perceived parental failings.

Wildey takes exception to this advice. She talks about the injury that comes from this type of repeated rejection from one’s own child: It takes a serious toll on physical and emotional health. And she believes that a parent’s persistent, unwanted outreach can also hurt an adult child who has decided to cut off ties. She advises parents to try to heal their own wounds first, so they can be healthy if their child decides to reconcile.

While she offers strategies to cope with this kind of grief, she says, “There are no magic answers. What I’m talking about is lessening the pain. It’s not ever going to go away.”

So, she makes a point to spend special days that will trigger that pain with others who need her comfort.

She picks up the phone and calls.

A white woman checked my privilege recently, and I’m glad she did.

She was presenting at an education writers conference at Stanford, where top experts discussed research on the academic achievement gaps between various groups of students. I asked her if there were aspects of the second-generation immigrant experience that could be valuable to helping lower-income students improve their academic outcomes.

I asked this as a child of working-class immigrants who came to America with very little, and who worked hard to raise six high-achieving children. We grew up on the outskirts of an upper-middle-class, mostly white suburb, where I frequently felt like an outsider.

The presenter asked me a few pointed questions:

-- Even though my mother didn’t speak English, had she been educated in her native country? Yes.

-- Even though we qualified for reduced-price lunches growing up, did we ever worry about our next meal? No.

-- Did my parents model the behaviors one needs to succeed in middle-class society? Yes.

-- Did we attend high-quality public schools? Yes.

In fact, our house was filled with books and high expectations, even though we were a working-class minority by race, ethnicity and religion. I certainly didn’t feel “privileged” in comparison to the wealthy white Christian families I grew up around, but looking back, I see that I was far more privileged than poor children in failing schools.

She helped me clarify my own assumptions: that it was primarily our hard work and learned values that got my siblings and me where we are. Those played an important role, of course, but there were unearned advantages that we benefited from, and it was naive for me to suggest that our experience could be compared to that of far more disadvantaged students.

It was after this conversation that I decided to approach the topic with my own middle-schoolers. We’ve always talked to them about the responsibilities that come with blessings and the importance of gratitude, but this was a different conversation. I wanted to help them see the difference between societal privilege, enjoyed by certain groups, and a blessing, a spiritual favor that can be bestowed upon anyone.

I also didn’t want my children to buy into the false narrative about their identity as American Muslims -- that they were either villains or victims, as so often portrayed in the media.

We talked about how power works in society. They are already aware that certain people are treated differently based on factors outside their control. So, there may be situations when they’ll be singled out while traveling based on their names or religious background. But there will also be times when they will benefit from certain characteristics -- whether it’s their gender, their socio-economic background, their skin color, their lack of disabilities or their sexual orientation.

We talked about what it means to use that privilege to work toward a more just society.

Nicole Hudson, the director of racial equity and priority initiatives for St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson, has taken a different approach with her own children, who are several years younger than mine. She will point out scenarios in which people in the same situation are treated differently -- by the police or the courts, for example -- and let them form their own conclusions.

Privilege is often about who gets the benefit of the doubt and who gets second chances, she said. Parents can explain to minority children that their white friends may not get in trouble (or to the same degree) for the same mistakes as them -- a reality borne out by history and years of data.

“Some people get a larger margin of error,” she said.

But she tries to avoid using the word “privilege” at all when talking about issues related to race or inequality.

“It’s a trigger word,” she said. “It so quickly shuts down the conversation” with some people, who see it as an attack. They assume they are being told they don’t deserve something or that their work didn’t matter. Or that they should feel guilty for something they couldn’t control.

“It becomes a debate about what they did or didn’t do, instead of helping them see a recurring systemic issue,” she said.

That defensiveness is learned, which is why I want my own children to recognize the ways in which they benefit from society’s power structures and the ways they don’t. More importantly, I want them to think about what they can do to listen to and lift up the voices of people who deal with challenges they won’t experience.

It was embarrassing to me that, as an adult, I failed to take into account the advantages in my upbringing before implying there were lessons in it for those less fortunate.

“You don’t see it because it was there for you,” Hudson said.

I had failed to separate the privilege from the blessings.