Michael Cook, 46, was never a political guy.

As a young adult, he pretty much ignored all politics except for voting in presidential elections every four years. But his interest began to shift when he became a father 14 years ago.

His transformation from casual, apolitical observer to outspoken activist has been informed by the intersection of life changes, such as fatherhood, and the larger societal changes of the past few years.

With young kids to think about, “I started paying more attention to the world,” he said. Initially, he kept it low-key. When he noticed bizarre political posts on his social media feeds, he began looking into the sources. He started researching what was fueling phenomena like disinformation and the anti-vaccination movement. And he started talking to his kids, now 12 and 14, hoping to foster their critical thinking and empathy about what was happening in the news.

“He’s one of those ‘cool fathers,’” his 14-year-old son, Owen, explained.

He said his dad has taught him that everyone has their own political opinions. “You should respect them, but you don’t have to agree with them,” he said.

Cook, a software developer in the St. Louis area, says he wants his children to form their own opinions, even if they disagree with him, and to be able to evaluate sources and think critically.

He participated in his first political protest with his children in 2020 -- the summer when George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer.

His 12-year-old daughter, Lily, said she remembers the massive crowd of people protesting the killing.

“It felt reassuring that all those people were on the same side,” she said.

“We had never done that before,” said Cook of attending the protest. But he and his wife wanted their children to understand the importance of the moment and cause. “That inspired us to get out and show our kids: You have to fight for the world to be the way you want it to be.”

Giving children ways to think about the world and how to engage in it are among the most important things parents teach their kids. For Cook, the country’s changing political discourse and events of the past six years have galvanized him in a way he couldn’t have imagined prior to becoming a father.

“I feel our democracy has eroded a lot. I want our kids to live in a world with democracy and facts and provable truths,” he said. It hit close to home for him when national political rhetoric began to encroach into local school boards. The attempts to ban books and limit what teachers can say or teach motivated him to become even more involved.

“That impacts my kids directly,” he said.

He has joined several politically oriented groups on Facebook, knows people who are running for local political offices and has even attended a fundraiser. But the change in his activism has come at some personal costs. There are some acquaintances who cut him off once he began challenging their misinformation and racist posts on social media. He has confronted his mother when she’s shared outrageous conspiracy theories. That’s prompted some discussion with their children about why some people are drawn to such views.

He’s considering taking his children to a larger protest in Washington, D.C., in the future.

“I’m trying to inspire them to pay attention, be aware and understand what’s going on,” he said.

His efforts may be taking root -- even during the preteen and teenage years. I asked Lily about the most important lesson she’s learned from her father so far.

“Stand up for what you believe in -- that’s the big one,” she said.

That’s quite a gift.

When teenagers are going through a rough time, parents may struggle with how to best approach them.

Adolescence is a period of development when teens often push parents away as part of growing their independence. So it makes sense that many young people are reluctant to discuss their troubles with their parents.

Dr. Ken Ginsburg, pediatrician and founder for the Center for Parent and Teen Communication in Philadelphia, says asking if your teen feels sad or anxious will not make them that way. Instead, “it makes them feel seen and heard.”

“Kids feel safer when the adults in their lives check in on them,” he said.

So, what is the best way to talk to teens if you are worried about their mental health or changes in mood or behavior?

Ginsburg writes that caregivers should focus on communicating three main points: 1. Professional guidance, such as counseling and/or medical treatment, can make a difference. 2. Emotional discomfort is treatable. 3. There are people who specialize in supporting teens and helping them feel better.

Katie Heiden-Rootes, an associate professor of family and community medicine at the St. Louis University School of Medicine, is also a licensed marital and family therapist. She says that a caregiver engaging with a struggling teen is profoundly important.

When she asks young people who are struggling what prevents them from telling their parents, friends or another trusted adult how they are feeling, she frequently hears, “They won’t believe me,” or “They’ll tell me it’s not a big deal -- to get over it.”

When a young person’s concerns are minimized, they stop talking to us. One of the goals of Heiden-Rootes’ work is to increase adults’ empathy, as well as their capacity to listen to their children without judgment.

“It’s harder than it sounds,” she said.

It can be helpful for parents to recall difficult moments from their own childhood. Remember what the turbulence of adolescence was like: how they felt and what they wished they had from their parents. She asks parents to imagine giving their own children what they had needed.

When adults approach young people with a barrage of questions, it can feel like an interrogation -- one in which teens fear getting in trouble if they say how they are really feeling, she explained.

She suggested a more thoughtful and gentle way to broach a conversation: “It seems like you’ve got a lot going on. How are you doing?” Or start by sharing your own experiences, such as, “When I was younger, I had a lot of anxiety.”

It is helpful to normalize feeling stressed or anxious, even if things appear to be going well.

Ginsburg suggests framing a conversation about seeking professional help as an act of strength: Strong people know they are capable of feeling better, deserve to feel better and will take action to do so.

“A first step is to use the right language -- it is not what they ‘need,’ but what they ‘deserve,’” he writes. “It is genuinely brave to be able to clearly state, ‘I don’t feel right, and I deserve to feel better.’”

In some cases, families are not highly functioning. In these cases, other professionals who serve youth -- coaches, teachers, mentors -- become incredibly important.

Changing the way our teens and young adults think about their mental health often means changing our own notions, as well.

With all of the media coverage and talk surrounding young people’s mental health, it’s reassuring for parents to hear how influential they remain in their teen’s lives -- even when it doesn’t feel that way.

“The most important thing is to notice your children,” Ginsburg said. “Show up for them. Ask them how they are doing. Talk to them.”

Some people form mental pictures -- "brain movies" -- when we read.

I never watch television footage of heinous crimes. It’s too gruesome for me to bear. But I do read news reports obsessively, and the stories from America’s school shootings have imprinted indelible brain movies in my mind.

The events 11-year-old Miah Cerrillo described to CNN last week should be seared in our collective memory.

Miah was one of the fourth graders trapped in a classroom at Robb Elementary when a gunman rained gunfire on her peers and teachers, killing 21 of them. In order to survive, she placed her hands in the blood of her dead classmate, who was lying next to her. She smeared her friend’s blood on herself and played dead.

She managed to escape death at the hands of a teenager armed with an AR-15 rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition -- an 18-year-old too young to legally buy a beer, but able to purchase military-style assault weapons.

It hurts to think about what Miah must have experienced in those moments. Her class had been watching the Disney movie "Lilo and Stitch" before the nightmare began. Then, suddenly, she was watching her teachers and classmates murdered in front of her.

Spend a minute thinking about what this little girl endured just to survive. Think about the lifelong trauma she will carry inside her.

This kind of terror has unfolded in American schools over and over and over: More than 311,000 children in America have experienced gun violence in school since Columbine, according to a Washington Post database.

That’s more than the population of St. Louis.

Imagine how the worst moments of Miah’s young life were made even worse by feeling abandoned by those she thought would protect her.

She and a friend managed to get their slain teacher’s cellphone and dialed 911 -- exactly what we teach our children to do in an emergency.

“Please come ... we’re in trouble,” she told a dispatcher.

No one came.

Armed officers stood outside that door for more than 40 minutes while children were trapped inside with a madman wielding an AR-15.

A child called again, begging for help: “Please send the police.”

Miah started crying when she remembered hearing officers outside, saying to CNN she just didn’t understand why they didn’t come inside and rescue them.

I can hear the voice of a terrified child calling 911 again and again.

“Please send the police.”

We need to sit with that and hear those words in our children’s voices. What would we do to protect them?

The Uvalde Police Department and the Uvalde Independent School District police force are no longer cooperating with the Texas Department of Public Safety’s investigation into their delayed response during the massacre. The officers waited for around an hour outside the adjoining classrooms because a commander on the scene wrongly believed the suspect was "barricaded" and that no lives were at risk.

Police outside Robb Elementary even threatened to arrest parents trying to rush in to save their children. The Uvalde police department's version of events has changed several times.

But this wasn’t the first time we saw armed “good guys” waiting it out while children were murdered inside a school. The school resource officer in Parkland, Florida, stood outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School while 17 people were murdered inside by another teenager wielding an AR-15.

Do the chaos and terror of a mass shooting paralyze some "good guys" with guns? Does a survival instinct override the oath to serve and protect? Is it fear? Is it cowardice? Is it knowing that their weapon is no match for a semi-automatic rifle? And why do we expect teachers to be even braver and more heroic than these "good guys"?

The Texas Tribune reported that FBI analysis of 277 gun massacres between 2000 and 2018 found that “so-called 'good guys with guns' interrupted mass shootings 3.9% of the time.” By comparison, unarmed civilians interrupted them almost three times more often (11.9%).

Unarmed civilians like teachers, principals and children, who have all sacrificed themselves during school shootings to save other children.

As for the myth of the "good guy with a gun" stopping the bad guy?

Bury that for good.