Funnily, once she stopped using drugs, her moodswings and raging also stopped and it has been over ten
years...she obviously is not bipolar or in any way mentally ill.
The diagnosis of mental illness in a troubled child weakens our resolve to take what we know are the right actions.
It is one more layer of vulnerability.
That we love them becomes a minefield for us, as our difficult children learn just which buttons and behaviors will get them what they want. The living horror of a child on the streets while we are safe and warm under our own roofs cannot be described.
You have to live it, to know the taste of that one.
What is happening to us, and to our kids, is one of the worst things that could happen to anyone. There is nothing pleasant about it, and there is no way to know whether our responses are going to help or create further harm. We do the best we know. We are betrayed again and again and our hearts are broken and all we can do is put them out and hope it works.
I am sorry this is happening. I am glad you are here. It will help you to hear our stories and to share your own. One of the most striking things I have seen, here on the site, is how similar the behavior of drug-using difficult child kids is. More than anything, these similarities in children raised in so many different ways has helped me understand that my child's problems are not the result of something I did, or did not do, as a parent.
Guilt is a vulnerability we cannot afford.
Yet, the hardest part about taking the actions we ultimately have to take with our kids is guilt. We have never imagined that putting a child on the streets could be our story and yet, we wake up one day and it is and we know in one part of our hearts that it is the right action but the other part of us is condemning what we have done.
It is a hard thing, to wrap our heads around how to live this story that somehow turned out to be ours.
As you read along with us here, you will find that it does seem to be true that telling the truth to our kids about where they are and where they are going and a tough love approach to their endless messes seems to help them. But things often get worse before they get better, and it is best to be prepared for that, too.
Love blinds us to the truth about our difficult child kids.
I am blind as a bat when it comes to mine.
The parents here, all of us at different levels of healing, can help us stay stable in our responses and support us through the self-condemnation parts, and that's priceless.
Soon enough, we find we can stand up again, that we are strong enough now to help someone else.
***
It is a good, good thing to attend something like Al-Anon, or to explore what NAMI offers in your area. Recovering Enabler posted about the information on detachment pinned to the top of the Parent Emeritus page. That is a good and helpful place to begin, too. There are YouTube videos about how to talk to our troubled adult kids, and about how to survive being the parent of one. Anything we can learn that can help us understand we are not the only people this is happening to will help us be stronger.
And as you know, we have to be very, very strong to do what has to be done.
Our worst enemies, when we have difficult child children, are the love we feel for our children even now, when they steal and lie to us, and the knife-edge senses of loss and guilt and wreckage and ugliness.
Here are two things so helpful to me. One is a quote from Headlights Mom, one of the moms here on the site. The other is something I heard President Obama quote at the State of the Union Address. Both things have helped me steer my course with a little more clarity.
And I will take all the help I can get, because parenting a difficult child child really sucks.
No, really.
For a long, long time.
Well anyway, here are the quotes, Headlight Mom's first:
"Lest I grow cold about him or let his ugly behaviors devour me. Sometimes, it's the only gratitude I have for him. So........I'll take it."
That was Headlight Mom.
Here is the President, quoting from the letter a young mom had written him:
"We are a strong, tight-knit family that's made it through some very hard times."
That helped me, because I never know how to think about what happened to my family. I am so keenly aware of the wreckage and ugliness. This quote was a strengthening, healthy interpretation that is equally and maybe even more true than the harshness of those judgments I was making about my family.
Please know that I wish you and your family well and happy again, soon.
But that is the way the world works, and the way families work.
Yes. It is hard to remember the validity of this very true thing when our children suffer and we can't stand the pain of it.
I just got a call from him telling me there was no way he was staying there again much less trying to go their program and be a prisoner there. I don't know what else to do.
There is nothing you can do.
Stay very strong. Repeat what you said verbatim if that will help you.
I write down what I am going to say. I know that if I do not, guilt and shock and hurt and just the unbelievable horror of the things that happen will do me in, every time.
There is nothing easy about any of this.
He says he still wants to go to rehab.
Of course he does. You have already offered.
The rest is up to him.
What do you need to see this time before you will help?
That is the most important question there is, because it gives us a place to stand, and helps us stay focused.
What do you need to see from your child before you will help?
He may get worse before he gets better if he gets better.
Good for you, for knowing that.
It is a harsh truth.
Again, wishing you and your family well. You are here with us now, and that is so much better than being alone with it.
Cedar
