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Book Review: Easy to Love but Hard to Raise
I have a confession to make. I’m not proud of it. When parents of children with mental illnesses I personally feel are less severe than Tim’s express how hard it is to raise their child, I sneer. It’s almost involuntary. I feel like shouting, “Ha! I’ll trade you my kid for a month, then we’ll…
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Mother of The Monster
My friend Marian said it best. “I feel like when that boy went into the theater, he jerked me in there with him. Like I’m able to imagine it as my own child doing what I fear the most. And that is just plain flat screwed up. It is impossible for me to look at…
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Join Me at Noon Central with the International Bipolar Foundation
I’m hosting a webinar about childhood mental illness from the parent’s perspective with the International Bipolar Foundation today, Sunday, May 21, at noon CDT. Join us at the link below: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/244842766
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Enough Said
Courtesy of / created by my friend Marian. Amen.
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What To Do Now?
Pain. It hurts. At this point you are probably thinking “duh”, but hear me out. I had to admit my son to an inpatient psychiatric hospital last Friday. There was no choice, really, he was a danger to himself and others. He was experiencing suicidal ideation, and he was kicking the crap out of me and his…
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It’s Not Easy – NHBPM / NaBloPoMo Day 15
I’ve posted this song before, so if you’ve been brave enough to have been reading my blog for the past three plus years, you’ve seen it posted before. But there is no song that better describes my little boy than this one. He is my Superman.
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When Doctors Won’t Diagnose
I regularly receive emails from parents of children experiencing emotional problems who are distraught because the psychologist or psychiatrist they are seeing won’t officially diagnose their child. When your child clearly isn’t well, you want to know what the condition is that’s making them unwell. That’s natural. And this is a phenomenon that is almost…
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Alone With The Diagnosis: Post for S-O-S Research
I can’t think of anything more shocking to a parent than hearing a doctor tell you that your child has a serious and chronic mental illness. I got my first taste of what a shock it is when my middle child, Timothy, was just eight years old. I was ill prepared for what exactly the…
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What Me Worry?
Someone once said, “Don’t worry about things that you have no control over, because you have no control over them. Don’t worry about things that you have control over, because you have control over them.” I try daily to live by that philosophy. This past weekend, I failed, miserably. I wrote a few weeks ago about…
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Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop
Photo by Roman Skrada My son has been in residential treatment for two years this month. I can’t believe he’s been living away from home for that long. It seems like it was just a few months ago we were sitting at the kitchen table, making the decision on the residential programs we wanted to…