** I’ve been asked to be a regular blogger for the Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation. Here’s my first blog post for CABF:

“My best suggestion to you is to give up your parental rights to the state of Illinois.”

A doctor told me that. A child psychiatrist my son Tim had been seeing for over a year. A psychiatrist with over 35 years of experience in treating children. A doctor I had come to rely on and trust for help with Tim’s confusing symptoms and long history of vague diagnoses. Tim was just 12 years old at the time, but we’d been dealing with his strange behaviors and unusual speech and seemingly meaningless rage since he was two. Tim was just weeks off his first psychiatric hospital stay, and we were at our wit’s end with meds and school and trying to keep our home from becoming Thunder Dome. Doors were broken. Walls had holes in them. Tim had threatened suicide and expressed hearing voices. Our oldest was staying away from the house as much as he could, and our youngest spent most days locked in her room. I sat there and, for maybe the second time in my adult life, wept uncontrollably….

Read the rest at the CABF website .