I know as my teen goes storming out of the house that our fight could have been heard several houses away in our quiet neighborhood. I worry about where he is going, and what he will be doing. It won’t be anything good with him in this state of mind.
Do you ever wish you could go back in time and just start all over again? You know with hindsight being 20/20, you can now see all of the missteps that have lead up to this moment in time. I really wish that I could wake up and realize it has all been a dream, and my boys are my sweet little kids again. I wish that I could be the mom that I tried so hard to be. But of course, that will never happen.
So, instead, I wish to impart to you something I would have liked to have done differently. I wish that I would have continued as I had begun. I wish that I would have read book after book about the different stages in their lives. I wish I hadn’t become semi-complacent with my parenting.
In the beginning, I read so many books, and they were extremely helpful in preparing me to be the type of mom I wanted to be. But as they got older, I began to read books more specific to a given situation. I was no longer reading ahead or looking to the future of how my parenting would need to adapt for the tween and teen years. I mean sure I thought about it and planned, but I stopped educating myself on what those stages would be like.
I just really wasn’t prepared to have a rebellious teen. He was a teen that had bipolar disorder and whose moods became so much harder to handle than I ever could have imagined. So, I began to make allowances to keep him from going further off track while he was in a rage and manic. I began to pick my battles so very carefully, and with that, I began to lose the parental control that he so badly needed.
I had to learn to let go of the guilt that this failure evoked-actually it’s a work in progress. But if I can help someone else to look farther ahead and realize their sweet little child can go through this too, I would be uplifted and maybe feel a little less like a failure.
My advice is to keep reading even when things are going great. Remember we cannot be certain of what lies ahead for our kids, nor do we know the battles they will have to face. Begin to arm yourself with enough information to be able to think quickly on your feet when those moments do come. Don’t wait until you are drowning in confusion, worry, and anger to try and get a grip on it. Be proactive in your education of solutions to even the worst childhood and teenage behaviors. Then you will be better prepared than I was and be able to make better choices.
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Published by Parenting For Good Mental Health
Hello,
My name is Tricia. I am the proud mom of two amazing young men.
My youngest son was always a very energetic and highly reactive child. Life with him was often like a roller coaster ride. He had to work very hard to learn how to manage his emotions and behaviors. By the time he turned 10, he had learned to manage them fairly well. But one night while watching the movie The Mummy, his anxiety was triggered. Night after night, he just could not get the scary images out of his head. This went on for almost a year where he would cry in bed at night. Nothing we tried seemed to help. So we decided to take him to see a psychiatrist where he was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, depression, OCD, and bipolar disorder.
Unfortunately, the care and medications that he received from various professionals did not really help. By educating myself, I began to learn that there were many more options that had not been provided or suggested. I believe that had I had more information sooner; his care could have been better tailored to his needs. This was a very difficult time not only for my son but for our entire family. We had to develop new ways of interacting that did not cause fights over the littlest things. We had to learn the hard way what not to do in a crisis. My husband had to learn that you don’t have to have a reason to be depressed or anxious. Sometimes you just are. And that it is not helpful to say to a depressed person, that they have no reason to be depressed. Having never experienced these feelings himself, my husband really struggled with understanding these things. But now that he gets it, he wishes he would have understood sooner so he could have been more supportive to our son in the beginning.
Thankfully, our son has found his own way through the darkness. And he has developed some skills and tools for managing his mental illness. His path could have been easier and less painful for him had we known about these other options sooner.
As parents and caregivers we need to educate ourselves on their illnesses and the evidence based care options that are out there. We have a limited number of clinicians that treat children and teens, so we sometimes only get to see them once a month. What kind of impact do you think you could have on your child if you only saw him once a month? We need to bring as much to the table as possible. The clinicians can only work with the information they are given. The more you can tell them the better they will be able to tailor your child’s care to his needs. We also need to know how to be the parents our child needs because what works for other kids does not always work for ours.
I would like to help educate others so that their path to recovery might be made shorter. There is a lot of support out there, but sometimes we do not hear about it. NAMI is the first support that I will recommend.
NAMI the National Alliance on Mental Illness is the largest grassroots mental health organization in America. Through NAMI you will find support and education that can help you to better facilitate the care your child needs. https://www.nami.org/
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Reblogged this on parentingforgoodmenatlhealth.com.
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Many of us have this same sort of regret but respect yourself for what you HAVE accomplished and recognize the intense love you have for your kids that allows you room to doubt your best.
“Don’t wait until you are drowning in confusion, worry, and anger to try and get a grip on it.” Wonderful advice!
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Thank you. I am working on it. I know I always did everything out of love, so I hold onto that.
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This is a great reminder, because I have not been reading either. I’ve been taking it all as it comes, and I find myself in situations I don’t know how to handle. I need to get more prepared!
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The more you read the easier it all seems. Thanks for the comment.
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