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In Reply to: Re: Good to hear things are going better now! posted by WC on November 27, 2009 at 15:09:15:
WC,
A lot of your experience with your son sounds very familiar. I've often wondered what would have happened to our daughter had she been raised in The Family. I hate to make such comparisons, but, there were many times when she was having these fits of rage that I flashed on "The Exorcist", and could see how some very religious people would see mental illness as demonic posession and act accordingly.
I was telling one of my show managers one time about what we were experiencing with her. He is a big church goer and started telling me about someone at this church with Bipolar that they prayed off the meds. I asked him how the guy was doing, and he said, "Oh, he killed himself". He said it in that way that peole do when they really don't get that they have caused great harm.
Of course, dealing it from a psychiatric point of view isn't without it's problems. We were really not gung how about putting her on medication. That sort of thing is so hit and miss that for the first couple of years some of the meds actually did make things worse and nothing seemed to make it better.
Now, I'm not sure if it's the meds, or the psychothearapy, or just that she is 15 not and her hormones are balancing out a bit... but, she is getting better, and I'm thankful for it for whatever reason. We still have daily challenges. For example, she started out today very hiper, talking a mile a minute, saying things that weren't appropriate, etc. Then she got quiet and I looked into her room and she was alseep. She's been that way for most of the day... but, this is par for the course for someone with rapid cycling bipolar disorder. At least it is in the range that we can manage without calling 911.
It is interesting about how hard it was for your son to complete tasks that were requested of him. Our daughter really does very little for herself, and when she is pressed, it can be so unpleasant, we tend to not expect a lot in order to keep the peace. Of course, that kind of approach has a cost, and we are constantly trying to find a balance between being responsible parents and managing someone with a chronic mental illness. It's very hard sometimes to know when we are talking to the illness and when we are talking to a normal teenager who is just being a teenager.
It really pleases me to hear that your son is doing well in society now. That is my hope for our daughter, that she will level out and find her way. We've been raising kids without a break since we were in our early 20's, and one would think raising a child in your 50's would be easy just because of the amount of experience we have. Wrong!
I am glad that my life has become a bit more simple. Some of it was my own doing, and some of it was more or less done to me by circumstances... but, I was crazy busy with so much stuff all the time that now it is good to be able to focus on certain things. Just closing our warehouse and not having a 60 mile round trip commute ever day helps a lot.
