The helplessness of trying to help troubled kids often brings out the fighting spirit in those who care the most. Unfortunately, without a clear enemy from which you can rescue your child, you often fight for goals that can\u2019t happen, target other would-be helpers, and make a bad thing worse. Regardless of how helpless you feel, your goal isn\u2019t to save troubled children from a monster or a mental illness; it\u2019s to find out if there\u2019s something you can do that will actually help while avoiding direct emotional conflict. Not fighting won\u2019t relieve your helplessness, but it will let you work towards something better.
\n-http:\/\/www.fxckfeelings.com\/ask-for-help\/<\/p>\n
My ex-wife, who is a therapist, is spooking me out about our son, whom she says she\u2019s treating for a variety of serious problems. He\u2019s now 10, and he\u2019ll tell me one day, when I\u2019ve got visitation, that he\u2019s having suicidal thoughts, using grown-up phrases that make me think he\u2019s just repeating something he got out of a book or from TV. Then she\u2019ll keep him home from school and stop visitation for a couple weeks while she does \u201ctherapy\u201d with him, at the end of which time she\u2019ll declare that the problem is solved. A few weeks later, he won\u2019t show up and she tells me she\u2019s keeping him home for treatment because he\u2019s having “panic attacks.” My kid needs help and I can\u2019t believe her treatment is doing any good. Meanwhile, he\u2019s not getting help from anyone else, especially not the staff of his school, who are eager to help but never see him enough (they’re already bending over backwards to keep him from repeating this year and are trying to avoid reporting him for truancy, given the number of school days he’s missed). My goal is to get my son the help he needs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It\u2019s hard not to unleash your wrath when your ex-wife\u2019s insistence on playing doctor blocks the real doctor from getting through. Your own child is in trouble, your ex\u2019s behavior is troubling, and you\u2019re this close to tearing her a new one.<\/p>\n
Remember, however, that nuclear wars between protective caregivers are costly and often harm the one you most want to rescue; by fighting against your ex-wife\u2019s treatment, you\u2019d just be increasing her blast range. <\/p>\n
The first thing to do then is to consider the alternatives while taking comfort in the fact that there\u2019s a great deal you can learn about your child\u2019s problems, and a great deal you can do to help. But it\u2019ll only work if you take things one at a time instead of taking your wife down.<\/p>\n
Begin by encouraging the teachers to invoke truancy laws without directly blaming your ex-wife or disparaging her intentions or even her treatment. Yes, it\u2019s a general rule that shrinks don\u2019t treat their own children, but you\u2019re not required to bring that up and shouldn\u2019t if you want to promote negotiations. All you want to allege is that truancy is bad and that you and the teachers don\u2019t have the professional, official input you need to decide whether this treatment, and the attendant absences, are really necessary. <\/p>\n
Similarly, teachers (or you) may threaten to report neglect if a parent fails to get appropriate help for a medical or psychiatric problem. Again, you\u2019re not disparaging your ex\u2019s treatment or maternal love, just insisting that a non-parent do an evaluation because you believe that\u2019s what the rules require.<\/p>\n
I assume you\u2019ve tried to explain your reasoning to your ex and that her response is to control more and consult less, and that\u2019s why the time for explaining is past. Let her know that you (and hopefully the teachers) have to do what you have to do and it\u2019s pointless to discuss why. <\/p>\n
Assure her that you\u2019ll be happy to discuss ways of avoiding court intervention and control, which all require an independent evaluation and no school absences without authorization by an independent professional. If not, it\u2019s out of your hands, the conversation is over, and the war won\u2019t have to begin.<\/p>\n
STATEMENT<\/strong>:
\n\u201cIt scares me to think that the person who is most probably making my son crazy is also shrinking his head, keeping him out of school, and controlling his care, but there are better ways to protect his boundaries than by fighting with his mother. His teachers and I have good strategic options for stopping her while remaining polite and respectful. In the end, we\u2019ll find out what my son needs and make sure he gets it.\u201d<\/p>\nMy 16-year-old son has been suicidal for several years and no one seems able to give him the help he needs. His psychiatrist has doped him up with medications that haven\u2019t worked. He\u2019s been hospitalized 3 times and spent several months in residential treatment and it did nothing but give him some new friends who use drugs. My wife and I spent most of our savings on fancy schools that cater to kids like him, and he still finds a way to get kicked out. It should be obvious to his teachers, his therapists, and anyone with a brain that whatever is wrong hasn\u2019t gotten better, but they haven\u2019t come up with anything new. My goal is to get my son what he needs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
We all assume, if we don\u2019t think about it, that a kid in trouble is obviously a kid in need. It follows that, if he isn\u2019t getting better, then someone must be doing something wrong and something necessary hasn\u2019t been supplied. This flash assumption then triggers the inner crusader (see above), who tries to rescue the child from the inadequacies of his current caregivers and, in doing so, probably makes him worse.<\/p>\n
The alternative to this assumption, sadly, is to recognize that we don\u2019t know how to rescue certain kids; our treatments are just not that powerful. That\u2019s not to say that kids don\u2019t get better anyway, since they change as they grow, and some treatments that don\u2019t help now will be more effective later. Meanwhile, however, you either learn to accept the helplessness of having nothing new to offer (for the time being) or you flail around, disrupting and demoralizing your current care team while looking for a cure that doesn\u2019t exist. <\/p>\n
Of course, you should assure yourself that all treatments have been tried and done properly by educating yourself and getting independent consultations. Discipline yourself, however, to look for evidence of a treatment\u2019s effectiveness, rather than reacting to emotional testimonials from advocates, victims, and would be saviors. No, you shouldn\u2019t accept authority, but rather become an authority who can use the scientific method to protect himself and his son from false hopes.<\/p>\n
Given the limitations in our knowledge, it\u2019s not hard to learn enough about your son\u2019s condition and treatment to understand all the available options and the reasons professionals choose one over the other. Learning the material isn\u2019t hard; accepting the fact that we know so little and that treatments are so often ineffective is much harder.<\/p>\n
Once you\u2019re well informed about risks and benefits, you\u2019re ready to lead the treatment team instead of fighting it. Instead of demoralizing your son and his helpers by declaring treatment a total failure, give credit for good efforts and acknowledge what has been learned. Unless you really think your current team is incompetent, you\u2019ll help your son by giving them encouragement, sharing observations about his responses to treatment, and encouraging them to keep trying and keep looking for something better. It\u2019s not the system that\u2019s failed you, just the universe.<\/p>\n
STATEMENT<\/strong>:
\n\u201cI can\u2019t stand to see my son become a druggie juvie, but I\u2019ve learned a lot about the mental health system in the last several years and I can tell whether or not he\u2019s getting good care. If he is, I will try to help his therapists remember that their work is worthwhile, so that they won\u2019t get down on themselves and quit trying to help him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The helplessness of trying to help troubled kids often brings out the fighting spirit in those who care the most. Unfortunately, without a clear enemy from which you can rescue your child, you often fight for goals that can\u2019t happen, target other would-be helpers, and make a bad thing worse. Regardless of how helpless you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85,37,86,87,98,113,103,22,78,29,89,90,91,93,33,20,48,50,25,38],"tags":[13,14,35,100,34,44,30,97,3,15,11,116,6,104,106,45,42,95,32,102],"class_list":["post-1343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-acceptance","category-actual-mental-illness","category-addiction","category-angerhatred","category-crazy-people","category-depression","category-divorce","category-drugs","category-failure","category-fairness","category-ffamily","category-fear","category-guilt","category-improving-others","category-just-fcked","category-kidsparenting","category-medication","category-obsessive-behavior","category-relationships","category-therapy","tag-acceptance","tag-addiction","tag-anger","tag-anxiety","tag-crazy-people","tag-depression","tag-divorce","tag-fairness","tag-ffamily","tag-fear","tag-guilt","tag-illness","tag-improving-others","tag-just-fcked","tag-medication","tag-mental-illness","tag-parenting","tag-relationships","tag-shit-sandwich","tag-therapy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fxckfeelings.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fxckfeelings.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fxckfeelings.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fxckfeelings.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fxckfeelings.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1343"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fxckfeelings.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1345,"href":"https:\/\/fxckfeelings.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1343\/revisions\/1345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fxckfeelings.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fxckfeelings.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fxckfeelings.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}