ShesMakingMeCrazy
New Member
Hi, I'm new to this forum. I came here, as I'm sure others have, to find solace among people in similar circumstances. My BD is 15. She is an only child. She has been high maintenance since the age of 3, very moody and prone to raging tantrums of surprising duration. While she was still in diapers, she was put in timeout in her room. She pulled all her books on the floor, pulled off her diaper and urinated on the books. Her solid wood bedroom door has cracks in it from where she threw heavy items against it as a small child. Things really started getting difficult around age 11, when she was hitting puberty. She became very depressed, anxious, irritable, angry, demanding, impulsive and needy, and it has only gotten worse since then. She started cutting around age 12 and this has continued to a greater and lesser extent. She has never cut herself seriously enough to need stitches. She overdosed at 12, but told me about it immediately thereafter. I gave her ipecac, and she was not hospitalized since it appeared to be a gesture. She has been under the care of a psychiatrist, multiple counselors, intensive in-home treatment. She was in a residential treatment center for 3 weeks one year ago. This did more to help us than her. We desperately needed the break this allowed. When she returned home we instituted a point system, and things improved for a short while. We have had her in the local public school, but removed her in 7th grade when she was complaining of being bullied. We put her in online school for the remainder of the grade, and she wound up failing. She repeated 7th grade the following year in a different online school and passed. Having her at home all the time was problematic and stressful. I managed to get her into a really good charter school this year, but her complete lack of effort and general PIA behavior necessitated pulling her out once again. She has been homeschooled for the past month. She has disliked school since 2nd grade and it has been progressively harder for us to get her there and get her to do the work. Since it appears that she will be failing 8th grade as well, we decided to give her the opportunity to spend a year doing GED prep, then allow her to take the GED when she is 16. Initially, she stepped up to the plate, got herself up in the morning and starting work without any nagging. Unfortunately her initiative waned and she started falling behind. This led to an increase in argumentative and angry behavior, loss of privileges, family conflict. 6 days ago she overdosed on Zofran and was taken to the ER. She was kept there until today, and as we speak, she is being transported by the Sheriff's office to an inpatient psychiatric hospital 3 hours away.
Compared to many of the kids on this forum, her behavior is less extreme. She is not generally physically aggressive. She is not using drugs (that I know of). She has not committed any crimes. She is lazy, self-involved, entitled, mean, verbally abusive, impulsive, self-injurious. She is like many teen girls, but to a higher degree. I'm sure we have contributed to her development. We have the best intention of being firm and having rigid boundaries, but her incessant bargaining, wheedling, arguing, demanding wears us down to the point that we will do almost anything to buy some peace. We both realize that this is not effective parenting, but there is a limit to what we can endure. She does have periods of niceness, when she acts "normal" and is pleasant to be around. Her father and I are always on guard, waiting for the other shoe to drop. She can go from 0 to 90 in half a breath. The word "no" tends to have an extremely negative effect on her mood and behavior. I fear my husband will stroke out, and I'm ready to have a nervous breakdown. Neither of us are weak people, nor are we pushovers.
I wish I knew the proper path to take. I don't want her shelved. I do want her to get the help she needs to be a well-adjusted adult. Our lofty goals of years gone by have fallen and now we want to keep her alive, not pregnant, not on drugs, not in jail until her 18th birthday. Beyond that we will have no control, and only hope that we would have been able to instill in her some coping skills and real-world know-how to be able to survive on her own.
Any input from the community will be appreciated.
Compared to many of the kids on this forum, her behavior is less extreme. She is not generally physically aggressive. She is not using drugs (that I know of). She has not committed any crimes. She is lazy, self-involved, entitled, mean, verbally abusive, impulsive, self-injurious. She is like many teen girls, but to a higher degree. I'm sure we have contributed to her development. We have the best intention of being firm and having rigid boundaries, but her incessant bargaining, wheedling, arguing, demanding wears us down to the point that we will do almost anything to buy some peace. We both realize that this is not effective parenting, but there is a limit to what we can endure. She does have periods of niceness, when she acts "normal" and is pleasant to be around. Her father and I are always on guard, waiting for the other shoe to drop. She can go from 0 to 90 in half a breath. The word "no" tends to have an extremely negative effect on her mood and behavior. I fear my husband will stroke out, and I'm ready to have a nervous breakdown. Neither of us are weak people, nor are we pushovers.
I wish I knew the proper path to take. I don't want her shelved. I do want her to get the help she needs to be a well-adjusted adult. Our lofty goals of years gone by have fallen and now we want to keep her alive, not pregnant, not on drugs, not in jail until her 18th birthday. Beyond that we will have no control, and only hope that we would have been able to instill in her some coping skills and real-world know-how to be able to survive on her own.
Any input from the community will be appreciated.