Does any of you have children? How do you experience parenthood? How does your illness affect your parenting and how do your children deal with it?
I am a single mother of a 5 year old son. In the beginning I could take good care of him: I loved him immensely and when I had him I was not yet ill. There is no contact with his father anymore, he was the reason I got psychotic disorder. He was a threat to our son. Over the past years I have become more and more ill and now my son lives with my parents.
Medication has an extremely bad influence on me. It made me lose all joy and love, even my feelings for my son. I find that without a moment of doubt the most horrible aspect of my illness. I hate taking the medication and would stop all the time because of this reason.
On good days I do take care of my son and we do normal things together. I make sure I show affection like I used to do and he doesn’t notice. He is happy when I am around and often asks for me to come and stay with him. On bad days I stay away from him. I am really thankful my parents take good care of him.
I do worry sometimes about him… He basicly has only a tiny bit of one parent left right now. I also worry he might inherit our vulnerability for psychosis - his father had schizophrenia in the family and had paranoid traits himself.
These are the really Big Names in child development in the past half century. Merely digging through all the amazon.com pages on their books – as well as their wikipedia pages – will be a source of considerable conceptual education.
Anyone who understands these concepts will pretty much know what to do when a child, adolescent or “adult child” acts out. Because they will understand the underlying dynamics themselves rather than just follow some “expert’s” instructions.
Work with that “psychiatrist” (or “p-doc”) to develop a medication formula that stabilizes their symptoms sufficiently so that they can tackle the psychotherapy that will disentangle their thinking.
.
If you/she/he needs a professional intervention to get through treatment resistance, I would use those search tools in item 2 above. Look for clinics that include intervention and treatment resistance services.
.
I will just say again that the reason you have such a tough time with your meds is probably because you keep stopping and starting them again. They take away everyone’s joy and passion for the first few months. But, as your body adjusts to them, your personality will start to reemerge.
The simple fact that you got your son away from his father, and that you’re taking the necessary steps to save him from the darkest moments of your illness, proves what a good mother you are. I’m glad your parents can be a part of your team. Having support really makes a huge difference.
I will stay on meds and hope my body gets used to them. All the starting and stopping must have done no good either, I understand that. I have never used meds for longer than a couple of months, so I don’t know about that.
And thanks for the compliments. I did fight really really hard to get my son into a safe situation and I am happy I succeeded at that! And I do try to protect him from my own bad moods right now. So yes, that’s good, I guess
I raised my son in my parent’s home after leaving his abusive father. I took a class called “Systematic Training for Effective Parenting”, which was about natural and logical consequences rather than punishment…very influential to me. And I read a lot of books. I read about raising a boy, and I read about raising a resilient child, and because early on I saw unique qualities in my son, I read child psychology books, especially The Highly Sensitive Child, which was my bible for raising my son. I couldn’t stop my ex from getting visitation, but I tried to build a strong foundation, with the help of my folks, at home. I made mistakes and always apologized and owned them. I yelled, but never anything mean or personally hurtful. I made sure he knew that he’s loved and that I’m proud of him. He’s 21 now and we’re very close. Always be honest, vulnerable, human, strong and loving. And have as much fun as you can fit in. It’s the greatest experience if you let it be. ️
So true, thanks for pointing it out.
I was sooo bad first year of Luka’s life because I wanted to breastfeed him and I dropped the meds. Then when it would become tough I would start again, then quit again. Few hell months.
Finally I accepted that its better for him to have a somewhat stable mother than to have a walking tempered milk bomb.
both of my parents have mental illnesses. My dad has schizoaffective disorder and my mother has depression add to that a brother with autisum, adhd and bipolar disorder. The house was pretty volatile. My parents fought a lot and my brother was abusive towards me. None of the take meds now for their illnesses so their emotions are inconsistent and erratic.
️
