Dear parents, stop making it all about finding the answer.
You bring them home for the first time. The first time you locked eyes, you knew were in love. You make a promise to your child that first evening, “I will not let any harm come your way”.
You can’t believe how quickly she’s growing. It was just yesterday that she was crawling. Now she’s knocking everything down as she rumbles and tumbles down your hallway.
She used to ask for things such as “food… me”. And now she’s forming sentences and questions you’d rather not answer for a few years (or centuries), “where do babies come from?”
You went to her first recital. It was awful, but you couldn’t really remember because you had so many tears in your eyes and your arms became extremely tired from holding up your iPad for two hours. Not to mention, all the gripes and murmurs of how much the light from your screen was annoying everyone.
You try and shield her from the “real world”, only to find out that she’s interested in dating, posting selfies of herself online, and needing you less and less as a companion.
As you grit your teeth and bear with your diminished role, you understand your child’s need for autonomy. They’re becoming a….. person.
When did this happen?
Out of the blue one day, you get a phone call from her school. Her teacher tells you that, “She hasn’t been completing her assignments”. “She has been withdrawing from social activities more and more”. “Is everything OK at home?”
A red flag goes up. You begin interrogating your daughter, asking if anything is wrong. Did something happen? Did she see something? Did I do something wrong?
At this point, you’re seeing that school is not the only thing becoming affected. She tells you that she doesn’t want to go to her soccer practice anymore. She tells you one Saturday that she doesn’t want to hang out with her best friend. You see that smile less often. She’s irritable all the time. Her presence is, well, non-existent.
The stream of questions and worries have now exploded into an ocean of worries and fears.
You jump on the internet. You find a local therapist who specializes in children and adolescents and set up an appointment immediately
Three weeks into sessions, you see no improvement. You interrogate the therapist before and after every session. You already emailed the therapist this morning, but in desperation, email again late in the evening.
You need answers.
You need to know the reason why your child is suffering.
A month later, you find yourself at a psychiatrist’s office. Explaining in full detail to her about the course of your daughter’s disposition, her current symptoms, and how talk therapy isn’t working effectively. The psychiatrist prescribes a light dose of an anti-depressant. She explains to you that the course of medications could take weeks before seeing any results. She reviews the side-effects and tells you to come back in a month.
No results.
Months are flying by.
Talk therapy isn’t working. Medications are not working. You begin going from therapist to therapist. Reading every self-help book and consulting with other parents about what to do. Your daughter has changed medications 4 times now. She’s not on one psychotropic now, but a medley of them.
You keep driving yourself mad in hopes of finding this elusive cure.
It has to be out there.
I just haven’t found it yet.
You begin racking your brain, cataloguing all of your daughter’s experiences and making more from her interactions and experiences then you should.
What if that one time on the slide at the playground, when that boy was especially mean to her? She cried for so long that night.
First grade was a particularly difficult year for her. I just got a new job and it required me to stay later in the evening. She spent a lot of time with the babysitter that year. What if that’s when it developed? What if the babysitter did something?
More and more, these ruminations and machinations are making sense.
This has to be it!
Every new health provider, you make these insights clear. You start leading the therapist, emphasizing these findings, hoping that the therapist agrees, and ultimately, in a few months, get the report that your daughter finally admitted to this or that event being the sole reason of why she felt the way she did.
All this time, you’ve been telling your daughter implicitly and explicitly, “we just need to find out what’s wrong with you”. “It’s not your fault”. “We will get you help”.
By now, the list of diagnoses has grown into a laundry list:
- Major Depressive Disorder
- Adjustment Disorder
- Generalized Anxiety Disorder
- Oppositional Defiant Disorder
- Persistent Depressive Disorder
- Possible Borderline Personality Disorder
What the fuck is it?!
Why hasn’t someone this out yet!?
This is how most parents arrive at my facility. They’re exhausted, frustrated, and scared. They feel hopeless but still have the drive and faith that an answer is right around the corner. They just haven’t found it yet.
They unload years of anxiety, worry, and now, unsurmountable expectation on my lap.
What they expect in essence is that I “fix it”.
It becomes evident, in speaking with most adolescents, that they’re tired of searching. They’ve become resigned to their diagnosis or diagnoses. That’s what they’ve become to their parents.
They are their illness. Their only hope is to find the cure.
This breaks my heart. Each and every time.
These kids have been reduced to something that is out of their control. To add to it, the person they were, are, and will be are forever linked. Not because they believe it.
But because their parents believe it.
These were the messages that were sent implicitly and explicitly as they were shuttled in and out of treatment, through millions of med changes, and with every parent teacher conference you had in explaining your child’s deficits.
A lot of my work is undoing years of this process of finding the “cure”, or more particularly, finding the reason for this mental illness. Which, at it’s inception, was noble and pure. Something is wrong with my kid, I need to find out what it is and figure out how I can help.
“Was it that time I forgot to pick you up at school for a few hours?”
“Your dad was very mean and nasty to me, I’m sure it has impacted you”.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Parents, please listen:
Mental health doesn’t work this way.
It never has.
And it never will.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Finding that seminal moment that changed the course of your child’s development is not the cure. Finding appropriate coping skills to manage emotions and thoughts is not the cure. Finding the right balance of medications is not the cure.
Constantly saying that finding the right (fill in the blank) is not the cure.
I’ve cleared up diagnoses that were incorrect. I’ve reached those “aha” moments with clients about certain experiences from their and it’s impact on functioning today. I’ve had numerous conversations about how much the medication is helping. I’ve helped clients effectively utilize appropriate coping skills.
For moments, they were extremely relieving for my clients. But never lasting.
What I always strive for, especially between a child and parent is that, in that moment, regardless of the past, of the diagnosis, of what the future may hold, is your child. Wrought with pain.
Sit with it.
Validate him/her.
Tolerate their pain.
Be present for them.
Share your pain about their pain.
And for a moment, understand and accept what your child has figured out a long time ago.
That in that moment, there may not be an answer.
And one won’t be right around the corner.
And.
That’s OK.
You’re still here.
Like what you read? Try some of my other writings:
5 things to remember about me, your therapist
Radical acceptance. How to accept life as it really is and make meaning
Steve is a program director at a residential facility in Southern California. He is aspiring to become a fighter of stigma in mental health, by sharing personal stories, stories of others, and what he (believes) he has learned through his work.
