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Hank and I are now on day three without Amy. She is on spring break and enjoying it with her grandparents. We are decompressing.
Amy is not an easy child to parent. Don’t get me wrong, she is delightful and one of the greatest people it has been my pleasure to know. I love her with all of my being. However, it is exhausting to be her parent.
Until today, I never really could put my finger on why this is. Today, however, out of the blue, it hit me. I have to be constantly leading her. Although it has been nearly two years since she was last hospitalized, I am still leading her daily. Those three years of finding the right meds, therapist and hospitalizations, she lost three years of development. She just doesn’t understand how life works.
We have to explain so much to her – why people do what they do, how to make friends, what she needs to do to complete a project, how to keep track of her stuff, etc. It’s like puberty on an accelerated course. We have to teach her what she should have learned along the way from ages 12 to 15 as quickly as possible and it’s exhausting.
So Hank and I are taking this week as a breather.
April 13, 2010 at 7:22 pm
I was the exact opposite of Amy. While I have been sick all my life, when I went through my three years of Hell, I matured at an accelerated rate. In fact, as I am still not completely stable, I feel this process continuing. With the combination of both mental illness and trauma contributing to it, I feel as if I have lost my childhood. I lost my innocence and immaturity at age three.
April 14, 2010 at 7:45 am
I’m so sorry to hear that. Amy is advanced in her emotional awareness and that leads to some of her confusion about why her peers behave as they do. I hope that will make her stronger. She aspires to become an occupational therapist and work with kids so hopefully this will be an advantage for her in life. Something good has to come of all of this, right? At least, that’s my hope and why I started this blog.
April 15, 2010 at 4:41 pm
I too am advanced in my emotional maturity. While I realize why my peers act much less mature and superficial – they are teens, with hormones, gray matter and lack of of experience (as in, nothing completely life-changing) mixing together at once – it is still hard for me to operate around them. I feel as if I am an alien in their world, with my concerns, thoughts, worries, emotions, hopes, view of the world, and even the way I talk so totally different. In fact, many did not accept me for it and think of me as weird, too smart, a freak, and other things. I do have friends now; however, it took finding others that are either like or completely accepting of me, and that was certainly no easy feat.
As for gaining something from this nightmare, I know I certainly have. I now want to achieve a career as either a child/adolescent psychologist or psychiatrist (that does therapy) so I can help others like me. In addition, in an attempt to find a healthy coping mechanism I found art, writing and music – things I can now do well and gracefully. Even in my good moments, I still create. From this suffering, I have also gained a deep sense of compassion, empathy, acceptance, protection and loyalty to my friends. While there is good chance I still would have these traits without the pain, they would not be nearly as strong. I have also walked away with a wealth of information and care for a highly stigmatized and misunderstood group of illness. Looking back now, while the mental sickness was terrible, it has given me too much for me to wish never to have experienced it.
Erika/Eri
April 16, 2010 at 1:40 pm
Wow, Erika/Eri, I couldn’t have said it better! You have explained yours and Amy’s experiences so well and eloquently.
May 12, 2010 at 9:47 pm
this is so interesting because I see the same thing in my daughter. She has alot of empathy and compassion for people, perhaps because of all she has walked through. In general, she prefers older young adults to high school peers, and has little patience for the high school social scene. After reading these posts, I am understanding why.
May 30, 2010 at 7:14 am
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