Welcome to Gaia! ::

Wow! All that on sick fingers, I am impressed and even more touched that you would choose to share all of that. Tough love seems to work for some, but it is sooooo hard when you love them sooooo damn much. Fortunately I finally finished all of the paperwork to get her onto an insurance plan and just got the approval letter yesterday. I can now get her back into counseling. Just the mention of her having someone to talk to seems to ease her a bit. Although, unlike your brother she is rarely verbally abusive with me, never ends the way she wants if she is. Example, we went grociery shopping one day and she pulled a really crappy attitude in the store, about something totally unrelated, and so right there in the middle of the store I put down the stuff I was getting and just said "Let's go", we walked out of the store, got in the car and drove the two miles home without a word. We walked into the house and I said for her to follow me, I had something to show her. We went to her room and I opened the door, I said go in there. She stepped into her room and I told her to look around. When she did I told her to make sure she got a good look, and then I said "Welcome to your world, you can come out of it only when I get damn good and ready. You will not treat me like that EVER! I am the only one that is ALWAYS on your side and I love you more than anything and I will not tolerate that kind of treatment from you." She spent some time crying and then had a temper tantrum on her bed, I ignored her until I had time to calm down, we had a long talk about it and she seemed alot better after that.

Her problems are never really with me, she is angry at the world and I just get caught in the crossfire. We are working on this all the time and it is getting better but I have found that when she spends too much time with the wrong people her behavior takes a nose dive. That to has given me tools to control her. I limit who where and when she spends that time and it seems to work.

Anyway, the initial crisis after the running away deal has passed and she realizes that I am trying to help. I think it was all bad advice she got from peers and it really backfired on her. Things are much better now and we are moving on to normal teen issues (like that's easier sweatdrop )

Thanks for your concern and encouragement, it means alot to me, and sorry I got so long winded. redface

The things that make you *SIGH* in life.....children are the biggest one for me. I have a 14 yr old daughter named Stephanie who brought me to Gaia. I came here to keep an eye on her and the perverts the hell away from her. Some raging jackass had the nerve to write my kid a letter that basically said "Cyber me for gold for your kiki kitty quest" I wrote one back that said "Drop dead and kiss your a** good bye I have already forwarded this to the cops jerkoff". I joined Gaia that very day, which joy of joys happened to be the day I signed a CINA(child in need of assistance) on my child, and it was my birthday.

Steph was a normal happy child until puberty. Then, and I will swear to this in a court of law, a demon crawled into her skin and started parading around as my kid. It was that night and day, everything about her changed. I tried to talk to her dad, he had his head up his butt....or was it the new wife's butt? Well needless to say he said he didn't see anything wrong, it was all in my head. Yea rightie o sweetcheeks. I finally got a hold of her therapist who listened and set up an appt for that very day. After describing her behaviors to a MD and a certified therapist Steph was hospitalized in a peds psych unit for a week.

They ended up putting Steph on a drug for her little habit of seeing and hearing things which weren't there. They also adjusted some of her other meds and added an antidepressant. She was much better for a while. Then we started this in and out of the hospital routine. She was becoming a frequent flyer at the rate she was going. She went mostly when she had stopped taking her meds. I am a trained nurse, I myself would watch the kid swollow the meds, she then would walk away and choke them back up. She felt fine, so why did she need all those pills???

I am so ashamed to admit I called the police to protect me from my own child not once but roughly 5 times last summer. I went to work so sore I could barely move let alone help a resident to the bathroom or into bed as I was passing medications at night. One night my sleeve went up my arm, one of my wonderful female residents saw a huge purple bruise. She pointed at it and said "I don't know how you got it but in my day you couldn't leave the b*****d now you can and I suggest you do. I use to fall down a lot myself when I was married so I understand say no more hunny". I didn't have the heart to tell her it was my own child who had beaten me into the ground. I could not admit to anyone let alone to myself I was scared senseless of Stephanie.

We started an at home treatment program, she went to it after school several days a week. It failed to work in her case. Her behaviors were worsening to the point of affecting school and every aspect of her life. Her self esteem was in the gutter. My child was not going to make it unless I sucked it up and admitted this was bigger than I could handle all by myself. I signed the papers on my 38th birthday. I cried the entire time. Sure I knew logically I was doing the right thing, but emotionally it felt like I was tossing my baby to the wolves. I wanted my daughter back not this raging, hateful, spitting, kicking, screaming, hitting, swearing, physically abusive to both parents child. This was not my Stephie, but it was the only way to get the help she needed.

If 9/14 was not a good day for us 10/12 was worse. That's the day I packed up the car and drove my child 3 hours to group home for girls here in Iowa. She has been there for nearly 4.5 months and she is just now getting ready to get off of level one(there are four levels and level one usually takes 30 to 60 days). Her behaviors have improved a great deal. She has not beat the living hell out of anyone in months. She does not scream endlessly for up to 6 hours at a time now. No longer does she plaster herself up against walls with a look of terror on her face from seeing things which are not there. She now sleeps 8 hours a day. Her mental illness is under control and she is learning to cope with people who cause her emotional distress or anger her in more appropriate ways.

Is this the perfect answer? God no, I have had many go arounds with the place over meds, healthcare issues, the way they handle Stephanie's mental illness vs behaviors. In their view her behaviors are seperate from her illness(she is a schizo affect disorder or rather will be in a few years due to the fact they never apply that label to kids under 17 in case they are wrong. It's pretty much accepted she is and will remain one. It is a most horrid cross between bipolar and schizophrenia). They are teaching her to control her behaviors, her illness will be taken care of by the drugs.

There is hope now whereas before there was none. I guess it comes down to this, no matter how bad we think we have it with our kids, there is always someone worse off then us. There are people out there who have kids burning down churches, killing homeless people for the fun of it, and worse yet walking into their own schools with guns.....

We do not have it so bad when we think of it in that light now do we?