Parenting Through the Storm: Find Help, Hope, and Strength When Your Child Has Psychological Problems, is written by Ann Douglas. The author, a member of this group and network, has a warm, open and honest tone.
She's a parent and gets that parents and kids are sometimes or even often scared, struggling and in crisis.
She knows. She writes about the time she almost lost her daughter, thirteen at the time, to death by suicide. Her daughter was vomiting and sleeping, restlessly, all night with Douglas by her side.
She writes about the time she almost lost her daughter, thirteen at the time, to death by suicide and they spent the night in intensive care.
"I thought back to an earlier time, when I was a brand-new mother up in the middle of the night in this very same hospital with this very same child, then a tiny newborn. I remembered how sacred and uncertain I had felt during those early hours and days of motherhood.
Those same feelings were back once again. But there weren't any mom-and-baby classes I could take to tell me how to keep my teenager daughter safe from herself.
It didn't matter that I was in the heart of a busy hospital, surrounded by the hustle and bustle of the ICU, and just inches away from my sleeping daughter. I felt utterly, totally alone. I felt like my daughter was slipping away."
How do parents manage and function and cope and get help and support when our children are in agony or crisis? Douglas wrote this book, in part, so other parents would feel less alone that she had as a parent of four children who all had at least one mental health challenges.
Douglas wrote this book, in part, so other parents would feel less alone that she had as a parent of four children who all had at least one mental health challenges.
Parents often struggle in private, silence and pain. Family and friends often disappear or don't know what to say or do.
Parenting Through conveys the daunting difficulty of having a child(ren) suffering and in pain while still remaining hopeful and helpful. ild who is suffering and struggling with psychological problems while remaining hopeful.
It is packed with resources, references and relatable stories.Douglas has documented her experiences, observations and what she has learned. She's combined it with research and the voices of many other parents who have thrashed in the same waters.r were in the same boat. who are have parented kids in emotional pain and crisis?
Some topics she covers are:
- helping parents become aware of mental health problems
- dealing with a diagnosis and getting help, in general, and in crisis
- becoming a better advocate for our child
- why and how to take care of ourselves and other family members
- recovery and hope as well as challenges and hard times
She shares her own observations about parenting, too. She writes:
"Many parents find themselves taking new approaches to parenting in the wake of their child'd diagnosis. They become aware that one-size-fits all parenting solutions won't work anymore (assuming they ever worked at all)."
How many of us realize this very same thing for ourselves when typical parenting advice turned out to be utterly useless or destructive in our house, family or situation?when dealing with a particular child, situation or dynamic?
Parenting Through the Storm is so warm and intimate in some places it reads like a memoir. Other times, sections serve to educate and guide with practical tips about executive skills in children and strategies for when they are not working well.
This is a book which could be used as a life jacket when parents or kids are thrashing around in open water struggling to survive. It also provides support for parents lucky enough to be in a boat no longer taking on water, who have time and energy to focus on strengthening ourselves and our families and thinking about issues such as nutrition and relaxation.
Douglas shares a tiny bit about her own emotional health challenges, how she and her mother have been diagnosed with a bipolar disorder. She doesn't go into detail though about how this impacted her as a child, adult or during any phase of her parenting which surprised me given the link between ACEs and increased risk for physical and emotional health problems throughout the lifespan is clear. Those of us who are parenting with ACEs are more likely to have kids with ACEs as well. This is something many parents struggle with in shame and silence and I was disappointed it wasn't explored by Douglas.
However, the focus of this book is on parenting through the storm rather than figuring about how and why it got stormy in the first place and how more storms might be prevented for future generations. It's possible Douglas chose to steer clear of this topic on purpose. She writes that many parents have been blamed and shamed in ways painful, stigmatizing and frustrating - often exactly when seeking medical support, intervention and help for our kids.
The last chapter on "Creating a Better System" helps provide parents understand that the system itself often seems to be working against us, our kids and itself.
"It's important for you to understand this so tha you don't start blaming yourself for not being efficient enough or persisitent enough or smart enought of whatever-else enough to fix the metnal health care system and educational systems on your own."
She writes about the need for creating community support on the local level, where treatments are affordable, effective and accessible so kids are not only treated in emergency rooms when in crisis. Some kids get no help at all or are hurt by being diverted to the criminal justice system instead.
Many of us have considered our parenting and health issues as painful, private and personal. But once we realize how many others have ACEs as well we realize it is far more than a personal issue. Douglas shares the words of Liza Long, who said:
"This is a public health crisis and we're treating it like it's just bad choices and bad parenting,"
This is a sentiment many of us here in Parenting with ACEs have probably thought, felt or said. It's often the place where we begin to look in new ways at families, communities and systems and consider how other ACEs - Adverse Community Environments - impact people just as Adverse Childhood Experiences do.
If Douglas revises this fantastic book I hope she will add ACEs science. I'd love to read how someone so smart, warm and wise would share this information with other parents in the same boat.
Note: There's a recent webinar entitled Learn How to use the Pair of ACEs Communications Tool available online, for free
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