Your age when you found out and how to get it out there to younger people

[Think About It...]

This is an interesting topic.  It's a sensitive topic for kids because most kids think their parents are "lame" at least!  I'm sure a lot of kids would have their parents dx with some sort of mental health issue by the time they graduated from high school.  If that happened, then it would be difficult to pick out the kids who really were dealing with a pwBPD.  But I agree that it should definitely be discussed.  My favorite class in high school was psychology.  It was just 1 semester and I'm sure it was very basic.  I found it very interesting.  I then minored in psychology in college, but never heard of a personality disorder that I can recall.  Again, maybe it was discussed, but did not stand out at me. 

Also, in my case, I didn't learn about Personality Disorders until recently, but most of the issues I had with my mom were as an adult.  It's been going on for the last 15 years or so and not really until after I was married.  My opinion is that my mom is NPD/ASPD and possibly BPD as well to some extent, but I always thought of her as very high maintenance and nothing more.  I also walked around on eggshells so she wouldn't get mad at me, but because of that, she never got mad at me!  And as long as she didn't get mad at me, I didn't really think about it too much.  I have enjoyed the fact that she lives out of state, so I don't have daily contact with her.  I guess being that she didn't physically abuse me or rage at me I probably wouldn't have noticed as much as someone who had suffered abuse as a child.

[Mom2MyKids]

This is an interesting topic.  It's a sensitive topic for kids because most kids think their parents are "lame" at least!  I'm sure a lot of kids would have their parents dx with some sort of mental health issue by the time they graduated from high school.  If that happened, then it would be difficult to pick out the kids who really were dealing with a pwBPD.  But I agree that it should definitely be discussed.  My favorite class in high school was psychology.  It was just 1 semester and I'm sure it was very basic.  I found it very interesting.  I then minored in psychology in college, but never heard of a personality disorder that I can recall.  Again, maybe it was discussed, but did not stand out at me. 

Also, in my case, I didn't learn about Personality Disorders until recently, but most of the issues I had with my mom were as an adult.  It's been going on for the last 15 years or so and not really until after I was married.  My opinion is that my mom is NPD/ASPD and possibly BPD as well to some extent, but I always thought of her as very high maintenance and nothing more.  I also walked around on eggshells so she wouldn't get mad at me, but because of that, she never got mad at me!  And as long as she didn't get mad at me, I didn't really think about it too much.  I have enjoyed the fact that she lives out of state, so I don't have daily contact with her.  I guess being that she didn't physically abuse me or rage at me I probably wouldn't have noticed as much as someone who had suffered abuse as a child.

[sollycat]

I just discovered BPD this year at 36 years old. I always knew something was wrong but never had the insight to start researching it as a teen or younger. Even if I had the internet back then, I'm not sure I would have researched anything. My mother was a raging alcoholic my entire life, downing her first Coors Lite of the day while I had my cereal in the morning. By the time she picked us up from school at 2:30, she was wasted. I knew that was wrong, so did many parents of friends' of mine. Yet still nobody reached out to help. You just didn't "do" that back in the 70s, I guess. Even today, I wonder how I would handle that situation if my daughter's friend had a raging lunatic for a mother???

I agree that getting the facts out there would be a great idea, I just don't know how many "kids" would be open to the information, let alone have any recourse to do anything with it. I would have loved someone in my family or community to take me to an Alanon/Alateen meeting as a teenager but nobody ever told me such a thing existed.

And as I was growing up, I know now that seeing a Therapist could have saved me years of strife, but at the time, like so many of us say here, my life with my mother was my "normal". I just accepted that was how life was going to be, I never realized that there was an alternative. And let's be honest, as a 10-14-17 year old, how many alternatives are there really?

It's a sick isolating disease whose victims are plenty.