Does your child behave properly?

[bravhart1]

Some may know my story, maybe not. I'm a step mom of a 6yo girl who's BPDm is pretty bad. When I say bad I mean mean, spiteful, alienating, false accusations, the works. The 6yo goes through a lot. She sees a therapist weekly, and has for three years, yes since she was three. :'(

I'm saddened to say her behavior is just awful. It saddens me because I don't believe it is what she would have been like if she had not had the mom she had or been exposed to this disorder.

Some of my questions for you out there who also have children they share with a person with BPD:

1) Do you think your child is ADHD? If yes then:  Do you think this is true ADHD or caused by the stress and poor modeling of impulse control by the Borderline parent.

2) Does your child have social issues? Like problems with boundaries, having a hard time being a friend, saying mean things, touching inappropriately, hitting?

3) Does your child have a problem with authority? Not respecting  or listening to adults, teachers, day care providers etc?

4) Does your child seem to have a deeply ingrained sense of entitlement? I'm not talking about the normal kid stuff here, the over the top, I should be able to do what I want when I want no matter what?

5) Do you have a hard time getting your child to empathize with other people or feel tender toward animals?

6)  Do you struggle to get your child to acknowledge fault or responsibility for wrong doing? Be accountable?

I am really struggling with these issues with my step daughter, she is so different than my own children, and any other children I've ever known. I'm wondering if these issues are just mostly her or her situation? I'm wondering if these are common behavior issues with children of BPD people? Do the children of borderlines have a harder time holding it together?

Lastly, I am wondering if anyone out there is confused by how much influence the BPD parent seems to have when they have a very limited time with the child vs them spending the majority of their time with us? My SD seems to gravitate to how mom does everything, make a bed, brush teeth, fold a shirt  (and of course all the other odd inappropriate things) even though she spends 90% of her time with us in our household. Why does moms way stick

Like super glue?

Thanks guys for all your support as always!

[Swiggle]

It saddens me to when I see what my own kids go through, with their dad uNPD and what my step kids go through, with their mom uBPD. To answer your questions.

1) Do you think your child is ADHD? If yes then:  :)o you think this is true ADHD or caused by the stress and poor modeling of impulse control by the Borderline parent.

My girls, DD12, SD13 were a little older and had very healthy bonding before both sets of parents divorced and were better able to make sense of what was going on. My boys, DS8, SS8 were younger when things went south. My son had healthy bonding but when I moved out and dad found a GF the kids came second and they spent much of there time not around dad. I believe my son had a hard time with adjustments and rules being different between houses. He was argumentative and would get angry over little things. This worried me so when I started taking him to T she did the Conner's Test. She found from my answers, dad's answers and his teacher's answers that he had characteristics of oppositional defiance. I have worked really hard at keeping him in T and using techniques to help him manage himself and he is doing great. As for my SS, he doesn't have the OD but he has really, really poor impulse control and sees a T as well. Just recently we had issues with SS touching (mainly his sister) inappropriately. After T sessions about how bad this was, it continued and his T finally did a reporting to child services. It was a few instances over the last several months and mom blamed it on our household because the kids were staying home in the summer instead of going to camp and she insisted that it was because they were unsupervised. She forgot the fact that several of the touching episodes happened at her house   but I digress.

2) Does your child have social issues? Like problems with boundaries, having a hard time being a friend, saying mean things, touching inappropriately, hitting?

Both boys have boundary issues, like touching someone's stuff without asking or hitting when they don't get there way with the girls or each other. The girls both think that making friends is to much work, which makes me sad. They can all say mean things and I truly feel, especially for my step kids that it is all of the negative stuff that gets said at mom's house.

3) Does your child have a problem with authority? Not respecting  or listening to adults, teachers, day care providers etc?

Again the boys have a harder time with this. My son has a hard time when respecting his step-dad and my SS has a hard time with respecting me. I don't think their other parent has ever really given them permission to like/love us. Specifically my SS, his mother loathes me and speaks poorly of me often (according to the kids) I don't think she does anything to hide her bitterness toward me or DH. My exnpd, does a better job of not saying those things overtly but I think for him my son can sense it.

4) Does your child seem to have a deeply ingrained sense of entitlement? I'm not talking about the normal kid stuff here, the over the top, I should be able to do what I want when I want no matter what?

Yep they all do to some degree. Not sure what is normal for their age versus what is coming from the other influences.

5) Do you have a hard time getting your child to empathize with other people or feel tender toward animals?

I got a cat 1 month after moving out from my ex. My kids love her since the day they met her. As my DH and I blended families we bought two more animals, a cat and a dog. They all love them and care for them. I think us having pets shows them how to care for and have empathy for them, because they see us doing it. The see the vast difference between how we view animals and how their other parents view them. All the kids at some point have made comments about how they don't understand how/why their mom/dad couldn't love an animal.

6)  :)o you struggle to get your child to acknowledge fault or responsibility for wrong doing? Be accountable?

Some of this I think is a kid thing, but with my SS he never takes responsibility. He has very much learned the victim stance from his mother... .it is always someone else's fault. My son can do this to but not to the degree that my SS does. The girls don't like to take responsibility because they don't like getting in trouble but they usually will. We have worked with the T on ways to help them understand their part in anything that happens and we drive that home with the way we talk about what happened.

I personally think that most behavior issues with kids that have major problems comes from the environment, parenting or lack of, and attachment to the parents. When you toss a mental health issues in the mix the kids suffer much more. I think all families go through crisis sometimes, but it is those that can face it, work through it in a positive way they fare better. Unfortunately our kids/step-kids will most likely always have an unhealthy driving force in their lives. It sucks, I hate it for my kids!

We have 50/50 parenting with both sets of kids. For my step-kids, I think they want to please mom; because who doesn't want their mother's love. They often appease her and take responsibility for her feelings. So if they come to my house and do all the things mom's way, I feel like it is so they can let her know that and she is pleased with it. If they please her they feel loved. I noticed that with all my kids, age 8ish to about 10 was really when I felt the most frustrated with the other parents antics. We kept doing what we do and as they started thinking in less black and white the kids started to see that mom/dad have issues and we aren't the 6-headed green monsters. Hang in there! 

[bravhart1]

Thank you for your reply. I really appreciate you taking the time to respond.

I have asked this question a hundred different ways to the T and I'm not sure if I ever get the answer I am looking for, meaning she hedges about where this comes from, and I understand she must stay neutral.

That's why I asked this here, I really do appreciate your responses.

BH

[Swiggle]

Does the T see both mom and SD or just SD? Why do you say she stays neutral?

[bravhart1]

She is child's T but talks to both parents and me. She must stay neutral to show impartiality towards the parents.

[livednlearned]

Hi bravhart1,

My son is ADHD, plus some other things. I'm sort of at the point where the diagnoses don't matter, he just needs special parenting to help him cope, and therapy to help him learn healthy skills. And I need therapy to try and make sense of him, too.

Last week I read this article in Scientific American Mind about kids who seem to have more vulnerable or sensitive nervous systems: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/helping-sensitive-children-thrive/

The full article is behind a firewall, but it's out on the stands now if you're interested in reading more.

I think this sensitive genotype theory describes so much of what I see in my son. His nervous system seems very overstimulated, for better and for worse. And that means he needs a different kind of parenting than what he got from his dad. I was the primary caregiver, so that probably helped my son to a certain degree, maybe more so than kids like your SD whose primary parent is the same gender, and spends lots of time with her. I could tell intuitively that S14 was sensitive, and other than some distancing behaviors that I misread, I feel pretty attuned to him. If I wasn't, I think he would be a royal mess, in many ways worse off than his dad.

It's possible that your SD6 has a sensitive genotype and that makes her challenging to parent. I do think these kids struggle to develop emotionally, maybe they lag behind their peers. The hardest thing I've had to learn is to parent S14 where he is at emotionally, not where he is at in terms of chronological age, or where his peers are at. That means that if I care about him picking up his clothes and hanging them up, I stay in the room until it's done. I do other things that I learned from S14's therapist, too, even though it can be a pain. S14 can lack empathy at times, so I model this a lot. Like tending to his tiny almost imperceptible wounds as though they are life threatening. It's possible that his sensitivity makes him feel things much more than they do for me -- I have to not judge his perception of the pain, and instead respond to how he is feeling. Slowly, I'm seeing progress.

I love my kid, and he's come a long way in the last 5 years. But wow can it be exhausting and challenging. It's made me have to be more empathic, and practice wisemind and all the other tools that my T and the healing platform here have promoted. Only when I admitted that S14 was at risk for mental health issues did I start to change my own behavior, and he sort of tagged along bit by bit until we have a good relationship.

I also had to figure out a way to empathetically work on boundaries. I'm not sure how this would work with a 6 year old, but with my son, we talk about ways we're going to approach problem behaviors together. This is pretty weird compared to the traditional way I am inclined to parent.

For example, he wanted to be able to eat in his room. We talked about my concerns (messy room, bugs, etc.) and he agreed that he didn't want that, and promised to be tidy. The consequence was that he would have to give up the privilege. Of course, his room quickly turned into a giant trash can. This weekend, we put an end to food in his room with minimal upset. I refuse to pick up anything from the floor of his room, and that's hard! I'm a fixer rescuer type -- he knows now that I don't do his dirty work, and even that doesn't seem to motivate him to be tidy.

Anyway, he has changed me into a different kind of parent.

I think a lot of kids with BPD parents are the walking wounded and need a lot more TLC than the typical kid. 

[bravhart1]

Yes I can certainly understand where you are coming from. My own biological son was diagnosed with adhd, but somehow that didn't seem to fit for me. I knew as his mom something was "not right" about him but not sure what it was. I continued to search out professionals that weren't trying to simply medicate him into submission but to diagnose his particular issue. He was finally seen by someone knowledgable to see he was a very high functioning aspbergers child. All of it fell into place, including his adhd " symptoms".

I've had to work very hard to protect my special guy from the harshness of this world and still help him to become a man who can be on his own. It's still not easy and he's 25 this month.

My SD is very sensitive to her own owies, plights, and feelings, she seems to thrive on finding ways in which she is being slighted so she can portray herself as a victim ( much like her mother) but she can not find any feeling for anyone else. Case in point, a week ago she did something in her classroom which resulted in her harming her teacher. She could have hurt herself but the teacher intervened and got hurt instead. SD was discribed by the other adults involved as being "fascinated" but not sorry or concerned in the least. Kind of disturbing to hear. But unfortunately not something I haven't witnessed myself.

[livednlearned]

A book that helped me was Highly Sensitive Child. I sometimes think of N/BPDx as a highly sensitive kid who grew up in a punitive home (plus bipolar mother, and his own apparent bipolar). I think S14 is genetically similar to his dad, and I managed to offset some of the damage with my parenting.

Could it be that your SD has some of the same traits her mom has, and its offset to a degree because she's with you 90 percent of the time? I feel like I'm trying to sculpt with this very unusual medium, not the usual stuff, not what I expected I would receive. Maybe it's the same for you? We have to learn new skills, I guess.

Understanding the depth of empathy I had to practice has been a challenge for me. My son reads my face, my body language, my tone -- there is no faking it with him. I have to be present, and paying attention, and really listen. I've started to change as a result, even with friends and family.

I remember hearing one of the BPD experts -- Blaise Aguirre, I think. Or maybe it was Gunderson -- about how if a parent of a BPD child/adolescent could not find someone trained in DBT, to find a T who was at least empathetic and believed in the child's ability to get better. That this was in many ways more important than anything else. A lot of medical professionals who work with BPD are resentful of their patients (as we can all imagine, I'm sure). When it's your child, though, a flip switches. It becomes a different kind of diagnosis. The very same thing I despised in my ex was suddenly showing up in my son, and it made me feel an entirely different type of compassion and empathy. That more than anything has probably helped my son. I had to let go of perfection and expectations and just drill down into the root of the problem, and change the only thing I could (me).

You're in a tough spot because SD is not your child -- my SO has three kids and the youngest is alienated from his dad, and not a person I want to spend much time with. He lies, is filthy, no empathy, no regard for other people. He's two years older than my son, and living with his mom. Even so, my SO and I talk about living together and I know that our relationship will be strained to the breaking point if his son ever came to live with us. I could maybe do it if my son was in a good place, and I was out of grad school, and had a stretch of time to shore up strength... .

Be kind to yourself about what you're doing for SD6. You're here trying to understand her, and married into a family where there is BPD.

As Bill Eddy says, these aren't just difficult people, they're the most difficult people.

And their kids have a pretty hard time, whether it's genetics or nurture or both.

[bravhart1]

Thanks for your insight! I appreciate the reminder to find some compassion. I struggle with feeling like this terrible fate has befallen me where BPDm is concerned. I know this terrible fate has hurt SD too but she's a big fan of moms and I forget that she doesn't have anywhere else to go with her feelings about this. She is an immature six year old to boot and it makes for a difficult home life with very little joy these days. For any of us.

I guess I struggle most with why she gravitates to any and all of moms comments, oddities and behaviors and doesn't seem to be getting any of the training we show or tell.

Any ideas how to see this any differently?