17 year old

[river girl]

Hi I am new to this site and our daughter hasn’t been officially diagnosed. I have found so much comfort in this site. Prior to finding y’all, I just couldn’t understand what was going on. Our daughter was adopted at birth. She is diagnosed with ADHD but that never really explained her impulsiveness because much of the most troubling stuff happened when she was on a stimulant. Way more serious eg. getting picked up from school by some adult man her friend knew, having sex and getting dropped back at school. I know that doesn’t shock any of you. You are the only people I have ever told that to. I even keep stuff like that from her dad because he is so mystified and I want to maintain their relationship as best can be. Also, she never admits any of this. Mostly I find out from intercepting texts, etc or being told by others.

We have been through so much!  So I am trying to narrow down what is bothering me most right now. We have a fairly new therapist. She doesn’t talk with me because of confidentiality/conflict of interest etc. I don’t believe our daughter is not presenting things the way they are happening. Eg.  I had restricted her phone privledges because she was stealing vapes from friends. She knew she would get full privledges when she had a clean urine test.All this after two months of my supporting her efforts, buying patches, gum and talking with her primary provider for help and advice. (Finally last week she did test negative.). She spent an entire session with her therapist discussing how unfair this was and her therapist apparently urged her to discuss this with me and if our daughter presented things reasonably then a “reasonable parent would understand.” I told her that yes I do understand and it is definitely difficult for her but the requirement for full privledges stands. She spent the entire ride home (an hour) yelling at me about how stupid my parenting is and her therapist agrees!

Well of course that wasn’t the issue. I have emailed the therapist that our primary provider suspects BPD.  The next session my daughter said that her therapist said“ maybe you need more family therapy. Your relationship with your mom doesn’t seem to be very good.” Again, getting this from my daughter so I don’t really know if that’s true.

I’m beyond worrying about what others think but I feel like it’s a waste of valuable time. If I email the therapist or text her about anything, she reads it to my daughter. So I am reluctant to do that because it hurts our trust relationship and perhaps emailing the therapist is underhanded but I don’t believe our daughter is presenting things accurately. Our last therapist discharged our daughter from therapy when the therapist retired saying that I had things in hand dealing with her ADHD. Two days later our daughter asked a friend to pick her up and she spent the night with a boy that she barely knew. Came home, dejected, sad, ashamed etc. It hurts so much to see her go through that stuff but I try to stay as neutral and supportive as possible. So,no, I don’t think she was ready to be discharged. Ugh.

It took me a while to find our present therapist because I really was hoping she could use EMDR to help her. Otherwise I would just find someone else but they have been working on trust for 6 months and I don’t want to interfere. Otherwise I was pretty much doing what parents have recommended on here. We have alarms and I have the internet stuff pretty figured out. Don’t say too much, keep it light and positive. As far as therapy though, we are running out of time. She’s 18 in April 2023. 

Thank you for reading this and if you have helpful advice or just support I am grateful.

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[Sancho]

Hi Luisa'smom
Thank you for posting. There are a couple of things in your post that really resonated with me - took me back to when my dd was 17 and the journey since then.

The first thing is the isolation. You are carrying facts and information, anxiety and heartache all by yourself there - as I was. You let some facts out here because yes we sure do understand! Coming here and reading others' posts was the first place I felt people understood.

Around that age I was frantic to get help - to find someone/some way of helping my dd. Reading the posts of others here also helped me with that and as the years passed I learned to 'let go'.

From what you say you are doing everything you can, and doing it very well. There are some things you can't control eg what dd says to the therapist, her impulsiveness (it's good that she felt those things later and expressed them to you).

Accessing the information here and reading others' posts could be really helpful.
Some people here find having a counsellor themselves is also very helpful. It's important to have your own support system in place as you support your dd, because it is an exhausting journey with a loved child who has bpd.