Most of my daughter’s course of therapy went well. The medication she took saved her life, in my opinion. As she matured, I began to let her take more responsibility for herself, including taking her medication daily.
Acting Differently
Overall, she did well with managing her medication, except for one time when she decided she didn’t like being different from all the other kids. I noticed her becoming withdrawn, more anxious, and needing a lot of reassurance. I realized that she was acting like she did before she started medication.
I asked if she had run out of her medication. Initially, she didn’t answer. I described what I saw in her behavior and asked her again. She broke down and told me she had stopped taking it. She learned an important lesson and never tried doing that again. Her final dose, once adjusted, was double her original dose.
Caring for children is very different from caring for adults. Some lessons may seem obvious to some, but they are essential to remember when you start being their caregiver and parent.
Lessons Learned:
- Teenager basic characteristics
- They have trouble making good decisions without guidance. Guide a way they don’t realize it’s being given.
- Tend to lie first to avoid trouble. Gently keep digging till the story sounds true.
- They are often more loyal to friends than family. Don’t push them to give up a friend. Work the line of questioning to safety and caring for the friend, not retribution.
- Want to be independent? Come up with ways to help them be.
- They don’t want to be different from everyone else. Help them blend in or cover up their differences to look like friends.
- Try to trust them even if they are untrustworthy. Find a way to trust them.
- Being objective with children takes time and effort. The mother-bear instinct is powerful; therefore, it’s challenging to let them fail and learn the hard lessons of life. The same holds when it comes to inflicting pain. Often, when someone is ill or injured, part of the healing process involves pain and suffering. Changing dressings, debriding wounds, and physical therapy all involve pain.
- While there are ways to reduce or distract from the pain, the caregiver can rarely eliminate the pain. Children will likely tell you to stop the pain, accuse you of torturing them, threaten to call social services, and say you don’t love them. You must find a way to push past their threats and do what is good for them.
- Ask someone to help you do the painful parts if it’s causing you difficulty. Contact your social services department for assistance with those tasks that are too difficult for you to do if needed.
- Be honest with the child if it’s going to hurt. Don’t tell them it’s not going to hurt when it will. They won’t trust you next time.
- Try some ice over an area for a while to numb it.
- Having a chronically ill child can break up a marriage unless you actively take measures to keep the marriage together.
- When trouble starts, work on it, and then, not later, it won’t go away.
- Come up with a plan on how you will try to make things better for both of you. You need time away together.
- Try to find someone to provide respite for you both. Keep in mind that being a single caregiver stinks, but being a divorced single-caregiver parent stinks worse.
Your marriage may be in trouble if:
- One parent spends all their time caring for the child. They give up their life, freedom, career, and everything for that child and feel trapped and isolated in the process. They envy their partner’s freedom, social life, and interaction with something other than illness.
- The non-caregiver parent works hard all day at a job, maybe with a demanding boss, nasty coworkers, or customers. They drive home in heavy traffic, must cut the grass and check the car engine, and are worried the job might be at risk. Doesn’t feel appreciated for their work or understand why they must do more work when they get home.
- Resentment grows between the two. Tensions start to build. They spend less and less time together.
