Helpless Teens?

Question

I am seeking advise on a situation now taking place at my home. My 17 year old daughter causing ruckuss in our home. I love her so much, and i like being around her, but these are our current situations:
she is 17 and is on medication for bipolar disorder or depression
she has a wonderful enviroment to live in
she is yes spoiled, but well disciplined
she is doing drugs
she is skipping school
she is very unruley.


I have: never told her she is a bad kid, always tell her that she makes bad choices
I alwasy remind her how beautiful she is positi
I never yell at her, I always explain the consequences
I talk with her like she is an adult, i do not treat her like a kid
I have pay for mental help and she takes the medicine
I am now telling her that she will soon be at boot camp and she says we will never see her again when she gets out
If anyone, parent or child, has any words of wisdom please do so. I will fix whatever in my life I need to fix to help my beautiful chil

Answer 1

I'm 17 and have two friends the same age with Bipolar Disorder. One of my friends sounds exactly like your daughter. Only she is not lucky enough to have someone who loves her like you do. She lives with relatives who don't want her and are impatient with her. The more they push the more she pulls. Maybe she should see a counselor regularly and maybe you could have family therapy. Doing drugs and skipping school well the reason i used to skip school was avoidance. If shes skipping school and doing drugs its to avoid something. Something she wants to get away from either shes having problems in school socially or academically. If neither of these are the case then its probably a friend influencing her behavior. There are only two things that can help her shes going to hit rock bottom and when that happens it might be too late or she can see a counselor. From me skipping school I had to become homeschooled so I might be able to graduate ontime. The hardest thing to live with is that I blamed everyone else my mother the school when in reality it was my own fault. Now it seems like i'm drowning and I just can't get my head above water.

Also to one of the other answerers... Being Bipolar does not mean that you can't control your behavior. Also it does not account for skipping school and using drugs. It also does not mean a person is always angry or always rude. It affects every mood, happyness sadness.

Answer 2

"I will fix whateve in my life I need to fix to help my beautiful child." What a nice thing to hear a parent say! All too often, parents are too worried what the child is doing wrong, why she won't change . . not what the PARENT can do to help. I wanted to make sure you understand that you are already passed the first several steps . . . accepting some of the responsibility.

First of all, how is your mother-daughter relationship? Is it strong or rocky? Teens (girls especially) are difficult to raise. They tend to have attitudes and realize they are individuals. I put my poor parents through hell, however I did it when I was 14 rather than 17. The situation does need to get controlled right away though, seeing she is nearly an adult and will soon be leaving the nest.

You're first thing to handle is the drugs. It will take a lot of work, and will probably begin a lot of arguments, but it needs to be done. If you don't already, get to know all of her friends. If there are some that you don't trust her with, don't allow her to spend time with them unless they are under your supervision. If she doesn't have one already, give her a curfew, and don't let her stay the night at anyone's house. If she has a cell phone, take it away for good--especially if she isn't paying for it. And be her only source of transportation. Take away all opportunities that she has to use these drugs. She will probably yell, scream, curse, and cry. But in the words of my dad, "I love you enough to let you hate me for a while."

One last thing, you said you told her that you're going to send her to boot camp. Don't make empty threats. Mothers are usually bad at this, but you have to threaten something that you can and will oversee if she disobeys you.

Good luck!

Answer 3

Honey I have been there. I was the same way at 17. Honestly there could be alot of reasons she could be acting out. She wants to break out of being seen as a "little girl", she is maby on the wrong meds or not taking them at all, She is not mature enough to handle being treated like an adult. For me it was all of the above plus my parents were going threw a divorce at the time.
Please dont spoil her, make her get a job and some responsibility. She will be in trouble in the real world if she doesn't know how to budget and manage herself. Plus it feels better when you spend your own money, a feeling she wont get by you just giving it to her.
You need to set rules. She is the child, and not capable yet of making her own decisions. Understand, you are not being mean to her, no matter how much she says you are. YOU, have to show her the way, she is not just going to straiten out one day, she will only get worse.
You all so would benefit from group counseling. You both can talk out your problems with a mediator, and that relives alot of stress in your relationship.
I hope this helps, if you need any more advice just drop me a line.

Answer 4

I was on medication for bipolar disorder. Get her hormone levels checked. I was not bipolar, but I had hormone problems, with symptoms often mistaken for bipolar disorder. My symptoms never improved while I was on medication for depression/bipolar disorder. Lithobid, tegratol, etc, isn't going to do anything for her estrogen. That's probably why she's still having problems. After getting my hormones under control, I was declared misdiagnosed.

Going with what a psychiatrist tells you without looking at the entire body isn't a good idea. They're looking out for their and drug companies bottom lines.

Family therapy wouldn't hurt. You don't mention anything about you, your husband, and your kids going to therapy. It's not just the kid. You can't expect just the kid to change. There may be things that you are doing that you don't realize are really getting at her. The same way it is for you. She may not realize certian things she says really gets at you.

Sending her to boot camp isn't going to fix the problem. Putting her in inpatient clinics isn't going to fix the problem. The problem is a broken family, and boot camp or clinics don't help fix a broken family.

If my family had realized this, we might still all be a family, rather than my folks divorced and none of us speaking to one another.

Answer 5

Good luck! That's all I really have. My 17 year old sister-in-law is now living with us because of the same things going on with your daughter. She's not so bad at our house (no drugs or yelling), but not much better. She dropped out of school and I made her get a job and pay us rent. If she's not going to better herself with an education then she can find out how hard it is in the real world. She pays $100 a month, but over here you can't find a place for under $500, not even a room. Good Luck!

Answer 6

Ok honesty, when I was 17 all I wanted was my parent to understand what I was going threw. You just need to sit her down, just you and her, make sure she's not doing anything else. If you interrupt her you will just make her mad. Then ask her what's going on, how she feels, if she dating anyone, stuff like. Become her friend, do this often she will feel like she can open up to you more, and tell her how you feel. I promise you, if you do this things will get better, but you can't get mad at her if she tells you something you don't like. You just gotta remember how it was little when you were 17. It's funny though cause a lot of the things you said sounded like me when I was younger. My dad even told me he was sending me to boot camp and I said the same thing. You just gotta become her friend. I know it sounds hard, but it's really not it just takes time.

Answer 7

well even if she says she will never talk to you again she will even if you do put her in boot camp she will come out respaecting you greatly. At least that is what happend with my friends daughter she had tried everything but nothing helped. she put her in boot camp four years ago at the age of 16 she now has finished high school just started college has a great boyfriend and is very happy. She has even thanked her mom for doing it. Good Luck

Answer 8

teen suicide isn't up final I study. on the time of suicide the chemicals from melancholy have long previous to the primitive techniques stem and it may reroute messages .I finished psychotic journey will locate the vocabulary degenerated to a sort of code for key terms and speaking won't help anymore. The discomfort threshold has been replaced so little discomfort is achieveable. The techniques bigger lobes are firing impressive speed because it tries to make sense of the perplexed messages now being imagined. fortuitously some get previous the prefer to die and purely cant think of rapidly.

Answer 9

First of all: all teens hate their family!!! its VERY normal.
Second: get her away frm drugs!!!!!
Third: I dont think she has nice friends in school. the only reason for skipping it.
Forth: Well sometimes yelling is good. eg when you are feeling guilty. being yelled at makes you feel as if youve got the punishment!
Five: treat her according to her age. not very little. dont overload her with responsibilities. a little of them are ok.

Six: good thing that you pay for her madicine. she would NEVER want to waste her money on money when there are clothes to buy.

Dont over load her with questions she doesnt want to answer.
if you get a rude answer.then stop. after telling her that she couldve said the same thing nicely.

Answer 10

Since she is a young woman and very close to becoming a legal adult there is no easy fix for this problem. Counseling only works if she is willing to go and participate. Allot of these problems may stem from her illness and will never totally resolve themselves. Patience and understanding is all you can do which it sounds to be your approach. Does she take her medicine as directed? There is always a possibility because of side effects etc. she may have stopped. Also drinking, illegal drugs may effect her RX.