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Hi. My name is Rachel. I have a 13 year old daughter by the name of TJ. She was recently diagnosed with Conduct Disorder (Childhood Onset), Bipolar Disorder, and severe ADD. These diagnoses came about after years of therapy and more recently psychological tests and clinical interviews.
Needless to say life is hard for our entire household. The constant chaos, outbursts and occasional violence over a period of many, many years has drained us completely. This includes 3 younger children. She entered the 7th grade this year and has now started to fail nearly every class despite the efforts of myself, my husband, her doctors, and some very involved teachers and school counselors. We are literally at our wits end.
Yesterday she was prescribed Depakote for the Bipolar component. Doctor wanted to wait until she was level before starting the ADD meds. While in his office she stated that she understood the diagnoses, agreed with them, and agreed to take the medicine. She acknowledged that her behavior affects not only herself, but everyone around her. I was so very hopeful when we left that meeting.
When it came time to take her meds last night she informed us that she most certainly would not be going on medication as there was no problem with her. In fact, it was US that needed medicating and had the problem so we could just piss off.
We spent 4 hours trying to talk to this child and get her to take the meds. She eventually flew in a rage, ran out into the road, and had to be restrained by myself and my husband more than once. We all finally wore out around 11. We called every hospital in the area to see if someone would take her for a week or so until she was stable. Nobody would. One county agency even went so far as to say that if we were doing our job by getting her to take the meds we wouldn't have to be calling them. Nice!
So now I sit here wondering what on earth to do with this child. I'm so sad, confused, and angry. Our family is literally being ripped apart.
How on earth do you get a child that is as big as you are to cooperate and take their meds? Any advice would be most appreciated.
Posts: 1 | Location: California | Registered: 11-17-2007
I feel for you, I really do. I wish I had some never-fail secrets. With my son we grounded, and took away privileges, and grounded more, and took away more privileges, and before long we had absolutely nothing left to take. We were considering taking his favorite clothing as a punishment, there were no other consequences left.
I will say rewards seem to work much better than punishment. If you take your meda all week we'll do something special over the weekend. If you take your meds all month, we'll go to see your favorite baseball team play (my son, not necessarily your daughter). If you take your meds all year, we'll go to that big music festival this summer. And so forth. Rewards did work for us, it was the only thing that worked.
