Parenting emotionally disturbed kids is hard. Unbelievably hard. For me, parenting my “flatliner” daughter has been THE hardest thing I have ever done, and vet school was no picnic.


My daughter was 21 months old when she arrived. She shut down her emotions at that time and has yet to make a decision to do otherwise. From research we have done, she has the double whammy of having biology working against her. But still, she has choices. She makes many, many choices on a daily basis. Most of them are by default… She does nothing on her own behalf and either suffers the consequences or waits so long someone else is forced to act.


After 15 years of trying everything, caring deeply, crying buckets of tears, ignoring her and being in her face… we are not much further along. For those of you who only want to hear uplifting, positive, you-must-always-have-hope kind of stories, I suggest you go read Chicken Soup for the Soul books. I am hurt, angry, frustrated, defeated, scared, powerless, extremely sad and dead tired. I don’t have any more positive energy to direct at this now-18 year old ADULT. I don't like how I feel, and I want to be positive, but right now, I just can't do it.


On one of ADN’s listserves, a mom posted about her daughter who apparently is on a similar trajectory to mine. This mom has parented this child for three years. The mom is all those things I just listed above… she’s out of gas. She hesitated to post on our list, for a variety of reasons. I am so busy I am not even reading that list much, but I happened to catch this introductory post. I responded with a long and emotional post that expressed my complete and total understanding of this mom’s current plight. I recognized my response was not necessarily uplifting, but when I have felt (and still feel) like this mom, I don’t need anyone telling me how I should wake up tomorrow and have warm fuzzies for a child who was clearly doing NOTHING to help herself. Of course, no where did I advocate that any mom become abusive or punitive towards a non-responsive child. But to continue to expect a parent to hold ALL the Units of Concern for how a child’s future unfolds, while the child continues to mom-shop and treat the family like dirt… I don’t think so! As my wise and experienced friend recently stated, "There is a difference between caring what happens and being involved in it."


We’ll go back to Intimacy vs. Chemistry later… more coming on this subject first.