It would seem like I've fallen into a hole recently. I haven't disappeared entirely, but nothing I've tried to write lately has made much sense, if any. I think I need a vacation. Bob is doing well; however, when your house feels like a demilitarized zone 90% of the time, there are bound to be some casualties. Unfortunately, in our case, it appears the first casualty is our marriage. So please bear with me as I try to hold it together, figure it out, and try to make sense of the chaos. I'll be back next week. Thanks.

Tomorrow, my children will both go back to school. (Excuse me while I do a little dance and high-five myself for having lived through--and allowed them to live through--this very long summer.) The school supplies are ready, the new clothes are in the washing machine as we speak--all in anticipation of a new school year. "Back to School" night was Monday, and we've already met Bob's fourth-grade teacher and know who his classmates are. We are completely prepared. Or are we?

My child has a mental illness. He is not going through a phase! As a parent of a child with a mental illness, nothing irritates me more than the well-meaning (or not-so-well-meaning) person who insists on telling me, "oh, I'm sure Bob is just fine." Or any variant thereon, such as "it's just a phase", "he'll grow out of it", "they all do stuff like that", etc. Believe me, I wish you were right. But your comments don't make me feel any better about the situation. If anything, they make me feel worse.

I went to see my own psychiatrist this week for my biannual "how's it going" visit. I said what I had to say. He pretended to listen and asked me questions I'd already answered. Then he said, "I don't think we need to change anything right now. I think you're just demoralized with everything you've got going on." Then he handed me the same prescription he's handed me for the past year. I was relieved, in a way--even though I'm reasonably certain other things have come into play in my head, I've been concerned about changing up my medication, afraid he may introduce something new that would render me even more of a trainwreck than I've been lately. And at this stage of the game, I can't afford to be any less functional.

When I picked up Bob from a week-long visit with his father last weekend, I knew it was going to be a tough day. It always is when he comes back from these visits. I never know what exactly to expect, just that conflict will arise. This time, the conflict was within me.

It's been pretty quiet at my house this week. Bob left for a week at his father's last Friday morning, and was scheduled to return last night. But my husband has some friends visiting from out of town tonight--along with their two young children--so I asked Bob's father if Bob could stay with him until Saturday morning. The guilty truth? I'm not ready for him to come home yet. And I'm not even sure he wants to.

My name is Angela, and I am a control freak. If you read this blog with any regularity, this probably comes as no great shock to you. If you're new, however, you may not yet have noticed many of my posts contain the same underlying message: How can I fix this?

Many parents of children who take psychiatric medications often face resistance from the child. In this mental health video post, I question when--and if--parents should allow their child to have input into their mental health treatment.

I dropped Bob off this morning to spend the next week with his father. On the way, we hit the pharmacy to pick up his medication refills. I handed him one of his pills, as we'd been out when he took his morning doses. "It's chewable," I said, "so you can take it without water." When we reached his father's house, I got out of the car, gave him a long hug goodbye, and got back in the car. As he and his father drove away, I noticed, in the passenger seat, the pill I'd handed him twenty minutes earlier.

Monday, I took Bob to the water park with my sister and her daughter, who is Bob's age. The kids get along well, and my sister and I saw this as our opportunity to beach ourselves at the wave pool while they did their "kid" thing. Later, I recounted our day to my husband. "You let them go off by themselves?" he asked, incredulous.