I found a great article in the NYTImees about your child going off to college -- and it will be in the next post -- but first I am going to tell you about what I have learned.

So how do you give your bipolar child the best possible chance as they start out in life. Having been one and had one, I think I have a bit of perspective on this, even tho mine was "mild" and my daughter's pretty severe and complicated with severe learning disabilities.

First of all
ALWAYS Love and accept them as they are.

Second
Foster independence and self-reliance on them throughout their lives. Make it appropriate for the ages, but give them self-determination over their own lives. Give them an allowance and teach them to budget. In High School, start a bank account and teach them how to balance bank statements. Tell them you will expect them to pay tuition and housing, and buy books and meals when they leave for college, and that if they run out of money from poor planning and frivilous spending, you will not be there to bail them out. Tell them they have to be ready to be independent and you KNOW they can do it.

My parents never gave me the tiniest bit of responsibility for myself, I was allowed no decisions for myself, my father even threw away all the college brochures as they arrived because he knew where he wanted me to go - so I spent most of my adult life thinking that only my classmates had colleges courting them -- that I was too much a loser for them to be interested in.

When I was finally given an allowance in high school, it was only enough to buy a fried pie and a milk shake for lunch every day. The fact that I no longer bought meal tickets did not give me access to that money. I had no "disposable income".. And it wasn't really an allowance either. I had to go to my dad's business every evening, after supper, and sweep the offices and clean the bathroom (a nasty one) and everytime a car passed the huge picture window, me in the lighted showroom, I cringed at the thought of being seen by everyone. I eventually stopped the "job" - no fast food lunchtime was worth the humiliation when all the other kids sacked groceries and other regular after-school stuff.

When I was in college, late in my Sophomore year, I actually had a friend (I was very shy, painfully shy, and not close to anyone)... and this gal wanted ME to go to Austin with her, for us to find a cheap apartment, get jobs waiting tables for the summer, have fun, save some money. I was so excited. I was twenty. My father told me no -- "If you do that, I will cut you off without another dime for school. You either go to school this summer or come home."

I married when I did because I was terrified at the idea that I would graduate from college and suddenly be expected to live alone, get a job, be independent. So I extended my childhood dependence out for dozens of additional years. Because I was terrified of the world. I didn't have a CLUE as to how to be independent, do ANYTHING for myself.

Guess what? Not only did my continued fear of being self-sufficient keep me from leaving a bad marriage, but when I finally did, 20 years later, I was still cripplingly dependent and had few skills and was generally incompetent in being an adult. 15 years later, I am finally beginning to learn the things my parents always led me to believe were too much for me to handle.

Third
Work closely with their teachers and all school support staff, attend all the ARDs, and LEARN what are the appropriate expectations are of your child. Then don't set impossibly high expectations they can never reasonably expect to me.

A MAJOR part of my own daughter's problems is that her father, after having decided when she was preschool that she was retarded, commenced during her high school years (even after she was shown to be emotionally disturbed) to JOIN THE MILITARY or GO TO COLLEGE. It wasn't until he took time off from his precious job to attend an ARD in the end of her Junior year of school that he actually ABSORBED and recognized the reality of her situation.

Yes, my daughter's "overall IQ average is 100 - her Mechanical Aptitude (Non-Verbal IQ) is as high as 126, but her Verbal IQ has tested from 76 to 90 over the years. She reads and does math at no more than a 5th grade level, and failed the required graduation proficiency test in our state. One of those diplomas which doesn't really mean anything except that she stuck it out because she loved going to school and being around her friends - to this day she deeply misses school. She knows it was the best time of her life.

Emotionally disturbed people never make it out of Basic Training, and often end up in the military psych ward with their first traumatic psychotic episode. I know, I've nursed there. And if you have a diagnosis of bipolar or a Cluster B PD, they don't want you to begin with. Those are reasons for discharge whenever they are discovered.

And with my daughter's IQ and learning disabilities, there ARE some Junior College training programs she COULD have tackled and done very well at --- like automotive mechanics, cabinetry making (she was terrific in her shop class in high school) and many trades where she could have a lot of independence, work pretty much alone and have a GOOD income.

But because of all the false grandiose notions her father pumped her full of, she is "too good" for plebian jobs like that. No, she is going to become a doctor, a politician, a restaurant manager, a store manager.

and what kind of jobs does she get? Usually food service, busing tables, greeting guests, and in the past doing kitchen prep. She is does not have the skills to be a waitress where you can take and write orders up. She also can't handle the emotional stress of dealing with customers. Sometimes she has had jobs working for vets or at stables, and has made her bosses happy generally -- but if she starts having stress from co-workers, things rapidly fall apart and she quits before she BLOWS UP in a rage at them... (she threatened to kill a coworker many years ago and they called the cops and she was escorted off the property).... so she quits now, before she can lose her cool .. or before she can get fired, giving no notice, just walking out.

So have appropriate expectations of your children and show that you think those jobs are important and honorable.... and that you would be so proud of them to do whatever jobs they will be capable of.

Fourth
USE the public school system to carefully screen, test and assess your child every step of the way, everytime you can get them to help. If you can't, contact your State's Rehab Division and see what help they can extend you. MANY bipolar children also have various learning disabilities and/or conduct disorders and/or obsessive-compulsive behaviors, and these all open up entries into tax supported public school help.

Why is this so important? Because when he or she goes to college, if it is a State-Supported college, the state MUST provide whatever necessary accommodations your child has been found to need - be it a tutor, a note-taker, special test-taking accommodations - you name it.

I have a nephew who is attending a state-supported university because he has the necessary accomodations to help him -- a young man with Aspergers and some learning disabilities. He plans a career in the computer technology end of the entertainment industry.

FIFTH
Teach your children to have good positive feelings toward their necessary medications. If you spend their entire childhoods having them exposed to therapists or relatives or such who want them off the meds, if you worry that they should have "drug holidays" on weekends and whenever school is out, and if you spend their lives searching for "other options"..... and ESPECIALLY if you let them think that taking medication is TOTALLY up to THEM and what THEY want to do or not do -- if you ABDICATE YOUR RESPONSIBILITY as an adult, as their parent ....

..... Then you are much more likely to end up with a child who does NOT take their medications as an adult because they "don't want to be on drugs that mess with my mind" or that "control me" at the same time they smoke dope, pop party pills, drink and smoke cigarettes - and worse, all in an effort driven to self medicate. Children who take their appropriate and needed meds do not turn into drug abusers --- THEY are the ones who stay straight because they don't need to "self medicate" because they doctor prescribed ones already are doing to their brains and emotions what is necessary for them to function.

Because my husband broke all these rules with our younger bipolar, learning disabled daughter, she has never, in the more than ten years she has been diagnsosed, has ever been on meds for more than a few weeks at a time and has had ZERO drugs in well over 4 or more years now. And is sicker, more mentally ill, than ever before.


NEXT will be the article that spurred this post.... I hope all of you get a great deal out of it

Teri

December 8, 2006
Fouth Installment in the series on Troubled Children
Off to College on Their Own, Shadowed by Mental Illness

By Lynette Clemeston

Her mother called it a negotiable proposition. But to Jean Lynch-Thomason, a 17-year-old with bipolar disorder who started college this fall, her mom’s notion to fly from their home in Nashville to her campus in Olympia, Wash., every few weeks to monitor Jean’s illness felt needlessly intrusive.

“I am so totally aware of the control you have over me right now,” Jean said, sitting in her parents’ living room one evening last June, before coolly reminding her mother of her upcoming 18th birthday. “In a few months the power dynamic is going to be different.”

For Chris Ference, 19, who is also bipolar, the fast-approaching autonomy of his freshman year held somewhat less appeal. His parents had always directed every aspect of his mental health care. Last summer, over Friday night pizza at his home in Cranberry Township, Pa., he told them that assuming control felt more daunting than liberating.

“If it was up to me, I would just have it so you could make those decisions for me up until I was like, 22,” he said. “I mean, you’ve raised me well up to now. You know me better than anyone.”

The transition from high school to college, from adolescence to legal adulthood, can be tricky for any teenager, but for the increasing number of young people who arrive on campus with diagnoses of serious mental disorders — and for their parents — the passage can be particularly fraught.

Standard struggles with class schedules, roommates, and sexual and social freedom are complicated by decisions about if or when to use campus counseling services, whether or not to take medication and whether to disclose an illness to friends or professors.

Keeping a psychiatric disorder under control in an environment often fueled by all-night cram sessions, junk food and heavy drinking is a challenge for even the most motivated students. In addition, the normal separation that goes along with college requires new roles and boundaries with parents, the people who best know the history and contours of their illness.

Like Jean and Chris, young adults approach the move to a new life differently, some with defiant independence, some with avoidance. Each approach, say psychiatrists, counselors, dormitory assistants and other campus leaders, comes with its own risk.

The students who are most dependent on their parents may be dangerously unprepared for the inevitable stresses of college life. On the other hand, students who are adamant about doing everything on their own may be afraid to reach out for help when they stumble.

For parents, the anxious pride at seeing children go off to college is often tinged with fear that their child might fall apart, spiraling into depression or becoming suicidal. Are they going to therapy as they promised? Are they taking the right dose of medication at the right time? Should they as parents inform the school that their child has an illness? Is a fight with a roommate part of a normal transition to college life or a sign of impending trouble? Does an emotional e-mail message written at 3 a.m. represent a transitory moment of turmoil or a reason to get on an airplane?

Once teenagers legally become adults, which in most states happens at age 18, they, not their parents, assume control over decisions about therapy and medication. If trouble arises, parents may or may not hear about it because college counselors are bound by confidentiality when dealing with adult students.


The Trauma of Separation
For Jean, as for many teenagers coping with mental disorders, just getting through high school was an ordeal. After experimenting with home schooling, a high pressure prep school and an outdoor learning academy geared to nature activities, Jean, a bright student with inconsistent grades but high SAT scores, decided to forgo her senior year and find a college that would take her without a high school diploma.

She was accepted at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., a nontraditional college of roughly 4,400 students that issues written evaluations in place of letter grades.

Evergreen’s environmental focus — the campus has its own organic farm, composting program and a contest for commuters who bike, walk or carpool to campus — felt like a good fit for Jean, who is passionately committed to the environment and social justice.

A consciously quirky teenager who sews her own clothes (to avoid crass consumerism, she says) and who prefers bus trips to flying (to avoid contributing to the pollution caused by air travel), Jean is disarmingly straightforward and self-aware.

She said she stopped taking medications when she was 14 because the side effects left her feeling “out of whack and emotionally inauthentic.”

She is determined to stay off medications during college, and she devoted considerable advance thought to possible triggers for her illness, like the long rainy winters of the Pacific Northwest.

“I don’t feel vulnerable about this transition because this is very much my decision,” she said. “This is a very autonomous move, very much me structuring my own life. I feel like I am putting myself in a situation with really clear intentions.”

Jean’s parents, Amy Lynch, 52, and Phil Thomason, 53, were hesitant when Jean, the younger of their two daughters, refused to take medications after eighth grade. Her childhood and early adolescence had been a whirlwind of depression, rage and experiments with different medications and treatments.

But when Jean was about 14, Ms. Lynch and Mr. Thomason said, she began to seem more stable. Her developing coping skills, combined with reports about negative side effects of psychotropic drugs in children, persuaded them to acquiesce to her demands to ride out the swings of her illness drug free.

They said they believed Evergreen would be a good college for Jean. Still, the move — to someplace so far from home — made them anxious. In the months before Jean left, Ms. Lynch said she wanted her to go back on medication to smooth the adjustment to college life, a suggestion that Jean adamantly rejected.

Ms. Lynch worried that Jean took for granted the tacit stability of being at home.

When Jean’s depression sets in, she tends to close herself off from people. At home, Ms. Lynch said, “I can look at Jean and know in five minutes what’s going on with her and how to respond to it.”

At such a distance it will be difficult to catch the signs.

“I feel like we’re doing a high-wire act,” she said, “and I am not sure we have a strong enough net.”

Rummaging through the accumulated possessions of adolescence in her bedroom over the summer, Jean singled out the items that she could not leave without: her sewing machine, her coffee maker, the social justice posters that covered her wall. With her mother out of earshot, she acknowledged that she understood her parents’ angst. “I get that this is intense for everyone,” she said. “I do.”


Hesitant to Leave the Nest
The uncertain months between high school and college were also anxious ones for Chris Ference and his parents.

Still groggy from an early morning drive to campus, his husky 6-foot-2 frame jammed into an auditorium chair in the student union, Chris shifted uncomfortably as a freshman orientation coordinator welcomed new students and their parents to the Behrend College, a Pennsylvania State University satellite campus in Erie, Pa.

“Today really is the first day of your freshman year of college,” the cheery administrator told the group on a June morning more than two months before the start of fall term.

Chris had initially been reluctant to go away to college. Though eager to leave the rigid structure and peer pressure of high school, where he told few friends about his illness, he preferred the idea of living at home during college and commuting to an engineering program in nearby Pittsburgh.

It was his mother, Debbie Ference, a service director with the southwestern Pennsylvania division of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, an advocacy group, who nudged him to move away.

He chose Behrend for its strong engineering program and small student body of about 3,700.

A boyish and fidgety teenager who likes heavy metal music, Xbox games and anything having to do with electronics, Chris said he had given little advance thought to his new responsibilities in college.

Just days before his orientation, he listened passively as his father, Michael Ference, and Ms. Ference talked about his care at school. They wondered aloud about whether he would be able to continue seeing his longtime therapist in Pittsburgh, more than two hours away. They raised the possibility of putting an advance mental health directive in place, so that they could be contacted if Chris was ever in crisis and unable to consent to parental notification.

They discussed how they worried about the possibility of Chris mixing alcohol with his medications. Chris huffed in annoyance and told them he was “smart and moral enough” not to fall into that trap.

The fact that Chris was willing to engage in the discussion at all was a sign, they said, of progress.

Chris was first hospitalized and received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder at age 10 after a severe episode of depression, mania and suicidal thoughts. He was hospitalized again briefly in sixth grade, after the lithium that had stabilized him for two years became ineffective.

But successful therapy and medication since then have kept the illness at a manageable level. He graduated from high school with honors, and in his senior year saw his therapist only every six weeks. A recent medication adjustment has left him able to feel and express more than he has in years.

“This whole move is like a coming-out process,” said Mr. Ference, 50, a service coordinator for families with autistic children. “Up to now it’s been all parental motivation. But I think this is a healing process for him after so many hard years.”

In a 2005 national survey of the directors of college counseling centers, 95 percent of counseling directors reported an increase in students who were already on psychiatric medications when they came in for help. While universities grapple with how to serve the growing number of students with mental disorders, students are taking the initiative by helping one another.

Active Minds, a student-led mental health advocacy organization founded in 2001 at the University of Pennsylvania, now has 56 chapters at schools including Georgetown University, Columbia University, the University of South Florida and the University of Maryland.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness has 30 campus affiliates, with 18 more in formation, groups that are set up as student clubs and are financed by school activity budgets and fund-raisers. Programs like the Jed Foundation, a suicide prevention program, and National Depression Screening Day, held each October, offer additional resources.

While the overall message from the groups and programs focuses on the potential for success, students who have been through the transition of leaving home for college say it is also important to be honest about the challenges.


Difficult Experiences
Stacy Hollingsworth, an honors student at Rutgers University who suffers from major depressive disorder, dropped out of college in the fall semester of her sophomore year after the routine aspects of college life left her so incapacitated that she became suicidal and was hospitalized.

At home in Old Bridge, N.J., she could retreat to the isolation of her bedroom when she was depressed — an impossibility in her crowded dormitory. The staggered class schedule left her lacking a dependable rhythm. Even getting dressed and walking to the cafeteria became an insurmountable task.

“I was in excruciating pain. I couldn’t breathe,” she said.

Though she had been suffering from depression since her early teens, she hid her struggle from family and friends. She sought counseling help for the first time in college, but still could not cope.

After a two-year absence and the loss of $15,000 in state scholarships, Ms. Hollingsworth, now 22, is back at Rutgers finishing her degree in exercise physiology and psychology. She is founder of the Rutgers’ affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one of the organization’s newest student chapters.

At 37, Robert C. Haggard III, who three years ago founded a chapter of the same organization at Washburn University in Topeka, Kan., is still working on his bachelor’s degree in studio art.

During his first attempt at college, right out of high school, Mr. Haggard said, “I wasn’t honest with myself that I needed assistance.”

He tried to blunt the increasing severity of his bipolar disorder with alcohol, a common tactic for students with psychological disorders, experts say.

He was on academic probation when, in 1992, he withdrew from school. He struggled though several jobs, a variety of medications, and a suicide attempt at age 29 before he started to get his condition under control.

It has only been within the past four years, he said, that he has gained stability. “I study during the day, sleep at night, eat right and maintain a lot of structure and routine,” he said. “It sounds simple, but it can be a hard place to get to.”

Dr. Richard Kadison, chief of mental health services at Harvard, said there were things students with mental illness could do before starting college to increase the chances of a manageable transition.

Most important, he said, is establishing local health support on or near campus.

Maintaining a relationship with a counselor from home can be helpful, but “you don’t want to end up in an emergency talking to someone at school that you have never laid eyes on,” Dr. Kadison said.


Last-Minute Worries
After the opening session of freshman orientation at Behrend College back in June, Chris Ference disappeared into a pack of students to begin selecting his classes.

His mother headed in the opposite direction and wandered into a session on student support networks led by Sue Daley, the director of the counseling office. She listened intently as the counselor talked about problems students had encountered in recent years.

She winced when the counselor related the story of a young woman who had a psychotic episode the previous year, during which she ripped tiles from her dormitory room ceiling because she believed the F.B.I. was monitoring her.

“We sent her home so she could get her emotional self together,” Ms. Daley told the group.

After the session, Ms. Ference complained that it sounded as if the goal of the counseling center was to get the “crazy kids” out of the way.

“I was offended by that,” she said to Ms. Daley. “I want to be comfortable enough with this school that I know you will take care of my son.”

In the car on the way home from the campus visit, Ms. Ference mentioned her discomfort with the counseling presentation.

“We definitely have to put some outside counseling support in place, just in case you don’t like it there,” she said to her son.

Looking through his thick pamphlet of brochures from the day, Chris responded, “Hey, we get a discount on computers and iPods!”

Ms. Ference took a hand off the steering wheel to rub at the stress headache pulsating at her temple.

About the same time in June at Bongo Java, a trendy coffee shop near her home in the Belmont-Hillsboro section of Nashville, Jean Lynch-Thomason pulled out a tattered journal, held together with silver duct tape. A picture of herself in the third grade, taped to the cover of the thick diary, stared back at her as she gathered her thoughts.

As she prepared for college, she had been writing in the journal several times a day.

More pensive than during the previous meeting when she matched wits with her parents about her desired independence, Jean confessed that she had been thinking quite a lot about her move in the fall.

“There is a lot more fear and anxiety about this transition than I am letting on,” she said. “We can set up all the protective measures we want and still there is just no way to tell what is going to happen, and man, that’s hard.”

She remained determined not to let her mother fly out to Washington to check on her. And she resolved to limit her own trips home, to cut down on unnecessary air travel.

But she said she felt confident that she had done the most optimal planning possible. She had decided to have an apartment by herself so that she could prepare her own vegan meals. Living alone, she said, would also afford her the privacy to sleep well and have the solitude she craves when her depression sets in.

That solitude, she added, might be a double-edged sword in a new environment where she would be more reluctant to engage with people during dark periods of depression.

“I am in a good, copacetic place right now,” she said. “But I also know that there is every possibility that things could go bad. I just sort of feel like if I get out there and don’t do well, then I am letting everyone down.”

Back at home soon after, she breezed past her mother, confident as ever.


A New Perspective
Three months after arriving on campus, Jean’s anger at her parents’ concern seems to have receded. Her mother’s hotly debated first visit came and went in October. There were no confrontations over medication, no accusations of heavy-handedness.

Mother and daughter said little at all, in fact, about the illness that has so defined their lives, and their relationship, choosing instead to ride bikes, work at a free store for the needy, and play in a fountain one night in the center of downtown.

“I’m more settled, I guess,” said Jean, who will turn 18 next week. She was surprised that she so enjoyed the visit. “I was in a good place. She was in a good place. My illness just didn’t particularly seem relevant.”

Some ideas that had made sense in the abstract — like living alone — felt unwise after she arrived in September and looked at a few apartments. When a friend from
Tennessee offered her a tiny crawl space of a room in an overcrowded home he shared with several other students off campus, Jean said it felt just right.

“It’s not like I’m going up to people saying, ‘Hi, I’m Jean, I’m bipolar,’ ” she joked. “But I’m surrounded by beautiful supportive people, and I know if I need it, they will call me out.”

She has maintained sessions by telephone with her therapist back home every two weeks. But she has also met people at the campus counseling center. She said she liked that they encouraged holistic as well as purely medical approaches to treatment, and that she would not hesitate to seek help there if the need arose.

Back in Nashville, Ms. Lynch said she may have underestimated her daughter’s ability to make good decisions for herself. The lushness and environmental consciousness of Evergreen and the surrounding area seemed to have a stabilizing effect on Jean, she said. There was not a trace of the early signs of mania or depression that Ms. Lynch could usually spot in her daughter well before others.

She said she had decided not to raise the issue of medication again. For now. “I may have a different answer a few months from now,” she said. “But what I know today is that she seems to have learned a lot about coping. And that’s how we get through this, by what we know any given day.”

Chris Ference has also changed since he packed his things and left home in late August. Sitting on the bed in his dorm room, sounding more mature than he had a few months earlier, he said the transition was smoother than he had anticipated.

But he was still working out some of the particulars of dealing with his bipolar disorder. He told his roommate about his illness in mid-October, only because a reporter was coming to their room for an interview.

“It’s cool. He’s cool. It’s fine,” he said, with a hint of wariness. “It’s probably good for him to know anyway, so he can understand it, in case I ever need him to help me out.”

Discreetly taking his medications in a dorm room typically crammed with engineering students until the wee hours of the morning is also a challenge. In an effort not to draw attention to himself, he said, he takes his two medications late at night, right before he lays his head down to sleep. If anyone notices, they have not let on.

He and his mother met with Ms. Daley, head of the counseling center, before school started. After the unpleasant encounter at summer orientation, Ms. Ference wanted some assurances that the school’s services were adequate. She left satisfied, she said, and Chris seemed comfortable enough with the counseling center to go there if he needed to.

Chris said he doubted he would need help from Ms. Daley or anyone else at the center. He has friends and is playing guitar in a band, he keeps his partying “under control,” and he loves his engineering classes.

He is under no illusions about his illness, he said. He knows it will be something that he has to learn to manage throughout his adult life.

“But things are just going so good,” he said. “So far.”


December 8, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/08/health/08Kids.html
by LYNETTE CLEMETSON

Thanks this is very good. I will be looking at this often. I work
with many parents that have not only kids with bi-polar, but many
disabilities that have some of these same questions.

I'm a parent advocate. And I've been working to get my 2nd son
through his first semester of college this last fall, while living at
home.

Donna

Dear Donna ...

My brother in law is seeing his LD Asperger son thru his second year of college. He is in a state school, not the private college they had both wanted for him, because the state university had to have federally mandated accommodations for learning disabilities and other disabilities that might impact his learning.

His dad also sees him at least once a week. My nephew had not wanted to have to learn how to drive, he wanted to continue living at home and be driven around. But his parents made him learn (his mother was dying & dad travels all over the country every week). Having his own vehicle has been good for him - it puts him, in that one area, into being like a regular guy. He is still not socially adept, virtually never speaks, but he does have a tentative career goal in the entertainment industry -- not acting , but in the computer technology that enhances films these days.

My LD/Bipolar daughter lives in a state with a tremendous junior college system. Some are strictly "college prep", and some are mostly technical trade schools. Many lie somewhere in the middle. for instance, you can get automotive technology and repair certificates, one at a time, in one term of school (or was it 6 month?). If she had the support system in place and in a secure supportive marriage, (AND was on her meds), then I think she could accomplish something like this and it would dramatically change her self perceptions. Just having that certificate to frame and hang on the wall.

My older daughter is in law school (a very prestigiuos one), but she developed grand mal epilepsy 3 years ago, shortly before she applied, and she is still trying to find an antiseizure medication that won't disrupt her short term memory or her word retrieval so badly. She has needed a lot of encouragement and emotional support, for she worries a lot.

I am happy that your son is in college. Can you see him being able to transition to living on (or off) campus at some point? Is he cooperative, does he have a good attitude about his therapies? I would think, knowing my bipolar daughter, that it would certainly help her entire life to not be so anti-meds. Her life is continuously chaotic without them. I don't see how she can stand it - the emotional stress would destroy me. She is bad enough for disability, but having trust, she can't get SSI and she hasn't worked many quarters in her life and will probably never have the quarters or the pay-in to even apply for SSDI.

Teri

Yes he could definately live on campus or with someone other than us.
At this point the main problem is that he has no income of his own.
And I personally really have no way to help him get on his own.

I'm working on finding a way to get him on his own, or with someone
other than me, getting him money or something. HE is going to college
mainly on Vocational REhabilation. And we support by paying his
car insurance, and life insurance. But my husband just doesn't understand
why we are doing this. For my middle one. He thinks he should be able
to do this on his own. Working on this, but so far its not doable.

We have to do things a little at a time. And right now if he stays in
school I personally think this is the best we can do to support him
in doing something.

Donna

Hi, Donna ....

I am feeling a bit worried at how dad doesn't get the picture of why your son needs this semi-sheltered existence for now. You know, having him live at home, and your helping him out with car insurance and such...

Maybe his Voc Rehab counselor or his psychiatrist or counselor could help him realize how emotionally precarious this entire time of life is -- transitioning from childhood to adulthood, all the responsibilities, and how ANY KIND OF CHANGE is stressful, and that he can only add a part-time job IF he and his counselors think it can be done. And for that matter, simply moving out of the house into another place, with other people, might just be too much.

Dad has to be able to recognize that the PRIORITY right now is GETTING THRU COLLEGE. The next priority is CREATING A STABLE SEPARATE EXISTENCE. And there are a number of little steps getting from here to there.

If he can understand that done correctly, your son will quite possibly never have to come back home to live permanently (more or less), then hopefully he will be willing to make these concessions. Actually, the statistics show that more and more "grown children" (of ALL ages) are ending up back at home for varying periods of time because of various reasons...

My ex had both our children living in our home (he had more or less moved out to his girlfriend's) for almost 10 years before he sold it -- right after our older child and her family moved off for her to go to law school.

For the younger one (bipolar I) he did it so she wouldn't have to sleep with a guy to have a place to live. When she left for another state to follow a boyfriend, he had her get an apartment there (he pays the rent) so she would not come back home. Home had too many slacker druggie deadbeat friends from school - some who have now been jailed for drugs, some of who are now on SSI for mental illness. The lucky ill ones live with a parent. Actually, they almost, to a person, live with a parent or a sibling.

It is unfortunate that Kat has such difficulty being around anyone in her family.... All of us love her - but since she can't stay on her meds, she becomes somewhat psychotic, highly agitated, and increasingly frightening to be around as her aggressions builds... If she has to share living quarters or even much time with someone she just can't emotionally handle or has to stay employed for many weeks or months, she always eventually gets to that point.

She will never, it seems, ever be able to be "gainfully employed". I'll never forget the first time I understood the seriousness of bipolar I. A man who had a wonderful college career, graduated with high grades, hired for a great job in a firm offering him a wonderful life... but he began tumbling into his first hypermanic episode.. Ten years later, he was working at night, alone, in a downtown parking lot as an attendant. Like my younger daughter, the only jobs she can handle are those where she works alone. And here is this man, with all the education my daughter will never be able to have.... and yet here he is, at the EXACT SAME PLACE SHE IS.

Share this story with your spouse. One step at a time, lots of support, emphasis on good psychiatric supervision, learning to tweak meds, working on building healthy FRIENDSHIPS with fellow students. If he had to work to pay rent, he would not be able to join clubs and organizations, participate in extracurricalar activities. There is more to life than work, home and TV. If he can be encouraged to explore his interests, the benefits, to my way of looking at it, would be tremendously valuable to him, thru out his life.

I cannot emphasize this more. If you don't have bipolar yourself, you might not recognize how valuable social skills and social ease are. And social skills are directly related to work environment skills. You are doing this the right way, to my way of looking at it.

Often a spouse (even when not a step-parent) dreams of a time when the house belongs to only the two of you. And they dream of a time when no one else will be in the bathroom, or eating the last slice of cake or drinking the last coke. <smiling> Or maybe he just wants more alone time with you. Maybe you can enourage your son to make friends how live off-campus and ask if he could spend a night to visit. You could make sure he came complete with home-made goodies and perhaps a KFC bucket dinner for all? That would grease those welcome wagon wheels!

I do feel for you, having to help your son, yet keep your spouse from feeling too put upon... I hope things are easier as time goes by...

{{{{{{{{{{Donna}}}}}}}}}}}
Teri

Thanks Teri

We had a added thing this last October, that my husband is finally accepting,
the only thing that he is still and people like his Mother are saying too.

Is how do we know its true. Devin has a almost 3 month old son, and he sometimes, stays with the mother, little boy Will and the 3 little girls the
mom already had. Yep, its a lot, and maybe the way we learned is to much
for him. Its a lot for me too, but I'm more of a go with the flow. We learned
when he was 2 weeks old, I'm honestly not sure when Devin learned about
him, I'm thinking probably about the same time. Since its been around our
little town that it was supposedly rumored it was someone elses child. William
as is his full name, looks like my son, so I honestly believe them, and my
son has taken to him completely. So I will not question it, so I just go with
the flow, and will help all I can. The mom is on SSI, has lots of learning disabilities, and anxiety or depression type things. She isn't depressed though, not exactly sure what her disability is. But I'm going to do what
I can to help. I'm like that. But I also have taken to the 3 little girls two
of which have dad's that I believe are probably helping support them, and
I"m very much willing to take to the 2 year old. Its the way I was raised.

But I degress. My husband has come around to the fact, he paid the rest
of the tuition for Devin, and will help again. So that is good. He is just
a very odd ball guy at times, thanks much for listening to me.

I know a lot about bipolar, it runs strongly in my own family, but also in
my husbands, so I've been privy to watching many lives get ruined by it.
But I also have watched, my oldest, straighten his life and now start a
job with it. So I do know it does work at times.

WIth meds and all. This one has no insurance, and he doesn't believe he
has a problem in the mental side, so we just deal till he ask for help now.

Donna

You are so welcome, Donna... Being heard - FEELING heard... Validated. That is the most beautiful feeling in the world, I think. It is a feeling that unlocks my soul and lets my feelings out... from the dungeon they were forced into thru the years.

Your son Devin is very lucky to have you as his mom -- and your husband is a good man. He may not completely understand, but he is HEARING YOU and he trusts in what you say.

May this year be full of blessings for you...
Teri

Teri
Something else happened good yesterday to this story. I have always
told my sons that the best way to handle things when they think they
should have been given more of something. And in this case its more
money from Voc Reh. Is to ask why they didn't get what they think
they should.

So the niight before last Devin sent his counselor a email, requesting
to get at least the 175 that he needed to have to pay his classes. Since
he didn't spend all that he had the first semester. IT was could I have
this from that money some how.
She wrote him back yesterday, something happened and I sent you the
wrong amount, you will be getting a check for the difference, and you
can take it to Ivy Tech and they will reimburse you the amount you had
to pay to get the class paid for. So he should give his dad his money
back. But I didn't open my mouth, because he is living on almost nothing
in the semesters and I know how hard it is.

SO I"m just waiting if he works for dad and pays off the amount then
I would rather he just keep it and not tell dad. But I have a feeling he
will give it or try to back to dad and tell him what happened. Its to
me his story to tell though. Not mine.

But a sign he is starting to get back in line again.

Donna

Teri

I didn't read through my last post so some of this might be repeat, but
its all good and worth it if it is. My son wrote his Voc Rehab counselor
a couple weeks ago and learned she shorted him his college money.

He got the voucher last week to pay the rest of his fee, even though
he had used his dad's check. THey told him 7 to 10 days, and I wasn't
sure if he had told his dad about this. But felt it was his news to tell
him. And left it that way. Well yesterday the check came and he
went to get it cashed, came back and was leaving it incase he wasn't
here when dad got home. And I just couldn't stand not knowing
so I asked him. Had he told his dad that he was getting it from her.

He had already explained it to his dad.

So he was on top of this all along. I'm so proud of him. I'm so hoping
his dad is too. I hope they got a chance to talk. The stupid phone kept
ringing. ANd I had to go to urgent care, thought my arm had a infection,
but turned out to be tendonitis. But it was such a neat thing to see
from afar.

My husband will have a new light, or else some new bumps later.

Donna