Deborah Vlock - Parenting Children with Mental Health Challenges: A Guide to Life with Emotionally Complex Kids

Parenting Children with Mental Health Challenges

Parenting Children with Mental Health Challenges

A Guide to Life with Emotionally Complex Kids

Deborah Vlock

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

Published by Rowman & Littlefield

An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

www.rowman.com

Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB

Copyright 2018 by Deborah Vlock

All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Vlock, Deborah, author.

Title: Parenting children with mental health challenges : a guide to life with emotionally complex kids / Deborah Vlock.

Description: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018009447 (print) | LCCN 2018011042 (ebook) | ISBN 9781538105252 (electronic) | ISBN 9781538105245 (cloth : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Parents of mentally ill children. | Mentally ill children. | Parent and child.

Classification: LCC RJ499 (ebook) | LCC RJ499 .V595 2018 (print) | DDC 618.92/89dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018009447

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

For J.D., A.G.V.D., and T.M.V.D., without whom there would be no us.

For Ruth and Richard Vlock, who showed me how to be a good parent.

Acknowledgments

I wish thered been no need for this book when I first began to wonder whether I should write it. I wish there were no need for it now. As my wishes on the matter are irrelevant, I eventually went ahead and wrote it. After all, maladies of the psyche will probably always exist while there are human beings on this earth. Im grateful to have had the chance to offer encouragement and advice to some of the other human beings who know, or will come to know, what living with a mental illness feels like.

Inside these pages, my hand is waiting to clasp yoursmuch like other parents have extended a hand to me when, over the years, Ive needed rescue from drowning. The wonderful kids and parents who chose to share their stories here, and the clinicians and other professionals who likewise came forward to proffer advice, have all done so because they want to help. Without their generous input, theres no way this book could have been writtencertainly not in its current form.

A big shout-out to the millions of children and families, just here in the U.S. alone, facing down a mental illness. You wake up every day and continue the weary work of simply getting by till tomorrow. You know what the stab of loneliness, severe sleep deprivation, and being in a prolonged state of fight-or-flight arousal feels like. Youve battled shape-shifting adversaries and been held hostage by psych meds you cant live with yet cant live without. Uncertainty is your baseline: never knowing whats coming tonight, tomorrow, next week. Theres no one braver, in my estimation, than you!

To the parents and kids who offered up your stories for this book, so readers in search of comfort and solidarity might find a bit of both, thank you! Heres to youand the dream of a future in which books like this one are obsolete.

A handful of outstanding mental health clinicians, advocates, and related professionals were good enough to share their knowledge with me. Jessica Reed, LICSW; Cynthia Moore; Anne Glowinski, MD; Leon Hammer, MD; and Kate Maffa, your expertise has made this book all the better.

Although my own life has been periodically challenged by illness and loss, my sleep disrupted by the ever-present potential for more of both, I must say, I won the family lottery. In Lars Ive found a true partnera loving husband and dad, willing to embark with me on this unexpected parenting detour, and to face together some hard truths about our own unquiet minds along the way. You are truly peerless at what you do and who you are: smart, funny, sweet, unflaggingly loyal, and a forever kind of guy.

Saskia and Ben: you are my true north, my greater purpose, my shining examples of how to undertake the tricky work of being good people in this world , and do it right. Not perfectly, maybe, but with deep human feeling, sometimes human fallibility, and enough courage to be true to yourselves while striving to do right by others. Im lucky to have learned from you guys what unconditional lovegiven and receivedfeels like. (It feels beautiful.)

My parents, Richard and Ruth Vlock, have probably read every damn thing Ive written since I penned my first poem around the age of six. They pored tirelessly over every draft of every chapter of this book, with love and enthusiasm, and possibly a semiprivate, long-standing belief that I am the greatest living writer in the English language. (Whatthats why parents were invented, no?)

My brother and sister-in-law, Rob Vlock and Joanne Southwell, both authors as well, have been my comrades in all varieties of artistic neurosis. I love you two. And Ill bet you twenty bucks itll be one (or both) of you, among the three of us, who touches the writerly stars first. Go, go, go!

Anke Finger, rock-star professor and my bestie since we took ourselves way too seriously in graduate school, you have been a most cherished reader and friend for a long time. May we have many years to come of mutual beta reading. Oh... plus good coffee and German chocolate, always and forever.

A special thank-you to my amazing critique group, who feel like family after many years together. Readers, look sharp (now and in the future) for writings by Diana Renn, Patrick Gabridge, Eileen Donovan-Kranz, Rob Vlock, Ted Rooney, Gregory Lewis, Erin Cashman, and Julie Wueach one an inimitable talent.

This book is only a thing because my agent extraordinaire, Janet Reid, is determined and loyal, sticking with me while I figured out what book I really needed to write. After one or two unsold novels, a couple of near misses, and some veiled threats that I was going to stop writing altogether, here we are. Im lucky to have been a longtime partner in literary endeavors with you, Janetand even better, to count you as a friend.

Suzanne Staszak-Silva, my editor at Rowman & Littlefield, was just the person to see the value in this book and acquire it. What can I say, Suzanne, except that without your trust, who knows whether this survival guide would ever have come to pass? I know you hope, as much as I do, that it will make a difference in many lives.

Last but far from least, there are a few people who mean the world to me, and whose basic presence in my life furthers many of the things I do. Thanks to Jessica, Emily, and Mark Axel; the King-Maranci family; the Zendzian family; the Donovan-Kranz crew; and Cynthia Moore, if not for whose dedicated friendship and advocacy, our family might have been lesser by one beloved person. Like the others mentioned here, Eve Golden and Ken Kronenberg spent many an anguished hour with us when life was nipping at our flanks something fierce. Without Eves wise and gentle counsel, we would likely have lacked the courage to take the very first stepa residential school for Benthat marked the end of a dire phase and the beginning of a hopeful, lovely one.