DeterminedSenior Contributor
Meeting the needs of children when a parent suffers from mental illness
Looking for feedback/ ideas
For anyone who has not followed any of my other posts, my wife suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder and major depression. This year has been particularly difficult for us with multiple hospital admissions. This has been hard on our children but one son particually.
This is somthing I have often pondered but a couple of things in the last week have brought this to the front of thoughts.
Last week I read an article on childhood emotional neglect and thought how relevant it was for my darling. (Important to note that I think my darlings parents are fantastic so not judging them at all. More a symptom of the era and environment they were raised in and my darlijgs overly sensitive personality).
Then I recieved a message from a friend asking me to encourage my darling to see a particular councillor to talk about childhood truma that she believed was present.
Also some time ago when researching signs of bpd in children and growing up in a high stress home enviornment increases the risk of devoloping mental illness for children.
So here is my question,
How do we as parents support our children to reduce this risk, particually when everything around us seems to be fallig apart.
Also how do we manage difficult behaviour that is a genuine cry out for attention. Unacceptable behaviour can not be ignored but I struggle to balance sometimes how to deal with it. Especialy when I am tired and emotionally drained myself. Sometimes I just have nothing left to give and I worry if this is harming my children 😔
