My Kid is..."Different"
Overcoming shame in parenting kids with mental health challenges
Our Tendency to Hide
“How’s the college life?” My daughter’s former junior high teacher asked after our family finished watching a concert for her younger sister.
“Ummm, I’m actually taking a gap year,” my daughter answered, avoiding her eyes, fiddling with a backpack. “It just wasn’t a good fit and I had some medical issues.”
As the teacher smiled and told my daughter that she looks great, I thought, that’s the socially acceptable half of the story. The one we might share publicly.
Last night, a friend texted that her teen is coming back to school after weeks in a mental health treatment facility. She wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t break her confidence if other parents asked about her teen’s absence. Without saying it directly, I knew she was dancing around the same fears of others’ judgments as my daughter.
The truth is, many people misunderstand children like ours. Because the conversation about mental health is so loaded in our society, few people truly understand how to support our families or how complex our parenting world is.
My friend’s concerns brought me back to my daughter’s experience in a treatment center. Because my daughter’s mental health breakdown happened in fall 2020 when our schools were shut down, it was easier to conceal her illness. Even when she healed enough to leave the treatment center and attend classes, she returned, with relative anonymity, to online classes whose students kept their cameras off. And yet, I still worried that folks outside of my inner circle would find out. I didn’t know how to respond to questions like, “How are you doing?” from other parents or work friends. When people asked me how our family was handling the pandemic, it felt hard to explain that I wasn’t just dealing with virtual school and grumpy housebound kids. How could I describe, to people unfamiliar with this journey, that the majority of my time was spent supporting, supervising and feeding a teenager who had lost the ability to feed herself?
Why is it so hard to talk about mental health issues, which one friend calls simply, “brain health"? Why do some of us feel the need to hide the reality of our teen’s struggle? Why does it feel easier to name my son’s broken wrist or my daughter’s lactose-intolerance than her anxiety disorder?
Fear of Others’ Responses
I think that part of the answer is “out there,” as my friend alluded to, that many folks don’t understand and don’t know how to respond in a helpful way, even though they may have the best intentions. Mental illness carries a certain stigma in our society.
I feel blessed to have a circle of friends who are amazingly supportive and wise and I’ve chosen to confide our struggles in those “safe people.” But occasionally I’ve gotten some responses that shook me. They usually fell into one of these categories:
Oversimplifying: “If you just do [xyz], your daughter will get better. Don’t worry.”
Blaming the family: “Your daughter’s struggles are a result of the brokenness of your family system. If you and your husband change, she will get well.”
Note: I am a huge believer in family therapy, but my daughter’s illness has a much more complex set of root causes than our family system. And if it was only due to her environment, our other two other kids would also have significant mental health challenges (they don’t).
False empathy: “I’ve been through this too. Sometimes I feel anxious and down.”
It is totally valid to have those feelings but not the same as having a diagnosed condition that leads to a mental breakdown requiring hospitalization.
Avoidance: Quick words of sympathy and then changing the subject, often back to the other person, which can feel like a harsh rejection and then an awkward path forward. “Oh, so sorry to hear that…did you hear that the English teacher resigned?”
Too much advice: “I think I know what is wrong with your daughter. You should do this…Have you thought about this? Maybe you need this...I don’t think that diagnosis is correct.”
Note: I love hearing others’ experiences with mental health. But only qualified professionals should give direct advice.
Over-spiritualizing: “God will heal your kid! Let’s pray right now for instant healing. I’ve seen this happen at a conference.”
While I deeply value others’ prayers for my daughter, believe in God’s power and often pray for others, this response can be hard on many levels. It can set up an expectation of instant healing and a disappointment for both the prayer minister and the grieving family if that doesn’t happen. It misses the bigger picture that mental health challenges are often a symptom of deeper emotional needs. It can send a message that mental health issues aren’t acceptable in the church. And more.
I know that in most cases, people mean well. It’s so hard to know what to say when someone reveals an illness as inscrutable, chronic, and painful as debilitating depression or an out-of-control eating disorder, especially if you haven’t walked the road before. Often, what I want is just someone’s listening ear, a hug, and the assurance that they will walk with our family through a hard time. I’m happy to hear their experience as long as they understand that our path might look different.
What We Overlook: Our Own Shame
If we only focus on others’s responses, we can fall into one of two unhelpful stances which are two sides of the same coin: victimhood or persecutor. For example, we can’t share our struggles with others because they don’t understand - therefore, we are victims of their ignorance. Or we can blame others for unhelpful responses and spend hours cataloging how they need to change. The concepts of victim and persecutor come from Stephen Karpman’s work on the Drama Triangle.
But those responses absolve us of our responsibility to get the support we need. And it’s an easy cover-up for an underlying emotion that can be common in parenting mental health challenges. We have to face our own shame.
When I look up definitions of shame, the answers don’t quite fit what I feel as a parent. Typically, shame is associated with an action that doesn’t align with our values or a sense that we are somehow bad or wrong. The Gottman Institute talks about healthy shame which points us towards self-correction, amends, growth and toxic shame which is self-punishing.
In contrast, I’ve experienced a different type of shame that comes from having a kid who doesn’t fit into the typical social norms, whose functioning is compromised and unpredictable, who may not follow the typical adolescent pathway towards independence. In the midst of a driven, competitive society, I feel the pressure to help my child succeed according to external markers and perhaps my inability to keep her on that path results in a feeling of shame. For instance, when I learned that my daughter’s college roommate was a premed biology major and varsity athlete who drove herself forty-five minutes to swim practices every morning and had an instant circle of college friends, I felt that same shame as I met her mother. I didn’t want to admit that my daughter gave up on learning to drive because it made her too anxious, quit high school sports after an injury and an eating disorder, and rarely goes out with friends.
My kid is different. She might look like a typical kid. Her academic abilities are off the charts. Her teachers adore her for her kindness and class engagement. Her smile radiates. But her neurodivergent, ADHD brain functions differently than a neurotypical kid. And her “brain health” prevents her from doing many age-appropriate activities related to socializing, independence, emotional regulation, and physical health, depending on the day.
Part of my healing journey has been admitting that I feel shame about having a different kid and then moving towards acceptance. The more I can embrace my child as she is, without trying to fix her, the more I can release shame. The more I accept what is, rather than what I want to be true, the more peace I can find. And the more I accept who my child is and what her path looks like, the more I can forgive myself for any false notions that I should have prevented this somehow. In contrast, my theology says that every person is a unique, beloved child of God, made in God’s image. Who am I to argue with God’s handiwork and say that she should be different?
Al-Anon talks about the three C’s when it comes to alcoholism: I didn’t cause my loved one’s illness, I can’t control it, and I can’t cure him/ her. That same principle lifts the impossible burden of taking responsibility for someone else’s illness. And it releases shame: illness is just illness, whether it is an illness of the brain or the bones.
The other day, I cried on the way home as I confided in a friend about my daughter’s struggles. For the moment, I moved from frustration about her challenges to grief at how much she carries, both in her brain health and body health. After wiping tears, I entered the house and gave my daughter a hug. I told her that I was sad that health had been so hard lately.
Her response surprised me. “Mom, it has been so hard this year. But I’ve learned so much about how to be healthier and I don’t think I would have ever taken some of these steps if I hadn’t gotten so sick.” Her eyes sparkled. “There’s new things I’m trying and I could help so many people with what I’ve learned.”
I did a double take. How could this young adult, who has railed against God and against life for her challenges, who has considered ending her life out of self-hatred, who has felt such despair and grief at her limitations, suddenly be celebrating her path? Just for context, this is not the response she would have given three years ago in severe depression or two years ago when she got her ADHD diagnosis. I took a breath and thought, this is her recovery which she has worked so hard for. And her new perspective is a gift of grace.
So I’m celebrating my daughter today, knowing that gratitude is an antidote for shame. Today, I can celebrate her, with the same pride that I had about her little sister’s concert a few days before. Even if one is a public celebration and one is private, they both bring joy, leading me out of hiding and into hope.
I’m so thankful you wrote this.