Boy, what a stressful situation this must be for everyone. I think your concerns about your children and desires to keep them safe are perfectly normal\u2014and warranted, given the erratic and \u201cdisruptive\u201d behavior of your (ex?) husband, which apparently includes visits to jail and mental hospitals. I think the first thing, if you haven\u2019t thought of this already, is to make sure any potential visits (even if Dad is \u201con his meds\u201d and reportedly doing OK) are strictly supervised. Perhaps the most appropriate thing, if\/when he is again permitted to have visits with the children, is to ensure visits are made in very controlled, safe situations. Again, this may have occurred to you already, but there it is.<\/p>\n
The main point of your question is how to speak to kids about things that even we adults struggle to comprehend, and that may even frighten us. We Westerners, with our love of hard science, tend to be more at ease with what we can see and touch; mental issues often seem intangible, hard to define and treat with the same precision as physical illnesses. This can create anxiety and frustration, including the question of how to talk to children. Rest assured, there is no \u201cright\u201d way to do this. The only way is trial and error, in the seeking out of that elusive combination of honesty and appropriateness, much of which, of course, depends on your children. Some kids are astonishingly open-minded and earthy about things; others have more anxiety and need to be treated much more delicately. Some 8-year-olds may say matter-of-factly, \u201cSo my friends say Dad\u2019s crazy, is that true?\u201d Others may very tentatively say, with much worry, \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with Daddy?\u201d The first step is to acknowledge their feelings about what\u2019s happening, validate their experiences (\u201cyes, this stuff is a little scary\u201d), and most importantly to reassure them that his behavior has nothing to do with them. I\u2019m sure their father is a good person in a bad predicament.<\/p>\n
Know that it\u2019s OK for you to share some of your own feelings about this, including anxiety, worry, frustration, what have you. It\u2019s likely worth talking about with a friend first, to sort out what you do and don\u2019t want to say to your kids. (For instance, if you\u2019re angry at him, it would be more appropriate to vent to a confidant than the children, though you might say that sometimes you get angry at the behavior, that his illness makes him do things that are hard to understand.) The point is, you are going to be the prime role model in how to handle this. If you are calm and balanced (as best as you can manage), they\u2019ll feel that; if you seem overly anxious, angry, or indifferent, they\u2019ll likely pick up on that, too. I don\u2019t get that impression from your letter, by the way. You seem quite involved and caring.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s OK to say \u201cI don\u2019t know\u201d if you don\u2019t know the answer to something. Perhaps you can pursue answers as a family. For instance, there are helpful children\u2019s books on mental issues, available via Google or Amazon. Seeking knowledge and education makes things less scary, and the good news is that, as awful as these issues are, better medications and treatments are coming along, seemingly every other day. (Is it possible, incidentally, that the schizophrenic episodes are connected to the mania? I\u2019m not sure what \u201cbouts of schizophrenia\u201d means, unless you mean bouts of psychosis\u2014visual or aural hallucinations, extreme paranoia, etc.\u2014which can be related to the mania. Fortunately, the medications available are much better than they were, say, even 10 or 20 years ago. Is he regular with his medication? Many with bipolar are not, which only worsens the other symptoms, such as posttraumatic stress, psychosis, etc.)<\/p>\n
I also wonder how much of their father\u2019s issues are personality driven. With all due respect, I have worked with people with psychotic and extreme mood issues, and not all of them end up in jail. I don\u2019t want to make any presumptions, but it sounds like he may have some other issues going on that might also explain his illegal and disruptive behaviors. (Does he have a drug problem?)<\/p>\n
It\u2019s scary to consider this, and not easy to say, but as parents (and I am one) we want to keep our kids safe, protected, and healthy, but there are limitations to those protections, since we are all too human. One of the very positive things my parents did for me was to take the stigma and fear out of seeking out counseling or therapy. I can\u2019t help thinking that a family therapy session or two might help you\u2014not only to destigmatize the mental health profession (which their dad so obviously needs), but also to allow your children to talk to a professional about their father\u2019s issues. Education and de-escalating fears, again, creates greater emotional safety. These issues are difficult, but they need not be terrifying. Having a professional involved, even briefly, takes some pressure off of you, while it allows you to role-model for them an example of seeking help rather than the pressure of having to know all the answers (who does?).<\/p>\n
A long, drawn-out course of therapy may not be needed; however, these kids have been exposed to some pretty disorienting fatherly behavior, and it might be a relief to them to talk freely to someone about their feelings, questions, and perceptions, someone not directly involved. Very often kids are protective of their parents\u2019 feelings, or wary to contradict what they sense one parent is feeling about the other. Speaking openly and freely about their emotional experience could help reduce any potential anxiety.<\/p>\n
I hope this is helpful. Your children are lucky to have such a caring, protective mom. Thanks for writing.<\/p>\n
Respectfully,
\nDarren<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Boy, what a stressful situation this must be for everyone. I think your concerns about your children and desires to keep them safe are perfectly normal\u2014and warranted, given the erratic and \u201cdisruptive\u201d behavior of your (ex?) husband, which apparently includes visits to jail and mental hospitals. I think the first thing, if you haven\u2019t thought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1061,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[625],"tags":[522,393,25],"class_list":["post-17676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dear-goodtherapy","tag-dear-gt","tag-family-problems","tag-psychotherapy-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1061"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17676\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}