There’s also a chat site industry in convincing teens they have some sort of mental problem and they should demand all manner of treatment and accommodation. It becomes their raison d’etre. And they become very persuasive and intimidating of their parents. I know one couple whose 30 something daughter still lives at home and has convi…
There’s also a chat site industry in convincing teens they have some sort of mental problem and they should demand all manner of treatment and accommodation. It becomes their raison d’etre. And they become very persuasive and intimidating of their parents. I know one couple whose 30 something daughter still lives at home and has convinced them she is autistic and disabled. Never mind she never exhibited autism at a younger age. She has hyponotized them into believing she was and they never saw it. What terrible parents, right? What guilt ridden parents. And so they enable her. I can’t talk to them anymore unless I buy into her act. In reality she is a low achiever with an attitude who has trouble making friends and keeping jobs. She needs counseling to be sure. But the autism makes it not her fault, so she doesn’t have to try. Now the parents are trying to get her SS disability. Good grief! I stopped talking to them.
We are in the middle of this teen mental health glamorization, trying to clear the way for our 12 year old. She isn’t on any social media and her screen time is restricted, but she picked up ideas from her friends and got a lot during the lockdown phase when the screen time limits got eroded. But these teen ideas are literally in the air we breathe.
Gee it’s so hard to find friends for her whose parents would be on the same page. Several close friends seek diagnosis for their kids to excuse behaviors to opt out from the increasingly difficult job of parenting and I am at a loss where our kids will find new friends if we stay where we are.
To be fair, a lot of teens developed mental health problems during the government mandated social isolation. Social isolation is not conducive to mental health. Then, too, some people use mental illness as a cop out/excuse, and it can be hard to know where to draw the line between being supportive and being enabling.
You are correct and this is exactly our story. We are a risk group for such social experiments like lockdowns. We are the collateral damage of the entire covid experiment. I have anxiety and depression run in the family but it seems to only present itself under an enormous stress.
My dad had an episode of horrible depression when he immigrated to the US in his late 60s; and at the same time he also received a diagnosis of lung cancer. The diagnosis turned out to be false, but at the time those two evens threw him into an abyss of mental illness. We never saw him having anything like it ever before or after. It was a special brand of stress that caused his mental dismay. Within a year and with the help of medications he came back to normal and is a completely sane and sharp elderly gentleman without any meds.
I do recognise his pattern when I look at my 12 year old daughter now. The stress of the draconian covid measures in California and isolation during her formative puberty years brought this damage upon her and many other kids. We had four suicidal ideation last year in one class (6 grade) and two mental hospitalizations. Some kids had a family history like ours and their parents were somewhat prepared while other parents weren’t prepared at all and went completely off the rails from the shock of that sudden mental and illness in their absolutely normal pre-teens.
Among the Russian immigrants in the Silicon Valley we refer to the entire covid theatre as “Chernobyl”, for its long lasting consequences that are swept under the rug by officials.
What’s especially agonising in it for us is that the mental health care system in the US is completely unprepared to address this kind of crisis in kids this young and this ‘normal’ (meaning there is no (substance) abuse, no addiction, no battered household) our kids are coming from successful, professional families. And we are being kicked from one health provider to another with the constant slogan ‘we don’t work with this’. And the aforementioned chat industry of teens glamorising mental health is of little help here.
It is my 74 year old dad who gives me the biggest hope now. After he had gone through his crisis several years ago he insists that we will persevere and even in his life time he will see his grand daughter flourish. I trust he is right.
That makes me so angry. It is heartbreaking. FWIW, my teenage daughter developed anorexia from the lock-down. It took months to find a therapist, as they were inundated with requests for help, and a few months in, the therapist explained that anorexia is caused by fat-phobia, which was invented by the thin white male doctors who run the AMA. I fired her. My daughter recovered with lots of extra love, attention, braiding her hair, and cooking lots of her favorite foods (which at first I had to kind of force her to eat.) And I never say no to her when she wants to get together with friends, which I never thought I would not do, but she really needs all the social support she can get. I live in fear of another lock-down, and want her to have all the social support she can get. It was terrifying. I wish you all the best with your daughter. She's lucky to have a loving grandpa.
Poor you and your daughter. And everything you had to go through finding help for her. This is a pure nightmare. I m so happy to hear she has recovered and that you were able to tap into extra love and care resource. I m afraid of another wave of lockdowns and current California political climate too and constantly seek for alternative place to live..
Thank you for your reply. I have looked into this. Apparently you need to have been diagnosed at a young age. That never happened. She never exhibited anything unusual. But that hasn’t stopped her from doctor shopping, trying to get someone to intercede and plead her case. So now taxpayers are supposed to pay for this charade. Psychotherapy—sure. SSDI—-no.
There’s also a chat site industry in convincing teens they have some sort of mental problem and they should demand all manner of treatment and accommodation. It becomes their raison d’etre. And they become very persuasive and intimidating of their parents. I know one couple whose 30 something daughter still lives at home and has convinced them she is autistic and disabled. Never mind she never exhibited autism at a younger age. She has hyponotized them into believing she was and they never saw it. What terrible parents, right? What guilt ridden parents. And so they enable her. I can’t talk to them anymore unless I buy into her act. In reality she is a low achiever with an attitude who has trouble making friends and keeping jobs. She needs counseling to be sure. But the autism makes it not her fault, so she doesn’t have to try. Now the parents are trying to get her SS disability. Good grief! I stopped talking to them.
We are in the middle of this teen mental health glamorization, trying to clear the way for our 12 year old. She isn’t on any social media and her screen time is restricted, but she picked up ideas from her friends and got a lot during the lockdown phase when the screen time limits got eroded. But these teen ideas are literally in the air we breathe.
Gee it’s so hard to find friends for her whose parents would be on the same page. Several close friends seek diagnosis for their kids to excuse behaviors to opt out from the increasingly difficult job of parenting and I am at a loss where our kids will find new friends if we stay where we are.
To be fair, a lot of teens developed mental health problems during the government mandated social isolation. Social isolation is not conducive to mental health. Then, too, some people use mental illness as a cop out/excuse, and it can be hard to know where to draw the line between being supportive and being enabling.
You are correct and this is exactly our story. We are a risk group for such social experiments like lockdowns. We are the collateral damage of the entire covid experiment. I have anxiety and depression run in the family but it seems to only present itself under an enormous stress.
My dad had an episode of horrible depression when he immigrated to the US in his late 60s; and at the same time he also received a diagnosis of lung cancer. The diagnosis turned out to be false, but at the time those two evens threw him into an abyss of mental illness. We never saw him having anything like it ever before or after. It was a special brand of stress that caused his mental dismay. Within a year and with the help of medications he came back to normal and is a completely sane and sharp elderly gentleman without any meds.
I do recognise his pattern when I look at my 12 year old daughter now. The stress of the draconian covid measures in California and isolation during her formative puberty years brought this damage upon her and many other kids. We had four suicidal ideation last year in one class (6 grade) and two mental hospitalizations. Some kids had a family history like ours and their parents were somewhat prepared while other parents weren’t prepared at all and went completely off the rails from the shock of that sudden mental and illness in their absolutely normal pre-teens.
Among the Russian immigrants in the Silicon Valley we refer to the entire covid theatre as “Chernobyl”, for its long lasting consequences that are swept under the rug by officials.
What’s especially agonising in it for us is that the mental health care system in the US is completely unprepared to address this kind of crisis in kids this young and this ‘normal’ (meaning there is no (substance) abuse, no addiction, no battered household) our kids are coming from successful, professional families. And we are being kicked from one health provider to another with the constant slogan ‘we don’t work with this’. And the aforementioned chat industry of teens glamorising mental health is of little help here.
It is my 74 year old dad who gives me the biggest hope now. After he had gone through his crisis several years ago he insists that we will persevere and even in his life time he will see his grand daughter flourish. I trust he is right.
That makes me so angry. It is heartbreaking. FWIW, my teenage daughter developed anorexia from the lock-down. It took months to find a therapist, as they were inundated with requests for help, and a few months in, the therapist explained that anorexia is caused by fat-phobia, which was invented by the thin white male doctors who run the AMA. I fired her. My daughter recovered with lots of extra love, attention, braiding her hair, and cooking lots of her favorite foods (which at first I had to kind of force her to eat.) And I never say no to her when she wants to get together with friends, which I never thought I would not do, but she really needs all the social support she can get. I live in fear of another lock-down, and want her to have all the social support she can get. It was terrifying. I wish you all the best with your daughter. She's lucky to have a loving grandpa.
Poor you and your daughter. And everything you had to go through finding help for her. This is a pure nightmare. I m so happy to hear she has recovered and that you were able to tap into extra love and care resource. I m afraid of another wave of lockdowns and current California political climate too and constantly seek for alternative place to live..
Thank you for your reply. I have looked into this. Apparently you need to have been diagnosed at a young age. That never happened. She never exhibited anything unusual. But that hasn’t stopped her from doctor shopping, trying to get someone to intercede and plead her case. So now taxpayers are supposed to pay for this charade. Psychotherapy—sure. SSDI—-no.