Parenting a Child with Mental Illness

This is my daughter Inara back in 2011 when we officially began our homeschooling journey. She was in kindergarten at that point, and I had never homeschooled before. I had just recently given birth to my youngest daughter, Avalon, and now that I had 5 children who needed some form of childcare either after school or all day, it didn’t make sense to keep working outside the home when my income wouldn’t even cover daycare costs. So I reworked the budget and reworked the budget until I was reasonably sure we could afford for me to come home and take care of my kids.

Homeschooling was always something I wanted to do. When I was young, I wanted to be a teacher. As I got older, other dreams took over, but the idea of being able to educate my children was still very appealing. Of course, the lamentable state of public education in the United States as well as several news stories about the lack of preparedness among recent high school graduates helped as well. I felt I had received a good education, and I wanted to be sure my children did as well.

But that wasn’t the only reason I chose to homeschool as soon as I was able. The main reason was Inara herself. My sister has ADHD, so I know how to recognize the symptoms. Inara had definite symptoms of ADHD. She was restless. She had difficulty concentrating. Her thoughts moved so quickly, and she talked very fast in order to keep up with them. She couldn’t remember a list of three items. I didn’t want to use medication to treat the ADHD. There is still some debate about whether or not the brain differences seen in children with ADHD are due to the condition itself or the nature of the medication they use to treat symptoms. I wanted to try natural, alternative methods for concentration first. I knew that in a public school setting Inara’s personality quirks would cause problems. It’s hard enough for teachers to handle “average” students in their classes, especially with the number of students per class, but throw in a few kids with “special” needs…well, they aren’t superheros.

Inara did well with homeschooling. She didn’t have to sit still all day. Our work took less time than public school lessons take because she was the only student and we didn’t have to focus on classroom management issues that take up a lot of the time in a public school classroom. She was able to move at her own pace, so if she picked up a concept quickly, we could rush ahead, and if she needed a bit more time to understand, we could slow down and take as long as we needed. I believe in teaching for mastery, so I didn’t move ahead with a lesson until I was sure whatever we were working on had been fully understood and mastered before hand.

If Inara wanted to jump up and down during math class, she could jump up and down. If Inara wanted to hang upside down from the couch during history, she was free to do so. She could fidget or draw or play with blocks during read alouds. The only time she had to sit still was during our penmanship classes. I told her I needed her to sit still in order to learn to write, but as long as she wasn’t writing she could do whatever she needed to do. If we were reading books and I wasn’t sure Inara was paying attention, I would ask her some comprehension questions. If she could answer the questions adequately, she could continue doing whatever she had been doing, but if she couldn’t answer the questions, she had to stop and sit still for the remainder of the lesson. I was able to minimize distractions in her learning environment and constantly redirect her wandering attention. We used yoga poses, exercise breaks, essential oils, and omega-3 supplements to help with her focus, and they did help a little bit.

But as Inara got older, I noticed that she had behaviors that ADHD just didn’t explain. She would lie about things all the time. I’m not talking about normal lying in young children when you catch them doing something they shouldn’t or when you suspect they did something and they are afraid of punishment. I’m talking lying about everything. All the time. Big things. Little things. Things that didn’t matter at all. She would tell stories. At first, I thought maybe she didn’t understand the difference between reality and fantasy, but then it became clear that she did understand the difference–at least intellectually. It just didn’t affect her storytelling. If she heard another person share a story about their life experience, I would catch Inara telling someone else the story as if it were her own, and when confronted Inara would insist that the story had absolutely happened to her.

She began stealing. At first it was the typical stealing in the check out line, taking candy or small toys. She was very young, so we explained that you can’t just take things without asking. We would have her return the item to the store manager and apologize for what she did. But where normal kids would stop doing this after the embarrassment of facing the store manager, Inara continued. It got to where we had to search her after every trip to the store. It didn’t stop either, Inara just got better at hiding what she had stolen so that we didn’t always find it. She moved up to stealing food from the kitchen at night. It’s not that she was hungry. She would just take things. She would steal ingredients if we didn’t have snack food in the house. She would steal food she didn’t even like. She would hide it around the house!

As we struggled with these behavior issues, we began to notice that Inara didn’t understand discipline or correction. When you correct a young child, you go through certain steps. You explain what they did wrong or, better yet, you have them explain to you what they did wrong. You explain how they should have handled the situation. Maybe you even role play what they will do next time. Most children from a young age begin to associate their behavior with the consequences for those behaviors. They understand the rules and how to follow them. As they get older, the discipline needs might change, but you generally don’t end up handling the same behaviors over and over and over again. Inara wasn’t like that. She understood the rule. She understood that what she had done was against the rule, but she didn’t understand why that was a problem. She viewed discipline as a personal attack. She would often say, “I’m in the corner because you don’t like me,” rather than saying “I’m in the corner because I hit my sister and that’s against the rules.” Even if you explained that hitting was against the rules and that was why she was in the corner, she would respond with “Well, yeah, I know hitting is against the rules, but that shouldn’t mean I have to be punished for it.” There was this sense that Inara did not understand why rules should apply to her.

As time went on, she progressed to getting more and more angry. Not only did she believe correction meant she was not liked or even unloved, she would begin to feel that whoever was doing the correction was her enemy and deserved punishment themselves. Since I was the one home with her all the time and handling most of the discipline that meant she targeted me with her needs for revenge. Inara was subtle in her tactics. She didn’t do anything at once. Instead she would wait, mulling over her feelings until they got big enough for her to act on them, days maybe even weeks later. She would destroy something I cared about. She would ruin something that belonged to me. If it was my birthday, she would stick her hands in my birthday cake before we even go to light the candles. If I received a present, she would break it or use it or damage it in some way so that I couldn’t enjoy it. If I received candy or a food item, she would eat it.

This behavior targeted her sisters as well. We raise our kids to be community minder. We often tell them that they ARE their brother or their sisters keeper. We tell them love means that you speak up when you see someone else doing something that’s going to get them in trouble or hurt them or someone else. You don’t let them do things that will hurt themselves, even if it’s something that will just get them sent to the corner. Remind them of the consequences. Then come get an adult if the behavior warrants it. When Inara’s sisters would see her steal something, they would say things like, “Inara, what are you doing? Why are you taking things? You know that’s stealing. You don’t want to get in trouble, do you? Put it back before someone sees you.” Inara began targeting them as well. She would tear up their favorite stuffed animal. She would cut holes in their clothing. Occasionally, she would choke them or threaten to hit them or harm them in some way.

As Inara approached adolescence, her threats escalated. She began to threaten to kill her sisters if they told on her or if they stopped her from doing what she wanted to do. We tried to seek mental health help for her, but when you have medicaid as your only mental health coverage (our commercial insurance excluded benefits for mental health) you tend to get lumped into a box and no one really listens. The therapists who took medicaid only wanted to recommend medication for her ADHD. No one believed that the other symptoms were true or that they were as bad as we reported. We were accused of scapegoating our child, of blaming her for our ineffective parenting. It didn’t matter that I had 4 other children (or even when I had 6 other children) who had none of these issues. I was to blame for Inara’s behavior.

We were finally able to get the local gateway agency for mental health in our county to come to our home and assess Inara for mental health services. This only occurred after Inara accused my husband (her stepfather) of physically abusing her. He was charged with child abuse in the 4th degree. We had to hire attorneys and fight to show that we had never abused any of our children. While we were working with the court system, Inara was qualified for in-home mental health therapy, which meant that a therapist came to our home and met with Inara either in our home, or outside, or at another location like a restaurant, etc. Inara was sent to group therapy for kids with severe behavioral issues. It was at this point that Inara’s stories took on a more sinister tone. She began to tell stories about the other kids at her group therapy sessions. In these stories, something would happen to a “friend” of hers, she would respond with aggression and violence to the alleged offender, and she would be the hero.

I became concerned that all of Inara’s stories now had some form of violence in them. Inara was good at manipulating her therapists. She had a pathological need to be the center of attention. She enjoyed shocking people and would often make outrageous statements to see the kind of reaction she would get. She told her therapist she was seeing demons. She then admitted that she was threatening to kill her siblings. Most kids who are mentally ill and make threats like this don’t have a plan. They say they want to kill people because they are angry and overwhelmed, but that’s all. So when you say: How would you do that? They can’t give more than vague answers. They don’t know. They haven’t thought it through. They made the threat in the heat of the moment due to overwhelming emotions. That wasn’t the case with Inara.

Inara had a plan. She always had a plan. It was detailed and step-by-step. She knew who she would attack first, what weapon she would use, how she would hide her attack from the rest of the family, and how she would progress until we were all dead. She even had a plan for how she would cover up the crimes and where she would go afterward. It was terrifying to live in our home. Inara was placed in an inpatient mental health hospital for adolescents. The psychiatrist who evaluated her said she had never met a child so young who lacked empathy and viewed people as objects. She had an obsessive need for revenge. It was after her hospitalization that my husband went to trial for child abuse. He was acquitted.

Inara was placed on a number of medications. She took a medication for her ADHD (the natural methods we were using were no longer effective and she was really struggling). She took a mood stabilizer. She took an antidepressant. She took a blood pressure medication to try to control her agitation and impulsivity. She took Melatonin to help her sleep. Inara never slept more than 4 hours at a time. In the beginning, the medication seemed to work. Inara came out of the hospital much more subdued. She was compliant. She was kind to her siblings. She obeyed our requests. She seemed less violent. She still lied, but she would eventually admit to lying rather than insist she was telling the truth. We were hopeful!

But as time progressed, the medication seemed to wear off. We adjusted doses. We adjusted medications, but Inara’s behaviors gradually returned in full force. It was almost like she said what she needed to say to get the pills to start with, but they weren’t actually affecting her behavior. She responded how she was told she would respond, but since it was an act it wore off quickly when the acting no longer suited her. Inara was still in therapy, but with the constant turn-over rate in mental health, she wasn’t with someone long enough for them to weed out her lies from the truth. By the time they figured out Inara was manipulating them, it was time for them to move on. She even convinced one therapist that her brother had Down Syndrome!

Inara’s behavior continued to escalate. All her stories were violent. She was sneaking out in the middle of the night. She was stealing from local stores to the tune of hundreds of dollars worth of items. She stole money from my purse and credit cards. She was threatening to kill us again. She even took a knife from our kitchen and hid it so that we couldn’t find it. It took us 6 months to find where she had hidden it! During all this the mental health agencies claimed their hands were tied. There was nothing they could do. They made Inara sign safety plans saying she wouldn’t kill us at night, and they sent us home. I can’t even begin to tell you what that’s like. I can’t begin to tell you how it feels to be alone in a house with 5 of your 7 children and feel that you can’t protect them from someone who wants to kill them. I can’t begin to tell you what it feels like to be afraid of your own child. And I was afraid! I was afraid for myself. I was afraid for my children.

Inara was finally admitted to the inpatient mental health facility again. It took multiple calls to police agencies and therapists to get it done. I had officers condemn my parenting. I had officers ask if I even had a husband and if all my kids had the same dad. (My husband is a truck driver, so he’s only home on weekends). I was told that the police were not a substitute for good parenting. It was humiliating and dehumanizing. I finally asked one officer if his 11 yr old daughter had ever threatened to tie him up in his sleep and set him on fire so that she could watch him burn. He said, No.” I said, “Well, then we’re really not comparing apples to apples here are we!” The officers who responded to my final call after Inara destroyed the house and was attacking her siblings took one look at the mess and decided I was the problem. They took Inara to the Children’s Hospital ER for psychological evaluation only after she informed them of her plan and desire to kill us. The officer questioning her said “Why do you want to kill your family? What would that accomplish?” She said, “They are in my way. I don’t like when people get in my way. Killing them solves that problem.” Her response scared him–scared a veteran police officer who had worked with hardened criminals. So they took her in.

At the mental hospital she decided she wanted to go into foster care. No one would accommodate her request. They all told her that foster care was not the magical place she thought it was. Inara met another patient who was in foster care and began getting information from her on how she got there and what it was like. The children aren’t supposed to discuss their history, but that didn’t stop Inara from pumping this girl for information. When she had enough information, she accused my husband of sexual abuse. The hospital said her accusation had all the hallmarks of a false accusation. They had to report it to CPS, but they assured me that they had told CPS they believed the accusation to be false. CPS didn’t care. After a sham investigation, they removed my husband from our home. Eventually, they went to court and placed all my children in foster care, claiming that I had failed to protect my kids from abuse. They used the previous allegation of physical abuse against us as well, even though it had ended in acquittal. They even claimed that the fact we homeschooled our children was a smoke screen to cover our abuse. Our religious beliefs of the roles that men and women should play in a marriage and in a home were evidence of abuse as well, they claimed.

Many people think that it’s always “innocent until proven guilty.” Many people think that they can’t prove you guilty unless it’s beyond a shadow of a doubt. But that’s not how it works in court against CPS. There, you are guilty unless you can prove yourself innocent. Everything is weighted against you. Statements are often twisted on the stand to look more damning. And you’re guilty if the judge determines there is a 51% chance that SOMETHING–ANYTHING–happened.

That brings us to today. My children have been in foster care for over a year now. You can’t get your kids out of foster care unless you admit your guilt or you “make progress.” Progress is defined by some change to your parenting or enough difference in test scores from parenting classes. The trouble is that since our parenting didn’t cause the issue to start with, we test high on all the tests. We are good parents. Our evaluators affirm we are good parents, but you can’t be good parents and have your kids in foster care. Since nothing is changing because we are being told that we are doing things well, we are not making progress. That’s how the state sees it anyway. We have had psychological evaluations to show we don’t suffer from mental illness and that we understand child development, aren’t scapegoating Inara for her behavior, and aren’t asking too much of our children, but it doesn’t matter. If we were drug addicts or if we suffered from mental illness ourselves or if we had pled guilty to anything–neglect, abuse, failure to protect–we would have our children back by now. We can’t do that. Our religion forbids us to bear false witness, even if the lie benefits us and others.

Inara did well in foster care initially. She was compliant. She was peaceful. It didn’t last long. She got caught stealing and when confronted she accused her foster mom of abuse. We thought that would vindicate us. It didn’t. CPS closed the accusation against foster mom. She gets benefit of the doubt since the state has approved her parenting as a foster parent. Inara was transferred to another home. She is failing school. She is stealing. She steals at school and has received detentions for it. She has stolen from church. She has left the home late at night. She has threatened to kill her foster family. None of that mattered. It didn’t prove we had been telling the truth. We were told this was all just a trauma response due to her history of sexual abuse. No one is willing to entertain the possibility that this abuse didn’t happen. Even when there is no evidence. There was so little evidence that no criminal charges were ever filed. The prosecutor even dropped that charge in the petition to remove our children. Instead he focused on the fact that Inara attacked her siblings when I wasn’t look, the fact that she had destroyed the home during her crisis, and the fact that we spanked our children. Spanking is legal in the State of Michigan as long as you don’t leave marks or bruises. We had not left any marks or bruises. It didn’t matter. Someone said we did, and all it took was their statement. It didn’t require proof of any kind. Anyone can say anything to CPS, and it’s treated as proof.

Most recently, Inara got corrected for turning flips near a glass table in the livingroom of her foster parents’ apartment. Inara got angry. She went to her room and began to calculate how to punish them. She decided to take a knife from the kitchen. I don’t know if she verbally threatened or if she attacked. I only know that her foster father had to disarm her and she was taken to the hospital again. She is now again in an inpatient treatment facility. This time she has declared that she is a lesbian. She claims she has another personality whose name is Evelyn. She insists that she is haunted by 3 little girls who look like her. She claims she was pregnant but miscarried (Inara hasn’t even had a period yet) and one of the ghosts is her daughter who died. She says she sees demons. No one takes her very seriously. They all claim it’s PTSD from the trauma. No one looks at the fact that the trauma didn’t happen. They are testing her for multiple personality disorder.

About the only diagnosis that we have received so far that fits the facts of this case–besides ADHD–is conduct disorder, early onset. Conduct disorder is a fancy name for a child who is on the sociopathic spectrum. She lacks empathy. She can not discern emotion in others. She is manipulative. She understands that rules exist, but she does not understand why they should apply to her. If you look at the medical research and prognosis, our best hope is that she learns to play by the rules and only goes to jail for petty theft. At the worst end of the spectrum, our child could be the next school shooter or could murder someone on the street. No one can tell you if a person will make the jump from verbally threatening and having violent fantasies to acting on those threats and fantasies. You just have to wait and see. Wait and see. And hope that if someone is hurt, it isn’t seriously.

So that’s our story. The broken mental health care system has let our daughter down. The broken foster care system has let our entire family down. We are telling our story in the hopes that it will help other parents struggling with a child with mental illness. We are telling our story in the hopes that enough people will see the brokenness in these two systems and petition their government representatives for change. “Best interest of the children” is thrown around a lot by these agencies. “We have to err on the side of caution.” That’s what we are told over and over again.

Meanwhile, children suffering actual abuse are left in homes until they die. There are calls from credible sources. There are medical records of injuries. In our case, there was none of that. Calls from an abusive ex-spouse were the only thing against us. I have continued to advocate that Inara get approved treatment for Conduct Disorder. I have begged the agency not to subject another family to the possibility of violence. I have tried to get a residential facility to take her, but it comes down to who is going to pay for that. We don’t have tens of thousands to pay out of pocket. Medicaid won’t cover it without a court order. The judge won’t order it. She claims only a psychiatrist can do that. The psychiatrist tried, but foster care claimed no residential home would take her. We are advocating or our other children, asking that they not be punished for Inara’s diagnosis. No question of abuse was even raised with them. They were taken under the law that states if one sibling is abused, all have the potential to be abused and should be removed from the home.

Most recently, our court appointed attorney told me to stop fighting for Inara. She said it was a waste of my energy. Stop advocating for my child. I am found guilty of abuse by people claiming I don’t love her or care about her, but now I am being told I care too much and need to stop. We are bankrupted by the fees as well. Not only do we have to cover our own attorney fees, or we did until I took a court appointed attorney due to lack of funds…we have to cover the guardian ad litum who is supposed to advocate for our children but really functions as a mouthpiece for whatever CPS says. We also have to pay the state room and board for our kids to be in foster care. We are $30,000 in debt so far, and the case isn’t even over yet. That’s the entire goal of the system. If we can’t get you to admit to something to make this go faster, we’ll bankrupt you until you can’t fight us anymore.

I hope this story helps someone else. I hope someone out there reading this feels less alone. Pray for our family. We know our God still works miracles. We know He isn’t surprised. We know He will vindicate us eventually. We trust that He will bring our children home. And we continue to pray for His divine healing of Inara’s mind. Get involved with a parent right’s advocacy group. Fight the corruption that is the CPS/Family Court system. Petition your representatives to hold CPS/Family Court accountable to following the spirit of the law. Children should not be removed from their home without some kind of proof of abuse. If it can happen to us, it can happen to anyone!