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If it Doesn’t Move and it Should …

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

…Use WD-40! The following is an excerpt from “Duct Tape and WD-40 … a parent’s guide to the mysteries of a bipolar child”

“Let’s focus on “WD-40”: Listen; Learn; Help; Lead. No matter the cause when you “listen to learn”, you will find that people open up, sharing things with you. Listening is the most effective tool you can use to enhance all your personal relationships.

“To get started identify the primary individuals with whom you need to reconnect? Identify the opportunities for that day when you might be able to listen to learn and understand the needs of those individuals. How about your family? What is it that you feel is important to them? Now move to thoughts of extended family, friends, and others. Are there those who are experiencing some form of hardship? You will always come in contact with people who are in great pain.

“Write down any thoughts that come to mind. Make a list of things you could do to show your love.

“What might those things be? (Feel free to write in the book.)

“First Rule of WD-40: to keep from damaging a relationship or could damage further by being angry, take a hike. That’s right, just get away and let the simmer cool down. This will give you time to reflect on how to respond and it will also provide some time and space from the behavior that caused your problem.

“Second Rule of WD-40: When you’ve calmed down, try listening. Ask an open-ended question. Then shut up and listen. “I don’t understand. Can you help me to understand?”

And from the forward by Newt Gingrich, “The power of David’s book for any other family faced with these challenges is its very honesty and the pain and confusion it accurately communicates. This will give you, the reader, permission to surface
your own pain and to be honest about your own confusion.

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If it moves and it shouldn’t …

Friday, August 28th, 2009

That’s right! Use Duct Tape.

So here’s a question to people of faith? If you are reading this, I assume you have had your life turned upside down due to the sudden changes of behavior in a child you love. Your child’s behaviors tend to be high risk and dangerous. Logic has failed you. For the life of you, you cannot understand why your child is doing/saying some of the things they do or say.

Then they cross a line: they have become either a danger to themselves or to others. You find yourself being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the world of mental health services. Your child has been hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital. Your life will never be the same.

You enter into the strange world of denial. This can’t be happening to my daughter. She’s taking meds that will make her better. My job is to hold her accountable: chores at home, grades at school, to name a couple. But that doesn’t work, does it?

Anger begins to creep into your everyday life. You’re angry with your daughter, with her school, with her mother, with your extended family that seems to visit or call less often. Your anger slips into depression. You seek to comfort yourself with alcohol or substance abuse. You are desperate.

You are angry with your church for they say nothing. What happened to all the cards? … Meals? …Visits?…when cancer stuck its ugly head into the life of your family just a few years ago?

If you are a person of faith, you find yourself sitting in church surrounded with life as it should be… and you become angry with God. Why me, God? You soon begin avoiding the very place that once gave you such comfort. Your life is totally upside down.

So, what moved? Better yet, who moved? You did. And you feel justified in doing so. IF the church doesn’t care, I don’t care! And God? What evidence is there that He cares?

In hindsight, it is such a predictable path we follow. The sad thing is that some of us never realize that it is a path to self destruction.
It’s amazing what hell we will put ourselves through before we fall to our knees and call out for help. When we do, we are surprised to find out that He was there all along. We had moved! God did not.

So how can you use Duct Tape to heal your anger with God? Follow His first great commandment: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ Matthew 22:37

Someone challenged me! “ If you claim that God is the most important entity in your life, don’t you think you should be talking with God and not ignoring him?” As I wrote earlier this week, how can you help if all you do is fight? Ignoring God is a passive form of aggression. It doesn’t work, does it?

The day I got on my knees before God was the day I began to use Duct Tape: to talk with Him each and every day in focused reflective prayer. It was the beginning of the end of pain for me. It was the day I began to acknowledge my own role in my daughter’s acting out: she was afraid of me. How could I help her when she feared me? It was the day that I finally acknowledged that my daughter suffered from a mental illness: Bipolar Disorder. It was the day that I discovered a new hope: her recovery. It was the day I began to search openly for answers. It was the day that miracles began to happen in my life.

If it moves, and shouldn’t … use Duct Tape. You can read the whole story in my book, Duct Tape and WD 40 … a parent’s guide to the mysteries of a bipolar child”.

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Where Do You Turn?

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

When they told me that my daughter suffered from Bipolar Disorder, I think my reaction was one of shock. When they told me that she would need to take two or three different medications for treatment, my reaction was “Great! Problem Solved!” They were offering a “Fix it Approach”, and that’s all I needed to hear. The problem would soon be fixed.

But months later, the problem was far from fixed. If anything, Emily’s acting out was more and more unpredictable, and more frustrating. The mental health providers were less than helpful because they had to maintain my daughter’s confidentiality. And I was tired of the well meaning advice of my friends; “why don’t you ground her!” Emily didn’t go anywhere. How can you ground someone who doesn’t go anywhere?

After a year of banging my head against the wall, I finally opened an envelope that I had received months before. Dona Constantine, a friend of the family from California, sent me a ton of information on NAMI, National Alliance on Mental Illness. Up until then, I was unwilling to accept the fact that my daughter was suffering from a mental illness. I was exhausted from trying the “fix-it approach”. I needed a different perspective.

If you’re at that point in trying the “fix-it approach” with your own child, please, please, please go to NAMI’s web site. You will quickly see that there is a world of helpful information at your finger tips.

David
Phil. 4: 6-7

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