How did we end up here?
Daughter: “When you say things like this, you want to make me shoot myself in the head!” she yelled at me.
Me: “Haley, (name changed for privacy) is that how you really feel hun? If it is, we need to get you professional help.”, I replied.
Daughter: “Yes, (crying) because you don’t trust me. I haven’t given you any reason not to trust me and now you want to put a two hour time limit on my computer?”
Me: “Yes, things have to change…”
Me: “Haley, where are you going?”
Daughter: “I just want to go upstairs for like 20 minutes and cool down.”
“No, you are not going upstairs”, I told her…(knowing that in the past she had been cutting and knowing that she was upset, I didn’t want to take the chance of that happening again.) I continued, “You can either one, let us take you some place to get help or you can two, start helping us unload the vehicles.***”
Haley chose to get help. We drove her to the nearest mental hospital (which is approximately an hour away.) The entire time she sat in the back seat texting and crying. Tears flowed from mine and my husband’s eyes as well.
Haley was evaluated and we (my husband and I) were interviewed. During our interview we were told that in our state at the age of 16, a child can check themself into a mental hospital and that Haley had signed herself in.
How did we end up here? How could my daughter end up at a mental hospital?
***We had just pick Haley up from a friend’s house in another state that she had gone to live with.
Note: I write this blog in hopes of helping other parents have better relationships with their children. In hopes that you will avoid mistakes that I made as a parent. In hopes that you might spare your child going through what my child has gone through.
As I begin my blog, Haley is out of the mental hospital now and is in a PHP (partial hospitalization program) that is a 20 day program. The program includes group, individual and family counseling. We intend on continuing counseling long after this program is over.