Hi all,
To the many of you who read my scary world post and to the new followers of this blog, I’m taking a short break from the new parents site I’m working on, to post a comment just received in “the scary world”:
***** Hi! Thanks for writing. I have a 14-year-old who has talked about suicide, even was away from school for a month with depression. It’s very scary to ransack the house to find all medication and hide the bottles because I can’t take a month off work. She spends a lot of time on line. What are good, supportive sites for her? *****
Well unfortunately I can’t answer that yet, but I am positive that some of you can come up with some worthy suggestions.
Please comment in this post, as your info might be useful for others as well.
Useful info will also be uploaded in the new site. (Soon………..)
Meanwhile take care.
Parenting And Stuff 
I haven’t read all the comments, but i suggest getting her OFFline. Being on the computer is an isolating activity. If that proves utterly impossible, then why not take up some sort of online activity with her?
No. Absolutely no. Get her to a therapist. If she’ll go. Having suffered from over 15 years of depression I can tell you in no way shape or form should you take away her access to the internet. It is not the healthiest, but it may be her only form of social interaction right now. Obviously she needs to get more interaction with folks in the real world, but cold turkey would be bad news.
It gets better. Hang in there. She needs love, support and understanding. Listen. Don’t preach. And ask her, not tell her, if she thinks talking to a mental health professional might help. She has to find the way.
Jenny,
I tend to follow this line of thinking. Kids are daring enough by themselves, but put them online where they can learn “tricks” from others, they will have a hard time resisting the temptations that come their way. Then, as a result they condemn themselves for being “bad” or useless.
Today I read this article that shows just what I am talking about:
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20130422/DA5QCEU01.html
Funny. Cause I took the cinnamon challenge before the internet existed. The world can be a scary place. Kids need guidance not blacklists.
My eight year year old has turettes syndrome and was thought to have a.d.h.d. and was medicated accordingly but it turns out he didn’t have a.d.h.d. but more of aspergers like traits and major sensory issues to the point where he would reflect his environment. so when he took the stimulants for the hyper behavior it made his “tic’s” from the turettes syndrome worse I mean horrible. It was such a hard time for all of us but for him it was more. Long story short he tried to kill himself by jumping off the couch with scissors on his neck. I was able to get the scissors before they cut too deeply.
I had no idea what to do and was so scared for my child. We went off all meds and I removed him from school yes I took him away from anything social until we had a new baseline to work with. We were able to do therapy with two separate counselors every week where he learned D.B.T. skills and also worked on his self esteem issues. we now home-school part time and also public school part time so that he has the one on one he needs with less stimulating environment and he still gets some of the social from public school where its limited and in smaller more manageable sizes. We also joined our local YMCA and swim regularly to get that physical and some social in the mix with out the competition that comes from mainstream sports.
sometimes special children just have to do things their way and thats o.k. I hope this information is useful if not to you personally but somebody who finds themselves at this scary crossroad. Much love Jessica