MOTFL 001 JAM 001: Raising a son with Schizophrenia

Anna discusses raising a son with childhood-onset schizophrenia on a Midwestern farm, the journey to the right diagnosis & medications, and what there is to celebrate.   Transcription: SPEAKER: Welcome to the ‘Just Ask Mom’ podcast where mothers share their experiences of raising children with mental illness. ‘Just ask Mom’ is a Mothers on the Frontline production. Today, we will speak with Anna, the mother of a son with early onset schizophrenia. Anna: My name is Anna and I’m from the Midwest and … oh, gosh. I went to college for computer information systems, got my degree, worked for the railroad for a number of years in information systems and married a farmer. So it’s quite a diverse life. Tammy: Yes. Anna:  Yeah, that’s a little bit about me. Tammy: Very cool. Anna: I always wanted to be a mom. Growing up, you know, I always imagined myself with five kids and when I got married to my husband, I mean, I just really imagined our life as a typical farm family, lots of kids and dogs and, you know, running around outside and life didn’t happen that way. [music] So we have one son, and he was actually adopted from Russia. He was 14 months old and at the time. We always expected when you adopt a child from an orphanage situation like that that there’s going be some catch up. There’s going to be some things that you need to do to play catch up. Matthew always stayed behind, though. He never was able to catch up and working through that as he got older, more and more issues came out and come to find out when he was 13 he was officially diagnosed with early onset schizophrenia. [He] had symptoms starting at the age of eight and that was a very hard thing to accept as a parent, especially when it’s your only– I mean, it’s always hard, but when it’s your only child and you’ve gone through so much to get this child and um– I went through a pretty major grieving process, you know– Tammy: Absolutely. Anna:  So the thing that I want other parents to know: when you’re dealing with a child with special needs and that has such a serious illness, — it’s okay. It’s okay to grieve, it’s okay to grieve for that child that you had in your heart, that you expected, that you always pictured that you would have raised. That is a loss and you shouldn’t feel guilty about grieving for that child, but then you have to move past that. You have to get to a place where you accept that child for who they are. It’s easy to say and hard to do but once you get to that place where you have truly accepted that child for who they are and for their abilities– although they may be different than what you expected, you– you’ll find that things are easier. You’ll find that it’s not as hard to accept where they’re at and enjoy them for who they are and every day becomes easier. Tammy: This is especially a lesson you have to learn in this particular situation but what you’re saying is true for any parent. Anna: Sure. Absolutely. For any parent, any child. You can have a child that is neuro-typical but they don’t have the same likes as you do and they don’t have the same interests as you do and you guys are polar opposites and you still have to accept that child for who they are. You may butt heads but you have to realize they are their own individual. Absolutely.  I think for my husband, I’ll kind of speak to that little bit– he’s a farmer. He’s a typical Midwestern farmer and grew up in a very sheltered environment, you know, didn’t ever really have any exposure to the big city and diversity and things like that, and it was, I mean, he had it in his mind his expectations of his child would be that they would help him farm. They would grow up learning that and doing that and that wasn’t something that Matthew could do. That was really hard for him to accept and as long as he wasn’t accepting that, as long as he was fighting that internally, he was miserable. Once he was able to accept that, he could move on with his life and he could be happy and enjoy his son again. And so it’s not just for the child, it’s for us. Tammy: Absolutely. Anna: You know, and I’m not saying that everything’s roses once you accept that -once you learn. Some people accept that easier than others and it’s not all peachy keen after that. You still have to fight for your child. I mean, I got involved with Mental Health Advocacy here in our State because there is so much lacking and there is so much that needs to be done yet. It’s not fair. We should not have to become mama bears at the school and fight so hard for what is rightfully deserving of them. And it is still an issue but it doesn’t become all consuming, I guess, once you can accept that I think it frees you up a little bit to stop obsessing about what they can’t do and focus on what they can and then that helps you when forming that IEP [Individualized Education Plan] and when talking to the doctors and trying to find a medication that works, then you’re not as miserable doing all of that I guess. Tammy: Absolutely. One thing you and I talked about and I was wondering if you’d share here is (and this fits into what you’re talking about with expectations) is how your parenting changes because what your child needs is not the traditional method of parenting. Anna: Right.  Absolutely. Again, my husband is a farmer and he grew up, and myself too, I grew up in the Midwest. I was raised when I was young on a farm and then we lived in a small town and we were both very much raised by ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ –  I mean with very common sense parenting and spanking was not unheard of. That was just how we were raised and that’s the example we had as parents and so when he was young and things would happen, I mean, we didn’t spank. That wasn’t really what we wanted to do, but we would use sticker charts, we would use timeout, we would use all the things that you could think of, grounding and taking rewards and punishments. We tried everything and nothing ever seemed to work. It was so very frustrating and you would get so angry and frustrated and then you find yourself raising your voice and you’re yelling and it’s constant and nothing ever works and you’re just pulling your hair out.  Once we finally accepted his diagnosis and learned we simply can’t expect the same things. We cannot put as many demands on them. That’s part of that acceptance process that I was talking about as a parent – accepting your child for who they are and what they can do and once you realize that, then naturally your expectations change and so your parenting style does change. Tammy: Thank you for that. That’s right. So, we ask everyone this. We know it changes from moment to moment. At this exact moment, do you feel like you’re swimming, treading water, sinking? Where do you feel like you’re at? Anna: I feel like we’re swimming. Tammy: Wonderful. Anna: I feel like we are– it just makes me want to cry. I think [laugh] because we have come so far. I mean we came from a place where, I would say five years ago I was not sure I was ever going be able to have my son in my house again. He was violent and we had to place him in the PMIC [Pediatric Mental Institution for Children] and we just didn’t know where to go. We had no idea where to turn for help. We could not control him any longer. I just couldn’t imagine him ever coming back home, ever graduating from high school, ever having a life that was meaningful to him. Let alone something that we could call successful. Today he is getting ready to graduate from high school, he has been back home with us for almost five years and he’s getting ready to graduate high school, he’s going to prom. Tammy: This is so wonderful. Anna: He is just– he is excelling in so many ways and I could have never imagined that. So, I mean, we’re in love with life right now. Tammy: A lot of hard work went into that. Anna: A lot of hard work went into that. It was a combination of the doctors and finding the right medication, getting the right diagnosis first of all and then finding the right medications, and then finding the right school. We ended up finding this awesome therapeutic school that he went to for about three years and they were just phenomenal. So finding the right school environment and changing our parenting style and having the right support at home. We had a waiver from the State that allowed some in-home assistance, you know, with therapy and things like that and all of those things created this beautiful movement towards putting him on the path to success Tammy: And now he’s a contributing member of society. Anna: Absolutely. Tammy: He’s working. Anna: He has a job lined up for after he graduates. He’s planning on having his own apartment. I have every reason to believe that he will be successful. Five years ago I couldn’t have imagined that. Tammy: Right. So, all of those services made all that difference. Anna: Everything made all the difference. It was not just one thing that I could point to, without one thing, without the others would not have had made much of an impact. I don’t believe.We had to change every aspect of his life to help set him up for success and help him learn about his illness and help him accept his illness because that’s a whole process too. Anna: And he knows, I mean, I have probably the biggest reason that I feel like he will be successful is because he knows he has an illness. He accepts he has an illness. He knows the medication helps him and he is absolutely adamant about taking that medication because he knows that helps him. So many times with schizophrenia people start to believe that the medication is making them sick –I’m not saying that that might not happen in the future. This is just where we’re at today, but he knows [the medicatio...