Parenting a teen with bpd.

Hi everyone, I'm new here and looking for a bit of support. For the lat year we have been fostering an amazing 14 yr old girl. She has recently (6 months ago) been diagnosed with bpd. We have a great psychiatrist working with her who is very helpful and supportive. I found this forum and hoped I could get some advice from people living with the condition as to how my family and I can best support her. Thanks.

Hi & welcome! I'd be happy to help you with any questions you may have. I'm 24 years old and I've been disordered for many years. I'm pretty sure you're "supposed to" be a bit older in order to be diagnosed with BPD. I don't necessarily agree with that though.

I, personally, believe that PD's should only be diagnosed at age 18, like is accepted in the world of psychiatry.

Anyway, I would say, just be very supportive of your foster daughter. Try not to get too angry or judgmental of her when she acts out, hurts herself or gets angry. Try to reason with her, have empathy & sympathy.

Do you have any specific questions about the traits of a Borderline?

Thanks for the replies. Yes her psych acknowledges that she is too young for an official diagnosis but he sees a lot of bpd traits so that is what e is working on at present. I've been reading as much as I can about bpd and finding it all really interesting. Sorry, thats not meant to be offensive by the way, I'm sure living with the condition is far from interesting.

Some of my foster daughters more extreme symptoms woud be:

Mood swngs: She can go from being absolutely manic, laughing hysterically for no reason, screaming and talking incessantly to being completely down, crying etc in a matter of minutes or hours. She has really angry outbursts as well which often appear to have no extenal trigger. She is on meds to stabilise her mood.

Self harming: She cuts her arms, legs and face with whatever she can get hold of. We lock away all knives etc but she will break a biro or ruler and use them instead. She has overdosed twiced. She was hospitalised for 10 days in an adolescent psych unit earlier this year when the police had to rescue her from a very dangerous situationwhere she was attempting suicide.

Relationships: Her relatioship with me has been very intense since the day she came here. She is jealous of any attention I give other people, particularly my husband or other teenage girls. (I am a youth worker so this is unavoidable sometimes). She ca fly into a complete rage if I dont give her instan attention. On the othr hand she is loving and affectioate to the point that it is almost inapropriate. We will be in the middle of shopping or going for a walk and she could make me stop for half a dozen hugs. Should I stop this behaviour or just go with it? I'm never sure whether I should explain that the hugs sometimes have to wait.
If I am annoyed/upset with fd becaus of something she has done and I attempt to speak to her about it her behaviour will usualy get worse. Is this common in bpd? For example she tnds to lie a lot. If I find out that she has lied and try to talk to her about it she will wal out of the house and often not come back for hours. Or she will go to her mums house and refuse to cme back. This then often ends with social workers/police gettn involved which is very frustrating.
She also gets into really intense relationships with boys very quickly, the last one ended up with her having unprotected sex just a couple of weeks after meeting him. She will invariably tell them her whole life story and then when the relationship falls apart (usually withing days or a couple of weeks) she regrets giving them so much info about her past and gets really down and angry.

Anyway they are some ofthe main issues at the moment. There are more but I think I've rambled on long enough for now. Thanks for reading.

Well it's good to have a head start. Well done for looking for support. You obviously love her (daughter) very much.

I think about what my own mum does, to answer your question..She doesn't 'tiptoe' around me but she does remain alert to my mood swings.

what helps me is that during my mood swings she does not take things personally, like hostility say... She shows more concern if anything. doesn't bounce my accidental feelings back at me..... stuff like that. Says it's okay when I'm struggling and I can tell she means it,

She has looked other places to increase her undertsanding to help convince her that bpd is real. ("Tammy Green", a lady on utube helped her understand.)