My husband and I can't ever have a night out to ourselves. My daughter, though 12, cannot stay by herself and we definitely cannot trust her alone with her brothers. The 3 kids together are too much for anyone else - even my parents. Therefore, my relationship with him is often strained.

My sons have often had to deal with her emotional abuse despite my best efforts to shelter them. They do not know that this is not normal behavior. How can I teach them otherwise? They fear her and should not have to deal with that in their childhood.

We will never be able to do things as a family. We cannot go out to dinner. We will never go to Disney together, we will never go to the beach. She is too volatile. We cannot expose the boys to the constant verbal abuse that happens in family trips.

Things are really bad right now and I realize that I am definitely seeing the worst of things. But, until we get her meds right, this is how it will be.

There has to be some room for you to recover, let alone for your marriage to survive or your other kids to have some kind of safe family time. It sounds like your family could use an advocate to help you get those things.

Just this past week we interviewed with a new place that offers psychiatric care as well as whole family therapy. I am pretty excited that this may be what we finally need.

Thanks for the . I was in a bad place last weekend.

before my ex and I found a clinician that was careful, skilled and accessible.

At one point, I was reduced to surfing the net to try to figure out which of the 5 meds was poisoning my husband. It's an ugly, destructive and even dangerous process. It turned out to be Neurontin, which was being prescribed in a very high dose AND off label. I wanted to bite somebody for putting us through that, seriously, and I've never even made a fist in my life.

None of those drugs is a miracle. When they work, they seem to work for a period of time and sometimes need to be changed out for a different one. I'd suggest keeping a log if you don't already because down the line, your own notes may be valuable for whoever is seeing your daughter.

Plus, as kids grow and hormones change, the drugs need to be changed often. I know this, but it is still so hard to deal with. We have started a chart and have already noticed patterns. Hopefully we will be able to head off many of her outbursts before they get extreme.

What makes this even more painful is that sometimes the person she really is shines through. At those times, I see the kind, thoughtful and intelligent person she really is. But lately, this person has been obscured by the disease. Even though I complained about the loss of normalcy for the rest of my family, I also grieve for the loss of her childhood.

Thanks for the support. I am glad your husband is doing better.