Monday morning, my phone rang. I recognized the number as Bob's school. With a groan, I tapped the "ignore" button on my phone and waited for them to leave a message, hoping it was just the cafeteria manager letting me know (for the 98th time) Bob's lunch account is in the red. No such luck.

My child has a mental illness. He is not going through a phase! As a parent of a child with a mental illness, nothing irritates me more than the well-meaning (or not-so-well-meaning) person who insists on telling me, "oh, I'm sure Bob is just fine." Or any variant thereon, such as "it's just a phase", "he'll grow out of it", "they all do stuff like that", etc. Believe me, I wish you were right. But your comments don't make me feel any better about the situation. If anything, they make me feel worse.

Many parents of children who take psychiatric medications often face resistance from the child. In this mental health video post, I question when--and if--parents should allow their child to have input into their mental health treatment.

I dropped Bob off this morning to spend the next week with his father. On the way, we hit the pharmacy to pick up his medication refills. I handed him one of his pills, as we'd been out when he took his morning doses. "It's chewable," I said, "so you can take it without water." When we reached his father's house, I got out of the car, gave him a long hug goodbye, and got back in the car. As he and his father drove away, I noticed, in the passenger seat, the pill I'd handed him twenty minutes earlier.

Monday, I took Bob to the water park with my sister and her daughter, who is Bob's age. The kids get along well, and my sister and I saw this as our opportunity to beach ourselves at the wave pool while they did their "kid" thing. Later, I recounted our day to my husband. "You let them go off by themselves?" he asked, incredulous.

Most of the comments I get on this blog come from other parents like me--parents who are raising a child (or children) who have bipolar disorder, ADHD or another psychiatric diagnosis. Occasionally, however, I get a comment from a troll who wants to blast me for being a bad parent, drugging my bipolar kid into a state of submission, and throwing myself a pity party in the process. Why do I even read them? Why do I feed into their negativity? Because deep down, I want them to be right.

My son, "Bob," has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and ADHD. In my post titled "Insurance Companies Are NOT Psychiatrists--Why Are They Making Decisions?," I discussed how my insurance company has decided not to pay for refills of Bob's psychiatric medications - even though his psychiatrist thinks they are necessary for his mental wellness. Your Child with Mental Illness is Being Over-medicated One reader agrees with the insurance company. Why? Concernedmom says he's "over-medicated".

The older Bob gets, the more he knocks me from my parenting pedestal with unexpected questions and requests. I thought he'd outdone himself with his recent query as to the purpose of testicles--but last week, he hit me with something that left me even more dumbfounded. "Nathan wants me to come sleep over at his house next weekend. Can I?"

I don't trust celebrity parents when it comes to parenting advice. Color me cynical, but I just don't think Angelina Jolie is any authority on potty-training anymore than Madonna would be on talking to your child about sex. But you know what they say about desperate times calling for desperate measures.

Continued from Part 1 As you may have guessed, the large dog, startled by the remote control car fast approaching it, bolted--knocking its elderly owner off her feet and dragging her along the sidewalk before she was able to regain control of it. (The only witnesses to this were the kids, the victim, and the dog--but the victim's neighbor came to our door the next day looking for the glasses she lost in the scuffle and reported she was "pretty bruised and scraped up.")