Tami Green’s Website on BPD Recovery: BPD in Children

Written by: Print This Article Print This Article   
Use of Our Content (Reposting and Quoting)

Tami Green was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. Rather than hide her mental health problem or deny it and refuse treatment as so many with BPD do, she’s taken on the challenge of recovering from BPD head-on. Moreover, she’s making part of her own recovery helping other people to learn about BPD and how to recover from it. She’s set up her website Borderline Personality Support and filled it with interesting articles, videos, and other resources.

This video below features Tami explaining some of the emotional features for children who are at risk for developing Borderline Personality Disorder. They tend to be be very emotional, have unstable self-images, and are often emotionally invalidated by parents or caregivers. The emotional invalidation effectively tells them that they are not OK and that something is wrong with them. This is a very damaging message to young children in particular, especially when repeated often. As a result, they may develop rages and emotional outbursts to get others to pay attention to them.


Tami Green Answers Question at Borderline Family Support Group:
How BPD Forms in the Child

Generally BPD is seldom diagnosed in children. Partly this is because their personalities are not fully formed. From my reading and experience, I suspect it is also because BPD looks a lot like a cross between “terrible twos” and typical teenage behaviors. Borderlines tend to be very oversensitive and have difficulty managing their emotions. Children often have difficulty managing their emotions, too. Good parents and caregivers help them learn to manage their own emotions by demonstrating skills such as patience, forgiveness, and honesty. They also help them to become comfortable with their feeling by demonstrating that their feelings are being understood. This is part of “validation” that parents need to do for children to grow up emotionally healthy.

This video below overviews the case of one child named Amanda who was diagnosed with BPD. She was paranoid, hypersensitive, dishonest, and exhibited splitting (i.e., black and white thinking). As a teenager, she joined a gang and planned to kill her parents. She was put in a psychiatric lockdown unit when her murder plot was discovered. Dr. Lori Greene joins the discussion with host Dr. Winnie King and guests Amanda, her mother Sharon, another teenager with BPD named Olivia, and her mother Allyson. The video also shows a DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) training group for parents practicing their skills.


Keeping Kids Healthy: Recognizing Borderline Personality Disorder in Children

Special Offers on Life Extension supplements:
Enjoy free shipping on orders of $50 or more for Life Extension supplements! (through December 31, 2024)

$10 off $75 + Free Shipping: Use Code CJNEW10 (through December 31, 2024)

Further Reading

Borderline Personality Disorder

Recognizing Borderline Personality Disorder in Children

Borderline Personality Adolescents

Borderline Personality Disorder in Children

National Education Alliance for Borderline Personality Disorder

TARA: Treatment and Research Advancements National Association for Personality Disorder

Support Group for Parents of Children with BPD

  1. Tim perry
    March 15th, 2016 at 12:25 | #1

    Hi Tami,I think it’s great what you’re doing! I’m in the recovery process myself and I’m currently studying to become a therapist. You are an inspiration and I would love to do in the UK what you are doing in the US. If you have the time to reply to give me some advice on this it’ll be deeply appriciated, thank you.

  2. Steven Poole
    October 18th, 2016 at 13:01 | #2

    Hi Tami –

    I was trying to figure out how to contact you regarding BPD. I read an article a couple of weeks ago and it described me perfectly. After 56 years on this earth and the excruciating pain of having just received divorce papers from my wife, I am trying to figure this out. I have reached out to many, many people but am still trying to gain understanding about this disorder.

    Please help me – I am feeling desperate!

    Steven

  1. No trackbacks yet.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *