When your children are small and feel unwell, a hug, a cuddle, or a kiss on the forehead usually takes some of the pain away. But as they move through their teenage years, often the very last thing they want is physical contact with you. Instead, they plough their own furrow, make their own mistakes - and grow, slowly, into the men and women you dreamed they would be.
If your child, like my child, becomes unwell with a mental illness, this journey into adulthood becomes harder than it should be. Teenagers have a torrid enough time negotiating the minefield that is adolescence - add in anxiety, OCD, depression or any other mental illness, and life suddenly feels pretty treacherous.
When my daughter was about 13 or 14, she began to be hypersensitive to smells. Rules were laid down about what was and wasn't to be in the fridge. Every switch and plug was pulled out before bedtime. Anything out of the ordinary and new unsettled her.
But I'd never had a teenager before. Were my growing concerns an overreaction to 'normal' teenage behaviour? I felt I needed to consider my own expectations before I could support her - were they unrealistic? Was I the one who wasn't coping?
One particularly difficult afternoon - filled with shouting, upsets over foods and bizarre demands over the way family life was organised - convinced me that this wasn't the case. Once the air had cleared, we sat down and I began to talk - openly, evenly, fairly, and without judgement. I explained how I felt, and said I could see how genuinely upset some situations made her feel. But that I could also see that this level of upset was outside what I considered to be 'normal', and that her behaviour was changing. I asked her for suggestions - what did she think we should we do now that we had sat down and talked things through? I tried hard not to apportion blame or throw labels about, and I tried hard to let her know I was here to listen. We agreed to go to the GP.
Sympathetic though our doctor was, the number of children and adolescents needing the support of mental health teams far outstrips the appointments available. Despite being told that my daughter really was ill and needed professional help; despite being told if we had a crisis (thankfully, we never did) that we should go to A&E; despite having to support my daughter through her increasingly frequent panics, we had to wait four long months for an initial appointment with the CAHMS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) team.
This period was hard. I had a daughter who was coping with a serious mental illness, but we had no idea how to support her at all. No strategies, no support, nothing. My daughter knew she was ill, but what now? We had so many questions and so few answers. We were in limbo.
Zara was wearing herself out, using all her energy to maintain as normal a facade as possible at school. There were times when she came home upset that someone had laughed at her for checking, and re-checking something - or had left her behind because she was taking too long to leave a room. School listened, but because Zara was functioning fairly well, they didn't feel they needed to add her to the SEN register. As she had no formal diagnosis at this stage, I had no right to push for support.
Teenagers don't do waiting very well, and by the time many finally get treatment they have been coping with their illnesses for a very long time. To hear that Zara had OCD came almost with a sense of relief, although it took more than five months from the first GP visit to a verbal diagnosis from a psychologist at CAHMS. With a name and a diagnosis, with information at our fingertips, we could help Zara. First, there was more waiting - but eventually, we started cognitive behavioural therapy and a trial with medication. This alleviated Zara's OCD symptoms, though it also numbed many of her emotions. Getting the medication right was a balancing act.
As a parent I decided to be honest with everyone who asked us about Zara. I explained that Zara had OCD and how this affected her. She too was very open. "Disarm people with a smile," I would say, half-joking that OCD wasn't infectious. It was also important, for my daughter's sake, to challenge those who trivialised OCD. Cleaning a house until it sparkles or organising CDs into alphabetical order does not mean someone has "a touch" of OCD.
OCD drives you to do things, repeatedly. You have no choice in this; often, if you don't do a particular task well, you have to start again, and again, until you get it right. If you don't, you fear something awful will happen. It really isn't the same as liking to put your clothes away in colour-coded boxes.
All this happened six years ago. Zara has grown into a woman I'm immensely proud of. She has run a marathon, walked 100km in ten days, studied hard to get into university and makes me roar with laughter often. If your child is struggling to cope with life, is waiting for an appointment or has a friend who is, then please have a conversation with them. Let them talk and take the time to listen. Ask what they want from you as a parent or as a friend. Support them, and importantly find others to support you too.
The Time to Change programme aims to end the stigma and discrimination faced by people with mental health problems.