I am not a professional therapist, psychologist, or anything along those lines. I have no credentials whatsoever aside from having raised a child with BPD through their teenage years and into adulthood. My advice is based on one experience. Take it for what it is.
One perspective that helps to understand how BPD distorts your child’s emotion is to think of BPD as a multiplier -- their feelings are the same feelings that we all have, but 10 times as strong, at a time in their life where they have little practice regulating themselves.
For example, if you made plans with a friend and they cancelled at the last minute, you might feel disappointment, frustration, perhaps some mild anger. A teen with BPD might multiply that disappointment into fear that their friend is never going to hang out again. Their frustration could grow into a feeling of hopelessness at being able to have a social life. Their anger can explode into a friendship-ending bitterness because they feel they have been wronged.
That same level of distortion may happen with every event in their life, big or small. One of your main goals is not to feed into that - don’t let their huge emotions and behavioral responses change your reactions or behaviors. Be a consistent model of typical behavior for them. Do not escalate their behavior, and do not engage with behavioral extremes:
The positive side likewise needs to be measured. While the negative behaviors are bigger problems, exaggerated positive behaviors can whiplash back to negativity if something frustrates them while they are in a good mood.
Because the root cause of this is emotional dysfunction, some of the problems are driven by the biology of how the human brain develops during teenage years - at this point in their life, their amygdala is running faster and strong than their pre-frontal cortex, which means that emotions win over executive function. There is no simple quick fix, but patience and support is the long term answer. To succeed, you need to accept how long this will take. Progress will be measured over months and years. That is a difficult pill to swallow. But having been through a few years of it, there is hope for your future.
Success at setting boundaries will make or break your success in living with your child.
Your initial boundaries need to focus on the protection, health, and safety of your family. You can aim higher later, but to start, you need to stabilize the family behaviors and make sure that you have a safe space in which the entire family can live while your child with BPD works through their challenges.
Be sure you are realistic with your boundaries. This is not a typical teenager where you are focused on ideal adult behavior. Accept their limitations, and set boundaries they are capable of achieving. Be aware of the reality that they will lie. They will yell. They will get angry. They will behave poorly. Let them. The concept of “choose your battle” is critical. If you set consequences for actions they cannot help from doing, nobody succeeds, and you exacerbate the problems.
When working through your boundaries, be consistent. They need to see that boundaries cannot be broken. They will test the boundaries, and If they see a weakness, they will dig into it to exploit it. Do not give them such opportunities.
Each boundary needs a specific consequence. Think them through ahead of time so you do not have to devise management techniques during a high-tension, stressful incident in your home. Let your child know of the boundaries and consequences ahead of time so that when you enact them, you do not need to explain anything, you simply invoke the rule.
Consequences for boundaries should never even approach giving the appearance of backing away from parental love or support. A key factor in BPD is a fear of abandonment. Don’t ever feed that fear with a consequence.
One of the most common incidents we encountered is that our child would be frustrated and angry and want to pick a fight. They would deliberately escalate things into a shouting match because it makes them feel like we are engaging with them. That was not an acceptable behavior for us - there was no end benefit to such incidents, it caused stress, resentment, and harmed everyone involved.
So we would tell them to walk away, or walk away ourselves.
Yes, this was common enough that we had to create a rule for it. There was a constant thread through the teenage years that all the problems were our fault, and they would be fine if they just did not live in our house with us, so they were running away. As running away was not acceptable, but we also did not want to escalate the situation by physically restraining them or getting into a fight, we would let them know that if they run away, it will be handled by the local sheriff.
They did test this. We did call 911 on them. And afterwards, they mostly stopped trying. (Mostly - nothing is ever perfect.)
Why does this work? Because most of the threats and extreme behaviors are actually seeking validation that you will support them and not abandon them. They do not actually want to run away, but they are trying to push your buttons, and the more you calmly deal with lesser behavioral problems, the more they will escalate until they find something that will frustrate you.
But once they know there is a consequence that they do not want, whether it be getting picked up by cops, or taken to a hospital or some other significant intervention, they will self-regulate to avoid such a consequence.
This rule was one of the more interesting ones, because it evolved over time. They would get the urge to run away even knowing it was just a temporary urge and they did not really want to be gone. So we later came up with an acceptable “fake” running away - we would let them leave under two conditions:
Most of the time, BPD will not escalate to violence. That isn’t truly their goal. However, BPD also often comes with additional mental health diagnoses, and that combo can create violent situations. Or maybe they are, again, just trying to push your buttons. But we made a choice not to even entertain the possibility that they were serious about threats, and if their behavior leans that direction, we go straight to the consequences.
Again, we do not even start down the path of trying to judge how serious they are when it comes to their personal safety. We simply take it seriously. If they were just trying to get a reaction, they got one. Most BPD teens who attempt suicide are intending not to succeed. But they sometimes accidentally succeed. Take it seriously, even if they are not.
As our child got older, the boundaries and consequences did normalize. While we still would enact those old rules if needed, the current conversations are more reasonable:
I just chatted with my child asking if they could think of any others, and no - we do have other general rules and norms of behavior in our home, but they are consistent with all members of the family, not BPD-driven boundaries. It took a few years to get to this point, but you should know that it can get there.
Don’t expect more than your boundaries. They will have times when they are doing great, helping out, etc. Other times they’ll barely hold up to expectations, and at times they will fall short of agreed upon expectations.
We manage the variety of their capabilities by encouraging them to do whatever they can on any given day. If they could get nothing done, fine - those days will happen. But if they had the energy and will to do more, we’d happily support them.
Most importantly, we strive not to hold grudges. Your child can quickly flip between being in a really bad state to 100% energized and ready to succeed. If you hold a grudge over where they were an hour ago, you might bring them back down. You’ll want to talk about such changes later, but do it when the time is right.
You are not the only person who will feel frustrated with your child. Their friends will share some of the frustrations, but without that parental connection that makes you want to make it better. Therefore, be prepared for their friendships to crash and burn in really ugly ways, on a regular basis. Be prepared to support them when they feel like they are all alone and have no hope of connecting to others.
Their friends are likely to get angry at them, and retaliate in ways that only teenagers can do. Odds are that everyone around their school will hear about it, and it will be a one-sided story about how one teenager felt. This will happen - Multiple times. Most of the kids will just start avoiding your child, trusting the gossip, and not getting to know your child. Parents may develop opinions about your child. Teachers and school administrators may develop opinions about your child. When you hear those opinions, some of them will be valid, some of them will not. But you need to be sure that your child does not base their sense of worth on what someone else thinks.
At the same time, you should not get angry at those friends. They are also just kids trying to grow up and expressing their feelings without the benefit of much life experience. We all were there once, too. I find it best to be friendly, but maintain a healthy distance from your child’s friends. If they get through many years and are still friends, you’ll get to know them over time. And if not, they don’t matter to your world. That is not meant to be mean… they matter in their own world. It just does not intersect with yours.
To that end, I stopped caring about exactly what the details were of any specific incident that caused my child’s friends to get angry at them. It didn’t matter. I am sure my child did something that hurt someone. I’m sure there were better choices to be made. I’m sure the friends could have reacted better as well. And I’m sure that all they need from me is acceptance as they live through the social consequences of it all.
This does not mean we never talked about details - we did. But we talked more about advice on how to handle things better next time. The social structure of the American school system provided sufficient consequences for their actions. I did not need to pile on top of that.
One other reason to be forgiving of their friends is that odds are those friends also have their own challenges. Kids with struggles seem to gravitate towards each other, in particular if they are not well accepted in their schools. They find each other, and often start out as great support structures for each other as they are able to talk about their problems, accept each other's problems, and truly become great resources for each other. But at the same time, when a friend group forms that is full of struggling teens who bond closely, they can all make poor choices together. A little bit of teenage mischief is a bonding experience, but if they cross the line into harmful behavior, that becomes a problem. Know what they are up to when they go out, and parent accordingly.
I do try to keep an eye on the friends to help get a sense of who was offering a healthy friendship and who was not. I’d notice and remind my child of the friends who stuck with them through ups and downs, who were forgiving after a fight. When my child would feel hopeless that they had no friends and never would, I could remind them of who their friends were.
If you are new to having a child with BPD, one of the first things to do is have a discussions with your child about how you are going to navigate this together. You’ll want to agree on a few things:
For the meaningful talks, latch on to those times. For my child and I, we fell into a habit of what we now call “car therapy”. We can have good talks while driving somewhere - it is lower pressure than sitting in a room across from each other. We can just listen to music and talk. Most of our progress came through these moments. And it even became a solution to more than one crisis - when everything else was crashing down, if they were just willing to sit in the car and drive with me, we could calm things down.
The lists you create will change. I recommend re-visiting them every few months.
Many parents feel that lying is one of the worst sins a child can do in their family. You’ll need to let that go. They will lie. All the time. Sometimes it is deliberate, and they are seeking a reaction against it. Sometimes it is deliberate just to be mean. But other times, they believe their own lies. And even other times, they know they are lying and feel bad about it, but at the same time cannot help but live as if their lies are true.
As a parent, being able to know they are lying and still accept and love them is key to supporting them. This is when it becomes important to separate BPD from who they really are:
If it helps, think about how you might parent a child who could not walk. Would you get frustrated because of it? Probably. Are they even more frustrated by it? Definitely.
You would not judge them harshly because of it. You would recognize their limitations and help them when needed, while also letting them independently take care of things where they can. You would help them learn skills to manage their differences in capabilities, you would listen to their frustrations with it, and counsel them through all the feelings it brings.
BPD is no different. It is a disability. Help them out to the same level you would if it were a physical disability.
Don’t wait for a crisis - expect that a crisis will come and have the safety nets up for when it happens.
Boundaries and their consequences are the primary tools to direct a crisis to the correct intervention. After all, if they are sticking within all the boundaries, it is not a crisis.
I recommend formalizing your boundaries into a crisis response plan:
Once a crisis is over, figure out how and when to talk about it with your child. Discuss how else that crisis could have been avoided. If they tell you to change your behavior, listen to what they are saying - often a BPD crisis is an exaggerated response to a legitimate complaint. In these moments, ignore their tone - listen to the message they are conveying, not the tone with which they give it.
At the same time, they may know very well that their response was not reasonable. Do not call them out on it at the moment, but do call it out later. The more they are forced to confront the fact that their behavior is unreasonable, the more they will notice it before it becomes a problem.
At this point in our life, most of the BPD-driven incidents in our family get stopped quickly by our child - they will start to ramp up, but then catch themselves, go away and recover. Help them see the unreasonable moments by talking about them after the crisis is over.
Track BPD-driven incidents and crises. This will do a few things for you:
For my child, the tracking was simple - I kept a short log of the dates of any incidents, a simple note of whether it was a major event, or a minor kerfuffle, and a sentence or two about what occurred.
Once you have been tracking it for a while, see if there are specific patterns. Do they have problems in response to specific types of events in the family? Is there a specific cadence to the incidents? Are there behaviors or habits that indicate they are headed towards a crisis?
The answers for those things will be different for each person, so the tracking helps you notice the specific trends for your child. It also will help in the case your child does end up hospitalized or needing other care - you have accurate notes of past history to help inform their care team.
Keep this log private and secure - it exists only to help you and your child. They would likely not enjoying reading it. They could be upset or embarrassed to see a log of their worst moments. They definitely do not need a friend, sibling, or anyone else finding it. It is a useful tool, but take care.
Through all of this, take care of yourself - Your mental health and physical health is likely to be challenged by your child’s BPD. Don’t let those challenges win.
There is enough information in this world on self-care that I’m not going to get into details - but make your own well-being an active goal in your life. Both you and your child need that.
Be sure that some of your boundaries protect that well-being. Don’t sacrifice a night of sleep to care for your child... at least, not outside of a crisis where you truly need to up to care for them. They will learn exactly where you draw boundaries and push against them, so you need to be actively aware of your own needs. Frankly, you need to win that battle, for everyone’s sake.
Seek out all the resources to help that you can. We had our own therapist to help us as parents, which was a huge help. Not everyone will be able to have that, but I’d encourage looking into it. Research BPD yourself to understand more about what is going on with your child. Find out if the school has programs to help. Know what hotlines and crisis lines are available to you, and use them.
Hotlines in particular are a unique form of help. While I honestly don’t feel that they gave us any direct help, if our child would spend some time on the phone with someone else, it would give us a break. And it never hurts to have more people listening and helping your child, caring that they are doing OK. Even if they don’t fix a specific problem, it helps your child know that people are there for them.
Finally, if you have other children, spend time with them. Everyone needs time together to build a healthy family, and your child’s siblings are living through this experience just as much as you are. Escape it together once in a while and enjoy some positive experiences with each other.