It is an incredible sacrifice to send you daughter to a residential treatment center and it is understandable to sometimes wonder if this sacrifice will be worth it. To help calm these fears, the therapists at Sunrise have shared 15 secrets to help you be an effective parent while your daughter is in Residential Therapy.

Let Go


This is one of the most difficult steps to make for a parent. To have a daughter who struggles with mental illness means that you will experience loss with her. It’s just part of the struggle. There will be things that you thought that you were going to be doing with your daughter and experiences that you were excited to share with her. Unfortunately, you won’t get to do and share some of these things with her. With this information, it is so vitally important that you remember that this is not about you and what you want for your daughter. As you realize that this isn’t about you, about your expectations, or about what you thought this relationship was going to be like; it will make it so much easier to celebrate your daughter and the successes she is experiencing in treatment. These successes may not be the ones you were hoping for and they may be small successes, but they are successes none the less and they deserve to be celebrated. And not only that, your daughter will need to be celebrated for her accomplishes and who she is and is becoming. This celebration of her will be so much easier and so much more real as you learn to let go. As she sees this acceptance, your daughter will be able to grow into so much more and truly find herself and heal.

Take Care of Yourself


Leading up to sending your daughter to residential treatment can be so hard. It can be a time full of crisis, stress, tears, and hardship. Yet many times after they send their daughter to treatment, parents sometimes get this feeling like they don’t know what to do anymore. Unfortunately, many times this causes a parent’s own self-care to go down. So it is critical that you take care of yourself. This experience will come with days that you feel sad or guilty, and it will be hard. But it is so important that you take care of you and the important relationships that you have in your life. Doing this will allow the relationship that you with your daughter to heal.

 Allow your daughter to be responsible


One of the most important questions for your daughter is “How are you going to handle this?”. This question means that whatever problem you see your daughter going through at the moment, you can turn to her and say something like “I can see you’re struggling and are challenged right now in this moment. What are you going to do about it?”. This is critical because you’re letting her know that you are here for her and are going to be with her, but it’s also letting her know that healing is up to her. She’s the one that has to do the leg work to solve this problem, and she is capable of doing just that. You may not know exactly what she’s struggling with and may have to have help from her therapist to gain a better understanding, but in that moment always let her be responsible and let her know she’s capable of solving her problems.
Incorporating these 15 steps into your life will help you as a parent help your daughter find success during her residential therapy. We hope that these steps will not only help you and her, but your whole family as well. Healing is a process that takes the whole family, and we at Sunrise only want to encourage this healing.
If you feel that you have a daughter who could benefit from Residential Therapy, please call us at 866-754-4807.