Having said that, I am so surprised that a 12 year old would be diagnosed with such a mental illness. At that age, a child’s brain is still, for lack of a better word, “growing” to reach its adult state – just like their bodies.

Toddlers are all different and there is a reason that time is nicknamed “the terrible twos.” Not every child goes through it, so I would say the reason you were surprised by her actions and reactions was because your other children did not go through that stage of development in the same way. In addition, teenagers are well teenagers and mood swings, control issues etc are not uncommon.

I understand the whole “having to have everything is a certain place in a specific place” & “worrying about something specific (i.e. the dog getting out)” – but that sounds more like OCD to me, if she actually has that mental illness. As a young adult those symptoms relating to OCD for me didn’t stop, so I was then diagnosed with it, but only then. My brother however had an anti-germ issue where he would wash his hands all the time and never touch a door handle (he would always wear a coat so he could use it to open a door and not his bare hand). However, by the time he went away to college that had all stopped, so to have diagnosed him with OCD would have been incorrect.

I agree with you, this new Dr sounds like the best. I had to go through a lot of “bad” ones before I found the right Dr. I would try and pull back from fixating on BPD. She may be different than her siblings and even you when you were a child, but just remember she is still growing and this includes her brain and all its chemical synapses etc are still growing as well.

I do not mean to say she may not have the illness when she is an adult, just that it is extreme to place that diagnosis on a 12 yo, even a 15yo as she is now.