Today we are starting back to school. We will start with half days,two to three days a week. It is way too hot to be outdoors. We might as well get a jump on next year. I am having them do the basics for now. Math, English and Chemistry for the older two and math,English and spelling for my seventh grader. Not one of the three of them is complaining. I wouldn’t say they are jumping up and down with joy and kissing my feet either. I think the feeling is more along the lines of “nothing much else to do when it is 104 degrees outside;might as well get ahead (or catch up some) on school”.
I am beginning to twitch when ever we have a meeting with professionals and my youngest son. I am beginning to truely dislike the profession of psychiatry; dislike being a very weak adjective describing my emotion.
My son is tanking again. We are saddened but not surprised. He does not want to face the people and life here at home. There will be no party for him. There will be line of sight to arms length supervision. There are siblings that are going to keep their distance for a while. He has to face what he left behind.I am sure that scares him. We have told him we will help him get through it. But- and this is a very big but with all capital letters in a giant font-he will have to follow the rules of the house. He will not be allowed to rule our home with his violence. We (his dad and I) know this will be hard for him. We also know he is strong enough to handle it.
This is not a comfort to him. He has received over 30 sanctions and four incident reports between last Wednesday and yesterday. He will only look at me with hatred again. He turns his head away at any attempt at eye contact. Nothing is his fault. He has lost all understanding of the rules. He is confused.He doesn’t mean it.
His psychiatrist tried to tell us our son was ADHD. That is why he disrupts the other boys in class and why he violates the rules. I tried to explain that it was, in fact, willful behavior. I also tried very hard to have a conversation with youngest,including getting out of my seat and kneeling in front of him so I could be eye level with him. I was told this was the worst thing I could have done. I am not to engage him when he is like this. That is why my son escalates. I am encouraging the power struggle.I tried to explain that my son escalated worse if his negative behavior is ignored,but ended up looking like a fool and crying. I had to leave the room.
We are once again afraid he will blow placement. He is running out of alternatives.
I don’t feel vindicated when he treats the staff the way he treats his family. I feel despair.
I don’t know why I cried. I rarely cry outside of the family. I pride myself on my emotional control.
Some control.
The therapist followed me into the hall when I broke down, led me to to an empty room and let me cry. She saw his face when I was trying to get him to look at me. She asked if that was the expression he wore when he was going to escalate. I told her, yes. If he would have been home he would have become violent. I told her that no matter how we handle him, when he is like that, he escalates.
He is the most violent when we are matter of fact with him.
She told me it appears he enjoys causing pain. He is the most complicated child she has ever seen.
My husband did damage control with the professional person after I left the room.
My husband told me he calmly reiterated to the psychiatrist how we handle our son at home. He repeated how our son will tell us he decides just how angry he will be at any given time,how he escalates irregardless of intervention. He explained that we have tried everything that has ever been suggested with the exception of no consequence. Not one approach has deescalate our son. Not one.
In the end, the psychiatrist was in a hurry.Vacation time,I suspect. No med changes for now.
The psychiatrist told our son he was acting like a five year old and he needed to stop.
For this he earns the big bucks.
I do not like having to talk about my son while he is in the room. It seems somehow dehumanizing The doctor talks as if my son were a part of the furniture. He asks questions and makes comments that gives my son new ways to manipulate. It is kind of like my son is a gallbladder instead of a boy.
I am also tired of being talked down to. I am tired of it being assumed we are to blame through omission or commission for my son’s problems. I am tired of it being assumed we have never parented traumatized children before. I have been doing this for twenty plus years. I wish that the same professionals that tell us our son is RAD would at least spend some time researching what that means. I wish someone besides us could see that it is a life lost if my son cannot heal. Maybe more than one.
Will someone please tell me how to reach my son?
We cannot work on his trauma or our attachment while he is in the Academy. He cannot come home until he can refrain from wanting to hurt me physically. He funnels all of his hate and self loathing onto me.
We are in a catch 22.
I could use some success stories about now. Somewhere,someone has adopted an older child who has been as badly hurt as our son. Surely,someone has a child who eventually healed enough to be safe?
Someone?
