The 4th of July and Freedom

I sent my son to live in a group home yesterday. Actually, I didn't do it, the decision out of my hands. 3 assault charges in a year means a judge is making the decisions now.  He wasn't even able to make it a week into the summer before the anger and anxiety became too much and he assaulted me again. His younger siblings watched, crying and screaming in terror, and my 12 year old daughter had to call the police in order to protect her mom, again. Mr. Man  spent 22 days in jail, 7 days in a "half-way" house so they could open a Medicaid account for him, and he is now living in a house with 4 other boys and 2 girls, as well as, 2-3 staff, 24 hours a day. And all he's worried about is if he will get to go out for his birthday.

They open Medicaid because it's $244 a day for him to live in this house, that's $43,920 for the 6 months he has been initially placed. We will be financially responsible for a portion of the cost, which they figure out through a formula according to the paperwork we are going to have to fill out. $43,920 and no guarantee that he will see this as anything more than another way we have "ruined his life" and cause him to hate us more. 

My in-laws are visiting from PA and we were able to get them in to see him the night before he went to court. They cried and said how gorgeous he is (and he is a good looking kid!) and wondered just HOW this happens. I have wondered the same thing, over and over. I begged for help for years, but it took 3 assaults to get it and still it may or may not be enough.

I have all 3 of my younger children in counseling...yep, the 2 year old too. One of the things that can cause PTSD in toddlers is when they watch their primary care-giver being harmed. We are considering sending my 12 year old to a different middle school, just so she doesn't have to feel like she has to follow behind her brother and his reputation. My 8 year old can't bear to have me out of his sight. He knows what time I get off of work and is calling within 10 minutes to see where I am and when I will be home. My oldest son and I were goofing around and fighting over a Peanut Butter Oreo (YUM, by the way!) and he fell on top of me. Even though we were laughing and goofing around, my 2 year old went into hysterics, crying and screaming. She was barely consolable. My sweet baby can't even watch us play without reliving her trauma.

Why does our system have to run so backward? Why do we have to be so damaged before we can get the help we need? And why do I feel guilty that I am looking forward to time at the cabin this 4th of July weekend and the freedom I feel because I know there won't be any physical assaults or fights or power struggles? How do I explain to my children, who are incredibly angry with their brother, that although I am angry too, he is still my son and I love him with everything in me? How do I convince my husband, who hasn't spoken to his son since that night, to participate in his son's "rehabilitation"? 

The intake worker for the group home commented that their goal will be to help me step out of a "treatment minded" role with my son and into a parental role. How do I do that when it seems to all be tied together? All of my training and education makes me "treatment minded", so I think it's how I parent...who knows. Just another detour down this long and winding road. 

A big pile of "should"

I "should" have all my laundry caught up after a 3 day weekend, and I "should" have a clean kitchen, having solved the mystery of  the "weird" refrigerator smell, and I "should" be have gotten my oil changed and my tires rotated (I'm only 2000 miles past due) ~ but alas, I did not do any of these things.

Instead I spent time having breakfast with a dear friend, celebrating my oldest son's graduation, having a bar-b-q with my parents, my grandparents and my brother's family, catching up with a friend who made the 4 hour drive to see my son graduate, and sleeping...lots and lots of sleeping.

I "should" be thrilled to have been offered a full time position in the school where I have been working, and truly, I am thrilled, but there's a big part of me that is worrying already about all the "shoulds" that are to come next year.

Why is it that I can have all these grand plans, plans to paint the house and plans to clean out all the excess crap (which we do have alot of) and plans to get out exercise 3 days a week and in the end all I want to do is sleep? Am I depressed? Anxious? Avoiding things? I think the answer to all of these questions is a resounding yes!

I am depressed, because no matter how many inspirational quotes I read, or how many other people I talk to, I still think I "should" be a super-woman. I "should" be able to work full time, deal with my mentally ill child, along with my other 4 children and the man-child I am married to and still have time and energy and the "want" to deal with the laundry and the kitchen and the tires. Even I am writing this, I am internally guilting myself about not being "super"!

I am anxious because in 3 days it is going to be summer, and summer for my child with mental illness is a huge challenge. And he is that much bigger and stronger and more defiant and angrier than he was last summer and as much as he hates school, the unstructured time of summer is way too much for him. Along with the fact that he will most likely make choices that incur consequences that will make his world shrink even smaller. I am anxious that even with my  plans to paint and clean and exercise, the best I will manage is to drag a comb through my hair and feed my children something unhealthy before we head to the pool, where I will read and play with my baby.

I am avoiding things because they are hard and uncomfortable and are going to lead to big changes in the near future, and although I just read a quote saying "I can do hard things", I don't truly believe that I can.

Maybe the key to avoiding a big stinking pile of "should", is saying I WILL get this one thing accomplished today, and leave the 1001 things I should have done alone. And being ok with the days where all I WILL get done is dragging a comb through my hair and making sure my kids have enough sunscreen on. I think that is the key...maybe I "should" go get a duplicate key made for those days when I lose this original  and am floundering in a pile of "shoulds".

I definitely don't have an answer, or even a question really, just some thoughts. And a long summer stretched out in front of me...

Knock on wood

I look back at my last post and am amazed that it's only been 6 months. It should be longer, when your life gets turned half way around, time should speed up to match your emotions. I have learned in the last 6 months that I am an abused woman, I think, act, and react to situations like a woman who has been abused for years, and in a way, I guess I have.

It starts out in little ways, you know. A suggestion here, a request there, a look on a face, a tone of voice, and all in the name of keeping the peace you find yourself letting go of ideas and beliefs that  you KNOW are right. A comment that is said as a "joke", but is really a veiled put down.  An attitude that says, "if you'd just do it right, everything would be ok.", and you NEVER seem to get it right.  It's weird, how words and actions can make you feel beat up and beat down. The saying "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me" is an utter lie. Words hurt. They cut and pummel and break and shape you into a person you hardly recognize as who you once were.

And then, then you have a son who sees and hears the comments and reads the looks and his mentally ill mind interprets it just a touch different. Where he hears a joke that seems to demoralize women, he takes it as permission to totally disregard women and see them only as a means to an end. Where he sees a mother bend and negotiate with his father, he interprets that women don't deserve respect and can be pushed into your will. And he grows, until the day he is bigger than his mom and stronger, and that's when you go from being emotionally abused and mentally degraded to actual, physical abuse.

I found myself second guessing all of my choices, because I knew which ones would end up in a physical confrontation. And then it was that everything became a physical confrontation. I was wrestled to the ground with my arm behind my back, kicked in the ribs, spit on in the face, bit and verbally abused for taking my son's phone away. He did all of this in front of his 3 younger siblings. My husband never seemed to believe the lengths to which our son would go, the abuse and physical threats that were a daily occurrence in the house. Just another small abuse, to not be believed and to be told I was over exaggerating what was going on. However, this night, hubby called and heard what was going on as my daughter was on the house phone with 911 and my youngest son begged his brother to leave his mom alone and my baby screamed because she was so scared.

My son went to jail that night, in October, and he did not return home until January 11. Alot of work has gone on between my husband and I, the entire inner workings of our marriage and the way we communicate with and to each other and to our kids has had to change. My son has promised me that he made a promise to himself that he would never let himself "go there" again. So far, so good...knock on wood.

Sunny side down...

I had to press assault charges against my son this week. I had to call the police, tell them I was afraid of my son and have him arrested. Is that 100% accurate? No, I am still bigger than he is and can take him if I needed too, but the fact is, he took it to the next level. He pulled my hair, pushed me against a wall, threw things at me, and threatened to hit me. Knowing that if I let it slide this time, next time would be that much worse, I sent my own child to jail. Hoping against hope that THIS is what it's going to take to get him to "see the light". Praying, praying, praying...

I wish I could say I was in as positive a spot as the last time I posted. I am not. I am tired, worn out and just plain pissed off. Mental illness just sucks. I don't want to offend or take anything away from a parent who's child it physically handicapped or who has a chronic illness, because those things come with their own sets of difficulties, prejudices and pain. But, at some level, I think at least people can see the issue. They may be unkind, but it can be chalked up to insensitivity, stupidity, or not enough education. With a mental illness, you have a person who looks normal, talks normal, walks around interacting normally, and then WHAM, not so normal. I have been told, by people who love my son and me, good caring people, who do not have a clue , that if I just loved on my son a little more, paid him more one on one attention, got him more involved in things,  "focused on the positive", got him "the help that he needs", or was stricter with him; that this would all go away. Like his mental illness is  my fault, that I did not parent this child correctly. That I picked favorites and he is not it. Bullshit.

My neighbor and his son watched my boy being taken away by the cops this week, now the neighbor kids is telling my daughter that my son is a "piece of shit". No knowledge of what happened or anything, just judgement for having to be lead away in handcuffs.

We're that house. The house with all the yelling and door slamming and cops outside...Not the white picket fence I dreamed of, that's for sure. I wanted to be the house that all the kids came too, where everyone liked to hang out and everyone called me "mom". But, we can't because we have a secret, we have a person living in our house that may blow at anytime, for any reason, damn the consequences. So, instead of being the FUN HOUSE (!) that everyone wants to come to, we're the FUN HOUSE like you see at carnivals, where something could jump out at you from around any corner.

If any of my other kids want to have a friend over, it's never a spur of the moment thing. We have to plan it out, have a Plan B in place, and then make sure Mr. has somewhere else he can be. We can't let him have friends spend the night because when he gets up in the morning, and he's embarrassed about taking his meds, so he waits and "forgets" to take them, or I take them too him and we have a whispered (supposedly) fight about how he doesn't need them, he cannot hold himself together and it's a huge uncomfortable mess. The kid leaves kind of wide eyed and wary, and they never stay again.

Last year, my in laws came to visit. I was getting ready to have the baby and they came out to help and spend some time with us and the kids. We had been telling them about what was going on, trying to give them a head's up, I guess. They were on the "well if you'd just spend more time, money, attention, on him he'd be fine" team. And for the first week of their visit, he was fine. But then he got tired of his routine being messed up and anxious because we had extra people in the house and a new baby, so he started acting out. Typical stuff for him, yelling, threatening, slamming doors, stealing, running off, arguing, calling names, bullying the younger kids, etc. My poor MIL was devastated. She and my FIL would try to get into the middle of things between my son and I, to help. Yeah, that went well. Or tell me to just wait until D got home from work and let him handle it, Ha!  Those poor people walked around for the last half of their visited looking shell shocked and walking on eggshells. My MIL even said she "pitied" me. Bless them, we love them and they are very good to our kids and us, but they just had no idea. And the level of tension in the house for the time they were here was palpable.

I'm not sure what we'll do when they come back, in all honesty, Mr. will probably go stay with my parents so his routine won't be as interrupted. Even as I write this, I think, "that's ridiculous!", we all have to deal with our routines being messed up and being inconvenienced some times, that 's life. But, the reality is, if we want to have a peaceful, enjoyable time, Mr. needs a place to go every night and wake up every morning without all the "extra" people and stuff going on.

My marriage isn't even a marriage right now. We are like a triage team at a hospital, just trying to patch up the bleeding and keep everyone moving. We have differing viewpoints and background experience and knowledge  with mental illness, so we are definitely coming at it from different angles. Actually, we just don't talk about it. My husband cringes every time I call him at work, sure it's me about to tell him another "something" has happened. So, we just don't talk. He wants the counselor to just get it through Mr.'s head what needs to be done and how he needs to act. I keep saying that Mr. has all the information, he just chooses not to use it at crucial moments when he should. D goes to work every day and works hard and grinds it out, I stay home and get called a F-ing B and have doors slammed in my face; knowing that the smallest request is going to be a negotiation proportionate to the Treaty of Versailles. So, D and I are not talking, we are existing, for the time being.

Today, my trying to "look on the bright side" and "get my Zen on", is not going so well. I am trying to love my child the way he needs and will accept, all the while being told that he doesn't love me, he doesn't want to live here, he hates me, Satan would be a better parent, and that I am a stupid F-ing B who should die and go to hell because everyone would be happier. And this little "pep" talk gets played on  a daily repeating loop. So, today, I am tired, frustrated and pissed off. Maybe tomorrow will be better...

On my knees and holding

So, as I started taking a look at what was really going on, how it was affecting my other children, my marriage, and even our home, I began to realize that something had to be done. We started with a counselor. We got lots of tips and techniques, ideas on how, when, why and for how long to punish, reward, interact, react, ignore behaviors. It was an exhausting summer with an end result of us not being any further along and my sweet sweet boy still running the house.

You see, as an aside, he is our 2nd child. Our first child listened to us, didn't need too many punishments and seemed to learn after one go around of a consequence. He would negotiate out of a longer punishment and, at times, we would allow him to since he seemed to "get" it.

So, back to Mr. Second Child. He loves loves loves to negotiate, in fact everything with him is a negotiation. The word "no" is simply not a word he can accept. When it finally came down to him saying he wanted to die and that it would have been better if he had never been born, I decided to take him to the Emergency Room and have him evaluated. It was THE MOST heart wrenching thing I have ever had to do. My son would go from begging me to just take him home to yelling and swearing at me and telling me to just go away. 

The worst sight I have had to endure was my son being wheeled away to the Psychiatric Center for an overnight stay. I took the next day off of work, which incredibly, considering where I was working, my employers were very unkind and not understanding at all about. I had no idea what we were supposed to do, what our next steps were...so I went and sat in the waiting room of the Psych Center until my husband got there and we could see an administrator.

Once we got in and were told about the night our son had had (defiant, argumentative, oppositional) we were asked why we hadn't sought help long before this considering the mental history we gave. Being looked at like, "how did you NOT see that this kid needed help" was the first (maybe second or third) humbling experience we were going to face in the next 18 months. 

Being told, when I finally got to see my boy, that this was all my fault, that I had ruined his life and that he didn't want me to call or come by during any of the visiting hours available was horrible. (makes me cry even now).  The decision was made that my child needed to be closely observed, have some med changes done and be in intensive therapy for a week. He wouldn't let us come see him, then he would call and cry, begging for us to come and take him home.

The sad part was, our home was so much quieter and more peaceful the week he was gone. It was like all the tension had gone out of the place. Having him gone was hard on my daughter though, she was relieved that he was gone (she's one of his favorite targets...still is) but felt sorry for him. She drew him pictures or printed off his favorite football pictures everyday.

At the end of the week, we decided that he still needed more help than a weekly counseling appointment. We looked at group homes, institutional care, and hospitalization. Knowing what I knew about group homes I did not want him going there, but my husband was not willing to let him back in the house unless something was being done. So, we decided on a partial program. That is where he would go to school, individual counseling and group counseling at the psych center everyday, but he could still live at home on nights and weekends. 

For the next 4 months our son got dropped off at the Psych Center every morning and was brought home every afternoon by bus. It was enlightening, a bit of relief to know he really did need the help, terrible because he told us daily that we had "put him in hell" and that "his life was ruined" and a growth opportunity for both my prayer life and my marriage. 

We learned alot about sticking together as a couple, not allowing him to split us, and also how to stick by our consequences not matter how far we had to go. This led to more ER evaluation visits, the police coming to our home 3 times, the sheriff coming to my parents' home, as well as a myriad of other experiences I would not ever wish on anyone.

Knocked to my knees

About a year ago my life changed in ways I couldn't have imagined. Actually, that's not true, it started to change about 11 years before, but I just went on my merry way and tried to "bob and weave" my way through. See, I am a teacher and a trained parenting group facilitator. For years I have been busy deciding what the parents of this child or that child must be like solely based on the behavior of the child. I sat in groups once, twice, and for awhile, even 3 times a week helping other parents with tips and suggestions on how to better parent their children. Yet, at home, I had a child who was running the house (the biggest "no-no" out there). He was  manipulative, angry, violent, and much better equipped to "wait it out" than I could possibly be. I wish I could say that the first time he said he wanted to die I rushed him to a counselor, or that the first time he kicked a hole in the wall or ran out the door screaming that I was going to beat him, I realized how out of my league I was. But, I can't. I mean, here I am a "certified parenting expert" and teacher. I KNEW how to handle kids and I had all the tools at my disposal to work with my own child at home. Nobody needed to know what it was really like inside the 4 walls of our house. Then I started a new adventure...

I was hired as a one-on-one aide for a young man who lived in a group home and went to a therapeutic school. He was big, on the autistic spectrum and much too wise about the ways of the "system". As I started working with this young man and began observing the other young men in his group home and also in his class, I was knocked out by the realization that my son had many of the same behaviors, attitudes, and problems that these boys had, and they HAD BEEN REMOVED FROM THEIR HOMES. What a shock! I began to look more seriously at what was going on at home, and really starting thinking about the trauma and, at times, danger my other children were in. A pattern soon emerged that was both disturbing and enlightening. The pattern went something like this, my child would want to do something, I would say  no  and my child would then begin to throw a tantrum the likes of which no one should ever have to witness. The part that was enlightening was the part where I didn't have to try to do this on my own, I didn't have to hide what was going on in my own house and there is help out there for parents of children like mine. Yet, it still took several weeks before I would take a step in the direction of help.