My Rachel tried to stab someone to death last night. The shift coordinator called to let me know. No big deal because no one was actually physically harmed, right? They still want to discharge her and don't understand why I won't bring her home.
We had a big, very loud meeting on Wednesday. They say she's made so much progress. And she definitely has. She no loinger tries to strangle people when they try to brush her hair. She's more likely to calmly state when she's thinking and feeling, even though those thoughts and feelings are her conviction that she can create false documents to enable her to run away to Japan and start a new life on her own, or that she'd be happy to come back home as long as I follow her rules, and allow her to run her and our lives as she sees fit, because she knows better than we do.
The therapists, administration, and insurance company all agree that if I won't bring her home, she is ready to be moved into a therapeutic foster home- a family trained to care for kids with behavioral problems. I fought with them until they started screaming at me that I wasn't in this for Natalie's best interests but because of my own issues, that I was obviously not in my right mind nad needed more intensive therapy than what I was getting. At that point I left the meeting, because I ust couldn't take it any more.
My Rachel tried to kill somebody tonight. She was angry at him, so she grabbed a pair of scissors and tried to stab him to death. But our mental health system insists she's ready for a step-down in care. It all comes down to money, doesn't it? They don't want to pay the exhorbitant price of the care this child needs. So they're going to let her loose on society, my homicidal delusional 12 year old. And while I hope with all my heart that I'm wrong, someday, I truly believe, she'll be a killer or she'll be dead.
Sarah
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I've read this account two or three times now over the past couple of weeks. You've listed the positives and those provide hope, yet the negative is certainly scary. You've all been on my mind and in my prayers. I wish there were a magic wand to an easy solution, yet I know there isn't. I know it is taxing in many, many ways to continue working to find a solution. Hang on to the hope that one can be found.
ReplyDeleteHang in there. You obviously love your child and I know you'll stop at nothing to get her the help she needs. I wish there was something I could say to help you somehow, but for now just know that you are not alone. Please just hang in there. xx
ReplyDeleteThis post was 3 years ago. I have a child in the same situation. What has happened in the last 3 years? I am wondering because I want to have an idea of where my daughter may end up.
ReplyDeleteBounced from institution to institution. Gotten worse not better, just bigger. Now a pedophile as well. I will not have that teenager, almost 16, in my home, no matter how much I love her.
DeleteHey, I just read your entire blog. This was three years ago, though. I would really like to know how your therapy sessions are going now, and what's been happening. Also, how is Joey now?
ReplyDeleteHow are you doing, too? and your husband?
Rachel has gotten much much bigger and much much more violent. Pedophilia is now a part of her diagnosis. I gave up custody to my first ex, who lives in Delaware, because there they let the parents and doctors decide when the child will be released. They don't leave the sociopathic child in charge of his or her own treatment and fate. Only my first ex is breakig the custody order and allowing Rachel to sign herself out.
DeleteJoey has been so sick I just haven't had the energy to fight the situation. My husband is gone. It's just me now trying to run this balancing act. I sit in the hispital as we speak with 9yo Joey curled up in my lap, waiting for emergency surgery this morning.
Therapy sessions with Rachel are non-existent. She refuses to attend. She says she's headed for Boston and her birth mother. I don't know what will happen to her. I am scared for her. I am scared for society. I am working to accept that she is almost 16 and within the rules of our broken system, there is simply nothing more that I can do.
I put my energies into Joey's healing and my own. In spite of the setbacks, Joey is, on the whole, improving with time. With my little one, now 9, there is hope.