After years of caretaker’s fatigue from managing my now 11-year-old’s behavior issues, I signed myself up for a 3 day per week program at our local crisis center. He has been diagnosed with disruptive mood deregulation disorder and ADHD, but in all reality, he most likely has a personality disorder. In 2023, we had the police out to our house something like 27 times over Memorial Day weekend and he followed that up with 8 back to back acute stays all over our state. He was finally admitted to a residential facility after we forced DCS’ hand through a psychiatric lockout.
Well, he was home for about three months before he kicked it up again, this time over boundaries placed on a Nintendo Switch. After a several day meltdown, he jumped out of a second story window onto our driveway and eloped to a stranger’s house about a mile down the road. He was taken to the hospital with a pretty bad head injury and after clearing trauma, was admitted to another acute stay. Tonight was supposed to be his discharge and I am again refusing to pick him up. Tomorrow, DCS will charge me with abandonment again and I’ll get to spend another year fighting them in court to try to have my son kept somewhere that he can be safe from himself.
This probably sounds uncaring. He doesn’t care about me. I don’t think he ever has. Or any of his family really. He built and subsequently destroyed a relationship with his 5-year-old brother over the last three months and doesn’t care. He has repeatedly tried to get me arrested so he could “roll the dice on another foster placement that won’t have rules on his switch”. I’m so exhausted. I don’t want to do any of this. I just wanted to have a happy family.
I can’t even connect with my wife or younger kid anymore. I’ve been too busy talking to DCS or driving all over the state for visits. They celebrated Easter without me because I was at home watching the 11-year-old kick holes in the walls of our hallway.
I called the police again last weekend and I hate calling the police. I don’t want them in my house and they almost never have anything beneficial to say. I needed to have him transported to the crisis center and they refused and just told me to try hitting him. DCS just says to call the police in crisis. The crisis center just ignores us because we’ve been there so often that our concerns are just dismissed at this point because it’s a chronic behavioral issue, not something actually manageable.
So I’m just broken now. Waiting for the inevitable calls that I’ve abandoned my kid again, how horrible I am, and how I’m going to be punished. For wanting my kid to be safe from himself and the rest of my family to be safe from him. I’ve been to hundreds of family therapy sessions. I’ve spent months of my life living in hospitals and crisis centers because he is so entitled. I don’t even know how he got this way. Maybe this is just my punishment for raising him wrong. I don’t know. I was 23 when I had him and his mom abandoned him with me. I didn’t know what I was doing with a kid.
I’m so exhausted. I have another session for therapy tomorrow and I just don’t want to go. It’s the second one and I just want to sleep, but I can’t even do that. I haven’t slept in days. Maybe I’ll get tboned on the way there and won’t have to deal with it.
I hope the therapy helps you deal. It was a step I never took. Although my kid had much less extreme behaviors, I spent several years really worried that I was going to lose it. “It” being my sanity and a place in society. Looking back, I needed therapy I’m pretty sure. I can offer no advice and can only say my heart hurts for you. Good luck.
I’ll get to spend another year fighting them in court to try to have my son kept somewhere that he can be safe from himself.
While my son did not have those behavioral issues, he did have his own. The year he killed himself he had attempted suicide, that we know, 5 times between April and September when he finally died. I kept trying to have him in a facility long term, it was the only time he was safe from himself. But he also suffered abuse from the staff.
At most we would get a week stay for him. Then he had an outpatient program that seemed to help. But in the end he took his own life.
As I said, your situation is vastly different. My son was generally a good kid, but still needed serious help.
I was 19 when he was born, and his mother and child services in their state kept him from me until he was 16. I feel you about feeling like it is punishment.
Best of luck to you.
