The answer should be yes. Not "how can I get my loved one help?"

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Breaking hearts, practicing tough love with our son

Breaking our hearts to practice tough love with David.
He called home for the first time since he was placed in detention.  Full of tears, and a story about how he banished the bad version of himself.
Breaking Hearts

Cook County Juvenile Detention Facility & Court

Cook County Juvenile Detention Facility & Court (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

During the first hearing, he didn’t want to talk to us. During the second, he said hello.

He isn’t happy there in the detention center.  Nothing to do and in bed by 6pm.  He claims they won’t let him read or do anything.  And he can’t visit with peers.

We can go visit him for an hour on Sunday.  In order to visit, we have to give 24 hours notice.

He told me that he wasn’t getting his medicine.  I talked to the staff and they said he wasn’t in compliance.  So tomorrow, I’ll find out what that means.  Because he needs his medicine and will have all sorts of problems if they don’t give it to him.   So tomorrow, a Saturday, I’ll start trying to unravel that issue.

No contact from staff.

Why didn’t the detention center call and talk to me about a problem with his medicine?  Or talk to his lawyer about it?  Or his advocate who has talked to David more than I have this week.  It will be difficult to do anything about it on the weekend.

Monday, I hope to get his psychiatrist and case manager to make sure that they have the medicine for him that he needs.

Super frustrated with so much about this experience, but we are staying the course.

David claims that he has banished the bad version of himself.  That he will never assault anyone, or become violent again.  He apologized for his behavior.

He said this before when he tried to crash our van on the highway two years ago.  That same summer when he attacked me with the shovel he said the same thing.  “I’ll never do it again.”

There was the time he threatened to stab me to death with a knife, and then when he said he was going to beat me with a stick.  So, I am hesitant to believe him.  If we cave and bring him home, we are showing compassion.  If we cave and bring him home without consequence and then this happens again, what are we showing him?  We forgive, and it happens again.  So our breaking hearts are practicing tough love.  You can forgive things that happen, but you never forget.  The fear stays with you, like the smell of a dead skunk on the highway stays with you 20 miles after you have passed it.

This parenting this is sure hard.

Why did it happen after two years?  Simple, he was in facility care.  He had support staff all the time. Other than mentor support 10 hours a week, he doesn’t get support.  Professionals claim he doesn’t need support.That he is getting all of the services that he needs. When he comes home from care, we have what we call a honeymood.  It’s the period where things are golden.

My contention is that if he had support staff, Monday would have never happened.

Now, if we could only believe his apology.  So many apologies over the years for the things he has done.  For the attacks, both physical and verbal.  I wish I could do like the facility recommended, and put the past behind me.  To not let it hold over us, a fear of our son.  Mom and I are in tears over this situation.

He needs to understand that there is acceptable behavior.  Violence is not acceptable behavior.  And for those who would argue that we shouldn’t let him play violent video games, or watch violent television.  We don’t.  On his x-box, he plays basketball.  The most violent show he watches is NCIS.

Let us be clear.  We don’t believe that the justice system is the place to get mental health care.

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Visiting David

Last week we didn’t get to see David because two of us were sick.

This week, I am still not feeling well, but we went anyway.

He was in a mood.  Not sure why.  He wanted to play basketball, and I couldn’t.  He wanted to play badmiton, and I couldn’t.  Part of it was because the other residents were in the gym.  To me there is an expectation of privacy.  I shouldn’t be part of their world directly because I am not staff.  Just like they shouldn’t be part of mine.

Regardless, unless staff tells me it is okay, I am not actively participating in activities with kids I don’t know.  And even if I had the okay, not sure how comfortable I would be.

So David was in a mood.  Refused to eat.  Didn’t want to cooperate.  Asked every five minutes what time it was.

He also talked about restitution.  He evidently lost something, and has to pay restitution.  Six hours of community service within the residence.

When it was time to go, he took all of our lunch trays back to the residential kitchen.  Then went to the gym.  No goodbyes, no “see ya later”  just left us.

Staff did the same.  We ended up setting off an alarm when we tried to leave.  That was interesting.

Reciprocity

One of the difficult things about raising a child like our son, David, is that the love that we feel for our son will likely never be reciprocated.

It isn’t that he doesn’t bond with people, he just doesn’t bond with family.

It is a facet of the attachment disorder.

He is more likely to bond with a complete stranger, at least briefly, than he is to develop a bond with us.

This is our reality.  Just as we can’t force him to modify his behavior, we can’t force him to feel any kind of love or feeling toward the family.

As a piece of that, he understands that telling someone, “I will take a knife and stab you” is not appropriate.  He shows no remorse for saying it.  To him it is no different than saying “the sun is shining”.

It’s tragic really.  The only thing that he regrets about his behavior from Friday evening is that it resulted in him being locked in a hospital.  At least this is all that he expresses to us.

This evening, I had opportunity to visit him in the hospital.  Every other sentence directed to me, began with the word Dude.  Hospital staff instructed David that it was disrespectful.  While I was talking with him about Friday, he frequently changed topics, or said the magic phrase, “I don’t know.” If redirected back to discussing Friday evening, he would slouch and cover his head with his arms.

Where I struggle with the whole mental health thing is trying to wrap my head around the idea that inside this beautiful human being, there is no remorse.  There is no empathy.  There is no caring bone in his body about anything other than himself and his own sense of id.

The key to David as I see it is this.  When someone other than family, a person in a position of authority, tells him to stop whatever behavior he is exhibiting, he will.  At least for the short term.  I witnessed this a couple of times on Friday evening, the first when the deputy arrived and dressed David down for the way he was talking, and then later when the nurse told him to knock off the behavior.  He stopped.  Immediately.   He doesn’t do this with everyone, for example, school staff.  But he does it for law enforcement.  He did it for staff at the hospital.

Today when I was visiting him, the staff in the visitors lounge did the same thing. They called him on his behavior, and he stopped.

Is he doing it for them to impress them?  Why won’t he do it for us?  The people closest to him?  So how much of this is mental health, and how much of it is just piss poor behaviors?