Mental health articles relating to a condition your child might have can be found here.
One Hour.
Sixty Minutes.
That is how long it took after David got home from safe bed before he stole something.
“I found it…”
“I don’t know how that got in my pocket”
At safe bed, he was evidently upset with staff. He had to eat in his bedroom, as he didn’t have privileges to eat with everyone else. So, he put all of his food down a heat register. Tomato soup. Indian Taco. Yum.
When asked why? He responded… “I was feeding the pet rats.”
David is in a safe bed. Another child in residence had some foreign currency and an mp3 player. David asked the child about it and was told that the mp3 player came from staff. Since David is home bound, when everyone else went on an outing, he stayed behind with staff.
Guess what disappeared?
The others came back to the house, and the child discovered that the items were missing. Social workers were called. David called the social worker a lot of interesting things and said that “dad was going to fire her…” or something to that affect. The police were called.
The police searched David’s room and couldn’t find anything. David was busy blaming another child.
The social worker searched David’s room and found the mp3 player hidden in a structural component of the building. 🙂 Imagine that!
The money couldn’t be found.
So David tried to tell the police that the social worker planted the mp3 player.
Clever little bugger isn’t he?
After the police left, and the social worker left, David gave up the money. But not after an extensive series of lies as to its location.
For the record, we don’t see ourselves as heroes. We are ordinary people dealing with extraordinary situations.
Like many other parents, we feel success and failure in any given day regarding what our children do.
I was asked once if I would adopt David again, if I knew then what I know now about him. Easy question to answer. Yes. I would. He is worth it. He deserves a family just like any other child.
One week from tomorrow David will be in the residential facility.
I am loathe to admit that part of me is excited about him going. He can get more help there than what we can give him at home.
On the other hand, I am sad. This is just the next level of care. But then there is the part of me that berates my ability as a dad. I should have been able to fix him.
I know, it isn’t realistic to think that I can fix his brain.
And then, I look at the rest of the family. David has been in the safe bed since Monday. He has done well for the mot part there, and wants to come home. However, I believe that it is him identifying what needs to be done to achieve a goal, and then doing what he needed to do to get there. The other kids are spending more time out in the main part of the house rather than locked away behind closed doors.
Do you have any idea how nice it is to not need a key to open a fridge? or cupboard? I mean seriously. To not need to carry keys around just to get a bowl of cereal, or a glass of milk is such a cool thing.
To not have to fight with a child to get them to return an item that doesn’t belong to them is nice as well. Actually, fight isn’t the best word, as we catch him, and then there follows a four to six hour long tantrum.
