Category Archives: Mental Health

Articles relating to mental health are in this category. Typically they will fall into one of two categories. Yours, or your child’s. Yes, your mental health is important.

transition to residential care

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

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Master of Deception

David was in safe bed last week.  One of his assignments was to write a detailed listing all of his hiding places. I don’t believe by any means that it is a comprehensive list, but it gives us a good place to start. It will also give us ideas of where else to look. So today we are going through the list.  Wish us luck. Like Willy Wonka says “Little surprises around every corner, but nothing dangerous.” Why do I call him a Master of Deception? He came home on Saturday.  By Sunday he had stolen 2 cell phones, a Kindle, a key, plus food that he hid under his bed. Like I told David, we know he has a problem stealing.  The tantrums that follow him being caught stealing are what makes everything so much worse.  Not that stealing is ok. The safe bed is going to have him

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What do you mean?

This has become David’s favorite saying when confronted with a behavior.  Confronted isn’t the best way to describe how we deal with his behaviors, but it works for the purposes of this post. “David, what are you doing upstairs?”  I ask. “What do you mean?” he responds. “David, why did you steal my keys?”  I ask. “What do you mean?” he says. For everything that he is confronted on, his response is nearly automatic.  “What do you mean?” Most of the time, just in case he isn’t understanding what we say, we explain it to him.   Another odd thing happened tonight.  He took his meds with water, just like always.  They immediately came right back out. Immediately.  Thankfully we were in the kitchen when it happened.  See, he thinks that if he is throwing up, he won’t have to go to safe bed tomorrow.  Little does he know that

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