Protecting ourselves?

I'd take my chances with the abuse charges and would defend myself anyway. You do get a trial before they convict you. If it were me, he wouldn't be coming home. Is long term out of home placement an option? My son is 21 now, but one of the things he told me at 18 was that while he liked the idea of having a family, he was unable to live within one. He is careful about his long term relationships at this point as he is still unsure he could live in a family even if he were the husband or father. Not all kids can handle living at home and it sounds like yours can't. Some states do allow out of home placements without disruption. If I were in your position, I'd look at those-especially independent living programs. Is he on medication? Risperdal helped one of my sons with anger outbursts be able to stop long enough to choose to not be violent. Another thing I did was keep a cell phone in my pocket. When my son escalated I went out the front door and used it to call police. He seldom followed me outside-destroyed the house, but didn't want the neighbors to see him be violent. Kept me from getting beat long enough to get help. Good luck. I love the double side-teen can beat parent with little to no consequence, parent is an abuser if they defend themselves from violence. Stupid and it teaches teens to be violent adults.

Another thing, my room had a lock on it and a phone in it. Another place to run to to be secure while getting help.

I have followed your posts for a long time and really admire your committment to your son. You have done so much to try and help him and to get him to help himself. I completely understand where you are coming from as far as not disrupting, I would feel the exact same way. I do not believe, however, that we have to allow our family members to harm us simply because they are our family. Allowing him to return home after threatening you seems like tantamount to volunteering to be victimized. I think Lucy has some really good advice; find an out of home placement so that both you and he can be kept safe while you continue to work through his issues. This seems to me to be a good compromise that maintains your committment to him without sending the message that its ok to physically harm other. God bless you, I hope that your son is able to begin to heal with your support.

I agree with the former comments. Just because he is your son, he does not have the right to abuse you.Every time he is assaultive, call the police. Every time. He is 16 and he needs to learn consequences. I found that the police were much more understanding about me defending myself when there had been prior calls. After they see how combative your child really is, they will be more reluctant to charge you with abuse. My experience has shown that the child will eventually reveal their true selves to the police. Maybe not totally, but they will see some of the war zone that our children make us live in.Lucy is right that you should not bring him home. However, I understand how hard that decision is to make. I have brought my daughhter home when it was unsafe. Such a hard decision to make. I too take my chances in defending myself. I mean, come on, if he has a record of being violent, how on earth can anyone condemn you for protecting yourself - I know, I know, it happens, more than I want to know.

I believe that in most states videotaping a person without their knowledge is allowed so long as there is no audio, so I suggest setting up hidden cameras in your home to use as evidence of his assaults or to prove self-defense if you do need to defend yourself. I wish you the best of luck in finding a way to help your son.

You've received some really good advice from previous posters who've been there, done that. One thing I'd like to add is this: has your son been evaluated for bipolar disorder? You mention that he cycles into rages about once a month...this could be related to bipolar disorder. It's worth checking out if you haven't already. My son used to rage in his teen years and was later found to be bipolar. A few years ago, he started raging again, but this time he decided to start taking meds. Risperdal has worked wonders for him....

Our son is the way he is because so many people bailed out on him. He learned that violence keeps people at arm's length, which is easier than the fear of being close to them. If we send him away, we just confirm that in his mind, and we definitely see him as an abusive spouse or parent in the future. We are trying to prevent that future. Sending him away is not a real option given our goal.We do keep cell phones on us at all times. He already destroyed one phone in the middle of a 9-1-1 call. He will follow us outside if we leave the house. That's what happened during the last assault. He started screaming that he was going to punch my head in, so I left the house. He came after me, my husband distracted him, so he ended up assaulting my husband.Yes, he's on meds... Abilify. At the time of the last assault, he cold turkeyed his meds 6 weeks prior, and was a true nightmare to deal with that entire 6 weeks. In PA, we can't force him to take meds over the age of 14, and he knows that and would taunt us with it. He is back on Abilify now. In his words, he does not go 'boom-boom' on the meds, so is willing to take them. We'll see how long that lasts....I did put an attorney on retainer this morning. He's very experienced with family and juvenile law as well as mental health. He's going to call the probation officer that advised against hitting back to protect ourselves. He also wants to meet with all three of us, and make it very clear to our son that he represents US, not him. Should there be any events at all, he is legally going to protect Chad and I. I do feel better knowing that someone is advising us now.

I understand the message you intend to send, but I think by allowing him to beat you and stay home, you are telling him what he's doing is okay. To allow him to continue to do this and remain home tells him it will be fine to beat his wife and expect her to just take it. I'm not a big fan of abilify as it seems to have a very short term affect but that's just my experience. And allowing him to control skipping his meds is not okay either. No, you cannot force him to take them but if he doesn't want to, he needs to be living inside a facility that can control the resulting behavior. Your dedication to him is good, however, your appraoch, imo, enables him to continue doing what he's doing without fear of consequence. It's not okay to beat the people who love you and be allowed to continue coming back to do it some more. While he may have learned this behavior in the system, you're behavior is telling him it is okay. What happens if he beats you to death? Is that fine? Do you have neighbors where you can run? If this is the way he chooses to live-off his meds, abusing people, well, he needs to learn what it's like to live locked up. My sons ONE reason for deciding to learn about his sociopathic behavior was that he knew he didn't want to spend his adult life locked up. He didn't like the RTC confinement, but he know doesn't stalk and beat women and I am alive. I never gave up on my son but I did NOT allow him to abuse me in my home. I did not pretend it was okay. Keeping him home at all costs doesn't equal healing, IMO. If this is how you want to live, then expect to get injured or killed. I hope the attorney is able to help you.

Our son is at present out-of-home due to his recent attack. He spent his 17th birthday in juvenile detention. He is at a 30 day wilderness program right now designed to teach accountability for behaviors. The last time he assaulted my husband, he was out of home for psych hospitalization. When he destroys property, he is the one to both pay for materials to fix it and is the one to fix the damage, or pay for replacement items. His actions are not without consequence, by any stretch of the imagination. He has spent 3 years in RTFs. See how well that's worked out? It didn't. Putting him back into an RTF won't work now any better than it did for the 3 years he was in RTFs. He was violent there too. He has learned that family is conditional. That sooner or later, family sends you away. We are trying to teach him that family is not conditional. We are walking the tight rope between personal safety and what a family should be. We are not afraid of out of home placement... but thus far, none of those options have worked for him... so we are trying to find different options that might work.

Please don't forget that the period during which most kids develop a conscience and the ability to comprehend cause and effect (in a good way) is the same period during which a kid with RAD was learning how to look out for #1 -- during the first 2-3 yrs of life. You have a nearly-full grown young man with arguably no conscience. He has well established patterns of behavior that will get him through most situations most of the time (which is why he isn't already locked up somewhere). I'm sure his view of the accountability program are quite different from your own -- it's just another chance to run his games on new people. I hate to be the one sounding pessimistic but rehab-ing a 16 yr old with RAD is going to require more than a family who refuses to give up on him. He has already given up on himself and the more you try to show him how much you love him and want to make things better for him the more he's going to resist. And the stronger his resistance is likely to become. He has to prove to you that everyone else was correct, you're wrong, he is NOT worth loving. He never developed the internal mechanism to control his anger or to even understand that it's not okay to hurt others, leading to escalating violence to get you away. The justice system can't help him. He isn't going to learn to control his actions through incarceration or tough love-type programs. He'll only learn better ways to avoid getting caught, and how to play the system to get better treatment if he does get caught. In his mind he's the one in control even if he's jail. Those who have success treating kids with RAD seem to have a balance of Mother Theresa's heart and a Marine drill sergeant's iron will. And a back up team to take over when they need a break. Last month my daughter and I saw a therapist a couple of times who had practically written off her chances of recovery based on the RAD diagnosis alone. She's only 7 and a far cry less impacted by her pre-forever home life than your son. This therapist works with a lot of RAD kids in his practice. In general he probably knows what he's talking about. Do as much reading as you can on what it takes to get a positive outcome for your son before he comes home. Make sure you're fully equipped to handle all the crap he's going to throw at you and that you have the necessary respite team assembled to step in when you need to take a step back. If you can't provide the structure he needs and the safety you need, then the most loving thing to do is arrange for him to go somewhere that he can get that help. Either way, it takes a strong person to do what's right for a troubled child. It also takes a tremendous amount of love to care enough to make such hard choices. I applaud you for having the heart to want to help this little boy in a young man's body. You're AWESOME! :grouphug:

There really is only so much you can do to help your son, having gotten him at the actual beginning of his adulthood. I took in a relative kid I loved very much and thought I could help, on his 17th birthday and in the 9th grade. Turned out to be a very dangerous thing for my family. It was just too late, there had been too much damage done. Years later now, I seriously doubt he can comprehend our love and the destruction to our family he caused. It means nothing to him. Hard, cold truth is, love and good intentions do not heal full blown RAD. And a 17 year old really cannot be forced to do much of anything he doesn't want to. If you're not enabling him, and requiring him to obey basic rules, he'll find someone to live with soon who doesn't have those rules, and he'll be gone. Hopefully no one is seriously injured or killed before that happens. You didn't cause the damage and rage inside him, you're doing everything you can think of to help him. Many of us have dealt with letting go of rebellious 17-18 or 19 year olds we'd raised many years or their whole lives who just refused to act decently in our homes. It hurts, and it's hard. Getting a kid a year or two before he is legally a man and helping him heal from severe wounds is just not going to happen, if HE does not want it to.

Hi all... I'm sorry for not responding sooner. My life took a turn for the much more stressful. The Director of Foster Care/Adoption from our agency sent an email to my husband and I stating the following (keep in mind, I've had one conversation with him on the phone, and that is the extent of our first hand experience with him... this email came completely out of nowhere) 1. T's violence is our fault 2. If T can be 'good' for 30 days at the wilderness program (and he was), it must be our fault that he escalates. 3. He is concerned about T's well-being 4. We should consider removing him from our home as we are clearly the problem. This was followed up by a phone call between him and my husband that showed there were a LOT of gaps in his knowledge about our family, and he stated the following... 1. We need to overturn the house rules that have been in effect for 2 years and that T both agreed to and helped contribute to writing, to give T a 'clean slate' 2. That we must avoid all types of conflict or things that will make T mad, as that is our responsibility as parents, so that he does not escalate. 3. He's going to have a meeting about our family dynamics with 3 other people that have never directly worked with our family to tell us what to do from that point. 4. When told that we wanted to be there to help fill the gaps in the information they had, he informed us that we must be hiding something. So, that's the battle we're dealing with right now. Everyone else with our agency has been supportive, helpful, cooperative, etc... I have nothing but good things to say about the remainder of the agency, so this was a huge surprise. Regarding your comments... yes bipolar was ruled out several years ago. We do have a second opinion with a psychiatrist scheduled Dec 14. Yes, our home is very consistent, structured, etc. Definitely iron will combined with a great sense of humor on all of our parts (including Ts), and a lot of patience. I agree with all of you that say that unless he wants to learn to be part of a family, he won't change. I have to admit, that's what drew us to him to begin with. He truly does want to learn to be a part of a family. He has shown progress in some areas. He actually apologized to me yesterday, unprompted and in an appropriate situation... that was a first. His face lit up like a kid at Christmas when we pulled in to pick him up on Thursday... that's something he just can't fake, and is a look we've only seen a handful of times (ie, his first skydive, and that post-jump euphoria). First visit with the RAD therapist is today. We'll see where things go.

OMG!!! Seriously, tape your son's behaviors so the Director can see them. How dare he?!?!

Oh lovely. My bet would be a sympathetic therapist at the wilderness program feels he/she bonded with your son and reported him as "fine with a parent problem". Gotta love the system and if you are the problem, can they please explain to you the reason you son had to move so many times in his past? Geez. I also love the "clean slate" plan(had some people try to sell me that garbage as well). Hello, he's almost an adult and the real world doesn't work that way. No rules? Really? Don't provoke him and he'll be fine? I'd be sending the boy to live with that idiot for awhile. Hope you get this straightened out. How very frustrating.

Inexpensive surveillance/security camera package set up around your house and connected to a hard drive and the Internet. You've got nothing to hide, make it easy for anyone who thinks they know better to be a fly on the wall and watch the household dynamics for themselves. It could prove to be a small investment in your peace of mind just knowing that if anything turns bad you'll have the truth saved to a hard drive.