For those of you who have had a child come home from RTC

February 18, 2013

Our AS is 15. He is diagnosed with RAD and bi-polar. He has many issues and has really put us through a lot. His issues have included stealing(everything from pens and pencils to cell phones and mp3 players), his favorite item to steal was ladies underwear(esp mine), lying about everything to the point he would walk down steps holding brothers cell phone telling you he does not have it and has not seen it,destroying things whether they were his or not,running away, threatening to kill himself or one of us(he attempted to kill himself twice,once with a cord around his neck and once with a garbage bag over his head),total disobedience to me, manipulative, and trying to hurt me.

He hasn't lived here since July 2011. He was hospitalized Aug 2011 for the sixth time that year after threatening to burn down our house and have us all killed. He went from there to a RTC in Sept 2011. He remained there until Aug 2012. At first we felt the RTC staff felt we were the problem but as the time went on they realized it wasn't us. When he was discharged from there the insurance had him placed in a therapeutic foster home as a step down because he wasn't ready to come home.

The TFH has not been a good placement as far as we are concerned.He did have problems with taking off from there. He was even hospitalized a month after being there because of his behaviors. Our problem has with the placement is that there is no communication with the fp and agency and us. The fp seem to let him do whatever they want to without us even knowing. The agency treats us as if we are the problem and don't tell us things either.

Our son isn't allowed unsupervised access to internet because another one of his issues was an obsession with pornography. He also isn't allowed hand held electronics(game systems because he breaks them all, phones because he has made inappropriate texts when he got hold of his brothers, cameras because he takes inappropriate pictures, and mp3 because we have a deal we made three years ago when he goes two months without running away we would give him an mp3 player. Everyone involved knows this because he is actually telling them he is working on getting an mp3 player. He hasn't run away since Jan 1. So last week a friend in school gave him an ipod. The foster parents checked with the kid and his parents and found out it was legitimate and left him keep it(they claimed they didn't know he wasn't allowed it, why would he continue working for an mp3 player if he had an ipod). No one bothered to check with us. My husband was on the phone with our son the one night and he heard him talk with one of the other kids in the house and say that is my charger and i have the cracked one. When my husband questioned him he said I didn't say that the other kid was charging his ipod. So the next night we start getting messages from family asking if our son was now allowed on facebook because he just friend requested them. He is not allowed on facebook and we just had that conversation with him a few days earlier.Until he can be trusted more he isn't allowed facebook. My husband called the foster father and he said that our son had gotten it from a friend in school and he checked it out,he didn't know he wasn't allowed it. He did take it from him and gave it to us on our visit. Apparently the fm had let him go on internet to download music and he went on facebook then. How does that happen when you are only allowed on internet supervised?

Now insurance and most others believe he is ready to come home so he will be home by April 1. For those of you who have BTDT how do you deal with a child coming home after that long? How do you keep it from getting as chaotic as before? How do you know if it is getting too much and he needs more help? He is so manipulative that he has everyone believing that he is doing so wonderful and because he talks to therapist and workers he is just being so honest. No one has truly seen all of his behaviors but us and it is scary. How do you stop feeling afraid all the time that something is going to set him off.Just looking for some advice from those of you who have BTDT. We want our son home which is why we have never given up but have come to like the sense of calm that is in the house most of the time he isn't home. His brothers have also enjoyed living with less chaos.

lucyjoy

February 18, 2013

I don't think you can just stop being afraid. You lived in a violent, chaotic environment when he was home before and that does leave on always checking for the next shoe to fall.

This makes it difficult to parent. At 15, if a child wants on facebook, he can get on it unless you are following him around 24/7. They use their friend's phones and computers.

I would sit down with him and go over the rules before he comes home. I might share them with the therapist first then include them in the meeting. You also need a safety plan in place.

At 15, he needs to be making more decisions and unfortunately, with his issues, it's harder to let him do that. But in a few years, he'll be out on his own.

Neither of my kids transitioned home well-though there was no step down in between. They both were still violent. (they never made it off level 2 in the RTC's either but they had such nice manners...and they said they'd do better.)

It's hard and I hope it goes well. I carried my phone in my pocket at all times in case I needed police.

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THREEBOYSPLUSONE

February 19, 2013

lucyjoy-- The fact that he is 15 makes it very hard. When he last lived here he was a 13 yr old in middle school and he is coming back a 15 yr old who is almost finished his freshman year of high school.

As far as facebook we will let him on but supervised at first after he is back home and doing ok. The problem we have had is that everytime he has gotten on it it has been with adults whose responsibility it has been not to let him have unsupervised time on internet. At the rtc one of the staff let him play a game on his phone and walked away so he had ability to do whatever he wanted on internet. At the current tfh they let him go on to download music on ipod he wasn't to have in first place and even though his treatment plan said he was to be supervised on internet they walked away and let him alone. Because they have not seen all the behaviors we have they don't think he has them.

As far as sharing things with therapist to go over together that is a joke. The agency the therapeutic foster home is with is useless for us. We have no one who we can go to. At least at the rtc the therapist and others would talk to us and see how things were going. Now there is no one. Half the time our phone calls aren't returned. They all believe him that he is changed and is going to do better. We can't wait to get him out of there because we have been treated like we are the problem. The foster family tells us nothing. We were never even informed of parent teacher conferences at school until about a month later. We had to get the school to send us a copy of his report card also about a month later because no one ever showed it to us.

I do have my phone on me at all times esp when he is home because otherwise he takes it and you don't know what he will do with it. He has downloaded porn,tried to text someone saying he was 21 how can they meet,taken disgusting pictures with it, or tried to contact his 18yr old brother to try to live with him.

wordsmither--every service we have received in the past 4 years has been through insurance. Luckily he has medical assistance which has paid for most of it because our insurance has not paid for much. As far as post adoption services we have none. With our son we adopted last year it is included in his subsidy agreement but with the 15 yr old and his two brothers that we adopted in 2002 there is none. We tried to get his subsidy raised because we were really struggling with the traveling an hour or two every time he was hospitalized and the rtc was an hour away,with the money my husband lost from missing work several times(luckily he was able to get FMLA so he didn't lose his job) and because of the money it will take to replace every thing he broke and were denied because it isn't medical expenses.

We are to be getting family based services when he returns home. We were in the process of getting them when he got sent to rtc. We did have wrap around services two years ago but at that time they didn't help. Esp. when his mobile therapist believed every thing he told her and never wanted to hear from us.