Advice needed on safety considerations

December 30, 2001

Hi, I'm hoping I can get some ideas here. My husband and I adopted our son 2 years ago, after he was placed with us on an emergency basis 6 months earlier. He was 11 at the time, and is 13 now. When he was placed, we were told that his needs were purely physical (he was, when placed, severely physically handicapped), and that although he was, of course, hurting, his attachments were secure. His therapist concurred, as did the psychiatrist who did his psych eval. As time went on, it became clear that his physical "needs" were largely learned, and that while he is disabled, in two years he has learned to toilet, bathe, walk with a walker, do his own homework, and make his own breakfasts and lunches. Unfortunately, with physical progress has come severe behavioral regression. Over the last year the lying has become constant and meaningless, he's stolen, self-sabotaged in every way imaginable, and the most horrific and unexpected discovery came last month when my 3 year old birth daughter disclosed that she'd seen him engaging in advanced sexual behavior with our 8 year old foster daughter. As it turns out, he'd been molesting her over the course of 2-4 months. He was removed, of course, but we have the distinct impression that the county wants to reunify, and will regard successful completion of a sexual offender program as a sufficient mark of change. I think he'll manipulate his way through it, and then come back to hurt our daughters more. We're having an attachment assessment done this week (though he's pretty obviously RAD), but we won't be able to afford intensive therapy (especially since we're paying for our daughters' therapy now, too!). Are there any resources? Wisdom? Ideas? I'll take just about anything right now...

Archive

December 31, 2001

Originally Posted By Jerry

I don't have much knowledge about sexual offecder programs, so I won't try and answer about that. I do have a lot of experience working with physically disabled children and adults. IMHO some physically disabled children and adults don't want to manage their own personal care because someone else will do it for them. Somewhere in their development they've been taught it's much more pleasing to be dependent on on their caregivers than it is to learn independant skills. It's painful to learn to walk with cp, it hurts when you walk into a wall because you didn't swing your cane that way and so forth. It's right back to how their behaviors were reinforced. Praise and positive reinforcement for dependant when it should be praise and positive reinforcement for independent behavior. I think I read a Love and Logic article about parents watching their children learn to skate. When the first child fell down the parent was overly concerned and of course the child went ballistic to do their part. When the second child fell down the parent yelled "bonk" and didn't make a big deal out of their fall. The second child got up and continued on without making a fuss over the fall.

We have a situation now where the youngest of our sibling group has charmed his way throuh his 5 years with great success. We've been parenting too long, and being cute to get your way doesn't work here. As my wife says. "we've shattered his world, so we have to teach him how to behave as though he were a toddler." When he expresses his feelings in an honest and direct manner he is given lots of attention and praise. When he manipulates or tries to charm, it's the ole monotone, "I'm sorry but that's unacceptable behavior...........and your consequence for that behavior is.........." So, what happens when a dependent physically handicapped child is put into and enviroment where they're no longer allowed to be dependent. They're going to fight the change in any way they can, until they accept the new reward system. I've known a few older kids who refused to even make an attempt at learning independent skills when they were physically capable. They're now adults living in insitutional settings when they could have lived on their own. I've known other people with cp that have had very succesful lives by any measuring standard.

I wish I could give you more advice on the sexual abuse issues. Although we've dealt with those issues as foster parents, I think you're past where anything we've done has been effective. I can only say that I feel it's important to address these issues with the child (or children involved) openly and without projecting any shame onto the children.