Cps

[barbie]

We started with another behvaior therapy aganecy and Eric has his assigned therapist and Danae has an assigned therapist. Tuesday I took Danae and Eric to P-doctor and Eric was so out of hand, I was literally restraining him, the nurse calls us back, and the dr looks at me and says oh so you are still having issues with aggressiveness? Uh yeah. I was angry, I got lost on the way home. Erics therapist comes over and Danae to who I had explained that she gets her own person, kept interrupting Eric session, and these are important so she can truly observe him and see how he is, Danae kept coming in, I asked her to go her room and watch TV, not good enough, I told her to do it, NOT good enough, I picked her up and made her do it, NOT good enough, she starts getting these papers on the top of her closet and comes to color with the therapist, but here is the sticky part, when they are wrapping up, Danae is balancing on her closet doorknob and I show the therapist this, I go to the room taker her off of the door and I escort her to the garage a very scary place for me, with exercise equipment in it, and bags of stuffed animals, Danae ofcousrse is screaming. I walk back to the therapist and she has her hands over her ears and says i can't listen to this, she sound frightened. I tell her its not a scary place unless you are overweight most times we go back to check on her and she is on the bo-flex, swinging back and forth "excercising" or playing on her rug with the stuffed animals, I know I am terrible time-out with activities.

Lo and behold two days later, CPS is at my door. To me I am not angry because this woman can open door for Eric to get the therapies he needs and push his approvals along. My CPS worker is so nice and she is helpful, I had personally been inquiring about parenting classes for parents of kids with special needs, she OFFERS it to me without me asking, I break down in tears over the phone I am so happy she came. She gets Erics medical records and says she is going to get him into the CMS program and he will get staffed and have a nurse that can come to the house and see him, they can get him the occupational therapy United has taken so long to process, a speech therapist. She even agrees with me that those therapies shouldnt stop just because the school year does. I am elated CPS is stepping in they can open those doors for me.

I called the behavior place and request that the therapist not come back to my home. Not becasue she called CPS, but becasue if she honestly thought I was doing something wrong and she was there to help the kids and help me work with the kids, I imagine she would have stopped me and showed me or suggested a better way to handle the situation. But if Danae would have fallen off the doorknob cause she is a heavy kid or broken it, fallen and broken some part of her body, I think thats alot worse than me taking her out of one room and placing her in another and if she is screaming then she is screaming becasue she knows she has done something and what kid wants a time out. Danae is in therapy for her tantrums for her anxieties, because of the behaviors the therapist expressed concern about. Im concerned too thats why Im getting them therapy, and to doctors and losing hours at work to get them what they need.

I am not angry because she called CPS, I am angry becasue of the way she went about it, If you are a therapist in my home and you know my kids have special needs, by gods if you see me discipline them and you feel there is a better way to deal with it, tell me then, say something so that I can correct my behavior and theirs is a way that works for both of us, or show me how, so I can try it your way and see if it works. Im willing to work with anything. Im grasping at straws that is why she is there. Am I wrong?

 

[JulienSam]

I'm SO glad it looks like you're finally going to get the help you need, even if it's not through the way you had planned.

Re: the therapist & your discipline -- I don't think you're wrong, but I can see how a therapist (or anyone) would be reluctant to confront you face to face in that moment. She obviously was frightened by the situation, and probably thought it would be better if someone else stepped in (CPS). It takes a lot of guts for anyone to confront any parent on how they parent -- and it doesn't sound like she was that kind of person.

But again, I'm really happy for you that the doors for help are finally opening.

 

[barbie]

Julie when you find the roadmap, lemme know, cause I need one too.

 

[klmno]

Hi! I don't normally post over here but I read this thread and felt the need I don't blame you for what you did. I'm glad you are working with cps and that they seem to be providing you with the help that is needed. Nothing irks me more than a therapist who is there claiming they can help difficult child or me only to turn around and prove otherwise. I agree- if the therapist knew the answers, he/she would have suggested something different at the time. If the therapist doesn't know the answer, then they should tell me that. I understand if he/she got concerned, but I expect the therapist to handle situations like this differently and better than other people. If they can't do that, then I don't need them- what can they teach me or difficult child?

I think I would try to make that point to the cps worker and anyone else who comes into the picture.

 

[barbie]

Thats what my point is. If firstly I am asking you into my home to observe and give my children therapy its because you can do something for them, that I can't. As a professional which if you are a behavior therapist, you should be, if you see me approach my five year old daughter who is teetering and I do mean standing on one foot on top of her closet doorknob reaching for something higher and my response is removing her from the situation/room and putting her in another room where if she does that its okay because the "exercise" equipment is back there, and honestly they use it more than we do. I think my response is appropriate and reasonable. Especially if once you seem startled I call you back so you can see what is in the room.

Danae, herself, is in therapy she had ADHD and for having tantrums, and these inappropriate reactions when things are said to her. Just today, the kids were taking a bubble bath, Danae did something, I asked her to get out of the tub, go to her room and get dressed, I walk away, she runs to her room with her towel on around her head screaming about how she is cold --dude we are in Florida what cold, anyhow, she screaming NO DONT DO IT, and I am in a completely different room from her. Wasn't even near her and she is having this hyper-response to being asked to get out of a tub and get dressed. I started using my camera to do videos to show them.

Sincerely I am not mad she called, shoot today I got my response from United Healthcare making a partial denial for Eric's Occupational Therapist (OT). They approved it two times a week for THREE weeks. We started the evaluation process in April, it July 18th. The case worker from CPS is going to open the doors that bylaws of UHC closed to me, Im glad she came, I have been looking for parenting classes for parents of kids with special needs but most groups don't allow for daycare which complicates things cause no one will watch him. She said with CMS he would have a TEAM, a complete team of people to help him, even typing this my eyes well up, cause Ive been asking for help for him for so long, and I got rules and restrictions, and we'll do this but not that. If she can help me find a good support network for me to vent and a great team of therapists and doctors to meet Eric's need and remove that weight off my shoulders shoot I would've called myself, I would've I've been on the phone whenever I've had a minute.

I just dont like that is she is there to help me work on ways to help them, then why not say something then. With the kids you correct the behavior as soon as it occurs, why should my mistake or behavior be any different.

 

[SRL]

I'm sorry you had to go through this. It's amazing what a sincere CPS worker can make happen that you couldn't going through regular channels.

 

[susiestar]

I am glad you have a good CPS worker, I hope she can get all of these things set into motion for you.

As for the in-home behav therapist, it doesn't seem she is worth the time/$$ she cost. Why on Earth would she not say something if she felt you were dealing with the kids' behav inappropriately?? If it were us, I would make a VERY short and polite note to the therapist's boss or the head of whatever company she works with. Just: therp X was at my home on date Y. She felt my child behavior was being handled inappropriately. Rather than ATTEMPT to teach me a better way to handle a 5yo standing on a doorknob than to move her into time out, she reported us to CPS. I have terminated her services because it would have been more approp to at least suggest a different course of action rather than make a CPS notification. Sincerely, Me.

But that is me.

Hugs,

 

[Marguerite]

There are two ways to look at this.

First, dump the therapist because yes, she COULD have maybe said something or suggested something instead of just going away and calling CPS. I do get that it's not the call to CPS that is the problem per se, it is the therapist's failure to handle the situation any other way - even if the therapist had said to Danae earlier on, "I'm not here for you, honey, I'm here for your brother." A therapist being firmer in that situation could have perhaps headed the problem off. From Danae's point of view, here is this nice lady come to play. She is playing with her brother and being very nice and polite (unlike mean old mummy, who keeps trying to shoo me away and spoil my fun; the nice lady hasn't said no I can't play). So yes, I do think that a therapist who can't really help prevent that situation (which took time to build and which was clearly going to continue with the mixed messages Danae was getting, from the two adults present) should be sent somewhere else to learn some proactive skills.

Or the other way of looking at this - the steep learning curve. That therapist must have SOMETHING going for her or she wouldn't have that job. Even if she's a new graduate with no experience, she DOES have qualifications and training in areas that your children need. And she's had ONE session with your family now, she knows what Danae is like in terms of attention-seeking behaviour too. And allowing her to come back, even knowing she called CPS, tells the therapist a number of very useful things:

1) it tells her than you don't hold a grudge, that you accept the help from CPS and don't see them as a threat in any way (which means your conscience is rightly clear);

2) It tells her that you accept the help of anyone whose primary concern is the welfare of the children and who will be fearless about ensuring the children are safe;

3) It tells her that since the kids are still there, that HER concerns were obviously groundless because CPS have investigated and dismissed it all.

In short, she has been re-educated.

So in summary - if you give her the boot, you don't know that she would have worked out or not, once she got to know you all better and know your family dynamics and to also know that kids and families have days like this. But then again - if she's so sensitive to a 5 year old screaming in frustration (as well as unable to see what's coming and help avoid it) do you want her?

Or if you keep her - maybe she learnt a great deal in this interaction, from what can happen if you let a five year old continually interrupt when it's not her therapy session (and allow that five year old to misinterpret the therapist's politeness for "it's OK to interrupt, even if your mummy says it's not"). And a therapist who has already learned some of the ropes with your family is maybe worth keeping.

I'm not able to tell you which is the right path. Perhaps both are potentially right. By keeping her, you still might find yourself giving her the boot later on. You would always have that prerogative.

I do this with doctors, but again it has to be a judgement call. If I see a doctor who is sceptical, or negative, I do tend to give him a chance. I at least try to give him some degree of feedback. "Do you remember when I saw you and you told me that I didn't need antibiotics for that chest infection? And I told you that in the past whenever I get an infection like that, it almost always turns into pneumonia if I don't hit it fast with antibiotics? Well, it turned into pneumonia, I was in hospital on oxygen - and an antibiotic drip - three days later. I just thought you should know."

A doctor who accepts this sort of feedback (corroborated with paperwork form the hospital or equivalent documentation) is someone I will go back and see, even if they got it wrong to begin with. At least the next time I got a chest infection, that doctor would be more likely to listen to me.

But if that doctor is still dismissive or makes excuses, I am out of there and finding someone else.

If you constantly chop and change personnel without giving them a chance to find out what they did wrong and maybe fix it, then you can find yourself running out of personnel. Again, a medical analogy - a woman I knew would change doctors at the first, often slight, disagreement. She ran into real problems when she began to run out of good doctors and was finally seeing one of the few doctors in her area that she hadn't yet sent packing - a quack, by this stage. The woman became very ill as a result of a medical bungle. It wouldn't have happened if she hadn't walked away from every good doctor in the town, purely because they told her things she didn't want to hear.

I'm not saying that's what you're doing here, only that in making a decision like this, you need to consider the pros and cons carefully.

Barbiealonso, you were there. You have the "vibe" of this person, you know the other factors that have influenced your decision. Of the two options I have outlined, I believe both are right, depending on how YOU feel about it all.

Marg