Aaaand We Have Our First "Allegation"...

Just venting.

Monday is a terrible, no-good day for us in the mornings, because Kiddo has anxiety about going back to school. This Monday, he spent 30 minutes raging, pulling my hair and kicking me until it ended with me restraining him in my office before school started...that was fun. He finally calmed down and was compliant enough to walk to class with me, but immediately started running around the room. His teacher is much too nice and Kiddo walks all over him, so I called Kiddo to the door and grabbed the back of his coat/backpack and pulled him outside the room. He tripped/stumbled over his feet and it looked rougher than it was...I probably was rougher than I wanted to be because my adrenaline was going still from the rage, but it was absolutely in no way abusive.

We had a meeting on Tuesday, and the teacher didn't get his way regarding Kiddo's behavior plan. I get a note today in his communication notebook that I am not to touch him like that at school and he "flinched and was scared all day." Ummm, thank goodness it was documented when he entered school that he flinches and has extreme reactions to not-so-extreme events (right now he is shrieking like someone is murdering him because he saw a bug). Teacher and aide already think I'm Mommy Dearest because Kiddo is just a poor little autistic kid who can't handle his behavior.

Obviously, Kiddo is not being abused. But he was prior to adoption and has difficulty with understanding time passage and answering questions, so they can't even ask him. I'm a little worried, because I work in this building and it could be really bad. But, they should have the "incident" on camera and while it was not my best parenting moment, it wasn't abusive.

I just needed to rant...I am looking for another job, this situation just isn't working. But, for the remainder of this year, this sucks.
 

buddy

New Member
so very sorry, that does sink big time. it is actually written about over and over that others don't understand the appearance of anger in parents in situations like this. it's not that the angry parents are causing the child struggles.... but you start to become that way at times....we fight so much...the child, the teachers, etc.... these kids can be very different in front of others. the teachers just don't get it. Also, when kids have autism and adoption issues is so much more complicated.

my son flinched day one in the social workers car. so glad we discussed it at that time. only stopped around age 12. He acted like someone was going to hit him if anything moved quickly.


my sister's friend with five adopted kids had one go off and she grabbed his coat. he pulled and a mark got on him from the zipper. it cost them the finalization of a bio sibling/infant. be very careful.
 
That's so scary about your friend's not being able to finalize their adoption. We're going to the principal tomorrow to hopefully get everything cleared up, and I've learned that I need to document every.single.mark this child gets (there was no mark on his body, there has never ever been a mark on his body from me...they just didn't like my attitude?). It might be hard considering he throws himself into things, people, etc., on a regular basis. Hopefully I find a new job quickly :\ Then, maybe, the stress of the "politics" being gone will help them not feel so threatened every time we have a request.
 

Methuselah

New Member
Hi. Sorry you are going through this. I know exactly how you feel. Our family has been put through h*** by our difficult child 1 and the school she attends. We have been falsely accused of heinous things. Because I documented everything and logged every convo I had with our abuser, we were cleared. Our documenting has convinced CPS we are the victims. The last time our abuser falsely accused us CPS didn't tell us nor investigate the allegation. I found out about it because I was checking on the status of another false allegation.

Even though we/ I have been cleared EVERY TIME of the abuse charges, the high school believes us to be guilty. They have crossed boundaries and possibly broken our state's education codes to protect difficult child 1. (Not surprising as difficult child 1 is a charming psychopath.)

Stay strong, document everything and understand you are not alone. There aren't a whole lot of us out here, but we are here. We have faced the charges, the stares; our characters has been questioned and intentionally maligned; we are exhausted and disappointed. But we fight through it.
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
Be careful in public because people have strange misconceptions about adopted children and parents. Many have negative ideas and most have no idea how damaged some of them are before we get them and how they can't be parented like other children because of their special needs. I've also had others console me as in, "I'm so sorry. Can't you have your own?" As if it is a "lesser than" way of having a child and that I can certainly not love the child as much, which is not at all true in my case, but they don't know me....and they don't know your heart either. Foster parents, which is what we really are until finalization, have a higher rate of social services knocking on their door due to false allegations than biological parents. Listen to the school and if they involve social services tell them you learned your lesson. We've had social services called on us for moronic reasons (our kids were obviously not biological because of racial differences). Most of the time when when the social workers saw that, they said, "Oh. Ok. That's why they called. Well, be careful."
 

susiestar

Roll With It
(((((hugs)))))

It stinks to have to work with people who think you are in ANY way abusing your child. You are right to document absolutely everything. This isn't just to protect your family, it is to protect your life in every single aspect. Very very few people ever really 'get it' about our kids and the way the family lives when a difficult child is in the mix.

in my opinion it would NOT be a bad idea to put cameras in your home so that you can prove that difficult child isn't abused. It is also very important to get yourself some kind of help for anger. NOT because i think in any way you are abusive, but because if this ever goes to CPS/court, you have PROOF that you are doing everything possible to make sure that anger is not yanking you over the line. Having this PROOF that you are working to be a better parent and to make sure that anger and stress are not tearing you and your family apart can go a very long way to making false allegations go away.

Some people have no common sense, and many times if you combine that with a difficult child you end up with what can LOOK like abuse. I once had a teacher in her fifties INSIST that my 7yo son was made to stand outside in his underwear all night long in Feb in Ohio. With nothing but his underwear, and not the long john kind either. Luckily basic logic showed this was truly idiotic and impossible.

One thing that MANY if not most people do not understand is tactile defensiveness. My boys both do NOT like to be touched if they don't expect it. They have sensory integration disorder and often a touch that is gently is interpreted as a slap or punch would be. It is actually fairly common in kids with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) or other special needs. Many people think that it is PROOF that someone in the child's life is abusing them. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Reality is that it s not at all uncommon even in kids who have not ever been hit, spanked, etc... Their brains don't register the sensory input the way a neurotypical brain would.With a lot of sensory work it can be helped, brought to a point where the person can be around people most of the time with-o flinching away if touched or if someone makes a sudden move.

I urge you to at least go to the area Domestic Violence center and ask them for help so that your anger doesn't bring you to the point where you do act out. NOT because I think you have, or even that I think you need to get that help. If nothing else, it is a way to protect yourself and prove that you are being PROACTIVE to make sure you don't ever cross that line. You shouldn't NEED to do this, but with working where your child goes to school there may be a need to show that you are doing all you can. There are some teachers who see problems if they don't like a parent or a student is hard to teach so there must be a problem at home, Going to the DV center shows you are taking this very seriously AND help is free there, and often they provide babystting for free also.

It would also be an excellent thing to have your son evaluated by a private occupational therapist (Occupational Therapist (OT)) for sensory issues and esp tactile defensiveness. I say private because school Occupational Therapist (OT)'s generally only look for how this impacts problems at home. I realize that MANY go beyond this, but there are still those who only look for how sensory issues impact academics. Many of us here feel private evaluations are more accurate and in depth and complete, regardless of what kind of evaluation it is. Many insurance co's will pay part or all of Occupational Therapist (OT), depending on the diagnosis the child has.

Sadly the reality today is that often we must go out of our way to prove that we are getting the skills needed to be sure our kids are not abused with things like classes on DV, etc... It is very true that a bit of proactive choices can keep us from major complications caused by people who just don't have a clue.

It is sad that Monday is such a tough day for your family. Is there ANY way to try to make it a good morrning? Maybe if he is cooperative and gets ready with-o problems then you could give hm a breakfast he really likes, or some treat after school? I am just throwing out ideas here. For a while we would let my oldest have a happy meal after school if he didn't have a meltdown before school on one day that was consistently hard for him. Or I would make a big batch of his favorite muffins and freeze some so that if he had a good morning then we would thaw the muffn for part of his breakfast. While food isn't always the best choice of rewards, it was one of very few things that worked to motivate him, so we went with it. We also had a checklist for all the steps of each chore (did you know that you can break down 'brush your teeth' into a lot of steps? It boggled my mind when I sat down to write out the steps because it seems lke such a simple thing to do, lol.) Having chores broken down that way, esp ones done before school (I am considering basic hygeine and getting dressed to be chores for the sake of this paragraph.) and the night before school to be ready for school, made a BIG difference. An even bigger difference came from tying rewards to those things. By that point I was desperate for a way to make mornings peaceful for all of us.

I am sorry that work is so stressful because these issues. That stinks.
 
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