klmno
Active Member
I have re-posted what happened last Sunday (8 days ago) in italics below this for reference. This is somewhat of a follow-up, I guess.
Yesterday, I went to visit difficult child early because I'd gone to the area on Sat. and spent the night there. Immediately, I find out he's still in isolation so I am led to the area for "locked" wards' visitation and difficult child comes in, in handcuffs, again. His counselor hadn't returned my call telling me what punishment difficult child had gotten for the original incident described in italics below. So I asked difficult child how much time in ilsolation he got for it. He told me 30 days. That blows his credit for a year-long history class and his driver's ed (written part only). Basicly, it blows his advanced diploma. He told me that maybe he is bipolar, he's not sure, but he thinks he needs back on medications. He said he gets angry a lot and wants to get it out of his system before he gets out this time. I made suggestions on constructive ways to deal with anger, instead of holding all kinds of emotional stuff in until becoming a time bomb and exploding on someone. He gave me tons of reasons why those things don't work for him. (HUM) He said he was hurt and angry over not being able to come straight back to live with me or ever be able to see his old friends again (like they are still going to be his friends). We talked about Boys Town some more and the dogs and we hugged. He said he felt he'd become institutionalized and made it clear he meant internally, he had adapted to an instutionalized way of life and that he felt he could just live that way and know how to function that way the rest of his life, but he didn't want to and knew he needed to get past it because he really didn't want to spend his adult life incarcerated. He had to get all this out of him this time incarcerated and get past it. (That was what he was telling me.) We hugged, cried, said I love you's and he agreed to talk to this new therapist they are getting him (supposedly) and the behavior counselor (not a real therapist) on the isolation unit. Then, since visitation time is shorter for those in isolation, the guard told us to say our good-byes and another lady popped up asking to speak with me and I said "sure, our visitation is about over, I can stay so we can talk", and I watched as difficult child was led down a hall wayy.
The lady sits down across from me and asked if difficult child told me what he was in isolation for. I told her he had told me about a fight last weekend and that higher-ups needed to review tapes, etc, to determine punishment and that his punishment had been 30 days in isolation. She said she had no idea about a fight the previous week but that's not why he's in isolation now. Then, why? difficult child had been sent back to his regular unit last week (meaning he did NOT get isolation or strict punishment for the fight and incident the previous week.) Sat. (day before yesterday) staff searched difficult child's stuff in his room (cell) and found he had a lighter (major institutional charge) and when staff confronted it about it and told him he had to go back to isolation to await another hearing for this, difficult child fought them and kicked the male staff in the stomach. Where did he get the lighter? No one knows. Why did he have a lighter? No one knows. This staff who got kicked decided not to bring a street charge but it is an additional major institutional charge for assualt on staff. And, they also found "a letter containing gang information" in difficult child's stuff. Is he in a gang? Is he holding this for someone? Is he teetering on joining a gang? Is this gang info he stole that instigated the fight the previous week? no one knows.
difficult child is facing major punishment on top of the automatic 30 days in isolation one gets for committing a major charge to begin with. They could extend his time incarcerated and/or transfer him to a worse facility. They are concerned about the gang info (as am I) and he will be having some confrontations and conversations with staff there who specialize in dealing with the wards involved in gangs.
Oh, koi, I can handle all this, except I'm having a rough time with the gang portion I can see how it could happen when you lock kids up with gang members. But my heart was absolutely broken again to know that everything difficult child had sat there and told me while visiting had been a lie. The lady said he just didn't want to tell me he had additional charges, he just wanted me to think this was the punishment for the previous incident. Yeah, sure, but the "needing to see a psychiatrist because he thinks maybe he needs medications afterall" is BS- he just wants medications to trade or take in an abusive way. Boys Town? Sure- like I'd trust him to mean that, too, and I think he'd actually get on a plane, fly out there with me and stay, without incident, and use that as an opportunity to turn his life around? Nope, this kids is still just soaking me for anything he can get from me. I'm not even angry about it because I can't be surprised enough to be mad. I just feel like it's another jab in my heart and I have to start wondering if he will ever out-grow any of the teen rebellion, taking parents for granted, etc, and really love anyone at all.
I know I made mistakes while raising him but I swear, to this day, I don't know where I went so wrong as to instill this in him. He was able to feel compassion, show love, be sensitive to others, etc, as a young child until he turned 11yo. How can this happen? He's been asked a million times by a million different people if he was abused by anyone, in any way, and he has ALWAYS said no and I can't figure out when it could possibly have happened anyway. The ONLY thing we can link it to is difficult child figuring out that his father had never been in his life because his father chose that and difficult child flipped (he really did and made that obvious) and he has just hated the world since then. But I can't beleive something like that could turn him into a sociopath at his age and that NO therapist can help difficult child add things up any better mentally? Where am I going wrong here?
Thanks for reading, if you made it this far. LOL!
Yesterday, I went to visit difficult child early because I'd gone to the area on Sat. and spent the night there. Immediately, I find out he's still in isolation so I am led to the area for "locked" wards' visitation and difficult child comes in, in handcuffs, again. His counselor hadn't returned my call telling me what punishment difficult child had gotten for the original incident described in italics below. So I asked difficult child how much time in ilsolation he got for it. He told me 30 days. That blows his credit for a year-long history class and his driver's ed (written part only). Basicly, it blows his advanced diploma. He told me that maybe he is bipolar, he's not sure, but he thinks he needs back on medications. He said he gets angry a lot and wants to get it out of his system before he gets out this time. I made suggestions on constructive ways to deal with anger, instead of holding all kinds of emotional stuff in until becoming a time bomb and exploding on someone. He gave me tons of reasons why those things don't work for him. (HUM) He said he was hurt and angry over not being able to come straight back to live with me or ever be able to see his old friends again (like they are still going to be his friends). We talked about Boys Town some more and the dogs and we hugged. He said he felt he'd become institutionalized and made it clear he meant internally, he had adapted to an instutionalized way of life and that he felt he could just live that way and know how to function that way the rest of his life, but he didn't want to and knew he needed to get past it because he really didn't want to spend his adult life incarcerated. He had to get all this out of him this time incarcerated and get past it. (That was what he was telling me.) We hugged, cried, said I love you's and he agreed to talk to this new therapist they are getting him (supposedly) and the behavior counselor (not a real therapist) on the isolation unit. Then, since visitation time is shorter for those in isolation, the guard told us to say our good-byes and another lady popped up asking to speak with me and I said "sure, our visitation is about over, I can stay so we can talk", and I watched as difficult child was led down a hall wayy.
The lady sits down across from me and asked if difficult child told me what he was in isolation for. I told her he had told me about a fight last weekend and that higher-ups needed to review tapes, etc, to determine punishment and that his punishment had been 30 days in isolation. She said she had no idea about a fight the previous week but that's not why he's in isolation now. Then, why? difficult child had been sent back to his regular unit last week (meaning he did NOT get isolation or strict punishment for the fight and incident the previous week.) Sat. (day before yesterday) staff searched difficult child's stuff in his room (cell) and found he had a lighter (major institutional charge) and when staff confronted it about it and told him he had to go back to isolation to await another hearing for this, difficult child fought them and kicked the male staff in the stomach. Where did he get the lighter? No one knows. Why did he have a lighter? No one knows. This staff who got kicked decided not to bring a street charge but it is an additional major institutional charge for assualt on staff. And, they also found "a letter containing gang information" in difficult child's stuff. Is he in a gang? Is he holding this for someone? Is he teetering on joining a gang? Is this gang info he stole that instigated the fight the previous week? no one knows.
difficult child is facing major punishment on top of the automatic 30 days in isolation one gets for committing a major charge to begin with. They could extend his time incarcerated and/or transfer him to a worse facility. They are concerned about the gang info (as am I) and he will be having some confrontations and conversations with staff there who specialize in dealing with the wards involved in gangs.
Oh, koi, I can handle all this, except I'm having a rough time with the gang portion I can see how it could happen when you lock kids up with gang members. But my heart was absolutely broken again to know that everything difficult child had sat there and told me while visiting had been a lie. The lady said he just didn't want to tell me he had additional charges, he just wanted me to think this was the punishment for the previous incident. Yeah, sure, but the "needing to see a psychiatrist because he thinks maybe he needs medications afterall" is BS- he just wants medications to trade or take in an abusive way. Boys Town? Sure- like I'd trust him to mean that, too, and I think he'd actually get on a plane, fly out there with me and stay, without incident, and use that as an opportunity to turn his life around? Nope, this kids is still just soaking me for anything he can get from me. I'm not even angry about it because I can't be surprised enough to be mad. I just feel like it's another jab in my heart and I have to start wondering if he will ever out-grow any of the teen rebellion, taking parents for granted, etc, and really love anyone at all.
I know I made mistakes while raising him but I swear, to this day, I don't know where I went so wrong as to instill this in him. He was able to feel compassion, show love, be sensitive to others, etc, as a young child until he turned 11yo. How can this happen? He's been asked a million times by a million different people if he was abused by anyone, in any way, and he has ALWAYS said no and I can't figure out when it could possibly have happened anyway. The ONLY thing we can link it to is difficult child figuring out that his father had never been in his life because his father chose that and difficult child flipped (he really did and made that obvious) and he has just hated the world since then. But I can't beleive something like that could turn him into a sociopath at his age and that NO therapist can help difficult child add things up any better mentally? Where am I going wrong here?
Thanks for reading, if you made it this far. LOL!
After waiting 15-20 mins to see him this morning, I hear he is in administrative hold so he has to visit me in handcuffs. As I hear it from difficult child and staff (at least so far), there were a couple of mini-fights going on in difficult child's unit on Friday. difficult child said his room-mate is in a gang and although they'd normally gotten along ok (difficult child is not in a gang), the gang of the room mate thought difficult child stole some gang info from the room mate and told the room mate to address it with difficult child. So during all this on Fri, while difficult child was sitting at a rec table with another boy, the room mate came over and starting hitting difficult child. difficult child stood up, "blacked out" and starting hitting back. difficult child says they are both about the same size but he had to give him all he had in order to hold his own. A staff member (female) came over and jumped between them to split it up and happened to be unfortunate enough to catch difficult child's next swing that was already in motion......and she was rushed to the emergency room with a broken nose.
From what I hear, the woman told the other staff that she didn't think the punch was meant for her or that difficult child meant to assualt her. They rolled the security films back and after watching them, wrote him up with 2 institutional charges (meaning they'll deal with it in-house and decide his punishment themselves) instead of a "street-charge" (meaning another arrest and court appearance and additional sentence).