Fears coming to fruitation...

HopeRemains

New Member
Hi ladies. Yesterday was a bad day. difficult child stayed home from school because he was "sick". This rarely happens, because he is rarely sick. But we have all been sick, so I figured that maybe he was this time. I don't think that anymore. Anyhow, difficult child was great until I said that it was nap time for everyone, since everyone (including me) was sick. He didn't like that, he started having a bad additude. Well, yesterday, I didn't just let it go or work on my nice skills... I was sick and cranky and not calm and collected. (By this time in the day he hadn't shown he was sick and I realized that he'd played me earlier so I would baby him all day, which I did, up until this point.)

Then comes the refusing to go to his room, the bullying, whining, screaming and melt down. I was NOT in any condition to deal with this all day long, which usually happens when husband isn't home. I called husband and told him he would need to come and get difficult child and take him to school. difficult child freaked at that. The melt down wasn't what has me bothered, though. It was when I noticed red marks on his chest and asked him how they got there. (I knew that he had done it in his melt down somehow, and that they would fade, nothing serious, but I wanted him to realize they were there. The other day during a rage he came out of his bedroom and his lip was bleeding, he had no idea how, but he is hurting himself when he's in these rages and I want him aware of it. Anyhow, he didn't know where the red marks had come from, he said. I told him he'd done it somehow while he was raging. So, about 20 minutes later, he is sitting on the couch, bullying in effect. He says, in a very nasty voice, that "I'm going to tell my Mom that you gave me those red marks.". !!!! He knew he was making it up. When I was telling husband this on the phone, the red marks had already faded, but difficult child stands up and starts scratching at his chest and arms as hard as he could (bites his nails, so no marks except the red marks he left on his skin).

Then, later, after the therapist left (it was his appointment day and we had him come to the house instead of school so that we could discuss the events of the day) difficult child started up again right away. husband ended up spanking his butt. Afterwards, difficult child told husband that "I'm going to tell my Mom you slapped me!".

Short backstory: His bioMom had not much to do with him till he was about 6.5 yrs old, shes an ex? drug addict, tries to make our lives hell, now he thinks she is awesome and he wants to live with her because she's been feeding him that for 2 years (even though my thought is that she wouldn't take custody if offered). Two years ago she had him lie to the sheriff and say that I had slapped him in the face. Unfounded, thank god, but it put the fear of God into me that she could manipulate him into lying about things like that. Now I don't even TOUCH him and try to video when rages occur, but the first words out of his mouth to husband or I are "I'm telling my Mom what you did!".

difficult child has also taken to slapping himself in the face during rages in the last few months, sometimes while calling himself stupid. He looks at us defiantly while he does it, like he's punishing us. The other day he started banging his head into the wall. UGHHHHHH!

All in all, I am TERRIFIED of this new tactic he's using of lying about us hurting him! I had always feared it would come down to this, but husband never thought it would. He's still not as worried about it as I am. Plus, with him intentionally hurting himself on top of it now, I just don't know what to do! Go figure, he had a psychiatrist appointment on Monday! She did add a new medication... he will continue on the abilify but she added 5mg of buspar (anti anxiety). But I am not at these appts so I don't know that husband isn't giving her a very soft version of what is going on. He says that he told her about difficult child hitting himself, but I'm pretty sure he was lying bigtime to save face in front of the therapist.
 
B

Bunny

Guest
Being sick and having to deal with a difficult child meltdown is no fun! I hope that you're feeling better today.

Is there any way that you can video tape him when he does these things to himself? And maybe have the camera date when it was recorded? This way at least you have some evidence that he does this to himself in case he tells someone that you did it.

When did he start taking the new medication? Could this new tactic be from a side effect of the medication? Can you go with your husband to the psychiatrist appointment? I would think that since you are the one who is dealing with difficult child's behaviors more it would be more helpful to hear from you what is going on in the house.
 

HopeRemains

New Member
Bunny- The other day I DID get him banging his head into the hallway wall on video. I just have my computer set up to wherever I am and I was doing dishes, so it caught him in the hallway. That was the same day/time that I noticed his lip bleeding and that was on video, too, and him saying that he didn't know how it happened and didn't care. It's not ALWAYS possible to get it on video, but at least this time we did. And I would hope that the therapist made notes about our meeting yesterday. Maybe he could be an ally if it ever comes down to it.

We haven't started him on the new medication yet, we are waiting until Friday, that way he can possibly get adjusted to it over the weekend if it has an effect on him. I agree that I should be there during the appointments, but transportation is an issue, and we live 45 minutes away from the doctor. husband takes him alone so that he doesn't have to miss an extra hour+ of work.
 

allhaileris

Crumbling Family Rock
I find the worse I feel, the worse daughter acts. If she got to this stage I'd assume there was a number of stressors affecting her. It sounds like he wants attention, I don't know why kids can't just get that their parent is sick and they need to be good instead of turning it around. I'm so sorry you have to deal with this.

But PLEASE get the self harm documented. I had my daughter taken away for 5 weeks because of exactly the same thing. She smacked herself in the face so hard it left marks. I took pics of her hand prints, but she went to school and told them husband did it (she first said she did it, but then "changed" her mind I'm sure with the nudging of the aide). CPS and the cops would not believe us at all. Make sure the school knows that he's doing this to himself. Ask them to document when he does it. Make sure they are on your side and will back you up if CPS comes to the school (which they can do unannounced). They will believe the kid with almost no evidence. Be prepared for them, and if you do have to deal with them, be as nice as possible.
 

HopeRemains

New Member
allhaileris- How do I get it documented? Do you think that the therapist counts as documentation? We have an IEP meeting coming up and I will bring it up, but I guess I'm not sure of how to tell the school of these behaviors. Last year biomom caused trouble at the school and threatened them with lawyers (because she said that husband kept her from anything, truth: she never, ever asked about school or conferences, etc). The year before that we had the whole CPS thing go on because of biomom. I feel that maybe they will begin to question us as parents (if they don't already!). It is a small community and I am so nervous about everything falling on US, even though I have told the school, always, about his behavior. The hitting himself is new and I am scared that they might see it as us trying to cover our tracks for some abuse at home or something!
 

HopeRemains

New Member
Oh... and he is perfect at school! So they cannot possibly believe when I tell them about his behaviors, they all look shocked and incredulous.
 

HopeRemains

New Member
My gut is wrenching, thinking that if only I'd went and gotten my computer from the bedroom to video yesterday, I could have documented that he intended to lie about me hurting him. =( Never again will I fail to do this. I wasn't in my right mind.
 

HopeRemains

New Member
My phone does shoot video, but it is an old phone, and very poor quality. Plus, I cannot get the video off of the phone. Right now all I have is my big old huge laptop. It helps that he doesn't realize he is being video'd sometimes. It depends on his mood.
 

allhaileris

Crumbling Family Rock
For us, the reason they gave her back to us at 5 weeks is because they saw the same behaviors in foster, she cut her hair and burned a stuffed animal. We had gotten the school to do a report a year earlier about her Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and Learning Disability (LD). I really don't know how to document it *correctly* before the fact. This is one of the issues I brought up with CPS. There should be some kind of way to register kids like ours so they don't come after us. At least now, when she's a teenager and running away or knocking off the corner liquor store, they'll see our past history. My daughter is a wonderful liar, and one of the issues they had was that they seemed to think all kids told the truth and they could tell if a kid was lying, and that all parents lied. They saw this cute little girl as the victim, and my 6'4" husband as the abuser, no matter what we told them. husband and daughter do fight a lot, and this happened a few months after I had a major injury, so daughter wasn't getting all my attention and was fighting with husband more, and so it was easy to just blame it on him. :(

CPS just doesn't understand kids like ours. I guess one of the few ways to deal with it is get your child to stop abusing themselves. But how are you supposed to know they'll do it? We all get stressed, and that's one of their ways of dealing with stress, unfortunately. It feeds their endorphins.

At this point we have found one social worker who has a child just like ours, we educated her a bit and she helped drop a bunch of hoops we had to jump through. There are social workers who don't work for CPS, right? Can one of them document this? Make sure you get your parents on board with this. They did talk to my Dad, which helped our case.
 

buddy

New Member
Still use the video on the phone. Doesn't matter if it won't come off. You can show the phone. Flip cams are cheap on sale too. Very easy to use. Also just keep a running list of what he does and what he says ...date and time. Report the concern to the doctor who does the medications. I do all that and its well documented that q will say I did something. People have heard him threaten to do it too, lol. I told him that sw and police can hook him to a lie detector and that has stopped it all. Funny but true!
 

susiestar

Roll With It
Using your phone or a flip type cam is an excellent idea. right now many phones have video capabilities and you CAN buy cables to connect them to the computer if you cannot connect wirelessly. You can also put a micro sd card in many phones. Some have a slot that is easy to get to, others have a place in the battery compartment to put them in. That lets you record longer videos and put them on the computer more easily. I have a fifty dollar net10 phone that does video pretty well and the sd card is easy to use. You actually could get one of these and not activate the phone part but use it for video only if you wanted. But BigLots often has flip cameras cheap and so do the deal a day sites.
 

Tiapet

Old Hand
Yes, document with camera whether cell phone or easy child. Even if quality isn't good you could still be able to make out what's going on. Another alternative is voice recording of the statements that are being made. That can also help because they can HEAR what's being said too and that is important. I have the same issue here and we've had to do that in the past and recently we've had to revisit doing this again.
 

HopeRemains

New Member
allhaileris- When CPS came the time that biomom had difficult child lie about me slapping him (that was the beginning of all of this "I'm telling my Mom" behavior), I asked her at the end what difficult child had told her in their school meeting, asked if he actually told her I'd done it. She said no, by that point difficult child told her the truth, and if he had told her that I'd done it she would have immediately sent the police to come arrest me at home. Now, when I told therapist about this the other day, he said she shouldn't have said that to me. I'm not sure if he meant it wasn't true or if it was just unprofessional of her to say that. Did they take action against your husband when your situation occured? Was he shackled and all of that? This is what I am afraid of. Maybe the worker would have had me arrested because I am not a blood parent?

I am at the end of my rope. husband and I have no real relationship- haven't for years. Between difficult child and his Mom I have horrible anxiety and hyperventilate, panic attacks. My little one is copying difficult child's disrespectful behaviors towards me besides having to sit quietly while difficult child goes through his rages (but he hears everything and is very perceptive) and he gets less good attention from me because I am so preoccupied with difficult child or his Mom at different times. Yesterday I couldn't even look at difficult child. He's only 9, for crying out loud, and I feel such resentment and disgust with him right now that I can't even look at him!? He's done the one thing that I am not willing to stick around to try to help him with. When he threatens me with these lies, I feel he is threatening my little one, too. It's not fair to the little one to have such a depressed, stressed out and threatening environment- and what happens if I am just taken out in cuffs one day? I'm hyperventalating now. I don't think I can do this anymore. I'm not helping. I'm not helping anyone. I've told husband over and over that I don't want to be alone with difficult child, but with his work schedule and living where afterschool care isn't really an option it's never really been an option. I'm stuck. I feel I HAVE no option but to leave. I pretty much stayed when I wanted to leave years ago for the sake of difficult child, but I'm not helping... I'm just taking the brunt of him and his BioMom and my little one is paying for it, too. I know I sound like a really weak and selfish person right now. I am in a very bad place.
 

buddy

New Member
HR, I am no family expert, but I think you're not being selfish at all. I think your little one could end up with some pretty serious PTSD over this and if it was something you could help....yeah I could see some argument for staying , but?????

It clearly is not an impulsive decision. You have really hung in there and tried. If you decide to leave, it doesn't mean you have to cut off all relationship but you may need some really strong boundaries if you continue a relationship with difficult child. It maybe that only written contact or skype or such thing is needed until he is far more stable. Is he bio bro to your little one? Do they consider themselves siblings? difficult child is a hurting child, clearly needs bunches of help. But is it your job? If not, then you do have a job....your little one.
 

HopeRemains

New Member
buddy- And you've hit pretty much on my internal problems... Is it my problem? I feel that it IS my problem, you know? If it's not my problem, if I don't try HARDER, then who's problem is it and who WILL try for difficult child? This has been my mentality and what has kept me going for so long. Then comes in the knowing that nothing has gotten better, it is getting worse and getting MUCH worse for the games that his biomom plays.

I told husband and the therapist the other day (sort of broke down) that I have been doing this since difficult child was 3, and nothing has changed (yes, behaviors have morphed but not gone away). therapist told me that I am taking things too personally and difficult child has changed since he was 3 and it's not comparable to him now, at the age of 9. I disagreed with everything he said... maybe I am taking things personally (?) but his actions are REALLY causing damage to our family and especially his brother. difficult child sits and tells easy child (who is 3 now) how much he hates him, has threatened to kill him with a knife when he is sleeping, hits/hurts him constantly (since he was born) and my easy child now says "I'm stupid. I'm dumb." and always asks difficult child if he loves him. Sometimes he gets a nice answer, but usually difficult child just ignores him rather than say he loves him. I forgot to add that during his rage the other day, difficult child blurted out "I'm a murderer!". Out of nowhere. therapist didn't seem to care about this or that he told the little one he would stab him to death, but took interest in the fact that difficult child is hitting himself now. I don't get it. He's been hitting everyone else for years. The guilt I'm feeling for wanting to tuck tail is so awful and my nature is to see all sides of things, whichs makes it hard to settle on one course of action. (So you see me arguing with myself to go one way then in the next breath arguing the other side... I'm sorry.) I guess I feel that no matter what I do here, there is no winning and no getting better, so why subject my little one to it and run myself into the nuthouse?

I feel difficult child is getting more dangerous.
 

allhaileris

Crumbling Family Rock
No, they didn't arrest husband when they took daughter away. They gave us a couple choices, and we were stuck because of our situation. The same day they did this we got the keys to our new place. They knew we had to move and there was no way they could separate husband and I. Their choices were to arrest husband, enforce a restraining order for husband so he couldn't be near daughter or I, or put her in foster care. Because of the move they knew we'd break a restraining order, plus they didn't believe us at all, so they just put her in foster care.

husband and my relationship is horrible right now too. He's been beyond selfish and has hurt me constantly the last few months, to a point that I want him gone too often. I just can't take care of daughter by myself, she's too much and I'm too injured. But now that she's medicated, and my medications are balancing me out more, it's a bit better between the daughter and I. At this point with husband, I have just shut off my feelings. He knows this, we've talked about it. He claims he's working on his issues with his selfishness with me but it's two steps forward, three back kind of thing. I know he couldn't take care of himself either, financially. But I married him and I value vows and all, I am really trying to work with him on our issues. It's just getting closer to a day when I say "get the h3ll out" and actually mean it.

He got a lot better with daughter right after the whole issue, but he's gone back to his ways a bit, gets angry at things that just don't matter at all. husband does have caregiver burnout. I suspect you do too. Sometimes he just cannot handle one more issue with daughter. We're supposed to get a good chunk of money from a settlement soon, and as soon as that happens I'm putting daughter in after school care or activities or something to help get her out of his hair.
 

HopeRemains

New Member
allhaileris- Oh, I am so sorry that happened to you guys! Caregiver burnout... yeah that's me. But I've been burnt out for years and just more and more miserable everyday. My husband is happy NOT to be involved and would rather just let things go than make waves with difficult child. I guess it's a combination of everything that has me on the floor. In all actuality, I feel like I'm being stronger than in the past by saying NO MORE. If x,y and z don't happen, I've told husband that I am gone. (This includes moving to the city so I can be part of society again, getting me a car and my refusal to be alone with difficult child.) I really don't think it's too much to ask for, but I've been begging for YEARS for this to happen. Now it's a demand and I will leave if husband puts a guilt trip on me for it or it's too much to ask of him.

I believe in a family unit strongly. That's why the decision to actually leave will wreak havoc on me. Especially for easy child... but I can't figure out if leaving would be better or keeping him in a whole dysfunctional family would be better? After difficult child's threats to him and current "murderer" talk, I am thinking that I would be a fool to wait around to see if they pan out or not. (Last night at the hardware store, difficult child picked up a pipe wrench and said that "a murderer would just swing this and bash your brains out".) He got mad at us when we told him not to say things like that. I was telling my Mom about it and she's freaking out. She stayed here for a few months last year while recovering from chemo and she's seen the darkness in difficult child (he pushed her into the counter when she told him he couldn't have something). Something in his eyes when he is intent on hurting you one way or the other is very scary. He's always had it. (But never seriously hurt anyone physically, yet.) It was in his eyes when he told me he was telling his Mom I put the marks on him. He spoke like an adult, a scary adult who knew what he was doing.
 

buddy

New Member
I really feel for you, no one here can answer but I can share my feeling when you say what you say here......
I think you're right on to put your foot down. You can continue to love and support difficult child without living with him if it comes to that. You get one chance to keep things healthy and parent easy child. If he wasn't in your life you'd have maybe more time.....but this sounds like you really know it could go bad on so many fronts. And the biggest loser will be easy child. I wish it wasn't so. None of what has happened nor what will happen with difficult child is your fault. You are probably why he is able to do any of what positive he does do. It's just very complicated, and frankly, you should struggle with the feelings behind it. That's what makes you so amazing. You really do care.
 
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