It just keeps getting worse and worse

[PiperThree]

Well, difficult child lasted a whole 4 weeks at this foster home. After the major meltdown Wednesday night at our house during a visit, the straw broke the camel's back yesterday with foster mom and dad. According to her e-mail that she just sent me - difficult child did everything in his power over the weekend to get himself tossed out on his ^$%# - he threatened her, taunted her, was sneaky, blamed her for his actions and accepted no responsibility for anything. Apparently, foster mom called a crisis number and a social worker was sent over who spent over 4 hours witnessing him in action. He did a lot of backpedalling and trying to cover his tracks when he was caught in a lie but what took the taco: the social worker asked him something and his response was: "What is she afraid of? I don't hit my mother anymore and I didn't hit my dad right away!" I guess foster mom looked him in the eye and asked him "So, I would be receiving that end of your violence eventually too?" And difficult child, knowing how snotty and nasty he is, apparently looked at her square in the eye and said calmly with an attitude, "Of course not." Well that did for the foster dad - he has to go and right now. Social worker started spewing the usually crap about being a weekend and tomorrow (meaning today) being a holiday all the state offices were closed but foster mom and dad said tough - he's not staying here any longer. Our safety has been compromised and we cannot trust him at all. Instantly a bed was found and while at this moment we aren't positive of where it is, the description sounds very similar to the first placement after we refused to allow him back in our house last April. He never apologized to foster mom and dad for anything but instead he screamed that she BETTER make sure she packs everything that belongs to him. Imagine the gall???? Pack your own crap - I hope she told him that.

Foster mom is really upset and she said that she and her husband and son only saw a taste of what we went through for two and a half years. This is crazy. husband is absolutely beside himself. His heart his broken and he can hardly function at work today. I am so dang angry at difficult child I can't stand it. One thing is certain, he cannot ever come back to our house ever. No way can we go through this on an everyday basis. We've had more stress in the last 5 days than we have in the last 9 months.

Okay. Vent over.

Piper

 

[BusynMember]

I'm really sorry this happened, but, and I'm not defending son, if he has bipolar, he is likely NOT going to be able to maintain unless he's on better medication. Bipolar is a biochemical problem that affects the brain, and he should be on a mood stabilizer, which Abilify isn't. Also, many people with BiPolar (BP) need both a mood stabilizer and an antipsychotic. His bad behavior is most likely the result of unstable bipolar--he could be totally different on the right medications. I have BiPolar (BP) and felt pretty violent off medications, but calm as a clam on medications. At your son's age, I'd break things and say hateful things and throw whopping rages, and this continued into adulthood because I was undiagnosed and unmedicated. It makes a whole world of difference to have the right medications. I don't even feel the need for therapy. Perhaps you should urge the state to get him a re-evaluation with somebody else, hopefully an MD Psychiatrist who understands mood disorders. You really do get out of control in a pretty wild way when you have bipolar and it's not under control. He may be grandiose and actually feel he doesn't owe anyone an apology. Your thinking is pretty distorted. Yet there is hope, if the right treatment is found. Residential Treatment Center (RTC)'s aren't that good at figuring out medications. We dealt with them when we had foster kids. And on that topic, foster parents really don't know anything more about troubled kids than any parents do. I was a therapeutic foster mom and thought that meant they'd give us extensive training in different disorders and how to handle kids. Um, no! We got kids!!!! And we tried to learn on the fly, but we didn't know any more than the parents they came from! True, our environment may have been better--we didn't drink or hit, and a lot of the kids came from that sort of home--but knowledge? No. We adopted one of the very young kids, and then we quit foster care. It was horrible for us, the foster parents, and we started not trusting the info we were given by the agency. The kids never got the kind of help we thought they needed. I don't know why Residential Treatment Center (RTC)'s send kids to foster care rather than home with a plan, and I'm sorry you have to deal with this long distance. Maybe your child never CAN come home, but he can get better with the right treatment. Just a rant. Hugs and prayers.

 

[PiperThree]

MWM - step-son has been on so many different medication cocktails since he was 6 that I can't even remember them anymore. WE didn't think Abilify was doing anything when he first went into the shelter at the Residential Treatment Center (RTC) - that's what they tweaked his medications down to - just Abilify. When he lived with us he was on all sorts of stuff - most of which now I can't remember the combinations and dosages but he was on Depakote, Risperdal, Triliptal, Lithium, Geodone, alot of anti depressants like Prozac and Paxil - I'd have to consult my 4 1/2 inch thick binder of all my notes over the last several years of his history to remember them all. Depakote worked with another medication but his white blood cell count went wonky on Depakote so it was discontinued. Another drug made him gain 60 pounds in 12 weeks. Lithium gave him the shakes so badly he couldn't hold a spoon although, he went on that when he was 8 years old - I wonder if now at 14 and a big kid if his body would be able to tolerate it better. Believe me, we've been fighting with the state and the child welfare people about demanding a neuropsychologist evaluation complete with a medication evaluation - our attorney has been fighting for it too only to be told that they (meaning the state) are "thinking about it". Translation: it costs too much so we'll do whatever we can to get by at a cheaper cost. Just like the whole foster family deal - theraputic family or not - we never wanted him in foster care because we knew eventually his honeymoon period would end and he'd blow his stack. Child welfare never even told this last foster family he had a violent background - chances are they never told the previous foster home either which is probably how difficult child went from being denied all foster homes when they were trying to place him to all of a sudden getting approved = yea, the state probably conveniently forgot to disclose info to them which in turn made them willing foster parents. Granted he never blew up with the first family but it's because he never got comfortable with them. With this last family - he already knew them. When they came forward and offered to help us we thought we were being granted a pair of guardian angels. Not only were they willing to take in husband's son, they weren't passing judgement on us at all because they already knew he was a handful. Handful, yes - violent - they had no idea until we told them after Wednesday's incident - they had no real knowledge before hand. They made their decision to allow themselves to be placed in harms way without all the info. I'm furious with the department for doing that at all but of course they'll probably get away with it now that foster mom and dad demanded he be placed somewhere else anyways.

When the heck will he get it? when will he stop doing this? even when he was on the best medication cocktail the doctors had for him, he still raged and was defiant. The defiance never went away. I feel completely sick to my stomach.

Piper

 

[Janna]

Ahh, Piper, I'm so sorry I hope you get some answers as to where he is soon.

When difficult child 2 is taken out of foster care, they always seem to find some type of respite or something for him to go to. They are usually a 72 hour home. So, even if the place difficult child is at isn't permanent, at least he's probably in some type of safe respite for a few days.

I have to agree with MWM on the Bipolar issue. Although my difficult child 2 isn't BiPolar (BP), my son Dylan is. I lived with him his whole life unstable. Although he wasn't a physical threat to me, he was completely out of control. Very aggressive. Very self harming. Very angry, nasty, all the time. It took almost 7 years to get him stabilized on medication. He's like a totally different person now, even at 10. Maybe difficult child needs a hospitalization? One medication at a time. Mood stabilizer first. FYI, the Abilify for Dylan, did nothing alone. He's on it now, and it's great, but it does fizzle out. He started at 5 mg., up to 10 (because it fizzled out LOL), then up to 15 mg (ditto). I see him going up to 20 soon.

I'm sorry difficult child is so violent. I can't imagine living like that. Poor husband. Poor you.

Sending gentle hugs to you today, friend.

Janna

 

[PiperThree]

We've lived with difficult child when he was on medications the entire time - he had regular appointments with his pediatrician and his psychologist/psychiatrist and also the doctor in charge of his medications. granted, he only saw that doctor 2x a year so of course the doctor isn't going to "get" what you tell him in a 15 minute appointment about how he was on such and such a date when this that or the other thing was agitating him or making him angry so who the heck knows if any of the medications did any good at any time. He's always been violent and defiant - either violent to himself, the bedroom door, the hallway walls or to his husband and bio mom. He never used his arms or fists or anything on me but he did throw something at me twice - once 4 days before his last day in our home and once the last day before he was removed. That's what we are having a hard time with - he's had medication evaluations in the past and stuff was prescribed, dosages tweaked, blah blah blah but nothing ever seemed to control his moods. And he's been on multiple drugs at the same time. Either the dosages are too low or the correct combo still hasn't been found yet. The whole reason why we refused to allow him to continue living with us was after 2 1/2 years of daily emotional and mental abuse by him and trying every dang thing under the sun to help him, nothing was changing except he was getting bigger, harder to restrain and even more frightening. Here the second foster family lasted 1 month and 3 days and they were so afraid for their safety they refused to take him back.

I guess the only saving grace in this whole mess is that he finally showed his true colors to someone other than us and our families. Now no one can give us the whole "but he's so good when he's _______" speech anymore. Enough adults and strangers have seen him in action the last 5 days to prove that husband and I didn't make all this up. I don't know what will happen tomorrow but hopefully we'll find out where he's landed this time. We were told by last FM that the one before (last summer) heard about difficult child being removed from the home and volunteered to take him back. She's in for a rude awakening if she really thinks he'll be "such a good boy" again to her. Once he gets comfortable with someone/family, he shows his real side. This is awful to say but I am glad he isn't coming back to our house. husband and I mentally can't take it anymore.

thanks for being here girls - I appreciate you more than you know.

Piper

oh, a couple more things - difficult child has been hospitalized - a total of 7 times. when he was living with bio mom he was so out of control for him she was afraid what he would do to the other kids and was able to get him admitted to hospitals. they were psychiatric hospitals too. the longest stay he had was 6 weeks - that's all insurance would cover. we've tried to have him admitted and the hospitals here refused him because they made us wait 11 hours in the ER and by that time he was calm and stable. he's been on medications since he was 6 years old. Lived with bio mom from 6-10 and came to live with husband and I 10 days before his 11th birthday.

 

[Wiped Out]

Piper,
The violence is scary-I'm sorry he is causing you and husband(and others) so much stress right now. I think it is good someone else saw him in action. Wish I had some great advice-gentle hugs to you and husband.

 

[Lori4ever]

I'm sorry you're going through this. I hope he is able to be stabalized soon. It does sound very frustrating.

 

[rejectedmom]

Piper, I am so sorry that things are not going well. -RM

 

[Wishing]

I feel for difficult child and for the difficult child's dad and you and can understand foster parents decision to have him moved out of their home. Unfortunately all the tough love in the world isn't going to make that much of a difference if this is a result of a biochemical storm in the brain. It is unfortunate that he in a sense is taking a beating in my humble opinion and he should have been much more stable b4 he was allowed to go into this home. I read somewhere that the antipsychotics effect is to encrcle the bi-polar and the major mood stabilizers act on the core biochemical problem. He also is on a high dose of abilify and my hope for him is that someone puts him in a hospital and does a better job of getting the rt medications to him soon.Prayers.

 

[wakeupcall]

I know that I know very little about foster care, etc. but how can they NOT tell you where he is if he's been removed from their home? I don't get it. I would be FRANTIC!!!

 

[BusynMember]

This is the problem. In my foster care group, so many parents were positive that because they did "tough love"--sometimes almost resembling a mini-Residential Treatment Center (RTC)--that the kids would shape up, like they hadn't done at home. But so many of the kids had brain disorders (mental illness) that it didn't work, and they would get huffy and want the kids out. Now I don't blame them for wanting the kids out, but they didn't understand that the kids were sick, not bad, and, frankly, the state fosters the view that the kids need toughness, not extra psychiatric care. They don't want to spend the $$$ on the kids! Almost all our kids came with identical diagnosis. of ADHD and were on stimulants. Wow! That really did a lot for our bipolar kids...lol. And the parents did NOT get the rights or acknowledgement they deserved. The prevailing view from the social workers (average ages of the ones we had maybe 26 with no kids) that the parents were the cause of the problems. Yay, RIGHT!!! Haha. When we got our child we adopted, we had a nightmarish social worker step in (she was fresh out of school/no kids) and she told us it was our fault he raged and slammed his head against the wall and she threatened to take him away from us, even though she acknowledged, "he's come so far." I never got her doublespeak. We had to fight to keep him. It was a real trip--lemme tell ya. I still don't understand why she was so determined to take him away from us. He was bonded and progressing and we loved him so much. We DID get to adopt him, although social worker wasn't happy, and he's 13 now and doing GREAT. I always want to write a letter to her and gloat about it, but I know that it's best to never contact her again. But I sure would like to tell her, "You were so clueless. This kid has autism, you idiot. That's why he raged. It wasn't us! In fact, we handled his rages well, and he doesn't rage anymore." Oh, well. It felt good to type it here, even if she'll never see it! You have all my sympathy. The system stinks, which is why we quit as soon as we formally adopted our little guy. Everyone loses in foster care.

 

[wakeupcall]

I'm sorry to hear that about "the system", MW. I guess I'm not too surprised....the school "system" put my difficult child (fifth grade) in a class with a 22-year-old teacher!! We've scraped along this year, but I worry that he's prepared for middle school. I always thought foster parents were educated to some degree with their preparations to become such. I feel like husband and I have been given subtle warnings all along from those on this board and some others as we raise our adopted son. I love him so much and with warnings as I hear in this post, we'll be very, very, careful as to what we do and agree to. Thanks for educating me. I'm sorry all of you are suffering.

 

[Sunlight]

I too have tears stinging my eyes. sick kids need help. there is not enough of that period. I feel for your son as well as for you and his dad. everyone hurts in a case like this. God be with you all.