Thank you, ladies! I'm not so sure I'm due all of DDD's compliments quite yet, though!
GAL is Guardian ad Litem, which in our case is an attny who was assigned at the arraignment for difficult child's 2 hour crime spree in March to "help me get the help difficult child needs". So far, she has done some harm by making too quick decisions when hearing just a few sentences from others and not checking the validity first.
MST is Multi-systematic therapy which is explained as a therapy designed to cover home, school, and community based relationships for the difficult child. This sounds great, doesn't it? What they don't tell you up front is that it's only for CO and anti-social personality and uses the methodology of training Pavlow's dog. The only preventative measure for poor behavior that is used in our locality is to remind difficult child of repercussions if he doesn't behave. So, instead of helping difficult child deal with "you need medications right now because...", and "lets work on this issue", it's based on if the family acted different and difficult child took responsibility for self, these issues wouldn't be here and other therapies wouldn't be needed. In some cases this might be true- in most of the cases on this forum, I don't believe it is. They actually discourage other treatments (like therapist) while you're going thru this; but if you have to keep other therapies, they have to be in the middle of(actually take over) them.
Furthermore, it's critical in my difficult child's case because his Adjustment Disorder stems mostly from his dad never acknowledging or seeing him (his choice) and difficult child convincing himself it's because "he's a bad kid", so as psychiatrist on the evaluation team believes, every time the sd or other "important, authoritative" figures treat difficult child as CO, this reinforces his negative internal beliefs about himself, triggers him into mania, and "BOOM", difficult child loses it. So, the last thing we need is MST guy convincing sd and therapist that a behavior plan where all bad behavior and cycling is monitored and reported to court people is all that's needed to help difficult child.
