Hello,
I just found this forum and I'm very happy I did! We have legal custody of an 11 year old who is in 4th grade. He is not related to either of us, but we know his mother and we offered to take him about 10 months ago. She happily signed the custody papers without reading them... and here we are.
We originally thought he was just neglected and needed a lot of love and help in school. Boy were we wrong! We had him evaluated by a psychologist. He has Reactive attachment disorder, Oppositional defiant disorder, ADHD, on the edge of post traumatic stress disorder, many learning disabilities, possible fetal alcohol exposure, possible fetal crack/cocaine exposure, and failure to thrive. The poor thing is a mess. We had been doing pretty well until this month. We have taken him to the emergency psychiatric ward, he has been in trouble at school every day, he is about to get kicked out of after school care, and every single night is a huge fight. Screaming, throwing, destroying temper tantrum. We feel like we are going to lose it!
He starts counseling in a week. He is on Adderall and zoloft, but it really doesn't seem to make a difference. I'm thinking that he needs to be on an atypical antipsychotic.
Anyways, I just wanted to introduce myself. Hopefully I can find time to post and get more answers. I hope to get to know you all!
~Kari
I just found this forum and I'm very happy I did! We have legal custody of an 11 year old who is in 4th grade. He is not related to either of us, but we know his mother and we offered to take him about 10 months ago. She happily signed the custody papers without reading them... and here we are.
We originally thought he was just neglected and needed a lot of love and help in school. Boy were we wrong! We had him evaluated by a psychologist. He has Reactive attachment disorder, Oppositional defiant disorder, ADHD, on the edge of post traumatic stress disorder, many learning disabilities, possible fetal alcohol exposure, possible fetal crack/cocaine exposure, and failure to thrive. The poor thing is a mess. We had been doing pretty well until this month. We have taken him to the emergency psychiatric ward, he has been in trouble at school every day, he is about to get kicked out of after school care, and every single night is a huge fight. Screaming, throwing, destroying temper tantrum. We feel like we are going to lose it!
He starts counseling in a week. He is on Adderall and zoloft, but it really doesn't seem to make a difference. I'm thinking that he needs to be on an atypical antipsychotic.
Anyways, I just wanted to introduce myself. Hopefully I can find time to post and get more answers. I hope to get to know you all!
~Kari