People new to the situation

[Marguerite]

Sounds like a new school placement is Plan A.

He's a clever kid, as you said, and has sadly been given a great deal of pay-off for lying and refusing to do work.

Can't you share this info about his mother away from his presence? He won't want to hear it form you, but a piece of paper with the information on it, not from you but simply court documents, for example, might be the way for him to find out. The person to blame for this is biomom, not anybody else. But he can't do that while he has her on a pedestal.

He has been abused. He did not lie about that. But the nature of his abuse has meant that he cannot blame his accuser, without feeling like he has to also shoulder the blame. As is sadly common, the abuse victim is often made to feel complicit, the abuse at some level is enjoyable even though it is still doing damage. But a child cannot legally be responsible for the sexual abuse that happened to him. So he has to find someone else to blame.

I'd be suspecting that a lot more went on with his mother than has been found out.

Marg

 

[Ehlena]

I know that difficult child suffered a good deal of neglect when living with bio-mom, and, given some behaviors, probable sexual abuse. When my father-in-law confronted bio-mom, she admitted that difficult child had probably seen her in the act, and that he had been present in the room when she was watching pornography. That's all she would admit to, and difficult child refused to talk about it in therapy.

I'm not sure the school is Plan A yet. Right now we are working on getting difficult child on an appropriate medication (he's been off medications for a while because of interactions with drugs and alcohol). difficult child has already been moved from his PRIOR school due to similar issues. I think it might be possible to keep him in his current school if he has something to help him control his impulsive behaviors. And we would hate to move him yet again only to run into the same problem. We can't move him from school to school forever. If we move him to another school, we'll need his buy-in.

Unfortunately, difficult child is already familiar with the relevant sections of the court documents, and the social worker has already explained to him exactly why he can't go to live with his mother. Not only does he see the social worker as a b!tch, but he sees the whole system of CPS and the courts as against him. I wish there were some way to get him to really SEE the truth, but he doesn't seem to see it even when it is written in black and white on court documents. I am not joking - it is THAT bad. He still complains and thinks it's unfair that his visits with us are unsupervised, and the visits with his mother are closely supervised. I was in the room when the social worker spelled out to him why. She told him that his mother and his aunt lied to her repeatedly, she has not followed the case plan, and his mother relapsed recently. She told him that we have completed our part of the case plan and have been nothing but open and honest with her. I don't know how much more clear it can get. This is not the only conversation difficult child has been a party to explaining similar things.

We're meeting with the social worker tomorrow. Going to discuss getting difficult child on medication ASAP and bring up getting him a neuropsychologist evaluation.

 

[Marguerite]

He can't see the truth, because it would set up too many conflicts in his head to do so. I think the very fact he cannot accept the truth is a strong indicator of a direction for therapy to take. Not to force him to accept the truth, but to find out why he uses this as a coping strategy, and to work on the inappropriateness in general of using denial to cope.

It is possible that once you can start him off again on his ADHD medications, he might be able to organise his thoughts more effectively and logically sequence this information.

Marg

 

[exhausted]

I know he's unhappy on the path he's been traveling. If we could just get him to accept help, there is A TON of it ready and waiting.

The million dollar question! My issue with my difficult child as well. She has finially agreed to her latest placement and it is a lock down and DBT treatment fascility. This is what it took for her because she would agree, and then go through the moves, and then run off and put herself in harms way. Wish I had the answers.....

Allan-is this the man who wrote "Lost at School"? This is a fabulous book which I am trying to get my principal to read so we as a staff can read it together. By the time I found out about Collaborative Problem Solving-my daughter was in custody. I have used it on weekends when she has been able to come home. It has worked as she is a "power" kid. I have used it with one child in my class as well and had fantastic results-he's a tough kid too! I want to get better. It's hard shedding some of the old methods.

I recommend the book(to add to your already full shelf)-it's school driven, but very usuable at home. The problem is getting the group home to use it-if they are so steeped in behavior mod. His link had some good info.

I agree that not having him home is good right now. I think you must be a wonderful wife to care so much for your husband and to care so much for his boy- please care for yourself first (Remember, your oxygen mask first!)