wethreepeeps
New Member
difficult child is 9 now, and has been in a sub acute program in the psychiatric hospital since November. Many medication changes later he had been very stable for the last few weeks and they were planning to discharge him last week. So after hearing that he'll come home on Wednesday, he starts to act out again, flooding the bathroom by stuffing paper towels in the sinks and turning them on, refusing to get in bed, cursing at staff, etc. He told his social worker, "why should I go home, I'm just gonna be bad cause I can't stop and they'll make me come back here." So we have a family session where we outline for him that the only thing that will get him sent back are violence to himself or others, or threats of violence. This seems to do the trick, he straightens his act out, and we plan for him to have a weekend pass and then formally discharge on Monday, today.
The weekend pass goes okay but not great. On previous passes the changes in him have been remarkable and we had a pleasant time being together. He wasn't perfect, but the issues that came up were nothing I couldn't handle. I really felt we were all ready for him to come home at this point. But this weekend, he wasn't violent or even defiant, really, but very negative about everything. He didn't like anything I cooked (stuff he'd always liked before), he was constantly bored, and he kept using his "mad plan" to come and tell me he was angry about things that had happened *years* ago. More than once he said he was angry because he was bored, and that when he was bored he could only think of "bad" things to do.
Really, this is actually amazing progress. He's never been able to verbalize his feelings on this level before, so while I'm worried about the things he's expressing, I keep giving him a lot of positive affirmation for coming to me and talking about it instead of getting violent.
Then Sunday around four pm he started getting very silly and hyper, rolling in the floor laughing and making animal noises, crawling around the house on his hands and knees, that kind of thing. This later afternoon hyper period was a long-time pattern that we seemed to have finally broken in the hospital, so I was very worried to see it come back. I tried to ignore it, got dinner on the table, and as he was walking past a wall that has multiple family pictures, he stopped and remember something negative about every picture. "I hated this shirt" "remember I cried in the car and you made me go anyway?" "remember santa didn't bring me a gameboy for christmas that year?" and so on. He then sat down at the table and very calmly said, "I just really want to stab myself."
So I call psychiatric hospital and speak to the social worker on call, and they say to bring him back for the night and we'll reevaluate his situation today. She said it's not unusual for kids to have tons of anxiety about coming home and being able to function at school and within the family again and try to sabotage their discharge, because the hospital seems safe and controlled.
How do I help get him past this? Does anyone else have experience with a situation like this?
difficult child: 9year old boy, ADHD, Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) not otherwise specified, PTSD, ODD, rule-out bipolar. Suspected prenatal drug exposure, adopted at age 3. Current medications: Adderal, Seroquel, Trileptal, Tenex
easy child: 11 year old girl terminally ill with Dystrophic Epidermolysis Bullosa
The weekend pass goes okay but not great. On previous passes the changes in him have been remarkable and we had a pleasant time being together. He wasn't perfect, but the issues that came up were nothing I couldn't handle. I really felt we were all ready for him to come home at this point. But this weekend, he wasn't violent or even defiant, really, but very negative about everything. He didn't like anything I cooked (stuff he'd always liked before), he was constantly bored, and he kept using his "mad plan" to come and tell me he was angry about things that had happened *years* ago. More than once he said he was angry because he was bored, and that when he was bored he could only think of "bad" things to do.
Really, this is actually amazing progress. He's never been able to verbalize his feelings on this level before, so while I'm worried about the things he's expressing, I keep giving him a lot of positive affirmation for coming to me and talking about it instead of getting violent.
Then Sunday around four pm he started getting very silly and hyper, rolling in the floor laughing and making animal noises, crawling around the house on his hands and knees, that kind of thing. This later afternoon hyper period was a long-time pattern that we seemed to have finally broken in the hospital, so I was very worried to see it come back. I tried to ignore it, got dinner on the table, and as he was walking past a wall that has multiple family pictures, he stopped and remember something negative about every picture. "I hated this shirt" "remember I cried in the car and you made me go anyway?" "remember santa didn't bring me a gameboy for christmas that year?" and so on. He then sat down at the table and very calmly said, "I just really want to stab myself."
So I call psychiatric hospital and speak to the social worker on call, and they say to bring him back for the night and we'll reevaluate his situation today. She said it's not unusual for kids to have tons of anxiety about coming home and being able to function at school and within the family again and try to sabotage their discharge, because the hospital seems safe and controlled.
How do I help get him past this? Does anyone else have experience with a situation like this?
difficult child: 9year old boy, ADHD, Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) not otherwise specified, PTSD, ODD, rule-out bipolar. Suspected prenatal drug exposure, adopted at age 3. Current medications: Adderal, Seroquel, Trileptal, Tenex
easy child: 11 year old girl terminally ill with Dystrophic Epidermolysis Bullosa