Before I start I just want to say that I am here looking for support and I would like to hear opinions, both agreeing and opposing, but I have been beating myself up enough over this and I really would appreciate it if no one else would add to it.
Now, with that being said, I have a son that is 7 going on 8. He is one of 4 soon to be 5 and he is the oldest. The other three children are your typical children. They give me hell some days and some days they are angels, but for the most part, other than a tantrum here and there, they are really just well behaved kids. Then we move to my 7 year old. I am having such major behavioral problems with him that I never could have seen coming when I envisioned having children. He has had a problem with wetting the bed since he was 2 and that went from a nightly bed wetting issue to catching him defecating in in basement, urinating in our basement, and now to urinating all over his bedroom. As if this issue hasn't been bad enough, I have caught him acting out sexually...worst part was it was with his little sister. When I caught this, I reached out to a counselor out of school as well as inside of school. I had this brilliant idea that if we just bombarded him with some support maybe we could get to the bottom of this issue and get him some help. It turns out that one of the counselors notified Social Services. I don't understand why because we sought help on our own and I don't know what this counselor thought DSS would do that we couldn't, but none the less, it ended with a trip two hours away with my kids at a hospital for forensics testing and questioning. It was completely traumatizing for me as a mother and very upsetting, but I put my big girl panties on and we dealt the hand in which we were given and got through it. That was four months ago and my children haven't mentioned it since the day we left.
Now that the kids are out of school, I have been home with them and we have been hanging out, playing and just doing what we usually do. One day last week I was in the kitchen doing dishes and and the kids were upstairs playing. I noticed everything was quiet so I walked to the bottom of the stairs and yelled up for my oldest. When he didn't come running out right away and I noticed his door was shut, I got this disgusting feeling in the pit of my stomach and decided to quickly go up there and open his door. When I did this, I caught him struggling to get himself dressed really quickly...wouldn't have been such a big deal except for the fact that my daughter (the same one that he picked last time) was in the room with him!!! I asked them what was going on and my daughter said that her brother was just sitting there naked. I clarified this and they both admitted that he was sitting there completely naked. I am still not able to get answers as to what was going on, but the only thing I knew to do at that point was to take him and myself up to the office of DSS and wait for the caseworker I am oh so familiar with.
Now, note, this is not the ONLY problem I have with my oldest. Not only is he acting out sexually and also by urinating in inappropriate places, he is also EXTREMELY defiant and refuses to listen or follow any rules. The ONLY way I have been successful in getting him to obey is by running this house like a frickin boot camp and being a drill sergeant which is completely miserable! Otherwise, he will deliberately do things just because I told him not to. In fact, I have told him to go and do things I know any 7 year old boy would love to do just to see if he would do it. For example, one day I told him to go outside and ride his bike and run around and yell and scream outside. All the things he isn't always able to do but most kids this age love to do...he sat on the front porch quietly for 20 minutes before he came back inside asking to stay in. So the next day I told him to sit on the front porch and not to move...I found him running around the yard yelling and screaming. But usually the defiance issues are more severe than how he is playing outside. He throws tantrums sometimes to the point that he puts his own safety in jeopardy. One day I caught him trying to flood the bathroom upstairs and I briskly forced him out of the bathroom by pushing his back with my hand. It was nothing more than forcefully guiding him out of the bathroom. The bathroom door from the top of the stairs is roughly 10 ft and I guided him to his room which is in the exact opposite direction. As I turned to go back into the bathroom to stop the water I heard all this commotion and screaming so I ran out of the bathroom and there he was rolling down the stairs. When i asked him what the heck happened he claimed that i had thrown his down the stairs! Besides the fact that this was completely UNTRUE, this child could have broken his neck! Sadly, that was not the last time he had done this. He has recently started doing it again since school has gotten out and I fear he is really going to end up hurting himself. And it's not just stairs anymore, it's the pavement and really anywhere he can get attention for it.
So here I am at the end of my ropes with this child. I am afraid he is going to get so out of control that he has nothing positive in his future. Not to mention, he is taking his little sister down his dark path with him. Putting him in a Residential Treatment Center (RTC) was recommended to me in order for him to get the help that he needs. I am just terrified that he will end up hurting himself or someone else and wind up in a lot worse situation than he is in now. I fear that if I don't get him the help he needs now, it will be too late. I am looking for some other input on this before I make my decision. I want to know what other parents are thinking and what they would do or recommend if they were in my situation. Maybe there is someone out there reading this that made the same decision for their child? If so, PLEASE, I would love to hear from you. I plan on calling this Residential Treatment Center (RTC) on Monday to find out what options we have without turning custody over to the state, but before I go too far, I want to make sure this is really the best decision for my child.
Now, with that being said, I have a son that is 7 going on 8. He is one of 4 soon to be 5 and he is the oldest. The other three children are your typical children. They give me hell some days and some days they are angels, but for the most part, other than a tantrum here and there, they are really just well behaved kids. Then we move to my 7 year old. I am having such major behavioral problems with him that I never could have seen coming when I envisioned having children. He has had a problem with wetting the bed since he was 2 and that went from a nightly bed wetting issue to catching him defecating in in basement, urinating in our basement, and now to urinating all over his bedroom. As if this issue hasn't been bad enough, I have caught him acting out sexually...worst part was it was with his little sister. When I caught this, I reached out to a counselor out of school as well as inside of school. I had this brilliant idea that if we just bombarded him with some support maybe we could get to the bottom of this issue and get him some help. It turns out that one of the counselors notified Social Services. I don't understand why because we sought help on our own and I don't know what this counselor thought DSS would do that we couldn't, but none the less, it ended with a trip two hours away with my kids at a hospital for forensics testing and questioning. It was completely traumatizing for me as a mother and very upsetting, but I put my big girl panties on and we dealt the hand in which we were given and got through it. That was four months ago and my children haven't mentioned it since the day we left.
Now that the kids are out of school, I have been home with them and we have been hanging out, playing and just doing what we usually do. One day last week I was in the kitchen doing dishes and and the kids were upstairs playing. I noticed everything was quiet so I walked to the bottom of the stairs and yelled up for my oldest. When he didn't come running out right away and I noticed his door was shut, I got this disgusting feeling in the pit of my stomach and decided to quickly go up there and open his door. When I did this, I caught him struggling to get himself dressed really quickly...wouldn't have been such a big deal except for the fact that my daughter (the same one that he picked last time) was in the room with him!!! I asked them what was going on and my daughter said that her brother was just sitting there naked. I clarified this and they both admitted that he was sitting there completely naked. I am still not able to get answers as to what was going on, but the only thing I knew to do at that point was to take him and myself up to the office of DSS and wait for the caseworker I am oh so familiar with.
Now, note, this is not the ONLY problem I have with my oldest. Not only is he acting out sexually and also by urinating in inappropriate places, he is also EXTREMELY defiant and refuses to listen or follow any rules. The ONLY way I have been successful in getting him to obey is by running this house like a frickin boot camp and being a drill sergeant which is completely miserable! Otherwise, he will deliberately do things just because I told him not to. In fact, I have told him to go and do things I know any 7 year old boy would love to do just to see if he would do it. For example, one day I told him to go outside and ride his bike and run around and yell and scream outside. All the things he isn't always able to do but most kids this age love to do...he sat on the front porch quietly for 20 minutes before he came back inside asking to stay in. So the next day I told him to sit on the front porch and not to move...I found him running around the yard yelling and screaming. But usually the defiance issues are more severe than how he is playing outside. He throws tantrums sometimes to the point that he puts his own safety in jeopardy. One day I caught him trying to flood the bathroom upstairs and I briskly forced him out of the bathroom by pushing his back with my hand. It was nothing more than forcefully guiding him out of the bathroom. The bathroom door from the top of the stairs is roughly 10 ft and I guided him to his room which is in the exact opposite direction. As I turned to go back into the bathroom to stop the water I heard all this commotion and screaming so I ran out of the bathroom and there he was rolling down the stairs. When i asked him what the heck happened he claimed that i had thrown his down the stairs! Besides the fact that this was completely UNTRUE, this child could have broken his neck! Sadly, that was not the last time he had done this. He has recently started doing it again since school has gotten out and I fear he is really going to end up hurting himself. And it's not just stairs anymore, it's the pavement and really anywhere he can get attention for it.
So here I am at the end of my ropes with this child. I am afraid he is going to get so out of control that he has nothing positive in his future. Not to mention, he is taking his little sister down his dark path with him. Putting him in a Residential Treatment Center (RTC) was recommended to me in order for him to get the help that he needs. I am just terrified that he will end up hurting himself or someone else and wind up in a lot worse situation than he is in now. I fear that if I don't get him the help he needs now, it will be too late. I am looking for some other input on this before I make my decision. I want to know what other parents are thinking and what they would do or recommend if they were in my situation. Maybe there is someone out there reading this that made the same decision for their child? If so, PLEASE, I would love to hear from you. I plan on calling this Residential Treatment Center (RTC) on Monday to find out what options we have without turning custody over to the state, but before I go too far, I want to make sure this is really the best decision for my child.