![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Rant rant rant
Jul. 16th, 2007 09:57 amSo dearson#4 is outside waiting for the bus at 8:15 and they didn't come. Finally the camp director calls and tells me they don't feel they can adequately manage ds4's behaviors at the camp. The camp is not an "appropriate" program for him. I so wanted to scream at the camp director but, of course, it's not his fault. It's not any particular person's fault, but everyone is fine with sticking me with an impossible situation. After all, I am the parent.
It's nobody else's problem that my 16 year old deardaughter#5 is in the hospital and just had some pretty major surgery yesterday and she keeps calling and calling me sobbing and wanting me to come in there with her. Because she was adopted as an older child, she has a lot of abandonment issues and she is definitely feeling that I don't care. And then she gets the nurse on the phone and the nurse sarcastically suggests I either bring ds#4 along or get a babysitter so I can spend some time with my daughter because she's obviously in a lot of pain and needs me there. I feel like telling her to get in line with all the other people who want to think I don't care enough.
A camp designed for mentally ill children where ds#4 has a personal aide in addition to the staff cannot manage him and doesn't feel they can safely transport him to and from the camp but I should be able to stick him in my car and take him to the hospital with me. Aargh.
On Friday ds#4's aide was supposed to take him out for 2 hours so my husband and I could spend a little time together. And of course less than an hour passed before husband's cell phone rings. Aide can't control him, we have to come and get him. On the way to pick him up I said to my husband, " Bet the police get there before us." And I was right. Ds#4 made an abuse accusation against the aide and I had to talk the police out of taking it seriously. Aide is freaking out because abuse accusations can cost you your job and keep you from ever working with children again. I know how he feels, I lived in terror of this for many years, but I'm so burned out I just don't care anymore. If someone wants to believe some behavior disordered child's obviously false accusation they can just come in and take all my kids and try to find someone else crazy enough to take them in. My bio daughter has turned 18 and they can no longer touch her. (If you're accused they take ALL the kids, including your biological ones). And If I'm banned from volunteer work at the school and banned from working with kids, well, I hardly care anymore.
How could I possibly find a babysitter for this kid? My husband is out of town for the day, won't be back until late this evening and he cannot keep leaving work or he will get fired.
Last week the therapist at the residential facility for ds#2 says to me, "You and your husband are not willing to really give much time to helping this child, are you?" and I just lost it, said things I've never said to a therapist before. How dare she act like I don't care. They want to say that he can come home because they will have all this help for us. Aides to give us some respite time, a special education placement, summer programs run especially for mentally ill kids (Ha! The same program that just kicked ds#4 out) and this is just such bull. These are the same services he had before he went into residential. And the school just kept calling us telling us to come get him because they can't control him and if we refuse they call crisis and an ambulance takes him to the emergency room and then we have to drop everything and run in there or be charged with child abandonment and then we sit in there for 6-7 hours til he calms down and then we take him home and next day we can do it all over again.
If that interferes with our jobs, well, our children really NEED us when they're in crisis.
Been there, done that, so tired of it. And the people in the emergency room will think we should spank them or we should love them more or we should SOMETHING, and hell if I knew what to do I would do it.
And everybody thinks that they could do better or we don't care enough, even people in the mental health field who ought to know better. I don't see any of them caring enough to try to be responsible 24/7.
Yesterday we had a restraint meeting for ds#3 and I waited around for it because I had said I would be available (didn't know ddau#5 was going to need surgery. Then as I'm going to leave for hospital they called about restraint meeting for ds#2 and I just told them I couldn't do it. So they were annoyed that I didn't have "10" minutes (it's always more like 15 or 20) for my son. We have to have a restraint meeting everytime ds#3 or 4 have to be in physical restraint which happens anywhere from 1-10 times a week. And nobody at the meetings ever has any new ideas about how to reduce the dependence on physical restraint, which is the point of the meetings. No, actually the point of the restraint meetings is to meet some requirement some agency came up with.
Ds#4's aide just called to tell me he quits because he doesn't feel comfortable working with ds. So yet another aide bites the dust. Ha! I don't blame him, but I feel like quitting right now, too. Dear son's #2, 3, and 4 are well known to our agency and it's going to take a while for them to find another aide willing to give him a try. It will be somebody naive enough or arrogant enough to think they can handle him so they will probably be very condescending to us for a short time.
Family therapist says, " You know, if your child had cancer no one would expect you to treat him yourself at home, but because it's a mental illness you're getting blamed. " Even if mental illness is caused by bad parenting (which is doubtful) I obviously didn't cause it because, HELLO, they didn't spend their early years here and they were seriously mentally ill when I adopted them. If 2 families adopt kids with cerebral palsy and one kid leans to walk while the other spends their life in a wheelchair, I really don't think anyone blames the parent of the child in a wheelchair or says their child would walk if they cared more. Some of my adopted kids actually go to school, hold jobs and do not have police records, so how is that possible if I am such an uncaring parent?
OK, rant over, I feel better now. Back to rl.
It's nobody else's problem that my 16 year old deardaughter#5 is in the hospital and just had some pretty major surgery yesterday and she keeps calling and calling me sobbing and wanting me to come in there with her. Because she was adopted as an older child, she has a lot of abandonment issues and she is definitely feeling that I don't care. And then she gets the nurse on the phone and the nurse sarcastically suggests I either bring ds#4 along or get a babysitter so I can spend some time with my daughter because she's obviously in a lot of pain and needs me there. I feel like telling her to get in line with all the other people who want to think I don't care enough.
A camp designed for mentally ill children where ds#4 has a personal aide in addition to the staff cannot manage him and doesn't feel they can safely transport him to and from the camp but I should be able to stick him in my car and take him to the hospital with me. Aargh.
On Friday ds#4's aide was supposed to take him out for 2 hours so my husband and I could spend a little time together. And of course less than an hour passed before husband's cell phone rings. Aide can't control him, we have to come and get him. On the way to pick him up I said to my husband, " Bet the police get there before us." And I was right. Ds#4 made an abuse accusation against the aide and I had to talk the police out of taking it seriously. Aide is freaking out because abuse accusations can cost you your job and keep you from ever working with children again. I know how he feels, I lived in terror of this for many years, but I'm so burned out I just don't care anymore. If someone wants to believe some behavior disordered child's obviously false accusation they can just come in and take all my kids and try to find someone else crazy enough to take them in. My bio daughter has turned 18 and they can no longer touch her. (If you're accused they take ALL the kids, including your biological ones). And If I'm banned from volunteer work at the school and banned from working with kids, well, I hardly care anymore.
How could I possibly find a babysitter for this kid? My husband is out of town for the day, won't be back until late this evening and he cannot keep leaving work or he will get fired.
Last week the therapist at the residential facility for ds#2 says to me, "You and your husband are not willing to really give much time to helping this child, are you?" and I just lost it, said things I've never said to a therapist before. How dare she act like I don't care. They want to say that he can come home because they will have all this help for us. Aides to give us some respite time, a special education placement, summer programs run especially for mentally ill kids (Ha! The same program that just kicked ds#4 out) and this is just such bull. These are the same services he had before he went into residential. And the school just kept calling us telling us to come get him because they can't control him and if we refuse they call crisis and an ambulance takes him to the emergency room and then we have to drop everything and run in there or be charged with child abandonment and then we sit in there for 6-7 hours til he calms down and then we take him home and next day we can do it all over again.
If that interferes with our jobs, well, our children really NEED us when they're in crisis.
Been there, done that, so tired of it. And the people in the emergency room will think we should spank them or we should love them more or we should SOMETHING, and hell if I knew what to do I would do it.
And everybody thinks that they could do better or we don't care enough, even people in the mental health field who ought to know better. I don't see any of them caring enough to try to be responsible 24/7.
Yesterday we had a restraint meeting for ds#3 and I waited around for it because I had said I would be available (didn't know ddau#5 was going to need surgery. Then as I'm going to leave for hospital they called about restraint meeting for ds#2 and I just told them I couldn't do it. So they were annoyed that I didn't have "10" minutes (it's always more like 15 or 20) for my son. We have to have a restraint meeting everytime ds#3 or 4 have to be in physical restraint which happens anywhere from 1-10 times a week. And nobody at the meetings ever has any new ideas about how to reduce the dependence on physical restraint, which is the point of the meetings. No, actually the point of the restraint meetings is to meet some requirement some agency came up with.
Ds#4's aide just called to tell me he quits because he doesn't feel comfortable working with ds. So yet another aide bites the dust. Ha! I don't blame him, but I feel like quitting right now, too. Dear son's #2, 3, and 4 are well known to our agency and it's going to take a while for them to find another aide willing to give him a try. It will be somebody naive enough or arrogant enough to think they can handle him so they will probably be very condescending to us for a short time.
Family therapist says, " You know, if your child had cancer no one would expect you to treat him yourself at home, but because it's a mental illness you're getting blamed. " Even if mental illness is caused by bad parenting (which is doubtful) I obviously didn't cause it because, HELLO, they didn't spend their early years here and they were seriously mentally ill when I adopted them. If 2 families adopt kids with cerebral palsy and one kid leans to walk while the other spends their life in a wheelchair, I really don't think anyone blames the parent of the child in a wheelchair or says their child would walk if they cared more. Some of my adopted kids actually go to school, hold jobs and do not have police records, so how is that possible if I am such an uncaring parent?
OK, rant over, I feel better now. Back to rl.
