UPDATE On My Son posted 2/21/2009 5:21:47 PM | 4 kudos what's this?     report abuse

tentfire

Update On My Asperger's Son

Many of you may remember blogs I wrote quite awhile back about my youngest son ("Update on my Asperger's Son" and "Roller Coaster Battles"). I adopted him when he was 8, classified as unadoptable, right out of a psychiatric hospital. In the womb he (and his sister whom I also adopted - was unable to get their baby brother) was pumped full of an assortment of drugs, alcohol, and, of course, cigarettes. After they were born, they were repeatedly abused in every sense of the word, to its severest degrees by many people. They lived the first several years of their lives in a world that the average American will never know exists in our country. They came to me with an ENORMOUS amount of bottled up anger, and rightly so. I will write about his sister another time. This blog is an update on Carl (not his actual name).

Among Carl's diagnosis are: Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, PTSD, MR, ADHD, ODD/RAD, and Asperger's Syndrome. The road to raise him was so very long and hard, though I was blessed to have a wonderful support system of family, friends, officers, counselors, juvenile affairs worker, crisis center employees, and a great judge (he had a few arrests). But not everyone was quite so supportive. Many, MANY, nosey busy bodies and judgmental know-it-alls often got in the way of progress, often reversing progress. Over and over, many (even people close to me), begged me to give up on him, "Just get rid of him, he's a lost cause". . . . "He's gonna spend his life in jail anyway". . . . "Just put him in an institute, walk away and save yourself the trouble". . . . and my personal favorite, "He's not worth it, You're wasting your time."

We hopped from home-to-hospital-home-hospital-repeat for years. We found most of the juvenile psyche wards in our half of Oklahoma and beyond. Getting the right help in our system is nearly impossible. They just dope these kids up and send them home. All the anger he held onto made him extremely violent. Over the years I sustained at least two concussions, loose teeth, numerous cuts, scrapes and bruises, dislocated shoulder, along with a few broken bones. Not to mention afraid to sleep after waking up to find him staring down at me, "I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to do it [meaning kill me]", the toll the stress took on my health and the immeasurable damages to my house. But I refused to give up on him. Deep down there was a very lovable child buried beneath all that hate and anger. Every once in awhile he forgot his anger and let that lovable child briefly surface. Although those times were few, short-lived (lasting only minutes usually), and far between. I knew that child was in there and I desperately wanted to bring him to the surface.

As he passed age 16, even the counselors said he was too old to hold much hope for. Not long before he turned 17, a specialized Asperger's unit opened an hour from our home. With persistence and much help we got him in. He stayed there for the next year (I went often for visits, passes, and family therapy), and he made great progress. But as he turned 18 he badly regressed. He couldn't stay there (18 was the limit) and the decision as to where he should go next was tough. He was having violent outbursts that required 3 trained staff members to contain him (along with an injection) and the staff often got hurt. Even though he was making adamant threats to harm me and had recently tried on a pass, DHS tried every way they could to get me to bring him home with me. I felt so mean and guilty refusing to bring him home, but I just didn't feel it would be best for either one of us, for many, many reasons. I chose to put him in a specialized group home. After a long search one was found, but it is about 3 hours away. When I also refused to be his legal guardian, they decided he was capable of being his own guardian with financial guidance.

And now I am so very happy to report. . . . . . . . . .

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