Thursday, June 29, 2006

Hitting the Wall and FAS Reflections

There is a point in time at night that I just can’t make myself do anything else. After hours at my desk today, I’ve hit the wall. I need a change of scenery.

Last night Mike and Kari and two of their kids came over for dessert. She loaned me the book Damaged Angels and thanks to therapy for 3 kids today, I got through about 100 pages of it.

There was a section that truly hit home for me. It is on page 106 and the section is called, “When in Doubt, Blame the Parents. In talking about her daughter, the author says, ”When I think back to raising Colette, what was hardest was not Colette’s difficult behavior, but the uninformed arrogance and denial of many professionals who shifted the blame to us.“

Later in that section she is quoting parents who had their child in residential treatment. ”The psychiatrist said that ... our family was wrong for this child -- that he actually shouldn’t be in our family ... They wrote into his records that our family as dysfunctional and that I wwas the cause of the child’s problems. The doctor said that our son would be better off without a family. When I asked what kind of placement she’d suggest, she said they had nothing to offer.“

I don’t know why it is comforting to know that someone else has been through what we are going through, but it really is. It almost sounds identical to some of the stuff that has happened to us. In reading the book, I am finding that we have it pretty good compared to what some have been through and it gives me hope to keep plugging away.

But it truly is unfortunate that good people, taking on FASD kids unaware, are put through years of horrible experiences and in attempts to find them help, are considered to be their problem.

I realize this is my soap box lately, but it is a VERY hard thing to go through.

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