Thank you for all your concern about the MIke situation. We have not decided exactly what to do yet. He didn't come home from yesterday's school day until 12:30 a.m. this morning and nearly drove me nuts this morning with not being ready on time. He intentionally did not get up until late (i reminded him several times) making all of us a little late this morning.
For all of you who are worrying about us, we are taking some precautions. Mike is not allowed here during times when neither Bart nor I are home. From now on, we will not leave young children here unsupervised. We are not done resolving the situation, but we are taking some steps toward it.
I debated for a long time whether or not I should even blog this, but I think that had we read a blog like this 8 years ago, maybe things would have gone differently. We are now taking steps with our younger kids to have services in place for them when they turn 18 so that this kind of situation does not reoccur.
Nobody wants to know this stuff when they are thinking about adopting, but the reality is that people need to know this stuff. It is better to be prepared. Trust me . . . we were clueless and could have done a much better job had we known.
5 comments:
Stop beating yourself up, Claudia. You might have approached this differently only to have ended up in the same place. FASD sucks. ~Kari
What exactly should I do to prevent this? I have a "Mike" who is 11 years old. What services do you recommend we line up? It seems to me there is nothing that will prevent this. I hate to be so pessimistic, but I can't even get a mental health SW for my kid because he hasn't been hospitalized, and he doesn't qualify for a DD SW because his IQ is too high. I am truly open to your ideas.
Ditto what Tracy says. My "Mike" is 13 and when we wanted to put him in a RTC this past spring because of some major (to us) issues, we were told he wasn't "bad enough" YET. The worker (who happened to be our adoption worker when we adopted him at age 1) said that his behaviors were more annoying than anything - well live with him for 12 years of annoying behavior and tell me it isn't serious. I guess we have to bide our time until he hurts himself or someone else OR the JJ system gets ahold of him for all of his stealing. Then we'll be admonished because we didn't do enough for him. It's always all our fault no matter how much we beg, plead, cajole or demand services for our kids. Some services are just non-existent around here, but we have to have something.....
Love the photo! How are the Texas boys adapting to the snow?
Nobody wants to know this stuff, but it's good that they do. You did what you thought was good and right. We all as parents make mistakes, but at some point our children are responsible for their own actions.
Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda, Remember-You didn't mess Mike up! Someone(s) else took care of that long before you and Bart came into the picture. You two did your best to heal him.
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