P.S. I hate the image you added which I guess was the goal.
I AM REACHING OUT..... but you are not hearing me, telling me to throw every single thing out. How about when they say the same things and are at home.... after taking a bottle full of pills, or cut their wrists? I GET IT AND I AM NOT GIVING UP YET.
Funny Psy told me to come here and now I am told to go back there. Thanx.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I want to address some points you made and also clarify a few of my own.
You are right in advising against projecting my fears for my child’s future happiness because of an unspoken DX. It is not my place, it is unfair and can be detrimental to him and our relationship. Who am I to judge his future? But that is my fear, and I was being honest about it.
“what you can't get from a program is the opportunity to screw up and live with it.”
This is true but as we also know this is true w/o a program. My child made 2-3 suicide attempts and IF he had succeeded I could never have lived with it.
“Programs are an artificial world that cuts a kid off from the cause and effect reality of society.”
Maybe. My child lives in society as you and I do but he does not get it! He is above the rules that we abide by, even those of us to pride ourselves in our Acting UP! But he does not see the cause and effect of HIS actions. He interprets effects as external causes.
To have unbiased information on who are running these programs, what their motivations are and what the documented results are would be invaluable. It is very difficult (if not impossible) for me to trust anyone with my child, for fear that they might have little or no good motives.
In an ideal world, wouldn't a genuinely therapeutic program be able to create an environment where the client could benefit, that they could see themselves and their role in that microcosm of society, their causes and the effects would be tangible and indisputable.
I know that I and many other parents are grasping for straws in the dark… WE GET IT! But doing nothing is also putting their lives at risk this is why I am here. When he is ready to do for himself that will be a wonderful day. I am only trying to offer him the best opportunity and it is up to him to take it or not. Sort of leading the horse to water.
“What artificially imposed consequence can even come close to the learning gained from natural consequences, which are incurred by each and everyone of us every single time we make a mistake?”
He feels there are no consequences… within the home, or even within the school's society. He weighs the effort it would take to just try, just to make an effort and he just does not want to make that effort.
He has no interest in being part of the family, interacting with anyone, shows no basic respect for those he lives with at home. He has very few friends (maybe 2) and spends too many hours isolated. I want to shake him and say wake up.... but I know I can not, anymore. That’s why I thought maybe a professional could help him make things "click"
“He has been stabilized in the artificial world of a TBS that doesn't adequately prepare him for reality.”
He comes home each week from Friday to Sunday, at a minimum. This can be and often is a comfort for all of us. While he is at school we talk whenever he wants (cell phones are allowed.) When he feels he needs more time away from school he comes home early to where we have no means to keep him engaged. I understand it needs to come from him. We are trying to just keep some level of contact with the “outside” world in his life until he is ready to do it himself.
The school has an opportunity to provide a meaningful therapeutic environment for him, to hold him accountable (as I have not been able to do) for his actions. They could be taking even just “baby steps” to help him learn some basic coping strategies, take ownership of himself, his actions, his relationships… and hopefully his dreams and goals… but they don’t.
“Bring him home and let him find his own way. Stop treating him like he is something out of the ordinary for having Bipolar disorder and all the rest of the alphabet soup syndromes. In the end he is a person not the disorder.”
You are right. It is not the dx of Bipolar that is the problem. It is his refusal to live in the world with others with at least a minimum of respect and accountability. It hurts us to see his lack of effort, hope, goals. He acknowledges he is lonely and wants friends but avoids making any friends because “friendships hurt too much”.