Friday, December 3, 2010

Been a long week

Wohoo! Got the translation into Hindi to stop, so that's good news. Geesh, you'd at least think it would have translated into Kanada or Telagu, the two languages from Ch's background but no, somehow I got it stuck with Hindi.

I had to have E admitted to the Psychiatric Hospital last weekend. Out of the blue, she came to me and told me a horrific story about hurting her baby brother. That wasn't the final reason we had her admitted technically though. She's been increasingly violent since summer. In addition to the bizarre story she told, she had attempted to beat up her Daddy that morning. She's been averaging assaults about once a week at this point. Given that she was claiming to have hurt the baby, we felt her lack of impulse control had finally escalated to the point of requiring the hospital. Her Psychiatrist agreed.

What we've learned in the course of this week is that she has NOT hurt the baby. Unforutnately, she is having intrusive thoughts, which are not unheard of with her mental health issues.

They increased one of her meds and gave her four days of intensive therapy services. Then, sent her home with a referral for intensive in-home therapy services for now. We withdrew her from public school. Technically, she's a homeschooler for this month. However, she's already registered to start a virtual charter school next month. K12 is a public school option in a lot of states, which makes it free, but its an online charter school. I think it will make a good balance to keep me from having to be her teacher, while not requiring her to be in the school buildings where she gets bullied and is struggling to function.

I dearly wish my little girl didn't have to face all of this. However, I know if we are proactive now, we can give her the tools to function for her future without struggling. with mental health issues, the better you teach them as children to fight it and contain it, the better their succcess at being independent and functional later in life. Since DH has mental health issues, its always been my fear that one of my children would inherit it. It became clear last year that E is the lottery winner on that front. However, at this point in her life its about helping her not go down the scary road DH went down before he started fighting to function and be healthy.

The greatest irony though is that my father is not speaking to me. He too struggles with a child with mental health issues and will NOT push for services, therapy and support. There is nothing I can do about his drowning in this issue. I've tried to support him for the last year and he continues to feel overwhelmed and not make significant changes. I won't apologize for making the proactive and correct choices for E merely because he lacks the courage to do the same with my brother.

I don't know what is going on. I called him last weekend to let him know she was being hospitalized. I haven't heard from him again. However, he called my sister to trash me and she put him in his place, assuring him that we were absolutely resopnding appropriately and this IS a big deal that we're dealing with. I haven't heard from him since. I don't even know if he's aware that she was released or not. Unless someone else in the family has told him, he doesn't know. Since my mother left him, he's never gone more than 3 days without calling me and we're at a week now.

I'm trying to decide whether I'm going to call him and face this head-on...or whether I'm going to wait for him to call me and assume he's trying to process and not ready to talk yet.