There are no minors residing in my house right now. I don't say children because my husband Thorn acts like a child most of the time, so I typically have 3 kids at home.
Rosie (14, NT) just left for the culminating activity of her Jewish day school experience, the 8th grade class trip to Israel. She will be there for two and one-half weeks. How blase these kids are. They certainly were excited about the trip, but more for the ability to spend time with each other and their Haifa sister school friends, then about the idea of going to a foreign country.
Some of the moms are very worried about possible dangers over there. I'll certainly worry if I hear that something happened, but until then, I'm just too burnt out from everything that I've been doing to get the proper treatment for her older brother. Oh yeah, the correct thing to write is that I have faith in the tour organizer, in conjunction with the Israeli government, that the kids won't go anyplace dangerous. The kids would moan about changes, but their itinerary WILL be changed if there is any hint of danger.
Rosie left early Sunday morning and tomorrow morning Abe (17, ADHD, PDD, miscellaneous other messed up diagnoses) comes home. Abe spent the last 3.5 weeks in two different psychiatric hospitals. I saw him this past Saturday and he does seem better. But it's easy to be "better" when you don't have any pressures on you.
I have definitely lost what little faith I had in the mental health care system because they gladly would have just turfed him out of the hospital and back home with no supports in place, except what we had before- which clearly wasn't working! I have certainly learned a lot about how to work the system since it seemed that I was the major player in getting him to an appropriate placement. We won't even go into the lack of official work that I accomplished at the office over the past 2 weeks.
It looked to me that they were planning on discharging him without any plan in place for his continued care. Nor were they very helpful about recommending any followup treatment for Abe. So, I am working with the school system, who are very helpful, to get him into a residential school where his education (high level. but learning disabilities), emotional (low level) and behavioral (problematic) issues can all be addressed in a inter-woven plan. But that takes time and some expertise in how to get the school system, our health insurance, and the state to split the cost of further treatment. It's all so horribly complex and because Abe isn't yet accepted into any state aid program, it's all fallen on my shoulders to be his social worker and advocate.
BTW, Abe came out of the hospital with yet another additional diagnosis: bipolar. I hoping that it will allow him access to services which kept turning him down previously.
So Abe is home and will start going to a psychiatric step-down day program without academics while we waits to hear from the residential schools we've applied to. There is a lot less stress on him since his sister isn't around and there's no schoolwork to be done. However, there still is the Thorn, and he can be a huge trigger for Abe. Unfortunately, the Thorn is unable to control his own behavior very well, so it's questionable whether or not they can get along until Abe is placed.
I'm taking part in the trading places game, also. I'm going away for a previously planned, long weekend. There's work to be done there, but (sigh) what a relief to get away.
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