So we received some good news
this week in that my son has officially been placed on the waiting list for
urgent placement at a youth care/ therapy facility this although still heart-breaking
for me as a mother is at least a step in the right direction for getting the
help we so desperately need, these past few weeks have been incredibly stressful
and health wise we have all gone down one after another which has been well
rather less than fun but we seem to be on the better end of it and we can now
only hope that a place becomes available soon.
Something that has been playing
on my mind lately is how we as a family as well as those around us struggle to
treat or approach a child like our son.
What I mean by that is that my
son we have established hit puberty at a very young age around the age of 8/9
so he has pretty much developed physically to the age of a 15 year old and
looks older than what he is, this combined with his IQ and his obsessive need
to eves drop or include himself into adult conversation means that most people;
us included tend to treat him like a 16 year old forgetting in the end that he
is in actual fact only 12 and still very much a child.
It’s not that we aren’t aware of
course we are and there are very definite moments where you can see his
immature/naïve nature pulling through but for the most part it is incredibly
difficult to face a child who carries themselves as an older child without
forgetting exactly who you are dealing with, this makes discipline and even
standard conversation incredibly hard.
Often if we are in a situation
with new people who do not actually know who our son is or how old he actually
is I find the adults talking to him as if he is a young adult or even an adult and
these people are incredibly surprised when I tell them his actual age, it is
incredibly difficult when you have a child who is making adult decisions/
choices, who sees themselves as older/ better/wiser (many do but this is a
whole other level), who has the intellect to carry an adult conversation
although his grandiose beliefs within his own intellect often show that whilst
he may have the intellect he doesn’t always use it, I digress but it is
incredibly difficult as a parent to know what is right, I mean you don’t want
to treat him like a child because of his issues and what he isn’t and is aware
of but at the same time he is still a child and even though his hormones and
body have developed there are of course certain parts of the brain that do not
develop until a certain stage of adolescence or early adult hood which means
that even though he walks likes like a duck, talks like a duck and believes he
is a duck he isn’t in fact a duck – not yet anyway.
Unfortunately we are in a
situation where my son is around adults all day every day and very few
children, in fact the only children he really spends time with are his brothers
this of course is a result of his behavior and choices but it doesn’t make it
any easier.
I am really hoping that this
placement will come through soon and that by placing him into a facility where
he not only has access to therapy and care within a space and environment that
understands him but where he also has the chance to once again socialise in an
age appropriate environment will open the doors we need to heal not only for my
son but for our family as a whole, I’m not going to lie our family is broken
and I cannot remember the last time we just had peace or where our lives were
just not utterly consumed by mania, I am literally holding on to that promise
of help, the light at the end of what has been an incredibly dark tunnel.
