This is a date I will never forget. There are certain dates that a mother never forgets. The day she was proposed to, her wedding date, the date her child is born, and she never forgets the day she admits her child to a psychiatric hospital.
I had been looking for therapy help for my son. I knew I had to get him help and I was trying to find someone that would work with us financially. I had found one place that would work with us based upon income, but I had to take my son to an "intake" appointment and the earliest one they had was 4 1/2 weeks away. I signed him up for that appointment and also put him on a list so that if someone cancelled they might call us for an earlier appointment. The school knew I was trying to get him help and I was reminded of how badly my son was behaving. I would fire off more letters asking them to evaluate him for an IEP and got no results. I was expected to fix my son alone with no help from them. I had a parent advocate I was talking to and she was telling me how to do things with them. I signed consent for her to talk to the school and she grew as frustrated as I was. Then came that fateful day.....
I received a call from the school yet again. One of my requests to them was that if he's having a rough day to call me and I would go get him atleast until I could get him back into therapy. The school decided that he was hitting (they called it assault and battery) to get out of school and no matter what they would keep him all day. This day was particularly bad for him. I had made a request that school assemblies not be a requirement for him to attend. I knew that having him sit in the gym with the entire school was a trigger for him. Too many kids in a confined space! I was of course denied and was told that they didn't have the staff to have someone sit with him in his classroom while the rest of the school went to the gym. This day was an assembly day and he of course hit the teacher assigned to sit next to him and was physically dragged to the office. Once in the office he was made to sit and write a letter apologizing to the teacher he had hit. He didn't get to write that letter because they caught him trying to stab himself with the pencil. He was hoping that he could hurt himself bad enough to be sent home. They took the pencil from him and he found scissor's and was trying to cut his fingers. Those were taken away and by this time it was time to get on the bus and come home.
I have always wondered something. He was made to apologize to the teacher's he hit, but they would never apologize for the stuff they said to him? In my mind "what's good for the goose is good for the gander". You want him to apologize, but you won't say you're sorry for the horrible things you've said to him? Of course they saw nothing wrong with how they treated my child.
I called the office where I was waiting for his intake appointment for therapy and they couldn't help me. I called other therapy office's hoping someone could get me in within the next few days and everyone was booked solid. I then called his pediatrician to see who could help me. Would the ER help me if I brought him in? Where could I go for help? I was told about this hospital so I brought my son there. The psychologist on duty decided that my son met criteria to be admitted and so my son spent the next 9 days in this hospital....
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