Bless You, Lisa

I have a friend, an amazing person and mom. She is going through hell currently and for the most part, there is nothing any of us can do to help her. The people that CAN help her and countless other parents, don't get it. I know there are exceptions to that, but for the countless stories I hear and through my own personal experiences, they are few and very far between. Lisa adopted a RAD child for the second time last year. Her first, J, was a very traumatized little girl and Lisa was able to provide her with the support and care she needed to come such a long way. K, like I said, was adopted last year. Going in, Lisa knew K had experienced severe trauma at the hands of her own parents. If anyone could help K, it was/is Lisa. It is bad. Very bad. K has recently been diagnosed with DID on top of her original problems. K has several, like more than 30, personalities in her little mind and many of them are abusive to those around her, mainly to Lisa. After many, many months of abuse, K trying to run away, and her condition getting worse, Lisa made the very difficult (and completely correct) decision that K has to live somewhere that she has full time medical care. You may think this is a simple and obvious decision. It isn't. Parents of special needs children, especially mentally challenged, want to do everything they can to keep their children at home. This is because, in most cases, the system is not capable of helping our kids. They can provide a fairly safe place for the kids to stay but the therapy, the attachment, the one on one, that is provided best at home. In facilities, you are lucky if your child is accepted to stay due to the fact that most places can't deal with the severity of the behaviors. They can provide meds to sedate which does help in giving everyone involved a breather, but this doesn't do anything for healing. Healing happens best at home, in most cases. Problem is, if the behaviors are so severe a facility can't take them, how in the world is a family supposed to handle them?? We, as parents, do the research, talk to other parents, talk to specialists, attend therapy, read the books, watch the videos, attend the seminars...our world is about how to help our children. Especially in children with attachment disorders, attachment can ONLY happen WITH the family, and until attachment takes place, actual healing can't take place. So the decision to place our kids in a facility, even temporarily, is one of the hardest choices we can make. But in cases like K, it is really the only choice. Attachment isn't even a possibility with all the other major issues and behaviors she has going on. So Lisa, with her heart breaking in two, takes K to have her admitted and is told that she, herself, the mom of this little girl, is crazy and horrible. That because she has already been through the process a couple of times and K has blown in a fit of rage, one that is barely controllable by those around her and definitely not by Lisa on her own, Lisa refuses to take her home when the facility/hospital denies her admittance. Lisa not only has her own safety and K's safety to worry about, but also that of J. For SAFETY reasons, she refuses to put them all in that situation again and the Dr? He unleashes on Lisa and threatens to file abandonment charges. This Dr that is SUPPOSED to be trained on these situations and kids. I can only imagine how Lisa must have felt. It took every ounce of her being to make that trip in the first place and had to ONLY because the state K was adopted from, dear ol Texas, denied to pay for her any care or help, and then to be told she was a bad parent on top of it?? It brings me to tears. So many of us love her and offer any support we can but ultimately the ones that can really provide the help she needs, are a**holes. What kind of system, and I have heard it from so many different states, will file abandonment charges on a parent that isn't dumping their kid, they aren't denying them care or love, they are doing what is necessary and they need help. Help from the system that is supposed to be set up to provide exactly that!! I know at least five families at this very moment that have been charged with abandonment for the mere fact that they won't bring their children back into their homes due to SAFETY. The ill child's safety, other children living in the home, the parent's safety, and the state(s) won't do a damn thing to help other than judge these parents whose hands are tied behind their backs. How is that helping anyone? The money the parents don't have to help their kids and that the state doesn't want to spend?? They spend it on punishing the parents instead of helping the kids. Something, some THINGS, need to change! Now! I don't know where to begin and I personally know people who are tackling this very thing with government officials. Unfortunately, unless you live this, there is no real way to understand it. It isn't a priority and honestly, most of us parents are looked at as crazy ourselves. We witness so many behaviors from our children in the privacy of our home that no one else will ever see in our children. The schools, Drs, friends, family, all think WE are the problem. Those little angels could never be capable of what we say. And that's ok, we understand that from everyone, everyone EXCEPT those supposedly trained to know this and are to help us. But in many cases, they don't get it either. Where do we start? What will make the difference that nothing else has thus far? The parents are in the media all the time, shown to be horrible parents that leave their kids out in the cold. I know there are some situations where that exact thing is actually happening. But in so many cases, it isn't. There are parents that love their kids more than anything, that want them home if they could have them there safely, that visit their kids constantly and call them and write them and miss the hell out of them. The kids just need help that the family can't provide and the family is punished on top of the punishments of fear, abuse, sleeplessness, heartbreak, judgement, isolation, trying to protect their other children and themselves, going rounds with the schools, and not being able to do enough for their child. It isn't fair. It isn't right. Change MUST happen.

Mother and Child (detail from The Three Ages of Woman), c.1905 Art by Gustav Klimt