I gave him away. Just like that, I left him. This was an abandonment.
For years, I begged doctors to help him. To help me help him. I started with pediatricians.
"Awe, just read to him and talk to him more. He'll be fine. You have to teach him these things, mom. All babies are different."
It's what they would always say when I told them...
"He doesn't hear me. It's like he is in his own world. He never responds. He gets angry if I try to interact with him. He isn't like any of my other babies. He won’t make eye contact. He doesn’t talk. I’m not sure what to do.”
When he started Kindergarten his differences became apparent to others. Finally, I thought, we would get some help.
He rarely ever made it through a day of school without destroying entire classrooms. Teachers would have to evacuate the other children for their safety. They even locked him in a storage closet, once, until we got there. Joke was on them... that particular closet was full of bottles upon bottles of glitter. He opened each and every tiny container, spewing angry little sparkles all over the place. They had tried one too many times to get him to come to the circle for story time.
He was in 1st grade when the police were called for the first time.
"We've called the police and they are trying to catch him. Your son ran out of the building and is running down so-and-so Road. He cut through a neighborhood and has made it almost to the middle school. Wait.... I think they have him. Can you meet the police here?"
I was SCARED TO DEATH. What if they let go of him and he took off again? He was weaving in and out of the road, cars almost hitting him at speeds in excess of 50 mph. These officers pursued him on foot and in vehicles for miles before he got tired and gave up running. He was in 1st grade, for goodness sake! How could this be happening??
This was the first time he was hospitalized. Years went by. Hospitalization after hospitalization. Psychiatrists and therapists and evaluations. Special schools, IEP meetings, and day treatment programs. We had in-home therapists, community interventionists, and social workers in and out of our daily lives.
The other children, their whole world revolved around their brother’s therapy and they were struggling. Struggling with constant uproar…. With his violence… With their world being upside down. With not having a mom to help them. I was always too busy de-escalating, restraining, in a meeting, on the phone, calling the police, cleaning up entire rooms that were utterly and completely destroyed.
As a mom, I had nothing left to give them at the end of the day. My son didn't sleep. He was up before the sun and down long after the sun had set.
As a person, I was non-existent. Entire days were spent with my children locking themselves in a room while I tried to keep their brother from getting to them… from hurting himself.... from hurting me. I would make them meals and snacks, bringing them to the bedroom door for them to quickly take inside.
Through broken bones and purple bruises, I fought to hold onto him. I restrained him while calling 911, explaining to the dispatcher my child was the one growling like an animal and screaming he was going to kill us and himself. Why? He couldn’t have a 5th helping of spaghetti ….or someone else’s plate… or toy, or shoes, or whatever it was he wanted at that moment.
It wasn’t until 2016 that I began to give up. I had fought for him for 11 years. I had fought tooth and nail for him. I had begged every pediatrician, doctor, neurologist, therapist, every agency, every doctor, every psychiatrist, every crisis worker, every nurse at the ER every. single. time. the police brought him in on a mental health hold.
Their answer… more pills and another evaluation. Pills that raised his blood pressure, killed his kidneys, brought him to the brink of diabetes. And, for what? None of them helped. They all seemed to just make him worse.
An evaluation that deemed him “Cold”- “Callous”- “Unable to form attachments”- “psychopathic tendencies”- “Extreme risk for future violence”- “Potential for violence”-
My son's brain did not function properly. Some parts were over active, some were under active. He couldn't process love because he just didn't have the ability. He felt controlled in a world he didn't understand and that lead to one thing... anger.
"I am not supposed to tell you this. But you are a capable parent. In the mental health system, capable parents get less help than ones who refuse to fight for their children. Play the game. Tell them you can't keep him safe. You have to say that. You have to tell them you can't."
That's what a long time therapist told me the last time I saw him.
I will never forget when social services showed up at my door that day.
“It seems like you have done everything you possibly could to help him. Let us help.”
That's when I finally said it... "I can't. I can't keep him safe. I can't keep the other children safe from him. I can't do it."
He was removed from our home…. HIS home... on December 1st 2016. I thought he would *finally* get approved for a residential program that could help him. I thought, there was no way they could ignore his needs now. It was the hope that kept me going.
I fought through a year of court battles, hoping the judge would order him into a residential treatment program. Instead, he was placed in foster home after foster home. He was also kicked out of foster home after foster home. He was just too violent for anyone to handle.
In the legal system, once a child is removed from their home, you have 12-14 months to reunify them with their family. At the end of a year I was given 2 choices….
Despite his dangerous and violent daily attacks on children in our home and the foster homes, I could (A) let him come home, subjecting his siblings to more risks and risk having them removed for their own safety..... Or (B) I could sign my rights away as his parent. There was no in between with the state.
I plead over and over, “Get him into a residential program that can keep him safe while allowing us to still be there to support and love him. Please, I can’t let him come home. Please, I can’t do this. You have to help him! It’s not his fault. Please.”
The court ordered me to be the one to tell my son we were abandoning him. In reply I stood in front of the court and said, “I wouldn’t have it any other way. My son deserves that much. I would never EVER allow anyone else to tell him I had given up. That is on me. I failed him.”
I will never forget the look in his eyes when I told him he wouldn’t be coming home.
“I’m sorry, I was not enough. I am sorry, I *am not* enough. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you. I’m so sorry. I love you. I will always love you.” …. Then, I walked away.
For months, I cried. For months, after getting everyone settled from the day and sent up to bed, I couldn’t get to the shower fast enough. With the water streaming over my face, as if it would hide my tears… as if it could hide my pain... I placed my hands on the walls, bowing my head to pray.
I prayed, begging for God to take the pain away. With clenched fists glued to the wall, I threw my head back and screamed silently to the Heavens.
“Why?? Why did he have to rape me? Why did my son have to suffer for what his father was? Why, God, didn’t you save him from becoming this? Why didn’t you make me stronger? I can’t do this!”
I had never felt pain like this. I had never felt emotions so strong that they turned into physical hurt. My heart felt as if it was tearing into two. My body felt like it was on fire. Every muscle screamed inside right along with me. Then, I felt it break. It was like my heart stopped beating, if only for a split second, and tore in half. One for him and one for me.
Less than 30 days after I signed away my parental rights, I was told he’d been approved for a residential treatment program. The very residential program we had been begging for all of those years. All of that anger, pain, sadness, and loss I had felt came surging right back.
How could this be? Why did I have to give up my son? Why did my children have to forfeit their brother? We could have remained safely in his life. He didn’t have to be in this alone.
I still can't sort out my emotions from losing my son to the mental health system. I am angry no one listened when he was young. I am angry that I had to give up my child in order for him to qualify for a program I couldn't afford to pay cash for. I am angry that it costs 20 THOUSAND a month for a CHILD to get the help they need when they so desperately need it. I am angry that an insurance company was in charge of deciding if it was necessary and if he qualified for treatment.
I am afraid. I fear he will become his father. I fear he will will take what is not his in other ways than he did as a child. If he wanted it... he always took it, no matter the consequences. He didn't understand consequences and never understood why he couldn't just have something.
I am sad that he has never felt love like you and I do... and that he never will. He can't. He just doesn't have that particular brain function. How sad to live in a world with people so willing to love but to never be able to feel it.
I hurt for my son. I hurt for all the things I couldn't give him and he couldn't accept.
I hate that I am 1 of thousands of parents in this same fight. I hate that their child is falling through the cracks too.
I still cry, here and there. It's not fair. It's not fair he is alone in this world when he didn't have to be. It's not fair they push pills and refuse to look into brain function and neuro-therapies. It's just not fair.
The next time you see a parent at the grocery store struggling with their child... be kind. You never know how hard or for how long they have fought for their child.