I have to write tonight to hopefully find calmness

  As I write my blog, I try to remember that things on the internet are visible to everyone, everywhere.  Since I want to be careful and make sure things are read with the correct intent, I don't like to share challenges with my boys schools until there is a resolution.

This year has been ripe with frustrations since October  with Matthew's new school program.  It just isn't a match.  I could list all of the reasons why it just isn't working, but truly it all comes down to a few main items:
1.  I don't believe he is being educated at a level that makes sense for him.  I think this causes him unnecessary stress, as a lot of the work is at a level that is beyond his reach.
2.  The communication with his team does not work- we don't speak the same language and are not on the same page.   I don't know how to fix this, and at this point I am too tired to continue to try.

On Friday, the day of the shootings in Newton, CT, I was in a meeting with the head of special education discussing what we were going to do for matthew.  I want him moved to another placement, and sadly there is no other placement for him.  That leaves us in quite a quandry, as my only option is to leave him where he is.

I offered that I would leave him where he is, and continue to work towards a peaceful resolution with his current team  if we could do the following:
1.  Ensure that no words of violence are used as vocabulary words.
2.  lower his level of work to the level his previous teachers felt was appropriate and see if that decreases his anxiety
3.  Continue to work towards finding a new placement.

My biggest fear in life is that Matthew will one day hurt someone.  I fear this more than anything else because if Matthew hurts someone else, it will be the biggest tragedy of his life in addition to the life of others.  Matthew is not a violent person at all.  I will say that again, Matthew does not have a violent bone in his body.  However, when Matthew is enraged, he is very aggressive.  Unfortunately, one never knows when he is going to explode and what sets him off one day would not upset him at all the next. 

I have begged, asked and pleaded that words of violence and aggression not be used as vocabulary words for Matthew:
Rifle, huntsmen and prison are a few of the recent vocabulary words that he has been "studying" even after my repeated requests. 

Why he needs to know what any of these words mean I don't understand.  I need to limit his exposure to violence because he already has a tendency towards aggression.  I don't need him reading passages about killing animals.  I don't need him reading passages about hunting with rifles.  I need him to read about peaceful topics.  Or even to read about situations of conflict and resolution so he has a chance to learn how to problem solve.

To be at a meeting to determine what can be done for my son educationally and to learn that nothing can be done was heart wrenching.  To leave that meeting and find out that a young man had shot 26 people truly hurt me to the core.  I feel like I have one chance in the world to make Matthew a productive member of society.

He came to me with a huge stack of things working against him- his IQ is very low, he had been exposed to alcohol prenatally, and the social history of his birth father is questionable.  Given all that is working against him, I have worked diligently to create success for Matthew.

There have been many incidents that have taken place inside the walls of my house that no one will ever know about.  You likely would find them hard to believe if you only know Matthew on the surface.   David and Jacob both know where to go when Matthew is angry and how to stay calm.  Jacob especially is a genius at helping deescalate the situation when Matthew is angry.  Until you have lived with a child with mental illness you will never, ever know what that is like.

Each and every time I have gotten to the point that i have decided Matthew needed help, I have called the local pychiatric hospital and been  told there were no beds.  When I found an emergency respite program and have called them, I have been told there is no bed.  We have waited a month for both of these programs to have beds open up.  A month in and out of crisis.  A month doing the best we can.  A month, 30 days, 30 nights, while he cycles!  And many of the times we have gotten to the point where a bed has become available and we have come through the crisis and are no longer in need of the bed.  I am exhausted, I need a break, but I will not use a crisis respite bed or a psychiatric hospital bed for me to rejuvenate.  That is not the purpose of those beds.  Additionally, Matthew needs to know that he belongs in our house.  He is a member of our family, and the only time he cannot be at home is when he is unsafe, so I will not take advantage of a bed that becomes available after 30 days if we are no longer in crisis.

Think of this in terms of any other illness or problem-
your heater breaks and no one can fix it for 30 days, it is mid winter.....do you wait and freeze?
your appendix is bursting- no surgeon can fix it for 30 days.....do you wait?
you are being assaulted by a stranger, the police can't come for 30 days....do you wait?

Of course you don't wait, you would be ridiculous for waiting!  You would never even consider waiting.  But when my child is an emotional wreck.  When we can't get in to see his psychiatrist, and my other boys are feeling unsafe, we wait. And we wait.  And we wait.  And I do my best, and I lean on my community.  And I take full advantage of the 3 hours of respite I get each week and hold David and Jacob a little closer and have some extra fun and rebuild our relationship for those 3 hours.

Tonight at the grocery store Mathew exploded.  The explosion was about food, of course, and the details are unimportant.  He laid on the floor of the grocery store kicking and screaming.  He begged another woman to take him home.   He laid back down and kicked and threatened to knock items off of the shelf.  I tried talking calmly.  I tried talking firmly.  I tried getting him to leave, I tried getting him engaged in shopping.  He laid on the ground screaming.

I finally walked with David and Jacob and assumed Matthew would follow.  He followed at a distance and I assumed he would settle down.  He for some reason got upset again and stopped at the deli counter.  This is where I was stopped by 3 staff members of the store to see if everything was ok.  They were wonderful for asking.  But there was no calming Matthew down.  He took off again and I said I was grabbing one more item and then leaving.  I knew that leaving in that moment wouldn't have worked, he wouldn't have left with me.  I hoped that just getting the last item, and giving him a few minutes would allow Matthew the chance to settle.  A staff member did a wonderful job talking to matthew and trying to calm him down.  Misty, at Hannaford, I owe you one!

After  I paid Matthew got in the car and I was seeing stars.  His entire behavior had embarrassed me.  There was no real reason for it.  We had been having a good day.  I don't know what switched for him.  I told him when we got home he would go to his room and think and that was again the beginning of the end.  He went to his room calmly for a while, and then erupted.  He giggled the giggle of someone in a manic phase, he cried, he screamed and he giggled the giggle again.

I went up to his room to talk to him and that is when I found the remains of another bag of chocolate and millions of gold coin wrappers.  The chocolate is for presents that I am giving to the boys teachers, no matter where I hide it he finds it.  It is more important to him than breathing.  The gold coin wrappers I am assuming he has been taking from Sunday school throughout the celebration of Chanukah.  These are gelt wrappers.   This is the 4th time we have cleaned up his room from wrappers and wrappers and wrappers.  Each time I get sick. How can I not protect him from himself?  How can he be so desperate for candy that he will risk so much?  He has vomited twice from eating so much candy, and yet he keeps eating it.  I don't understand, I can't understand.

When you are unable to make good decisions because your IQ is low and you do not see the world through the same lense as the average person, you make bad choices.  Matthew's life is full of bad choices.  The problem is that to teach him good choices requires him to have a person to act as a brain that walks around outside his body.  This is a full time job.  I already have a full time job!

I feel the need to speak loudly on behalf of those with mental illness.  I feel the need to beg the district one more time to understand that when we teach Matthew violent words for vocabulary words we are putting future contacts of his at risk.

There are so many opinions being thrown around on facebook these days about what happened to those poor, innocent children in Newton.  Of course none of them deserved to die.  None of the children of Sandy Hook Elementary deserved to see the ugly reality that they were face to face with on Friday morning.  However, there are other people who need to be remembered.  Adam Lanza had a mother, a father and a brother.  Only they know what life was like with Adam as a child.  Only they will know the private torture of knowing that their brother and son created this tragedy.

The autism community is speaking out with a vengeance that it is unfair to say that Adam had an autism spectrum disorder because this speaks poorly about all of those with autism.  I find that horrendous.  No one should ever be in such a horrible place that they feel the only way out is to kill children.  Whether Adam had autism or not does not give us the reason as to why he did what he did.  If Adam did have autism, that is just a  piece of who he was.  Additionally, if he had a mental illness, that is just a piece of who he was.

Matthew is not defined by his mental illness.  Matthew is a loving, funny, larger than life boy who loves simple things and cheers for everything in life!  He is passionate and funny.  However, he is tortured by mental illness, sometimes more tortured than others.  If our education system does not take this into consideration, we are doing Matthew a disservice.  If our political system does not find some way to manage the guns available to those who may use them unsafely, we are all at risk.

First and foremost though we need to stop spewing hatred and remember that every person has a mother, a father, a sibling and someone that cares about them.  Even  Adam Lanza was someone's grandson, nephew, and friend.

Mental health is as important if not more important that physical health.  We have got to provide support that is immediately available so that I can be sure that Matthew grows up safe so that everyone around him is also guaranteed their safety.