This year has been about healing and sacrifice. I used to strongly believe that family is supposed to stay together , no matter what. I recently learned love alone is not enough to keep a family together. I got my kids back when their father died in 2019. Three kids. Twin girls and their older brother. I knew going in this was going to be a lot for me to handle. Still I got custody, found an apartment and transferred them into a new school. Most importantly, I got us all into counseling. Things were okay for a little while.
My son started displaying behaviors that got me called to the school several times. It made sense. He lost his father and got a new home and school within two months. He was only 8 years old by the time that happened. So I did what I was supposed to do. I got him help. I talked to his school clinician and sought out services for my kids. I had him on every waiting list I could find. The behaviors did not cease. It became destructive. By the time he was 10, he had broken a T.V. the back door and his bedroom window. He felt the need to bully his sisters into doing what he wanted. Which mainly resulted in him hogging the T.V. and the PS4. Eventually he was diagnosed with ADHD. His clinician helped me get my son into a temporary group home. He got a new therapist that he seemed to actually connect with.
Therapy was helpful. But he was young and wanted friends. So he did what any young person does. He got mixed up with the wrong friends. To be honest they weren’t really friends to him at all. They were fair-weather friends who turned into enemies and then bullies. The end result was him getting jumped by them on the way home and having to fight his way there. The parents then called the police on him with the intent on criminalizing him. I protected him as best as I could. I got a lawyer. We fought it in court with the support of our community. An order was placed to protect him from those bullies. But within just a couple of months, he started hanging out with them again. I warned him as best I could. He thought he knew better. Then he started returning to the house late. Way past his bed time.
I got reports from parents in the community of him stealing bikes and participating in other random acts of vandalism in our neighborhood. I tried to discuss it with him in therapy. His solution for that was refusing therapy. After he refused it enough the therapist stopped making appointments.