Discouraged Dad
New Member
New to this site and asking for advice:
Need help.
Like everyone, its a LONG story. Long story short-ish: Our 15 year old son, who we adopted from Korea at 7 months, is in juvenile detention for another 10 days (30 days for violating probation - threats to family saying he would kill us, etc, etc, etc) and we are at the point where we feel we can not parent him and he will put me, my wife, and our two other children at risk of physical and emotional harm. We really feel like the situation has escalated and he will snap and do serious harm to us when he comes home. We have tried intensive family conselling with DSHS, been to several therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, etc off and end since he was 4 years old. His psychologist diagnosed him as CD, antisocial character traits, and we believe Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD). He lies, steals, yells, threatens, etc. difficult child states he will not take any medications and the psycologist said, in his case, he did not think it would help much, if at all anyway. He highly recommends a structured therapeutic boarding school for him but at $4k to $10k a month we can not do this.
We need help to see how we can get the courts (Washington State) to keep him and put him in state care (children's hospital and then Residential Treatment Center (RTC)), or a therapeutic foster home. He has kicked-in our bedroom door, kicked holes in the walls, threatened to kill us, or have his friends kill us and he says he does not want to live with us. Our whole family is stressed and scared. He is on probation for lying to a police officer and drugs possession so the court said we did not need an At Risk Youth petion. DSHS (government agency) gave us a month of intensive family therapy and said they can not do anything more. The social worker sent me a link to private therapeutic boarding school sites and health/school loan sites. We do not qualify.
I feel bad saying that we want the state to keep and help him, but we really feel like we have tried everything else and we can not influence him now. I started secretly recording him when he has a total meltdown and the threats and out-of-control yelling are unbelievable. He is really damaging our other kids and he keeps taking it to a higher level.
Sorry about the long story. We need advice on how to get the state to keep and help him. We have started researching a Dependency petition or trying to see how we can make him a Ward of the court. Can we just state that we can not take him back because we feel it is unsafe for our other kids? If anyone has experience or knowledge on options it would help.
Thanks,
Discouraged Dad
Need help.
Like everyone, its a LONG story. Long story short-ish: Our 15 year old son, who we adopted from Korea at 7 months, is in juvenile detention for another 10 days (30 days for violating probation - threats to family saying he would kill us, etc, etc, etc) and we are at the point where we feel we can not parent him and he will put me, my wife, and our two other children at risk of physical and emotional harm. We really feel like the situation has escalated and he will snap and do serious harm to us when he comes home. We have tried intensive family conselling with DSHS, been to several therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, etc off and end since he was 4 years old. His psychologist diagnosed him as CD, antisocial character traits, and we believe Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD). He lies, steals, yells, threatens, etc. difficult child states he will not take any medications and the psycologist said, in his case, he did not think it would help much, if at all anyway. He highly recommends a structured therapeutic boarding school for him but at $4k to $10k a month we can not do this.
We need help to see how we can get the courts (Washington State) to keep him and put him in state care (children's hospital and then Residential Treatment Center (RTC)), or a therapeutic foster home. He has kicked-in our bedroom door, kicked holes in the walls, threatened to kill us, or have his friends kill us and he says he does not want to live with us. Our whole family is stressed and scared. He is on probation for lying to a police officer and drugs possession so the court said we did not need an At Risk Youth petion. DSHS (government agency) gave us a month of intensive family therapy and said they can not do anything more. The social worker sent me a link to private therapeutic boarding school sites and health/school loan sites. We do not qualify.
I feel bad saying that we want the state to keep and help him, but we really feel like we have tried everything else and we can not influence him now. I started secretly recording him when he has a total meltdown and the threats and out-of-control yelling are unbelievable. He is really damaging our other kids and he keeps taking it to a higher level.
Sorry about the long story. We need advice on how to get the state to keep and help him. We have started researching a Dependency petition or trying to see how we can make him a Ward of the court. Can we just state that we can not take him back because we feel it is unsafe for our other kids? If anyone has experience or knowledge on options it would help.
Thanks,
Discouraged Dad