Posted by flame on October 12, 2006, at 7:46:52
Others might say that he is just a “criminal”. I am not ready to accept that. Our son has struggled his whole life … and we (his parents) right along with him. Why can’t we find someone that can help him? And the big question, CAN he be helped?? He was diagnosed in elementary school with ADD. As years progressed he had added to that as diagnosis oppositional defiant disorder and OCD. Since then .. about two years ago, a good psychiatrist (in my opinion) finally diagnosed him with aspergers. Which, quite obviously, has been the problem all along. Had he received help .. way back when, he may have been a whole lot better off now. Our son is currently on prozac and risperdal. (The risperdal is only .50 mg.)
We .. as his parents have gone through hell and back trying to help him work through three different “offenses” from this past May. They all turned out to misdemeanor charges, but on his record nonetheless. (There is no one in either my husbands or my family that has any kind of a record.) This is just so very over whelming for us .. we don’t know what to do for him any longer. He has two misdemeanor charges on his record ..that we were told could more than likely be expunged IF he kept his “nose clean” over the next five years. One charge was for illegal use of someone else’s credit card. (He is currently on probation for this) The other was A/B .. he head-locked a girl because she was charging at him. He left marks, she called police, he ended up in jail. (He did community service, paid fines and now has the record. They did not “do” any additional probation time, since he was already on it for the other offense.
Now, after working through all of this and all of us going through hell .. he tells me that the sheriff dept phone number is showing up on our caller ID. I didn’t think too much of it (naïve, aren’t I?) I said it probably was just a wrong number .. or whatever. He became obsessive, calling the number and trying to find out why they would be calling. This was yesterday. He finally called me last night on my cell phone .. while I was out with husband and friends and told me he thinks he might know why they called. And proceeded to tell me that he took someone’s purse out of a car in a parking lot where he was at. He said, he found no money and dumped the purse not too far away. He tells me he doesn’t know WHY he did this again. He was a total wreck throughout the whole processing procedures of his other offenses over this past summer. How come he didn’t “learn” from that? What is “making” him do this?
I am so totally beside myself!!! We have, throughout this last springs ordeal, taken him to a “special counselor” AND a new psychiatrist. No one can advocate doing anything “different” for our son. I am thinking that he needs to be put into some kind of home/institution so that he can get the much needed help that he obviously needs. Why can’t something like this be available to him?
What can we .. as parents do for our son? I believe that he would not “survive” in any kind of a jail setting. He says way too many "wrong" things and his OCD can/does drive people nuts. Of course, as his parent .. I can’t stand the thought that he would have to spend any time there. If this is indeed “mental” it wouldn’t do him any good anyways, would it?
I haven't really filled in the whole story here, but I guess this post is long enough.
Wondering if anyone here has any input for me ...?
poster:flame
thread:694065
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20061012/msgs/694065.html