Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Waaah
I met with Timothy's psychologist/behavior analyst yesterday.
I went by myself because I wanted to talk about what the future may hold for him and us. I wanted to cover the whole range of possiblities, from best case to worst case, and my wife has said that she just isn't up to talking about worst case.
It was not a fun experience. I'm not going to post all the bloody details here, but the short version is that on the current path, in Timothy's adolescence he is most likely going to require constant 2-on-1 supervision. She said that she could envision it being necessary by the time he reaches 6th grade.
That won't be possible in our home. Which means to keep every safe (mostly Timothy, it's far more likely that he would endanger himself than hurt other people) we'd have to place him in the care of the state.
I'm very distressed about that idea. But I have to admit that I sometimes suspect that Timothy would be better off not living with us--it's extremely difficult for us to provide him with all the things that he needs (not to mention providing our older son witha ll the things he needs). My wife is not able to even discuss the possibility of him not living with us. For her, she can contemplate him going off to live in a group home when he turns 21 (or maybe 18), but anything before that is to horrible to even think about.
I talked with the psychologist about what we need to do to maximize the odds that Timothy will be able to live with us until around 18. She said for that to happen without significantly endangering him, he needs several years of all his time and activities being extremely rigid and structured, so that he really has no alternatives but to do what we want him to do. Without that she doesn't think that he will learn to communicate effectively or to moderate his extreme impulsivness.
The big problem is that while a very rigid, structured lifestyle would be really good for Timothy and probably for Jason as well, it would be really bad for my wife. So bad for her, that I don't think she's able to do it, at least not as our life is now. So bad for her, that I'm not sure that she could even let someone else do it. We're working on toliet training Timothy, and the process is very rigid. Once you take him into the bathroom to start a session, you don't take him out until he has urinated. It's working--he's urinated into the toilet about 10 times now. But sometimes you have stay in the bathroom with him for over an hour. So far my wife hasn't taken him in to use the bathroom. Staying in there with him for a long time while he is whining and crying is too hard for her. She has also tried to get me to let him out without going during some of the longer session (generally whenever it goes over an hour).
If the psychologist is right, and my gut instinct is that she is right, Timothy isn't going to make much progress without the rigdly structured environment. I'm not sure how we can provide that environment if my wife is at home with him all the time. She's said many times that she doesn't want to work full time, she needs (for her own sake) to be highly involved in Timothy's care.
I don't know how we're going to resolve the contradictory wants and needs. Right now my wife is so overwhelmed and exhausted she isn't really able to work with me to try and figure it out. We really need to talk about what tradeoffs we're willing and able to make in service of the goal keeping Timothy in our home until he is an adult. And at the moment we can't. I hope we can before it is too late and all of our options are gone.
I went by myself because I wanted to talk about what the future may hold for him and us. I wanted to cover the whole range of possiblities, from best case to worst case, and my wife has said that she just isn't up to talking about worst case.
It was not a fun experience. I'm not going to post all the bloody details here, but the short version is that on the current path, in Timothy's adolescence he is most likely going to require constant 2-on-1 supervision. She said that she could envision it being necessary by the time he reaches 6th grade.
That won't be possible in our home. Which means to keep every safe (mostly Timothy, it's far more likely that he would endanger himself than hurt other people) we'd have to place him in the care of the state.
I'm very distressed about that idea. But I have to admit that I sometimes suspect that Timothy would be better off not living with us--it's extremely difficult for us to provide him with all the things that he needs (not to mention providing our older son witha ll the things he needs). My wife is not able to even discuss the possibility of him not living with us. For her, she can contemplate him going off to live in a group home when he turns 21 (or maybe 18), but anything before that is to horrible to even think about.
I talked with the psychologist about what we need to do to maximize the odds that Timothy will be able to live with us until around 18. She said for that to happen without significantly endangering him, he needs several years of all his time and activities being extremely rigid and structured, so that he really has no alternatives but to do what we want him to do. Without that she doesn't think that he will learn to communicate effectively or to moderate his extreme impulsivness.
The big problem is that while a very rigid, structured lifestyle would be really good for Timothy and probably for Jason as well, it would be really bad for my wife. So bad for her, that I don't think she's able to do it, at least not as our life is now. So bad for her, that I'm not sure that she could even let someone else do it. We're working on toliet training Timothy, and the process is very rigid. Once you take him into the bathroom to start a session, you don't take him out until he has urinated. It's working--he's urinated into the toilet about 10 times now. But sometimes you have stay in the bathroom with him for over an hour. So far my wife hasn't taken him in to use the bathroom. Staying in there with him for a long time while he is whining and crying is too hard for her. She has also tried to get me to let him out without going during some of the longer session (generally whenever it goes over an hour).
If the psychologist is right, and my gut instinct is that she is right, Timothy isn't going to make much progress without the rigdly structured environment. I'm not sure how we can provide that environment if my wife is at home with him all the time. She's said many times that she doesn't want to work full time, she needs (for her own sake) to be highly involved in Timothy's care.
I don't know how we're going to resolve the contradictory wants and needs. Right now my wife is so overwhelmed and exhausted she isn't really able to work with me to try and figure it out. We really need to talk about what tradeoffs we're willing and able to make in service of the goal keeping Timothy in our home until he is an adult. And at the moment we can't. I hope we can before it is too late and all of our options are gone.
