P.S.

Part of Toots' plan of leaving the hospital and setting herself up is to return to the BOCES special high school where she has already flamed out twice. Would they even give her a third shot?

I emailed The Ninja's guidance counselor this morning. He met with Ninja briefly, and they will have a longer discussion on Wednesday.

Keeps piling up

Last night, Toots punched a wall on her unit at Children's Hospital. She does this frequently, and has broken her right wrist several times. Not this time, thankfully. Just got a phone call. Today in school, she was having a verbal altercation with another girl. A male teacher stepped in and tried to break it up. Toots stabbed him in the side with a pencil.

Just broke the skin, fortunately.

I get so I don't even feel much at the announcement of new atrocities. It's just same old, same old with Toots, ten years' worth of it.

She thinks she is going to college when she finishes high school. We can't imagine how she would navigate a campus environment or make it through a class.

Walking in the rain and making plans

On Saturday, Toots and I participated in the NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) walk at Jones Beach on Long Island. About 20 staff, 3 girls, and 2 parents walked as the Children’s Hospital team. Lots of staff, consumers, and family members from many agencies, lots of enthusiasm, and free lunch at the end. It would have been fun….had it not rained in torrents during a good part of the walk. I had picked up disposable ponchos at the dollar store the day before, but Toots didn’t want to wear one. Well, I took advantage of one, and the others were used also…..the plastic covering helped somewhat, though I still got pretty soaked, and Toots got very soaked. But we finished the entire walk, all 5K. Went all the way to the turnaround spot and walked back. I can’t even recall when I last walked so far.

When it was over, I needed hot coffee and some food that wasn’t a hot dog. Toots and I went to a diner, and had a good talk over our meal. I think her new medication may be helping her focus her thoughts and plan for the future. She actually sounded realistic in her thinking (although I remain skeptical that she will be able to handle a post-secondary program). Toots definitely wants to stay in school and graduate (with Mom cheering inwardly at hearing this!). She doesn’t want to just get a GED, because “you can’t get any kind of a job with that.”

Toots also talked some more about getting an apartment, either by herself or with another person. She asked how much government funding would be available for her. I told her no one could predict that at this point (pending the results of the election). But I am so pleased that she is at least considering her options in a rational way, rather than just fastening on the goal of being a rock star.

Maybe we are seeing some actual progress. Maybe, just maybe, she is maturing.

Does it ever let up?

We have had a rough week with The Ninja. He has been engaging in something new - cutting class. He skipped out of periods 6 and 7, this past Monday and Wednesday. He almost had me believing his story about Monday, that he was in the Counseling Center having additional individual testing. But, mom thought, why was that going on if he already had his triennial review testing done last month? For Wednesday, he tried to convince me that the teachers had accidentally marked him absent. Yeah, right. That's in keeping with the dodge from last year, when he claimed that he had handed in homework assignments that his teachers had forgotten to enter in their books.

So, after some stern talking yesterday, Ninja admitted that he cut these two classes to join his friends in the cafeteria during THEIR lunch periods, and then took his own regular lunch time as well. (Steam coming out of mom's ears.) Little Mr. Social Butterfly. I've always been glad that Ninja is so good at making friends. Until now. Grrr.

So, his consequence is that he loses the use of his XBox for two weeks. Two weeks for two occasions of cutting and lying. He says he doesn't care, but we know he does.

The thing is, you can run but you can't hide, in his school. We get an email and a robo-call informing us of his absence from classes. How knuckleheaded can you get?

This had better stop happening. He says it will. Stay tuned.

On the other hand, he and we could have many worse problems.

Update

I spent last week with my mom in south Florida. Since my dad passed away four years ago, she continues to be a snowbird, spending half the year in New Jersey and half the year in Florida. She wants to keep doing this as long as she can, and we hope that will be true for a while.

As I think I mentioned before, Toots moved into a girls' residence last month. We are having her at home every other weekend, more or less. She says she likes being home, but when she is here she keeps asking us to take her places - "Can we go to the movies? Can we go to Panera Bread? Can we go to the dollar store?" - regardless of what we are doing or have planned. Shopping and eating are her twin passions. When Toots is at the house, she can frequently go out on shopping trips or excursions with staff.

Being home does not seem to make her happy. Being at the residence doesn't seem to make her happy, either. We despair as to whether she will ever find a place where she can be happy.

Since Toots was in the hospital from the end of June until December, she received very little in the way of education. The hospital offered two hours of instruction per day, but the kids were not made to go, and from when she communicated, I have serious doubts whether it was worth anything. She told me one day that a "school" assignment at the hospital had been, "Make a list of all the team sports you know." Toots is nominally in eleventh grade. SIGH.

Since she moved into the residence, she has been receiving homebound instruction, also supposedly for two hours each day. The tutor often calls to cancel.

Last week, we had the screening to determine whether Toots would return to the special ed high school she attended from January to June of 2011. (A number of her new housemates also attend.) She had been saying for several days that she didn't want to go back there, she wanted to attend another alternative school program (which the abovementioned tutor had told her about). Upon investigation, it proves that the alternative school cannot meet her psychiatric needs, and it would not be an appropriate setting for her.

Anyway. We went to the screening, and the upshot is that Toots is accepted (and, as of this minute, is willing) to return to school tomorrow. While we were there, she saw a number of faculty members and friends who were happy to see her and expressed gladness that she is returning. I hope it actually happens tomorrow morning. She has gotten into the habit of sleeping very late, and I hope the house staff do not have trouble getting her out of bed to meet the bus. We gave her money to have her hair cut and styled today, and a member of the staff is taking her. She is a teenager, after all, and she does want to look good. It is hard, sometimes, to remember that she is just a kid.

I have many things to do today. I am not working outside of home at present (though I am doing some freelance writing and other things), and I have errands to run and projects to complete. When I have time (later today maybe? Ha), I need to sit down and figure out how to get the word out that I'm back online.