Tuesday, 17 April 2018

Dealing with a therapist for my ASD teen (a bit of a vent).


Sorry if this comes off more "venty" than anything, but I wasn't sure where to post and wanted to see if we are crappy parents.WARNING!!! This is VERY long. I needed to talk / vent to other parents as my wife and I are extremely upset today, apologies.My 15 year old daughter is on the spectrum. You could put her into the aspie category (even though they don't use that term anymore). She has extreme social struggles, to the extent of being so overwhelmed at school that she has complete breakdowns (and has for many years). Her school has been fighting against her IEP and being a pain about honoring it. They also are not communicating with us often as well as disregarding her issues.This year especially has been a nightmare (freshman). And her behavior, grades and emotions on a downward spiral (at school). However considering she doesn't show emotion, it's hard to know how bad things are.Back many months ago for instance she wrote a three page letter to her case manager. Near the end she mentioned having suicidal idealizations. Her case manager decided to not share it with us, until after we raised some issues many days later. Which infuriated us.My wife and I have advocated for my daughter year after year. As parents of a special needs child we feel it's imperative for good communication and to make sure she is doing OK at school. This includes keeping an eye on her grades.Fast forward to last week, my daughter attempted suicide at school. Luckily she was OK, and ended up staying in a psychiatric hospital the remainder of the week. During this time we found out that she had been being bullied, and the school was not staying on top of her IEP. In fact one of the agreements last fall was to make sure the main bullies would not be in any classes with her. Come to find out when one of them returned (from back issues) she personally (the bully) requested to be put into my daughters classes. Which they complied with. In turn she quickly sat next to her in class and constantly harassed my daughter. Of course we didn't know, again my daughter does not communicate well, or advocate for herself.Yesterday we met with her newer therapist for the first time since last weeks incident. She spoke with my daughter first in private. And my daughter was insistent that she didn't like us calling her school. She also insisted that we wont allow her to hang out with friends, won't let her order her own food, or even get a job.Long story short, this is all untrue. She doesn't like us calling the school because it causes anxiety. She refuses to go out to dinner 90% of the time, and we push her to hangout with friends. Her grades are not good (and she is only 15) so we don't think it's a good idea to have a job. Somehow she twisted this around and deflected the situation on my wife and I. This triggered the therapist to flip out on us and blame everything on us advocating for her. Telling us we won't allow her to handle life herself. Also telling us we should not be contacting the school without her consent.W....T....F....My wife was devastated, and still a emotional mess today. We have been through so much and this was horrific. I am not so much questioning if it's our fault or not. But I feel that considering my daughter will not advocate, ask for help or even show emotion that we need as parents to look out for her. I also don't see why we would ask permission from her to talk to the school and her teachers about how she is doing. Checking on whats going on with her grades etc.What do you guys think? Are we wrong? via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2HI1xq7

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