Jane's Posts

Sep 27 1998 12:00 am

I feel like crying.

DH phoned his son's mom last night because we hadn't heard from her in a couple of weeks and were about to become very hard to get ahold of (it's moving weekend). She told us that my stepson is about to start a barrage of psych appointments because his occupational therapist thinks he has Pervasive Development Disorder.

My past experience with psychologists and therapists in general has me thinking that this will be the complete end of my stepson's life. I realize that there must be a few good ones out there, but the majority seems to be bent on the idea of twisting weak minds and forcing their theories and ideas on them. And my stepson is not the strongest of children. When he goes to see some idiot shrink and they try to tell him that he "must" have been molested, who's going to be the one to say no? God, I've been through this over and over and all they ever want to do is make you their test case...the subject of their Nobel Prize winning book!

"Pervasive Development Disorder" is just another stupid label for a kid who learns differently...another excuse for why a kid isn't learning in the public school that our tax dollars are providing. I've taught him more in an afternoon than those idiots have in three years of school! HE LEARNS DIFFERENTLY!!! And most of what his problem is, is that he has a mother who refuses to help him grow. The woman cuts his bloody chicken nuggets for him!!! He's eight! They've based this on the fact that "he has trouble with math." He has no trouble with math...it's just that nobody ever taught him on a level he understood. I taught him how to do math concepts in fifteen minutes! And if they fill him full of drugs and somebody else's theories, I'm never going to be able to help him! How am I going to convince him that he *is* smart and he *can* learn if these people are filling him full of excuses for *not* learning???

God, what am I going to do?

Lil. Calm down. Stop crying. Well, at least stop panicking.

You are letting your own stuff get in the way here. You have to separate your own experiences from SS's problem. Stop thinking about the worst possible outcome; it will just make you more upset. All you can do right now is to start figuring out how you can help the boy.

Sure, shrinks can be idiots. Sure there are erroneous recollections of sexual abuse. I am even willing to assume your cousin is one of them. But your knee-jerk reaction to the profession is not going to help SS. You have to work with these people now.

Get back to the library and the Net, and start researching. Find out all you can about PDD. Save all information you find about diagnosis, treatment, pharmacological options, etc. Start reading up on general childhood education and development. Then turn to service providers in SS's area. Find out all you can about different social workers, psychologists, doctors of ed, etc. in the area. Try to find someone who you feel could HELP SS.

I'm busy right now, but I'll do a quick search later and email you what I find.

jane

P.S. Stop blaming BM! If you alienate her now, you won't be able to do anything for the boy.