Restraints

A day after his first visit with the doctor at the clinic, Jack got his first official "hold" by staff at his school. He was asked to stop doing his own chosen activity, and chose to ignore the request to stop that and begin his work. This ended up with a child on a total downward spiral, who did pretty much everything he could think of to act out. In this case, he threw a chair at a teacher. He was warned that if he didn't stop his behavior, he would be held. This is when he picked up the chair.

I emailed the IS this morning to let her know that Jack might be grumpy or tired today.. the grumpiness likely due to my "criticizing" him about some odd habits he's developed that have me concerned for him. (They're OCD in nature). He stomped out to the car to wait for his dad, without saying goodbye to me. (I wasn't really concerned about that, but a bad start to his morning can often lead to a progression of negative behaviors throughout the day. I hate when he takes that stuff from home and transfers it to people at school. It's probably worse than my husband dumping all of his work problems on me- which I'm fine with, by the way. As long as he doesn't literally take his anger and frustration on me, which he doesn't).

I often find myself wondering these days what would be considered serious enough behavior to have him hospitalized or put on a 72-hour hold. He hasn't tried to harm himself, though he did write down somewhere that he sometimes hits himself. I don't think his intent is to seriously injure, though. He also never does that as a threat, like "If you don't leave me alone, I'm going to .... myself". He told the doctor yesterday that he doesn't want to kill himself, and has never thought about it. He also implied that he doesn't think about hurting others- or that this isn't really his intent. His real intent I think is to get people to back off. The problem is that despite, or in spite of, his true intent, he is quite often a danger to others. Becoming more and more so. Certainly at school, where we see this severe behavior.

SO much to be considered, and I don't know what my options are, or how much I'm blowing things out of proportion. He needs blood work to figure out some medical things, which is what I requested months earlier from his pediatrician. This new doctor has written out for a blood work-up, so once I get that done, and everything looks ok, she's already got a list of meds ready to change him to. (I'm sort of concerned about the Strattera, because I think I read somewhere that Priapism was a possible side effect. My kid shouldn't have to worry about that).

Is this mental illness? I need a handbook for this kid.. seems they're fresh out.