I am a mom to three beautiful children. I have two boys and my baby is a girl. All of my children mean the world to me. Sadly, my eldest son has given me a run for my money. I wish I could tell you for sure what exactly is wrong but I can’t seem to get a consensus amongst the numerous professionals he has seen just this year. Just this year alone, he has been hospitalized at a mental facility three times for various reasons. He has received a string of diagnosis’s ranging from ADHD, ODD, IED, disruptive mood Disregulation disorder, Autism spectrum, mood disorder Nos, PDD-NOS. His therapist thinks he very much fits under Conduct Disorder. To be honest with you, I don’t care what the label is, I just need help.

He held his brother under water in our pool last summer, to the point my younger son scratched my eldest sons’ feet til they bleed and I was standing right there, talking to my husband. When I turned around, he released him. Weeks later, he jumped on my lil son and held him down with a pillow over his head and no matter the amount of screaming, I had to get to him because he wouldn’t get off until I shoved him off. We explained to my eldest in detail what the consequences could have been and a couple weeks later, he did it again and I had to throw him off once again and he looked at me and said, “what? Did ya think I was going to suffocate him?” That day I drove him to the first psych hospital, we spent 11 hours there and we were turned away for lack of beds and staff. He has since been to a partial inpatient hospitalization, and three full hospitalizations. The last hospital was a planned admission by the first hospital that sent us away a year ago. After a week of evaluation under the most ideal conditions for my son (I.e., one on one staff, an individual room right next to nurses station, youngest child on the ward), they discharged him staying they noted no aggression. He was sent home on barely enough ADHD medication to get him to sit at the kitchen table let alone focus and learn in school or keep his family safe. Then, when we went to see his psychiatrist for a follow up appointment a week later, it was cancelled and we couldn’t get in for a month. This is a child that gets so angry when you tell him that we can’t go get ice cream, that he destroys the back if my car by ripping seat protectors off, throwing things at my from the diaper bag while I’m driving, threatening me, hissing at me, gritting his teeth. His dad, my husband, had to come and get him from my car and drive him home separately.

My younger son has been physically, verbally and emotionally abused. Pretty much all of his life. By his brother. We knew things weren’t right before my second son was born but we just thought it was sibling rivalry. But it has continued and has gotten dangerous. It has gotten so bad at times that my younger son wouldn’t sleep in his bedroom. He would either come sleep in our room or beg to sleep at other peoples houses. And he was happier gone. He was also happier when his brother was gone at his various hospital stays.

My daughter has adjusted better, she is only two and doesn’t know much difference. But he doesn’t target her. He seems to have some kind of connection with her that he doesn’t have with his brother and arguably me or his dad. But he has also thrown her 6 feet across the room in an impulsive moment and the lack of remorse for her situation was astounding.

I have been hit, punched, my nose broken, screamed at, called names. I have suffered more a use from my child than I would have ever accepted from anyone else in my life. But he’s my son. I am the one that fights the hardest for him. I am the one that takes him to all his appointments, fights to get him the best care, makes sure his meds are filled. I take on the insurance battles and find professionals more capable of helping him AND us all and I do it while being the target almost as often as my younger son. There have been times I have had to use my body to shield and protect the bodies of my other children during his rages.

We live in a house with alarms on bedroom doors. Constantly streaming video cameras so that we can watch where he is and capture events when things happen. We have had to lock up anything that could be a weapon and have a house alarm set at night so that he is unable to move freely downstairs should we not wake up to his alarm on his door.

He can be a sweet boy when he’s on the right medications. But that window of opportunity is very small. And since his lady hospital visit, we never see that sweet boy anymore. He rages for 45 minutes at a time and calms for a while. Then as soon as you ask him to do something he doesn’t want to do or go somewhere he doesn’t want to go, the rages start all over again. We literally live picking our battles. What battle is worth causing a holy ruckus verses just allowing him to think he has the control?

My marriage is suffering tremendously. My family is suffering a slow and agonizing death. My relationships are suffering. My business is suffering. People try to help but we do our best to shelter them as well. It’s kind of hard to ask your family to take him and his siblings for a weekend, knowing what they know about our life and the risks. We don’t get a break. I tried to go out of town with my best friend and business partner and we couldn’t because he ended up admitted to a psych hospital. And frankly, it’s too much for my husband to handle alone.

We are a family in south need of help and yet it seems like none exists. I have never felt so much like a failure as I do now. And to top it off, the mental health community fails us more regularly than they help. It’s a sad state of affairs in this country. I simply cannot get the help I need.

In October of 2013, I started blogging. It was an outlet. In 2014 I was one of the stories broadcasted by This American Life under the Bad Baby episode. I am “Cheryl” and while my name is not real, my story is very sadly true. The future is not bright for us and daily life is often simply just survival at this point.  My blog has since become another platform for other people to learn what it’s like to live with a child like mine. The solution isn’t as easy as people would like to think. The system is flawed and broken and so many families like mine need so much more help. Proactive help not reactive help. I want my boy to have a future. I want my family to survive this as one. But at this rate, we are only a shell. Living the same bad dream over and over again.