To voluntarily put my child into care

[Crumplesock]

We are at the point now where we think we may need to either put our eldest into the care system or seperate and live in 2 seperate homes to keep our children apart for fear that the eldest will seriously harm the younger two children. However, I'm not sure how we will actually finance two seperate homes (even 2 x 1bedroom flats).

Our son is autistic with a PDA profile. We are low demand parenting, and he does not attend school after being excluded and we are following his lead in Home Education. We followed the At Peace Parenting Course (which is amazing and so insightful, if not a little crazy on price!) but she told us we need to radically accept that this is our son's disability, this is part of it and we need to accommodate it. She shared how her family had to live sperately for a while. We are being advised by all the professionals that we are doing all we can for our son's needs and are accommodating and parenting him in line with his disabilities. But I just feel so broken at it.

As our son is getting bigger, his level of aggression is increasing and becoming harder to manage. We attempt to keep the children separated at all times but this is hard when there is only 1 parent at home and all 3 do need to be watched constantly.

Our other two children, and us parents too, are receiving multiple injuries daily.

Our son has taken to doing home workouts, which is absolutely brilliant and I want to encourage a healthy lifestyle but his strength is crazy. I've witnessed him do 20+ pull ups, he can now lift 1.5× his bodyweight in a Deadlift. I spoke to him about this passion of his and he said its so he can always make sure he is the strongest and to make people scared of him.

I know deep down there's a scared boy in there, whose doing this as a reaction to school trauma and being pushed around by school bullies (he had it quite bad). But it also terrifies me at how he is stronger than me and it won't be long before he levels with my husband.

I have spoke to Social Sevices today who has said they'll get a support package and stated that this is Child-on-parent (and sibling) abuse and that they do need to safe guard our other children

My eldest son is autistic with PDA profile.

I spent years excusing him, seeing the best in him, doing low demand, following at peace parents stuff etc.

I'm really sorry OP, but he is now 17, he no longer lives at home with me, I finally had to remove him when he was threatening to kill me aged 16. But I should have done it years ago.

I am gradually coming to realise that I monumentally failed him and his siblings by keeping him at home trying to firefight constantly.

Low demand didn't help him. He's been deeply unhappy for years. Even while he was controlling everything he was miserable deep down. He abused me and his younger siblings. His younger siblings are seriously traumatised and in therapy, and have serious issues because of what they've lived through.

My eldest has no GCSEs, he isn't in training or anything, he is not happy, in the last few months he has made multiple suicide attempts, had to be apprehended by police multiple times - needing restraint and on one occasion being tased. He has been in and out of hospital and been sectioned more than once.

My son was already violent aged 8. I'm sorry - I don't have any answers really, but I honestly do believe that sometimes keeping a violent child in the family home is not the right answer. For any of the children involved.

OP, I wonder if a good therapist could find out why your son thinks he needs to be stronger than everybody else. Has he been bullied at school? Apologies if you have already addressed this as I haven’t read all the posts.

@mldbbdbf and @Namechangefornowonly as a mum, I am so sorry to hear that you still suffer. Our eldest lashed out every now and then and verbally frightened our youngest. They did it out of frustration but at the time there was not as much known about neurodivergence as now and as parents we just didn’t understand it.. We tried to keep both our children happy - to understand the oldest and support them and to protect the youngest as best we could. However, it backfired and our youngest felt like they didn’t have a voice in the house. We try continuously to make this right by giving them a voice now and explaining that we were doing our best at the time.. Unfortunately, they are so hurt that they say the intention doesn’t matter. We will continue to try to make amends in the hope that one day they can see that we are genuinely sorry. We were all dealt a bad hand.

OP, I agree you would be better off posting in SEN. Perhaps you could ask for this thread to be moved. Please ignore posters saying your son is a sociopath, that is just bs.

I have experience of this. My son was so violent at 8 to his younger sister that when she started nursery at 3 she said 'hurts me and makes me feel sad'. I was constantly trying to protect her, stopping my ds from jumping out of moving cars, grabbing sharp knives to attack us. So I really do get where you are coming from and what this is like. I also get the gym thing, that sort of weight bearing exercise was a key part of my son's management, as his sensory profile meant that he needed proprioceptive input to regulate himself.

I don't think I have seen anywhere any reference to him being on medication. I would 100% explore that. As pp said, ADHD is very commonly co-morbid with ASD. Fluoxetine and ADHD meds made a huge difference to my son. When things were really bad he was put on an anti psychotic, risperidone, which was very effective.

I am not surprised that your son is still highly traumatised by school, it sounds horrendous and it takes a long time to recover, but I do it is absolutely possible for him. My son, after going to specialist school is now doing A levels. He is never ever violent. My dd is okay too, she has had a lot of support from us and some therapy. Things are good now. The question is how to keep everyone safe in the meantime.

As above, I would 100% explore meds if you haven't already. We were faced with inpatient admission or meds, and took the meds. Personally, I would explore living separately if that is at all financially viable before arranging for a child that young to live away from home. But if there is a setting that you think is safe and suitable for him I wouldn't rule it out.

While writing this I am reminded of another SEN mum friend who had a child who was incredibly violent at ages of 9 or 10. He went to a residential school with a waking curriculum. He's now in his twenties, at college, has a girlfriend, all is good. I always had the fear with my son if he is like this at 8 what will he be like at 14 etc. But it doesn't work like that.

You sound amazing, you are doing your absolute best in horrendous circumstances. I know this sounds trite, but burnout is very common in SEN parents. Please do take as good care of yourself as you possibly can.

I also agree with pp who said an assessment from an OT trained in sensory integration would be a good idea.

I have read all the posts. The attempts to poison the water bottles with glue and the wanting to work out to be bigger and stronger than the other kids are clearly an immature and childish response to being bullied. The OP has not mentioned any premeditated violence towards the family so I’m assuming it is him lashing out due to his autism and PDA profile. Not that it makes it okay, but I don’t think you should write off an 8 year old based on these examples.

YABU. @LolaJ87 being put in care is like being but WORSE and with less rights and control. Sensory processing issues can cause the sen person to become overwhelmed at times so before you go down this rabbit hole of destruction of your child’s future wellbeing I second the suggestion of getting a specialist OT assessment, EP assessment and psychiatrist if recommended by the EP. Once your child turns 16 in a care home both the parents and child lose all control and the care placement and LA share full parental responsibility. Very very few care homes have the experience or knowledge to care for the sen as it is purely a money making buiisness now. Especially care homes. Think very carefully before you progress any further, find out where the LA are suggesting your child be placed and research it. Check companies house for the owners name and from there you can check what if any experience they have of caring for the SEN. Very very few have any experience at all and in a lot of cases the vulnerable and sen are abused, neglected and not looked after properly. I know from first hand experience do don’t fo it.

PS get your child a gym membership as that does help persons with high sensory needs a lot and could easily solve any problems you currently have. Regular or even daily gym sessions could resolve your problems. It worked for us.

Here to say that social care isn't the answer here, the LA need to find a specialist residential setting for him. Xx

Feb is not long enough to recover from school trauma. As I said was 18 months for my kid who o oy did 6 weeks of school. Demand he go into care/residential school then meet in the middle and accept a full time carer come into the home. Do a SAR to school and use the incident reports and any paperwork you have showing he needed 1:1. My kid had 2:1 at school due to safety I used this along with pages and pages of incident reports to argue he needs 1:1 and I'm a single parent of 3 it's not safe.

But honestly Feb is not long ago. Fight for help because you need it but expect that to take months. I spent almost 2 years fighting for help and then when I finally got it my son has massively calmed down because he trusts school isn't going to happen to him, he's had time to process the trauma of what happened to him and he understands that I will protect all my children fiercely both him and his siblings. Fight for help because you don't know if things will get better but have faith they will. Join not fine in school Facebook page. Sensory processing differences SPDUK Facebook page. Read the posts and see how long school trauma induced burnout/heightens sensitivity takes to recover from its like 2 years and every new trauma sets it back

"Suitable residential schools" well, yeah, there are some. New Forest for example. But it will take a Tribunal appeal which will be massively stressful and to succeed in an expensive independent residential placement, also cost a bloody fortune. All those schools are full, so it would need to be a s41 school, too. It's not a quick, guaranteed or easy solution at all.

It could also set his trauma, and anger, in stone.

OP, the sociopaths on here are grown adults talking insane batshittery about a primary age child with severe anxiety who has extreme meltdowns. PDA is so hard to manage but in no way is a child with this profile unusual or likely to be a sociopath.

You do need to protect the little ones, but I think an ADHD assessment, and anxiolytics, need exploring. Are CAMHS involved? And again, are you meant to be getting EOTAS (has he an EHCP?)

@CowboyJoanna wide your neck in. It’s clear you know nothing about the SEN or how SEN persons can struggle with sensory overload. Don’t yabber in about stuff you are clearly ignorant of as you have made yourself look stupid as well as ignorant

He’s 8.
And your comments about the care system aren’t very helpful. Not all placements are the same and at the moment he is destroying the lives of his young siblings who deserve to be safe. I don’t believe that it will destroy his life because he has and will have supportive parents but even if it did, it would still be the better option than letting his siblings’ lives be destroyed instead. They never asked for this and he is the violent one.

I don’t know where you are in the country, OP, but this company are great and offer private support for families and have expertise is PDA; they’re in Surrey:
p-ast.co.uk

I am the mum of an SEN son (diagnosed dyslexia, suspected ADHD)
Friends with mums with SEN children, including some with PDA

This is the same little boy you were writing off as evil upthread and you were deleted for it. Shame on you. You clearly don’t have a clue about any of these issues so why do you keep posting malicious drivel ?

They are all behaviours indicative of needing control, fgs.

You know nothing at all. If you actually knew a damn thing about psychology, you would know it is regarded as ethically abhorrent to diagnose people even from lots of eg TV exposure to Donald fucking Trump. Yet you are making aggressively terrifying, batshit insane claims about a disabled small child to a traumatised mother whose small child's life is spiralling out of control? Watching pop documentaries on the childhoods of serial killers is not, in fact, a doctorate.

I know exactly who is exhibiting a disturbing lack of empathy in this thread.

OP, please post on SEN children. You aren't alone and fellow SEN parents can support you. I know other parents who have been where you are now. With some, the right support did mean the children outgrew it. With others, they didn't. It's so complicated and you have so many competing best interests to juggle. You deserve support, help and understanding and you won't get that from AIBU.

This is an excellent post.

Do not twist my words, I was not writing off YOUR little boy as evil.

The reason why I am posting in this thread is because I have a LOT of empathy.
A LOT of empathy for his scared siblings, and for his mother. Because I don't want to see them having to cower and put up with this abuse just because it's by their flesh and blood.

You don't know that.

The OP doesn't know that.

No professional can tell you that with any degree of certainty.

What we can be sure about is there is a child with no plan for education. That is a failure on the part of the LEA.

There is a disabled sibling who has a legal right to be safe guarded. Chances are social services have offloaded that responsibility back onto the OP with just enough paperwork backing to make it legal. Ish.

There are options for the OP, with the child staying within the home with support, in residential schooling or in Foster. I have known a child to be very successfully placed in residential at 10 and my own child ( different causes) has remained at home mostly throughout (although there are times this meant my DD could not). Solutions are very very personal to the child, situation and causes

It is unlikely that any causes or Solutions will be explored unless the OP gets lawyered up.

Are some of your best friends black, so you can't be racist, too?

Your posts are vile. Utterly ignorant, cruel and vile. They disgust me.

That first part isn't true - my AuDHD son used to be violent due to fear/fight response. It peaked about age 7-8 and then became more self harm. Now he's 10 he is very rarely violent. Time and therapeutic activities (lots of physical activity like trampolining, long walks, horse therapy etc) made the biggest difference. ADHD meds have helped too as have magnesium supplements (autistic kids are often low in magnesium).

Pre-meditated violence is a whole other thing though. Is he getting proper therapy? Is FASD possible as that often comes with the sort of behaviours you mention.

ADHD and dyslexia are not autism. And ‘friends with mums of SEN children’ doesn’t confer expert status. As you’ve very clearly demonstrated.

I should've edited that to say anxiety as well as temper, as I've said before