This is one of those things. My first instinct was to be furious and blame everyone else. After serious thought, there was still much incompetence on the part of others, but I'm a lot to blame too.
Here's what happened. In the spring, we found this group that was suppsosed to teach kids social skills such as anger management and calming and how to lose gracefully and all kinds of other things that our ADHD and ODD riddled child CW desperately needs to learn. And things we desperately NEED him to learn. This group sounded like the answer to our prayers. It was expensive, sadly not covered by OHIP, but it was AVAILABLE! And conveniently located. And fit into CW's busy weekday schedule. So we signed him up. All summer every time he had a huge meltdown or displayed his woefully inadequate social skills, I would console myself with the fact that, come September 19th, he would be starting this wonderful new group that was going to help him (and us) SO much! Over the summer I confirmed with the group's organizers via email several times in July, as well as a phone conversation and another email in mid-August, that the group would indeed start Sept 19th and would meet weekly on Mondays from 5-6:30pm. Perfect.
So, in order to be able to take CW to said group, I organized a weekly babysitter to pick up AK from school, have dinner with her and hang with her until either I or DH got home. I also signed CW up for a Karate class which happened to be across the street from where said behaviour group was to take place, because I figured, after some behaviour work where he was bound to get mad and frustrated, what could be better than some physical activity? It all fit so nicely into our tightly packed schedule.
Fast forward to today. At 1pm I get a call from CW's school to tell me that he is in the office complaining of a stomach ache. Great. First I have a panic attack because as you may know, I'm TERRIFIED of puke or anything stomach bug related. After I recover, I go to the school to pick him up, hoping that he's crying wolf (because it wouldn't be the first time). And thankfully he seems fine. I hoped that if I let him go home and rest for a bit he'd be good to go to the 1st session of the behaviour group and maybe even karate. So time passes and he is fine. We go to the behaviour group and have a seat in their lobby.
5pm comes. The leader of the group comes out and says, as if she has never seen me before, "Hi, I'm Sandy***, and who is this?" I was all WTF?? But I said "this is CW" Isn't the group starting today?" And she was all "uh, didn't anyone contact you to tell you that we didn't have enough kids so it isn't starting today" Uh NO. I have an email from 3 weeks ago saying that it was. So here's where maybe I dropped the ball. Is it my responsibility to contact the leaders of a private group that I'm paying to attend and confirm that in fact the group is starting on said date that they said it was? I think not. I mean, if I registered for a class a few months ago I would just show up and assume that it was still running as scheduled. Maybe it's just me....Anyway, I do feel like maybe I should have confirmed, but I'm still really angry. For kids that do not handle a change in plans well, this was not a good day.
I had to explain to my son that, through no fault of his own, they were not starting the group today. But that now, since we are here anyway, we have to hang around a strip mall for 2 hours until your karate class is to start. We found a diner and had a seat and thankfully, I had my ipod touch with me so he was amused while I fretted about the situation with the group. Eventually it was time for karate and now we are home and everyone survived.
However, here's the thing that infuriates me further. Two weeks ago, I got a call from a publicly funded agency that we have worked with in the past, that said that they had a group forming that may be a good fit for CW and did I want to bring him in to have him assessed to see if it would work. I had already signed him up for the other group and had him assessed more and did not want to put him through that again so I turned them down. What was I thinking??? I turned down free help in favour of something I'd have to pay for, just because it sounded and looked really good and I was trying to save my son the hassle of yet ANOTHER assessment from psychologists and psychiatrists.
So now, I've left a message with said government agency to BEG them to consider us if it isn't too late...which it more than likely is, because anything publicly funded fills up instantly and we were lucky to even get on the list in the first place. So that will be me on the phone tomorrow grovelling some more because if we don't get him in there and get him some concrete help I just don't know where else to turn.
***name has been changed even though I don't think this person deserves to have their identity protected, I've been burned on this blog for even using an initial.
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