Retraumatizing the Traumatized

So William's school called in a report to the Abuse Hotline on his bus monitor. I don't think we will ever have the full story, but this is what we have pieced together...

On the way home from school William and some other boy got into a fight. Now, William usually is a verbal fighter and avoids the physical. He's tiny. As a side note, I put in his height and weight into this CDC calculator and William is in the first percentile. That means our little man is, well, little. He is 50 inches tall, 9 years old, and 43 pounds. To give you some indication, he weighs the same as my 5 year old nephew Justin.

Anyway, apparently he got into a physical fight (more rough and tumble than throwing fists) with another boy. The bus monitor pulled them apart and back into their seats. This is where the story has different versions. The important thing is that all parties agree that the bus monitor backhanded William in the face (across the eye). William says she did it after separating them and for no reason (hmmm??). The bus monitor has claimed that William bit her and her reaction was to swing her arm and she hit him. It doesn't really matter what happened, she never should have hit him. Never.

He was unusually quiet that evening, but we couldn't get anything out of him. We actually found out the next morning from school. Apparently another child on the bus was upset by what happened and told their parent who was concerned enough to call the school. The school immediately Hotlined the situation and William was interviewed by an investigator the next morning. We haven't heard anything since and are waiting for our case worker to get back to us on what is happening. The bus monitor was immediately pulled off the bus and in fact his bus driver is different now too.

I guess we will never know exactly what happened. Although the buses are supposed to have video cameras, our principal tells us she has never successfully gotten a video from one of these incidents. They are either not working, not turned on, etc. It's BS and I've thought about a lawsuit, but don't know what good that would do or if I'm just being over the top.

I know William can be a pain. Trust me, I live it and there are times when I want to give him a good whack on the butt (like my mom did with a ping-pong paddle- sorry mom- you know I had to get it in here =) But I don't... The child has been through hell and while his behavior is unacceptable, physical punishment is not the answer. In fact it only escalates his anger and outrage. In other words, it re-traumatizes the traumatized. I'm feeling more and more convinced that William has extreme PTSD. A lot of his other diagnoses seem to be symptoms of PTSD. However, it's all a tangled web and it gets overwhelming. On top of PTSD, he has been diagnosed with ADHD, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, an anxiety disorder, an attachment disorder, depression, and the wonderfully ambiguous Severely Emotionally Disturbed (SED).

It's overwhelming to live in the same house as him sometimes. You feel like you don't know what the hell you are doing and it takes every ounce of will power to keep any resemblance of patience and calmness in your voice. But I try to remind myself how much this little boy has been through and how I just want to give him some happy childhood memories. I want him to not be so mean, so unhappy that he can't stand to see other people happy. I want him to smile more and crab less. I want him to laugh. I want his innocence back...

But that isn't reality. And it breaks my heart in a thousand ways. And it pisses me off that he was traumatized by another adult...

And then I have a good cry in the shower and go back to being the best parent I can be...