Friday, 08 August 2008

• Boot Camp

  The Probabtion Officer that is handling T.J.'s case called me yesterday. She wanted to know my opinion about what the reccomendation to the court should be concerning T.J. I told her I thought he should go into a Residential Treatment Facility. She said that normally the courts only send minors to Residential Treatment Facilities when they've committed felonies. T.J. has only committed 4 misdemeanors. Therefore it would be highly unlikely that the judge would agree with a Residential Treament Facility as punishment for T.J.'s crimes. She then suggested that T.J. be sent to a "wilderness camp" for troubled youths or a military style "boot camp." I agreed to the boot camp. Considering he's extremely defiant towards all authority figures, boot camp sounds like an excellent punishment and a wake up call. If the judge agrees, he will be sent there immediately following the hearing this Monday August 11th, and will stay there for 30 days. That means he will miss the first few weeks of the school year, which starts August 25th. He will go to school at the boot camp and will have any credits he recieves transfered over to his regular school once comes back home. However, the downside to all of this is that he may loose his place at CTC (Career Technological Center) where he was going to go for half the school day to study electrical technology (he has aspirations of being an electrician).

  T.J. called me last night and when I told him all of this, he simply stated, "I don't think that will be good for me. I need my place at CTC." I told him if he loses his place at CTC, that is but another consequence he'll have to deal with. I told him that he's known for a long time that if he continued with this type of behavior that something like this was bound to happen. I told him that  he's turning 17 at the end of this month. If he were to ever let something like this happen again, more than likely he would be tried as an adult and placed into an adult jail. I told him that everything he chooses can eventually effect his shorterm and longterm future. He simply said, fine whatever and hungup on he. Actually, from the sound of it, he just threw down the phone and stomped away, because I could still hear background noises. I waited a few minutes to see if he or someone else would pick the phone back up. No one did, so I hung up. He has this weekend to think about all of this before he goes before the judge on Monday. Will he have an epiphany between now and then. I very much doubt it. More than likely he'll continue to believe that we (his family) hate him and just want to get rid of him. He'll continue to blame his bad behavior on his mental disorders and even us (his family). He'll continue to not be accountable for his words and actions.
  
  I'm doing better than I was. I've been talking a lot with the Home Based therapists that come to our home multiple days a week. They've been extremely supportive. They will continue to work with us as a family and as individuals until T.J. comes back from boot camp and even after that. The only time they would have to stop the Family Based Therapy is if T.J. was placed in a Residential Treatment Facility. It's probably going to be weird for T.J. when he does come back home, to have these 2 Family Based Therapist coming into the home multiple times a week, the rest of the family already very familiar with the therapists and he's only visited with them one time for 2 hours before he was placed in the juvenille detention center. Oh well, he'll have to get used to it. Family Based is a 32 week program. If he doesn't get a damn thing out of it, we (the rest of the family) will.

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