His behavior became very antagonistic, and volatile, somewhere around mid-September, and we dealt with that as best we could until mid-November, at which time he started to become physically threatening not only to himself, but to other people. He had started slapping, hitting and punching himself, then there were a couple of incidents with his teacher, and with me.

One afternoon when he came home from school after such an incident, I was beside myself. I called Belmont Pines, which is a local pediatric psychiatric hospital that I had been referred to by Ed’s case worker. I told them what was happening, we set up an assessment appointment, and he was admitted to the hospital but on what they call “partial hospitalization”, which simply means that he would be there only during the day, and coming home every night. (WHEW!).

He was there for 10 days, and did wonderfully! That’s when he was diagnosed with Anxiety disorder, and placed on Topamax.
At the end of the 10 days, he was discharged, and went back to school, where everything went downhill very very quickly.

To make a very long story short, he has 2 more days to go in a second stint at Belmont Pines, and then it’s back to school on Wednesday. However, I’m truly hoping that this return to school will be different.

You see, mom has been undergoing a little bit of re-training SO, we shall see what happens now.

I am absolutely determined that 2010 will be a better year for me and my boy than 2009 was. It has to be – couldn’t be much worse.