Please help me with 19 year old daughter, challenging and violent behaviour

bubspencer

Hi all. 

This is my first post here. I have a 19 year old daughter with a chromosome disorder , autism, learning difficulties and challenging behaviour. She has gradually getting more and more violent towards me and I’m not sure how much longer I can cope. 

I always thought I would always have her at home with me but now I’m starting to think maybe she needs residential care for the sake of my other children and myself. 

When she goes it can be quite frightening and she has hurt me so many times and broken so much in our house. 

My heart is breaking at the thought of her going to live somewhere else but my head is telling me I can’t cope much longer like this. 

I suppose I’m just after some stories of hope about children going to live in residential homes and how it all worked out. I feel like I’ll never stop feeling guilty 😢

Cher_Alumni

Hi @bubspencer and a big warm welcome to our online community, I'm glad you found us and reached out. It sounds like things are tough right now, I'm sorry. How's your Thursday going so far?

Please try not to feel guilty, I know it's easier said than done when you're a mum(!) but your thoughts are borne out of love and wanting to keep your daughter and family as safe as can be. If you're beginning to feel that you can't cope, then talking to those who can help is a good starting point. Do you have anyone you can confide in, be it family or friends? Also, it might be worth speaking with your GP about the impact this is having on your own mental wellbeing. Don't forget yourself in all this 

For your lovely daughter, it could be that a multi-disciplinary team review of your current arrangements and strategies for managing your daughters needs is looked at. Do you have a practitioner you could get in touch with? Whilst, The National Autistic Society have this guide around managing distressed behaviour, if there's anything you haven't yet tried. Plus the Challenging Behaviour Foundation are there to support you too.

We do have some other members who have navigated the same experience, and I'm going to tag @Cress if you're still about lovely, and I've moved your thread to our Children, parents and families category, if you want to take a browse of that and our Autism and neurodiversity section too.

I'm going to email you to see if we can offer any additional help, and in the meantime, remember you are doing brilliantly. Take it easy and a day at a time. We're here if you need to vent or talk 24/7.

surfygoose

My parents did need to move me to residential care a long time ago because of my autism and I’ve stayed with them recently for a while because I left my old home, but am moving to my new one next month. It’s not all bad. It can be hard settling in and you want to be sure to find the right home and to keep an eye on everything and that it’s working well. I won’t lie and say it’s perfect because my last home it was ok but it went down hill and it did fail it’s inspection and it couldn’t meet my needs and that’s why I’ve been moved. However maybe we knew it wasn’t quite right for me in the first place but it was closest to my parents. This time I’m moving just over an hour away and we had wanted to avoid that but the home seems so much more suitable. I did actually improve a lot in some things at my old home, sometimes it’s the time for a change anyway. It can be nice because I can have a good relationship with mum and dad that they aren’t just caring for me all the time they can do more fun things with me. They aren’t always tired or stressed when I’m living away so we can enjoy our time when we see each other. I’ve been visiting my new home and so although I don’t know your daughter I can tell you how some things can be like for someone with my needs. The house is for  autism and epilepsy and challenging behaviour and learning disabilities and any mental health issues occurring alongside that. They have high levels of staff at all times. They have waking night staff, safe garden, ability to take everyone out for activities, volunteering, doing chores together. There’s in-house psychologist and behavioural support team. Big bedroom, en-suite bathroom. All the technology like cameras and alarms and bed mats where required. Any restrictions required can be in place like locked meds or locked door to outside but all only based on needs, not like a prison! I’ve lived in care settings a lot of times and honestly it’s ok and although you might feel guilty because you love your daughter and feel like you’re sending her away, children do move out naturally often. She may get to do lots of fun things and have opportunities that maybe you can’t do with her. Like my mum can’t swim but staff can do that with me or going on fairground rides my parents feel sick but staff can take me to ride on them. Also my parents get scared about being really old and then dying one day and that even if they could cope with me and look after me for their whole lives it would be an awful shock for me if one day they were gone and suddenly as well as losing them I was whisked away and thrown in a residential home and I’d never experienced it before. They think it’s very good for me to be used to relying on people other than just them. I don’t think going in to my new place is going to be easy, I don’t react well to change but if you decide it for your daughter you can do it really slowly like I’m doing visits and then overnight. Although it might not sound like it could be true, for me when I’ve been settled in a home and lots of my friends have been the same, that we get excited to go home to visit our parents but also get excited to go back to our own place because we are looking forward to seeing our favourite staff or there is a barbecue scheduled at our house so we would rather have that and come home for lunch with you another day!

bubspencer

Thank you so so much Surfygoose you have helped me so so much and your reply was lovely x

Sandy_123

Hi @bubspencer an hello from me too. @surfygoose that all sounds so positive and I wish you well In your new home.

L_Volunteer

Hey @bubspencer. Thank you for reaching out to us. This sounds really difficult and conflicting feelings about what is best to do  How do you define "violent" and does anything trigger this behaviour - for example, is your daughter struggling to communicate something or going through a particularly challenging time? How are you coping with it all being so difficult for you and your wider family? We are here for you if you wish to talk about this further or if there's anything else we can do to help 

surfygoose

@bubspencer how is it going with your daughter? I hope you are all ok.