Update.

Big Guy is still in the psych hospital. We made peace with our decision once we saw that the unit is really quite fine and the staff is really nice, and though Big Guy refused to see us the first time we visited (he was really angry), he's seen us each subsequent time and seems to be doing well. Yesterday he said "it's fun here." Um, psych hospital FAIL. It's not supposed to be fun, buddy! But I'm glad he's not miserable, I certainly don't want him to be suffering.

So Big Guy is okay, but I still have steam coming out of my ears right now. They are refusing to alter his meds because they haven't seen the behaviors that we hospitalized him for yet. They say "we don't want to rush things, it might take a while for us to see them" but when we asked them how long they keep most kids for they said "7 days." Um, it's already been 4 days. So basically they are making it sounds like they're going to discharge him on Thursday, with no med changes, no aggressive or self-destructive behaviors observed, and basically it'll just return to business as usual at our house. They said something like "Well, a lot of times it's behavioral issues that need to be dealt with in the home, not psychiatric issues." Seriously? So in the meantime, while we deal with the "behaviors", it's totally normal that we spend hours wrestling him to keep him safe? It's totally acceptable that he's trying to run into traffic, and that he sobs for hours on end, that he can't stop his outbursts and then feels horrible about himself and asks us to beat him, and that he becomes dissociated after his tantrums? We can fix all of this with good parenting?

Even if we could fix all of this with good parenting, we need to keep ourselves and our belongings and this sweet little kid SAFE while we get more services in place to help with behavioral interventions in the home. We are approved for 2 hours of therapy and 2 hours of behavioral assistance each week, but he couldn't even make it to his next appointment last week! The neurologist said he needs to be under the care of a psychiatrist, but he couldn't even make it until his psychiatrist appointment! Even if these issues were more behavioral than psychiatric, if he can't behave safely while we continue our behavioral interventions, nothing is going to change.

BTW, the psychiatrist hasn't returned our calls and didn't show up to the meeting. So the only info we have is filtered through a social worker, who's not the one who makes any of these decisions. I've had it up to here.