Hyrum is HOME!!!

I'm happy to announce that Hyrum has been released from the Utah State Hospital and is home full time now. Boy is he giving his mom and dad a run for their money!

He is challenging any and every limit he can. Tuesday he decided to be done with school. He informs me in a cheerful voice that he is not going to school anymore "it's boring." I pull out the usual parent rhetoric and he just smiles and sits there on his bed. So I take a deep breath and relax, I'm not going to make this fun for him. I take all of his toys and close the door telling him that he is only allowed out to use the bathroom.

I call Jason with my initial idea of taking all the toys from his room and making him grounded to his room. Jason says something like, "heck no that kid is going to school even if I have to drag his lifeless body." He says he is on his way home to help deal with this. Hmmmm..... I can see a confrontation coming. Next I call our guy from the Families First program of the Utah Youth Village.

His name is David. So if you hear me spouting about the wisdom of David that's who I mean. The state and county want to reduce the likelihood of having Hyrum back at the State Hospital. We were lucky or blessed enough to qualify for the Families First Program where a therapist comes to our home and observes and helps us come up with solutions specifically developed for Hyrum. They stay on call for your family anytime 24-7 for a full 18 months. This is usually a $5,000 program but it is covered for us thank heavens!

So, I have never met this David guy but I call the number he gave us in case of emergency. He immediately told me that Jason and I need to be a united front before confronting Hyrum. Also that he has had kids decide to quit school and so he told them that they needed some vocational training. And since the only kind of job you can get if you quit school is manual labor, that's what they do if they are not in school.

I called Jason and since he had time to cool off he decided that forcing Hyrum to school physically wasn't a good idea. So we went for the vocational training. We just happen to have a lot of manual labor to do around our house. We had Hyrum dig a ditch in the back yard.

Jason sat out with him telling him to keep digging and no, he couldn't use the bathroom until his break at 10am. Pretty soon we decided that Hyrum was liking all the adult attention. So Jason came in where we could see him from the window. Then Hyrum decided not to work at all and just lay on the ground. This was about lunch time and so Jason offered to take Hyrum on a ride. Hyrum got in the car and asked where we were going. Jason told him that they were going to the police station since not going to school is against the law and that the police would be happy to tell him what happens to people who don't obey the law. He decided that he would like to go to school after all.

This was not the end of the school fight and I don't think that it will be over for many years but at least he won't catch us unaware again. We've got rewards and punishments in place now. Hoo boy yeah I love having him home but that boy will be the death of us.

-Wendy