Seth & Hayley January 07

Published January 26th, 2007

Seth and Hayley have had the usual ups and downs, trouble with mates wanting to fight; someone taking to their fence with an axe; Hayley wanting to leave and move to another town and Seth wanting to stay where he is; Hayley giving Seth an ultimatum about his drug use; Seth running over a little girl in his car (not his fault so no charges were laid); Hayley finding things that Seth has downloaded from the Internet that she was upset about (I had to ask Sue Miers from NOFASARD to help with that one); and so it goes on and on.

The one thing that seems to have remained stable is Seth’s job and his problems with money.  Between he and his case manager, many of the issues that were problems at the beginning of his work seem to be resolved – at least for the moment.

That’s one thing that even I forget sometimes – this condition is a condition of ups and downs.  I am often so stressed by what Seth has told me or says he has done or will do that I can hardy function.  Depending on what the issue is I will read what Teresa Kellerman says, talk to Sue Miers and Don and then when I have enough information I will get back to Seth and talk to him about what to do.  By the time this is all done even though it might only take a few hours, the issue is all over red rover.  I don’t ever touch the caffeinated drinks, I don’t need to.  I have my own little ‘upper’ – my Seth.

Last week Don and I paid for them to go for a weekend away because they had been having a hard time with the above.  It seems that ever since Don and I left for Cairns, there has been one thing after another for them to cope with.  The one good thing is that they ARE coping – mostly – and with our help.  There is rarely a day when I don’t hear from him several times – and that is good.  He tells me mostly everything and the things he doesn’t tell me, Hayley does.  Between the two of them I understand what is happening and what I need to fix or not fix.

Even though they have a case worker from the Public Trustee looking after their money, they still aren’t coping and are spending far too much.  Katrina from the PT office has been outstanding.  I wish I had done this straight off and not looked after it myself for a couple of years as this created so much stress for us all.  For anyone looking to help their child with FASD, the Public Trustee should really be part of their management plan.

I have to still help them out every now and then but even though its still not perfect, it IS better than it was.  Seth will now ask Katrina if he can buy something whereas before he would just go to any old Money Lender and ask for thousands of dollars which, of course, they would give him.  He looks normal, has a job – why wouldn’t they? 

So we have gone through and learned everything the hard way – but at least we have been able to work something out to stop that thing from happening or – removing the temptation, which is part of being an ‘external brain’.  If we know he has a habit of stealing (which he doesn’t now, but if he did), we would ensure that there was nothing in the way to tempt him.  That is not babying him; that is us acting responsibly.

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