Our First Parent Visit to Monarch - Disclosures

It's been a while since my last post. I guess I just needed to take a break from the relentlessness of thinking and worrying constantly about Josh. After three months we were finally able to go out to our first parent visit. It was postponed because about a third of the students came down with the flu in early November and were quarantined to try and keep it from spreading. Josh had the flu as well as pneumonia.

One of the objectives of the first visit is for the child to give his "disclosures". This is where the child tells you everything they have done that they are not proud of, and the parent's job is to just listen while they put it all out there. It's cathartic for the child to be able to say these things, some of which the parents may not have heard or know about and some of which may be shocking to them. The child obviously dreads doing this but also feels a huge weight lifted off of them once they have done it, particularly if the parents can listen without judgment. It is the first step toward repairing a parent-child relationship that has gone wrong.

We were also terrified of what we might hear. But in our case, the disclosures were not as shocking as they are for some parents. Since WOW is Josh's drug of choice, we did not have to hear about the drugs, sex and violence that many parents do. We were aware of most of Josh's transgressions, at least in a broad sense, and the worst that we heard was about lying,  unauthorized use of our credit cards and stealing small amounts of cash from our wallets.

Strangely, the very act of doing the disclosure has the effect of drawing parents and child together, as you are able (metaphorically) to set aside that baggage and get one with doing your work in pursuit of a healthier relationship.