The squares

I hate not being able to tell him that he's coming home for good at Christmas. It's lying by omission. I get the reasoning I suppose. Kids that know their time is up there can act up physically and become even more disruptive. The list of things they are worried about - well, it's still hard for me to fathom DS2 falling into that category. I just wish I could promise them he wouldn't do those things. I know I can't. I don't think I know what he will or won't be able to do. I would have never thought that he would do the things he has done. I truthfully thought that getting away from us would be the answer to his behavioral problems. I thought that being back in a dorm setting and not having a 'mom and dad' would be the answer. It wasn't. We are back at square one.

I realize now that he was passing school and flying under the radar because I was basically sitting on him. I would stand over him and force homework to get done. I would give him a million daily reminders about how to act out of my presense and he knew the consequences for not following those rules. Not that he cared about the consequences. He was very good at not getting caught. He's not good at that, it seems, anymore. No one there is sitting on him to make him do work. That was what I wanted for him...to be responsible for himself. I truly hoped that he would choose to take care of his own business. He hasn't.

Our options:
1. Keep him home and find a homeschooler (not me) that can come into our home and catch him up, keep him caught up and knows how to deal with troubled kids. File all the paperwork to make that legal. Quit my job to be able to supervise him 24/7 and have a lot of lockdown to keep him away from the other kids.
2. Keep him home and send him to public school. I've called them to ask about the discipline protocol and the fact that he's so behind in school. No one has called back. I'm viewing that as not the best plan at this point. I would still need to quit my job in order to drive back and forth and be here whenever he is home.
3. Keep him home and try to get him into the alternative school. Not sure what that solves other than stricter structure. The quitting thing is all the same.
4. Find another school/program. We have one we like - but the cost may make it out of range. I'm trying to nail down more details. It's a more RTC type setting, but they work through school issues as well. Their goal is to bring him to a point, both behaviorally and academically, that he can return to home life and public school. There is no magic number for how long that takes - anywhere from 6 months to 3 years is average.
5. Well...I don't like to talk about this option - I'm sure you can imagine what it is.

I am not sure if I am ready to live in a prison setting for the next six years. I would love to say that we could go back to him earning privileges and becoming a more 'normal' kid...but I don't think that is the case. So, all options of him staying home would be hard on the other four of us. I want this to be about him...but it's hard to remove everyone else from the equation. Heck, it's hard to not think about myself.

We're just back at square one.