Schizophrenic child Jani Schofield’s parents are divorcing

 

Michael and Susan Schofield, who have appeared on multiple reality TV specials about their schizophrenic daughter January and autistic son Bodhi, are getting divorced.

In a blog post from last month, Michael revealed that he’s had an affair, but that the true reason for the couple’s divorce is that he felt like he and Susan were more co-workers than husband and wife.

Jani, who is now twelve years old, was diagnosed with schizophrenia when she was only six. She’s shown marked improvement over the years, but her parents’ concerns have turned to her now six-year-old brother Bodhi, who is currently exhibiting troubling symptoms. He’s been diagnosed with autism, and his parents expressed in their latest documentary that they think he will be eventually diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

While Jani has always been very talkative about her hallucinations and what she was going through, her brother is less verbal, and tends to self-harm. Two adults have to be with him at all times in order to restrain him when he starts lashing out.

Michael Schofield writes that the decisions he and his now former wife Susan made to put their children first hurt their marriage. He also blames “the system” for not being able to offer their family much help:

 

We were angry all the time. Worse. We were embittered. Not at the children. At each other. But why? When did we start to turn the anger on each other and eventually on ourselves?” he says. “Every ounce of anger at the failures of the system turned in upon ourselves because we had nowhere else to put it. Those who worked in the system didn’t care. Or maybe they did. They offered words of support but words are empty. How were we supposed to take time for ourselves? Even if, hypothetically, Susan and I could have gone on vacation, when would we stop thinking about the kids? Never.

 

He says he and his wife were offered residential care for their children “to save us. Susan and me,” but reflects that this would have been too high a price to pay to save their marriage.

Michael also reflects on regret:

 

I miss the father I used to be, the one whose only focus was on keeping Jani happy. I miss being funny and making her smile. I miss engaging with her the way I used to, when I wanted to, before it turned into an obligation….

Of course, during that time I was also pretty much ignoring Bodhi. I think one of the mmost insidious things about autism is that because Bodhi doesn’t talk, I don’t talk to him as much. He becomes background until he has a meltdown and needs restraints, taking his star turn, which what you have to do in my family.

 

He closes by pointing out that he once wrote a blog post about why parents should always try to stay together “for the children,” and why we was wrong. “In the end, I was as human as any of you,” he admits.

He closes with a bit of advice to parents of children with mental illness:

 

All I can tell you now is you have to decide what is more important to you In this life, with mentally ill children, something is going to have to go. You have decide what that is. It our case, it was our marriage.

May Jani and Bodhi forgive me.

I couldn’t do it all.