The other day I had to go to a pediatric behavioral health office to get us signed up for a new study. It's a family group study, something that's based on a process that's been successful in a intensive format. This version seeks to distill it down to fewer, shorter sessions and see if it's equally successful. It'll be in a group setting with other families, and will hopefully give us some new methods to manage some of Jacob's challenging behavior. I'll try anything, honestly.
Not everything is bad these days, mind you. I think lately we've had fewer really challenging moments, but the ones we do have are rough. I feel like if we could tweak a handful of situations (and Jacob's and our responses to them) we'd probably solve 90% of our problems. Lately I've felt a genuine love from Jacob--even if at other times he flat-out tells me he hates me--which is something that was missing for a long time. He'll even spontaneously hug me, or respond when I tell him I love him, or seek me out to hang out. Fridady morning was his Muffins with Mom thing at school, and he was very excited for it the prior night. He even hugged me when I woke him up that morning. Of course, then we had a falling-out because we were rushing and he couldn't find something to wear as a jacket (once I told him the one in his lacrosse bag would stink), and that almost blew it. But we recovered and had a nice time. His newfound affection is sweet, and it's a start. I remember a while back hearing or reading something about how you need to build that trust relationship with your child if you expect them to respect you and turn to you when the going gets tough as a teenager. I realized we were definitely lacking that, and little by little I've been trying to rebuild that part of our relationship. It's still not easy, but it's something I try to keep in mind when I can.
Anyway, as I sat in the waiting room at the doctor's office for a very short few minutes, I saw a lot. I saw a small group of boys with some subtle social awkwardness going off to a group session. I saw a presumably autistic boy yell his way through the waiting room. I saw parents who are clearly a little burned out. Being in any sort of pediatric psychiatry office is by definition a little tough. It's not like a regular doctor's office where there are well visits. Everyone that's there has something going on, and I find myself wondering what everyone's story is. Are they victims of abuse? Are they struggling with a divorce? Do they have some sort of disorder or disability? Are they sort of like us, or is their battle significantly harder? I see teenagers that look like they might be struggling with gender issues...but then again maybe they're just finding their way through depression by expressing their creativity through their appearance. I see parents--or maybe foster parents--who you know have had to struggle themselves. You almost wish it was like Humans of New York, where you know everyone has a story and you wish you could hear it. It's not just a nosy thing, either, I swear. It's a compassion thing, or a quest for understanding, or maybe just a desire to bond over a shared challenge. It's hard to know everyone is struggling with something, and no doubt many of their stories are tragic. These days in the office we're in we see mostly teens and tweens, but seeing a bunch of kids today was equally heartbreaking and curiosity-inducing.
Part of the sign-up process included a baseline survey. It was mostly like everything else I've filled out over the years--what does your child struggle with and how do you feel about it, as asked in about 50 questions. As I filled it out, I started feeling like I did when we did the brain study in December. Some of the questions referenced very specific serious situations (like poverty or abuse) or things that may apply to older or more serious cases (like kids leaving home unattended), and I found myself unsure about how to answer them. The thing is, when you're in the moment in our house, it seems horrible. Sometimes it just seems like the end of the world, or maybe some very bold first steps to a really painful future with an uncontrollable teenager or an aimless adult. Our current problems seem like a a microcosm of the challenges that await us when testosterone and teenage drama magnify them into something out of our control. And, honestly, that's a big reason why we're trying to do something about it now. If we tackle it when it's easier, will it eliminate the worst of the problems we'd have had if we didn't do anything? We have no idea, but I guess I'd rather try now and hope it works than regret later that we did nothing. But my point is that the problems seem huge in the moment.
But then I sit in a waiting room with kids and parents who struggle through every moment of every day. They deal with hardcore, serious issues--learning disabilities, disappearing kids, verbal and physical attacks, self-harm--and I find myself wondering why I'm sitting there. Our problems aren't that big--at least in comparison. Our lives have been impacted by Jacob's issues, but contrary to what it seems like sometimes, they have not been completely destroyed. At least, not at this point--which first makes me thank God we've made it this far, then stops me in my tracks as I ponder what might lie ahead. We don't know what the future holds. While I want to have faith that we'll be fine and Jacob will turn into a quirky but amazing adult, there is still a chance that our future will be far more challenging than any of us could imagine. I sincerely hope not, of course, but none of us parents planned to be in that waiting room the day we saw the positive pregnancy test, and none of our stories have had a predictable storyline to the present. I can have faith that God will carry us through, one way or another, but there are no guarantees about what that might involve. So while my first instinct might be pity, it comes back around to compassion, admiration, and a straight-up broken heart that any of us need to go through this at all. It's hard to describe the rush of emotions.
My first moment of hesitation on this particular day was as we reviewed the study parameters. There was a section that talked about the study subjects having Oppositional Defiant Disorder and/or Conduct Disorder. I've seen ODD in Jacob's paperwork (and I even thought it sounded right when we were first trying to figure out what was up with him when he was five), but there's never been a full-on diagnosis. It was more like it was suspected or among the options. If he has it I suspect it's a mild case. Our challenge, I think, is that he can manage his behavior at school--he doesn't generally have behavior issues with teachers--but at home he's a challenge. So clearly his issue is more with us and it's controllable to some degree. So does he really have it, then? Who knows. Anyway, my questioning continued as I went through the questions. Most of my answers were more in the middle ground, maybe admitting things were an issue but not a severe issue. It was rare that I was selecting something on either end of the spectrum, other than behaviors he definitely doesn't exhibit at this point. On the scales measuring severity, I felt challenged to really think about what I should say. Like I said, in the moment (or as I apply these behaviors to the future), they seem serious. But compared to the kid who's currently running away, following through on violence, or setting his house on fire, do we really have a problem? Do we really belong here? I thought about other people we might encounter in this group, people who might be dealing with those exact issues, and might they laugh at us and our seemingly simplistic challenges?
The thing is, when you grow up in an abnormally normal home, anything beyond that seems extreme. After years of what I suspect is my parents thinking that we weren't doing a very good job with Jacob, they now admit that they dodged a bullet and know they got off easy. They've seen us try to parent him through these challenges, and heard enough from friends of theirs to know that this isn't out of the ordinary. For the most part my brother and I were very well-behaved (not always with each other, but we survived without the emergency room), so with that as their "baseline", I can understand why they'd question what we were doing. Now they're realizing that despite our best efforts, we're still struggling. And clearly I never expected our lives to be like this because my childhood was never like this. I didn't even really know anyone whose childhood was like this. Maybe if I'd been exposed to something like this as a kid I'd have some perspective on how all of this should go. But when you live a very normal existence, anything can put you into a panicked tailspin. Is this normal or is this something we need to do something about? Is it normal that he will only wear one brand of clothing, or is that a sign of autism? Are these tantrums normal, or should we have him evaluated? We've asked those questions for years, and still do. We've had a little more perspective since Carter was born and has been slightly closer to "normal" with most things, and even proved to me at times that I'm not a terrible mom. Even still, you find yourself questioning everything, even about your own experiences as a child. You think about your own struggles and wonder if they were more or less serious than you thought. Were we only that normal because we pushed something down or didn't make a big deal of it? Did I pass something down that I never knew was there? Going through something like this just makes you question everything you thought you knew.
In the end I just tried to answer the questions as best I could from our perspective, keeping in mind that our "serious" may not match others' "serious". That's probably why I never picked the option at the most severe end of the spectrum. I'll be interested to see what kind of group we're with and how it changes our perspective on our own situation. We can't really compare our challenges to others, and we shouldn't--because better or worse, if it's something that concerns us, we need to do something about it. But sometimes hearing others' stories is a good reminder that it could be worse and we should still have hope...even if it's all we have. And perhaps that's what this group represents--hope. Most of all, I just hope it works.
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