About Last Week...

Last week.  Ugh.

Last week took me back in time nearly 10 years.  To a time where I feared for Jacob's future, worried we'd need to send him for inpatient treatment, and wondered how the heck we were going to survive parenthood.  Except this time around those feelings were happening with the testosterone-fueled teenager I once feared having, knowing I would be smaller, weaker, and incapable of forcing him to do anything.  That future is now, and it sucks.

It's ironic, mind you, because a couple Fridays ago I drove past the new behavioral health building that went up down the street from the office we used to go to for Jacob's therapy a number of years ago.  They started building it just as we changed to the office we went to throughout the pandemic for both kids, and I thought about how thankful I was when that was built that it would be there if we needed it for more intense treatment.  As I drove by, I thought in that moment, "Well, I guess it was good we never needed it."  Karma, I guess, because there were moments over the past week that I was sure we were going to.

The short story of all of this is that Jacob's school is making him crazy and his frustration from his broken leg is probably making things worse.  He's constantly behind on homework, which causes him to stay up late (because he is incapable of pushing through and getting it done without endless breaks in the afternoon and evening), so he doesn't get enough sleep and is dead tired in the morning.  Coupled with his hatred of school right now, he was essentially refusing to get out of bed.  By the time he did, he was late for school, which only made the frustration worse because he couldn't eat a proper breakfast, which only made him more tired and cranky.  It got so bad that he missed almost two full days last week, so we took him in for bloodwork to see if there was more to it, and it turns out he's basically anemic.  So maybe there was some medical cause to the debacle--fair enough--but we can't just let him stay home from school for the next month, which he has asked for.  He refuses to just push through and make it work.  The new school option that I mentioned previously has indeed turned into a massive distraction/preferred next step, but that's complicated, too.  

So I guess that's not such a short story--but that's the shortest version I can tell.  As for the longer version...

The refusal to get out of bed has been absolutely exhausting and rivals the stuff we dealt with when he was five.  He is just impossible, combative, and irrational.  I understand he's tired, I understand he's frustrated, I understand that the obnoxious, immature behavior of his classmates is really wearing on him after a long year.  But legally we can't keep him home from school.  We can't just let him sleep like he says we should.  He doesn't listen when we tell him to do his work earlier in the day, and then insists he can't go to bed on time because he needs to do his work and his leg/ankle stretches.  There simply aren't enough hours in the day for him to fit it all in within the limits of his brain's endurance.  Then if he has trouble sleeping on top of it all, he's not telling us until it's far too late and he's even more tired in the morning.  It's this awful, vicious cycle and it is completely exhausting.  I need a nap by the time I get to work.  It's not like when he was little and we could carry him (probably getting punched in the process) to wherever we needed him to go.  He's bigger than me, at least as strong, and I am powerless to get him out of bed.  I try to remind him it just takes a few seconds of summoned strength to push through and stand up, but apparently that's too much.  Last Wednesday he went to school (late) only to go right to the nurse and have Craig pick him up.  Then Thursday he refused to get up and stayed home all day.  He does do work and catch up on sleep when he's home, which helps for a while, but then it makes the homework problem worse, which means we're stuck in the same mess perpetually.

As I mentioned, with how tired he's been, it made sense to take him in and get some bloodwork done to rule some things out.  Turns out his iron is quite low.  In fact, everything related to his iron was low (or in the case of one thing, abnormally high).  His ferritin is a 7, which is crazy low.  But it's the same exact thing that Carter and I have both had issues with, so I really think this is genetic.  My mom has perpetually low iron as well.  Carter's low ferritin popped up when we did testing around the time of his sleep study and subsequent tonsillectomy around five years ago.  He takes a kid vitamin with iron now and seems fine.  My hemoglobin was always borderline when giving blood so I started supplementing daily, and since then mine has been better, so I think a supplement will help Jacob too.  His vitamin D was also low, and I already take that too, so I started him on the same supplements the next day.  Hopefully it works quickly because we need whatever help we can get.  So, like everything else in his life, I guess some of this literally is my fault (darn you, genes)...along with most other things plaguing him.  Sigh.

He has a month of school left.  That's not a lot to ask.  But it apparently sounds overwhelming to him.  Making things more complicated is that the thing that needed to happen to make this different school a possibility happened--his favorite coach got hired as the varsity coach for a city charter school that happens to be in our town and therefore has a loophole for him to not have to sit for a year in order to play basketball there.  But he's way down on the list for the lottery so a number of things will have to happen for him to be able to go there.  The academics are better and the college acceptance rate is significantly higher than where he is now.  He'd be in a very small minority of white students (like 10%), which he's fine with (and so are we) but it could be harder than he realizes to fit in.  Most of the kids come from the city, which concerns me a bit, though maybe not for the reason you'd think.  It just seems a lot easier to end up in the wrong place at the wrong time in the city--so many underage kids have been shot already this year--so I feel like it would be a bit more complicated to nurture friendships there and make sure his judgment is good when picking people and places to hang out.  It's not so much the kids themselves--they are clearly doing their part to go to a good school and do the right thing based on the school's academic stats--but you just don't know the family culture they grew up in, who they associate with, and whether they might frequent or live in parts of town where crime is higher.  And Jacob could stick out like a sore thumb in certain situations, so I feel like we just need to be more vigilant with vetting those relationships if he goes there.  But just getting him in sounds like it will be a challenge.  And if he doesn't get in I have no idea what we'll do because staying at his current school is looking less and less possible if we want to keep him mentally healthy.

When Jacob was five, I worried about what those intense tantrums would look like as he aged.  Would he be punching holes in every wall?  Would he be physically attacking us?  Luckily we're not quite at that point, but we're not that far off either--let's say I'm happy he has a good phone case.  But it's at the point where I worry for his future, much like I did back then, but now we're at an age where if he decided he wanted to hurt himself, he is capable of doing that in a number of ways and would have plenty of time alone to do it.  Even if we manage to get him through this stage, what happens when he goes to college, or even prep school like he wants to in a couple years?  How can I even begin to protect him then?  Hence my urgency right now.  The truth is, life isn't easy--it's actually pretty endlessly frustrating if you let it get to you that way--and I don't think he's prepared to manage that, despite our best efforts.  How do you tell your kid that life really is a series of hard things (interspersed with some truly great stuff) without completely crushing their spirit?  I think that's where I'm a little stuck right now.  He's never been particularly tolerant of unpleasant things, but life is going to demand that more and more.  I just don't know what else to do to help him through it when he doesn't want to hear from us, won't participate with a therapist, and generally can't be reasoned with.

This past weekend actually made me realize a couple things more clearly.  We had a mostly-nice weekend in Buffalo (more on that soon), and he was pretty normal the whole weekend.  He talked a lot about the new school, which he needs to chill out on until we make any progress there, but for the most part he was pleasant and all of the erratic, frustrating behavior from the week seemed to fade away.  But Sunday night right around bedtime it ramped up again.  Despite making good progress on homework, he still had makeup work to do.  He stayed up later than would be ideal to do his leg stretches, then started complaining about needing to get his work done and wanting to stay up to do it...which of course would put us right back in the "not enough sleep" scenario.  We encouraged him to take some melatonin, but in the process he said a bunch of worrying things, to the point Craig went down and stayed in his room until he fell asleep.  It was just sort of jarring how quickly he reverted to the inconsolable, irrational, endlessly frustrating kid we dealt with all last week, despite being generally pleasant most of the weekend.  It was about that moment that I realized that this was probably anxiety, and this difficult behavior is probably his version of an anxiety attack.  He says it's not, but I don't think he realizes quite how intense it is.  It's like his brain flips and he starts spiraling, and from then on he's impossible to manage.  Once the immediate stressor subsides for a bit (like over the weekend or even during the day when he did stay home from school), he emerges from that and is able to act normally again until the "threat" reappears.  I previously sort of felt like it was a bit of an act (or at least an embellishment) to help us see his anguish and convince us to keep him home or whatever, but now I think it may be a legitimate, involuntary brain response fueling it all.  What we do about that, I'm not sure.  Every time we bring up therapy he says it will only take time away from him getting his work done and he won't participate anyway.  The school work won't be an issue a month from now, mind you, but we need to get through this month.  I don't know if a therapist would be enough, or if he needs medication to help bring him down a notch, but that's a scary prospect.  I don't know who would even qualify him for that and prescribe it, or if we could even get it done soon enough.  Maybe CBD is worth a try?  I'd rather he figure out some coping techniques instead, but right now it's just overwhelming when he gets going.

While we were in Buffalo we stopped in to see my parents.  My dad has always been a worrier, but lately so much of his existence and perspective seems to be overwhelmed by the state of the world, to the point he's hard to talk to without the conversation veering to whatever is bugging him.  He focuses so much on politics and a frustrating news cycle, plus his health problems, and doesn't have enough other good stuff to offset it.  He loves his time with his extended family, and they do go to casino shows and things like that--not to mention their travel a few times a year--but most of his day-to-day is very much centered around the bad stuff with few distractions.  I think Jacob is much in the same boat, honestly, only his is a frustrating school experience, lots of homework, and his current physical limitations.  It's overwhelming him to the point that the good stuff can't break through and balance it out.  And sometimes he's so focused on his goals and preferences that I think he dismisses positive things as not a good use of his time, such as his unwillingness to do touristy things on our trips.  He may not think that stuff is fun or interesting, but sometimes I feel like just being open to experiencing the world is important for realizing there's more to life than just the small circle we exist in every day.  I think he needs to be more open to finding the joy in those things than he is now.  Sometimes it's just enough to take the edge off.  It won't solve the problems but it might balance things out a bit.

The start of the week has been a little better.  Not entirely, but he's gone to school and stayed there.  He's still worried that his perpetual late arrivals will reflect negatively on his chances to get into the new school, but it's only making a small dent in the morning mess.  He should have some internal support to encourage him getting into the new school, but apparently the admissions person is "by the book" so we're working through some scenarios that might make it easier--from our concerns with the quality of the education at his current school and how he'd likely transition into Regents-track 9th grade, to whether his shorter school year could enable him to enroll at the end of the year and bypass the lottery entirely.  Making these big decisions (again) is hard--especially when there's a financial component and the mental health element is delicate currently.  I had my concerns with the last transition, but it had to happen, and I feel similarly about this one.  We're running out of options, though.  I still find the balance between attending to your child's needs and going into helicopter/lawnmower parent territory very challenging.  Is he learning enough resilience?  Are we encouraging him to work through conflict and challenges?  But what if it is better for him in the long run?  It's so hard.

So, needless to say, it's been a roller coaster (and not the good kind) lately.  I'm happy to say that the phase of tearing up at my desk three times in a day has passed for now (that lasted months 10 years ago), but we still have a lot of struggles and work ahead.  One day, one wakeup, one homework session at a time.  Hopefully he will be more open to our help and we'll build up an even better kid in the long run.