Max has been having a lot of problems and issues lately.  He has been unmanageable, explosive, and angry.  It seems like he has taken major steps backward after improving quite substantially.

It is not that he has been intentionally getting into trouble.  In fact, even though he is 10 years old he has been crying when he finds out that he has been misbehaving.

The crying in itself is unusual because he has never really cried since he was a baby.  I mean he can fall and bang or scrape his knees.  He can bang his thumbs with hammers so badly they swell and throb in pain.  But he will jump up and walk it off while saying:

“I’m okay, I’m okay!”

When he says this we know he really got hurt but he has always tried to hide it.

But in the past few months he has been misbehaving and crying more and more often.  And as I said he is not doing it intentionally.

A lot of things have been happening that have been affecting him badly.  These are some of them:

• His dad (me) came down with pneumonia and it took several months to get well.  As a result I hadn’t been available to play or go different places with him

• A month ago we had a pre-season snowstorm.  We lost power for 24 hours which wasn’t too bad but his grandparents were without it for 3 days.  His granddad is paralyzed from the waist down and his grand mom has slowed down quite a bit; they are both in their 80s.  Since they couldn’t take care of themselves through this it fell to us to make sure they survived.  We ended up taking them to different hotels each night since we could only book one day at a time.

• Two days after the power came on they had to move to a handicap accessible apartment.  And of course, we had to take care of it.

• But with all of the moves and disruptions Max’s grandmother has been terribly disoriented. So as result we have two more children to take care of.  I make breakfast every morning for them and take it to their apartment.  On days when their pcas don’t show up it falls to me to get them up and ready for the day.  My wife makes dinner for them, takes it over to them, and washes their dishes.  Later on she goes back to put them to bed.

• And then there was the big one. I got a call from a close friend of mine a few weeks ago informing me that his oldest boy had committed suicide.  He was 16 years old.  Max and I have been spending as much time as we can with the family.  My friend is a single parent with 3 boys (2 now) and the youngest is a close friend of my son.  And Max looked up to the older boy.

This is not everything that has happened but these are the biggest.

Max has been a trooper.  He has helped my friend and his grandparents whenever asked.

But with all of the stress over these situations and our exhaustion we hadn’t noticed that he was becoming very unhappy….until the bad behavior.  He can’t listen, he does what he wants, and he is very explosive when he doesn’t get his way.

We’ve had to call in child services and it has been recommended that if he breaks anything or hits us to be ready to call the police.

He’s a far cry from where he had been over the summer.  He is basically back to where he was when he was 7 and 8 years old.

We can see now that the stress has been unbearable for him too even though we didn’t notice it for awhile.

He has also told us that he hasn’t been getting enough time with us.  Well he has, a lot, but there haven’t been any close and happy times.  None of us has been in the best shape.  My wife has been exhausted as a result of taking care of the two of us while I was sick which doesn’t help her disability at all.  And now to be her parents’ caregiver is taking a toll as well.

But our priority has to be Max right now.  Yes, her parents need help but he needs more from us.

As I write this I can hear him in his toy room which is right next to my office.  He is working with his advocate cleaning up the thousand different messes.  He is acting calm and collected with her but this is following an explosion he had after his mother requested he turn down his music.

And it’s raining again.

Okay, so today is Monday.  I just got off the phone with Max’s teacher.

We have an issue but the school is trying to downplay it.  It might not sound very major to people but I think it does to a young child.

Basically what happened was that my son brought a box of fish fingers to have for lunch.  He is on a special diet and we had sent them in a gluten free batter.

Now he was only supposed to eat half of them and save the rest in the school refrigerator.

He didn’t understand that so he cooked them and only ate what he could; the rest he through away.

This happened on Thursday last week.  My wife made mention of it in the daily record that gets passed to and from school every day.

Apparently her comment was misunderstood.  Max was grilled about what happened and afterwards they concluded he was lying about the situation.

The result was he was placed on red!!

For those who don’t know what that is about some schools rate behavior with colors:

• green – safe
• yellow - some issues
• red - unsafe behavior

But wait a minute you might ask.  How is lying an unsafe behavior?

Good question.

It seems that unlike some of the other kids my son rarely or never does anything unsafe at school so they treat him differently.  For him, lying puts him in red territory.

To me this is funny…sad.  Max may have a lot of behaviors that aren’t so good but lying isn’t one of them.  It’s not that he doesn’t know what a lie is; he just likes telling the truth about everything.  Even things he shouldn’t.

So he was punished on Friday.

When he got home he was very angry.  Why did that happen?  Why had we called the school and gotten him punished?

He had no idea!

We called the school but it was closed for the weekend.  The teacher called us back this morning.  And oh, she said, it was just a misunderstanding.

“But you know that he had no idea what you were talking about?”  I asked her.

“He must have.  He admitted to lying about it.”

“I’m sorry but when Max is put on the spot and doesn’t even know what you are talking about he will tell you what he thinks you want to hear.”

She said she would talk to him about it and smooth things over.

I mentioned to my wife that he was now out of the running for the monthly prize.  All the kids that are on green for the whole month get to have a private lunch with the principal.  Because he has been on red forget about it.

My wife shrugged.  She said it’s not so bad; he doesn’t even care about the prize.  And he’ll forget about the punishment.

I’m not so sure.

I’ve heard the experts (therapists, doctors, well meaning parents) say things like “he’ll get over it” when something they consider minor happens.

Sometimes maybe and with some children but in a lot of cases I don’t believe it.

When I was growing up I spent a lot of time at my grandparents’ house.

One time their shower rod fell down and my granddad had to fix it.  I was blamed even though I had not been near it.  They claimed I had been swinging on it and that’s why it broke.

They weren’t generally like this so it was a shock that I was being blamed.  It hurt me very badly.  But guess what, everyone said I’d get over it.

I didn’t.

I ended up cutting back my time with them because it made me feel uncomfortable being there.

Same thing happened with my uncle.  I used to spend a lot of time at his house as well.  But then one day he blamed me for something that I had nothing to do with.  This man that I idolized ignored me for three days.

I was wounded.

I didn’t spend very much time with him after that either.

Well of course a lot of people will say that I was overly sensitive.

Perhaps I was.

But you never know what child is not going to just “get over it”!!

Will Max get over this punishment?

I don’t know.  I do know that there are a lot of things that he is keeping to himself that have hurt him over the years.

Parents, teachers, just well meaning people in general can hurt a child without knowing it.

I am becoming more aware of my actions around my son.  I can even see how other people’s actions can hurt him.

I think some actions may be unintentional and may be ignored by the kids but how you handle fixing these mistakes can affect them.

This was a misunderstood situation for Max.  How the teacher handles it could affect him adversely.

My son Max and I don’t have a lot of good Father and Son moments. Usually one of us gets angry and then we end up not speaking to each other for awhile. This generally happens when someone imagines that the other is doing something inappropriate.

Because of that I like to celebrate the few times that things go fantastically well when we are out together. Recently we had such a moment.

On Monday Max came to me and he said “Dad, can we go to the aquarium this week?” He was speaking about the New England Aquarium in Boston. I asked him when he would like to do it and he told me Wednesday. This would work because he has a half day at school every Wednesday. I told him I would think about it.

I talked it over later with his Mom and she brought up a good point. Max rarely asks us to take him to places like this. Usually we will suggest something and he will respond enthusiastically. That’s not to say he won’t ask to go places but it is generally to a store, fast food restaurant, or friend’s house. He almost never asks to go somewhere exciting.

We decided it would be a perfect thing to do so I jumped online to buy tickets. We have found from experience that we can buy them once we get there but on a good day it can take an hour or more just to get up to the ticket booth.

On the big day I drove to his school and met him at noon coming out of the door. From there we drove to the subway station; he loves riding the trains. Once we were seated in the car I mentioned that we had two options:

• Change trains and take the second right to the door of the aquarium

• or get off the train at Government Center and walk fifteen minutes through Faneuil Hall to get there.

He opted for the second route but when we got off the train at our stop we found ourselves on a narrow street surrounded by quite a few tall buildings. I turned to a street vendor and asked him how to get to the hall. He smiled and said “Very easy.”

He led me to a spot in the sidewalk, “Do you see these two lines? Follow them; they will take you right there.” I was surprised but as I directed Max to lead us it dawned on me what we were on. It is known as the Freedom Trail. It is actually a line of bricks bordered by stones and set flush into sidewalks and pavements. If you follow the trail it will bring you to 16 historical Revolutionary sites in Boston.

My son was very enthusiastic about taking us to the hall and we followed it through twisting streets and around corners until we came into the Quincy Marketplace which is part of the Faneuil Hall complex. From there it was a just a short walk over to the bay and up the aquarium concourse.

Since it was now 1 o’clock we decided to have lunch before starting the tour so we headed up to the restaurant on the second floor. This was marvelous my son was not balking at having something to eat. After a hot dog for him and a burger for me we went in to see the fish tanks.

One thing about Max: he is a speed viewer. That is, no matter whether we are visiting a museum, zoo, or aquarium he cannot stop in one place to see the exhibits. Because of his ADHD he will end up walking fairly quickly past each one with barely a glance. Interestingly enough he can tell you all about it in every detail later on. He doesn’t miss a thing.

Today was different. When we walked in the door the first thing we saw was the large penguin area. It is divided up into 4 quadrants; each holding a different type. Instead of moving passed them he went up to the nearest group and leaned over the balcony to stare down at the birds.

For a half an hour he stayed in this one spot watching them preen themselves, swim, and talk to each other. He was utterly fascinated. He even laughed when someone shone a flashlight with a fish-shaped beam into the water. The penguins dove at the light trying to capture a “meal”.

Once he was done he took the ramp to the top of the main fish tank. If you haven’t been there, the aquarium has a four story cylindrical tank in the center of the building full of different types of fish. It stands in the middle of the penguin pen and the ramp spirals around it to the top. It is also made of thick clear glass so as visitors climb they can see different levels of fish from those that live at the bottom of the ocean all the way to the ones that swim near the surface.

Today we noticed that the large shark seemed to be pacing us as we headed upwards. He stayed at our level the higher we went and Max loved it. But when we neared the top he disappeared.

At the peak the tank is open and surrounded by a balcony where visitors hang over and see the fish and giant sting rays. No viewing would be complete however without…Max excitedly pointed down to the aquarium’s mascot: Myrtle the Turtle. She is a large green sea turtle over 70 years old.

When we tired of touring the exhibits Max decided he wanted to walk back the way we came to the subway and stop to check out Faneuil Hall. As we walked down the concourse it started to rain so Max changed his mind; he wanted to just get on the train at the aquarium stop instead. Good thing, literally as we stepped through the station doors there was a huge boom of thunder and a lightening bolt overhead. We were glad he made that decision.

Once we got back to the car and headed home we stopped for dinner at our favorite restaurant. He was off to bed once we got back to the house.

As you can see it was a very nice outing. There were no hyper moments. There were no tantrums from either one of us. There were no disagreements about what was going on. We both seemed to be totally in tune with each other.

It is at times like these that I really love a good dad and son day!