Posts tagged ‘Family’

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.

For 3 years we have been seeing family therapists. The goal has always been to help my wife, Max, and me to be a family as we work through his ADHD, Asperger’s, and Bipolar issues.

It hasn’t been easy. This is not because Max has been resisting us; even though he has. And it isn’t because we haven’t been learning anything; because we have.

It is because there hasn’t been any consistency. We have gone through 5 or 6 different therapists. As each one comes in we have to start from the beginning. And they all start with what I call “the happy face” pages. That is, Mom, Dad, and Max are handed our own piece of paper. They have a number of faces drawn on them; each with a different emotion. One is happy; one is sad; one is angry; and so on.

As we go from individual to individual we must choose a face and describe what it means to us. Quite often we pick the one that we are feeling at that moment and talk about it.

The next week there will be another session similar to this. Then the following week we get another variation.

But we never see any changes!!

And Max doesn’t like to sit in these sessions. He is a doer. He doesn’t like just sitting around and talking about his feelings. It is okay if he is working on his bicycle while doing it. But he isn’t going to stare at a piece of paper and chatter on and on.

As usual our current therapist started just like all of the others: with “the happy face”. He soon discovered this wasn’t working for any of us. He changed things up to make sure Max is involved. And now he comes in with a schedule:

• We do 5 minutes of check in. That is, how is each one of us feeling today? Pick out a day since the last meeting that meant a lot to us and talk about it.

• Following that is a formal meeting which lasts about 20 minutes where we now talk about different issues. This is the time that Max hates the most and we generally cannot get him involved.

• Then we continue our conversation for 20 minutes through play. But we don’t do it by sitting on the couch. Recently we all moved out to the driveway and stood in a circle far enough away so that we could toss a ball to each of us. Before throwing it we would specify who was going to get it. That person would then say something nice about us. For example, Max has the ball and he wants to throw it to me. I would say something like “you are a great engineer.” He would then toss the ball to me and it is my turn.

• At the end it is Max time. For the last 15 minutes Max takes the therapist off to see his new project. Mom and Dad retreat back to the house.

This week something different happened. We went through the 5 minute check in and as expected Max would not get involved in the formal session. We continued on without him. The therapist brought out several sheets of paper which contained the following diagram:

As you can see it is a triangle. At the bottom right is the word “Actions”. On the bottom left is “Feelings”. At the top is the word “Beliefs”.

Our first goal was to list some of the actions that Max does that bothers us:

• Swearing

• Yelling and screaming

• Smashing

• Poking

• Inappropriate attention-getting

The words on the diagram are related. What are the feelings that Max has that are causing these actions? We came up with the following:

• Anger

• Anxiety

• Fear

• Sadness

• Insecurity

• Loneliness

Since Max isn’t here we are just guessing that these are what he is feeling. They aren’t numbered because they don’t necessarily correspond one on one with his actions. For example “sadness” does not necessarily incur “poking”.

Just like actions are caused by feelings; feelings are a result of the beliefs we have about ourselves. In this case we came up with:

• “Nobody loves me”

• “Nobody understands me”

• “I’m a horrible person”

• “I can’t do anything right”

• “I’m stupid”

These were our best guesses as to how Max feels about himself.

What I have described here is the furthest along we have ever gotten during the last 3 years of therapy. Forget about everything else I’m now seeing something we can work with in helping our family.

But this wasn’t the only surprise for this session. Max joined us once we had gotten this far. He came and sat between his Mother and me and looked at what we came up with. We showed him his actions and we told him how they were connected to his feelings. He looked through the list and pretty much agreed to what we had.

We then explained how beliefs fit into the picture and how they cause the feelings which spark the actions. We told him we didn’t really know what he believed but we had made some guesses. He read the list and nodded but then he said something else:

“I feel worthless.”

He said it very quietly.

We were stunned. We had always thought that we had done our best to build him up: “You did a great job on that project”, “Thank you for cleaning the sink. It looks very nice.”

But now we are seeing that something is being lost in translation. And the worst part is this path feeds on itself. What I mean is:

• Max feels worthless

• It makes him angry, sad, insecure, and lonely.

• So he screams, swears, and smashes things.

• People get angry with him so he feels more worthless and this continues the circle.

We’ve had a break through! Finally after 3 years! This is wonderful!

So now what do we do with this information?

But as the psychologist says to his patient, “Our time is up. We will continue this at our next session.”

So this week we should be discovering the next step.

Could this help in your family situations?

He showed up in my office in a black suit and a red tie, “I’m ready to go Daddy.”

“Where are we going?”

“To the wake.”

I know there are Irish wakes and funeral processions in Louisiana that both celebrate life. They can be joyous occasions.  I grew up on the former and witnessed the latter once.  But in this area they tend to be morose affairs; catching up with people you haven’t seen in years while commiserating with the bereaved family.

My boy is too hyper and joyous to participate in one of these; an Irish wake maybe.  We reminded him that basketball is on Tuesdays and he would miss it if we went to this one.  We also mentioned that he wouldn’t know anyone there.  Yes, they were family but I had only seen my uncle once in the last 25 years.  And of course it would be dull; he would have more fun playing ball.

He was very conflicted.  He did not want to miss basketball but he believed he was obligated to be with family today.  I shrugged and told him to meet me in the car but as he went out the door he stopped.

“I changed my mind.  I’m going to play, ” and he went upstairs to change.

I followed after to say good bye but I found him sitting cross legged on the bed crying; he was still very torn.  By this time the suit was off and he was wearing only his shorts.  I suggested that if he wanted to go just grab his clothes and get dressed in the car.  In the end he decided to stay home but later my wife told me he cried for some time afterwards.

He had a blast playing ball.

This morning he came to me and asked, “How are you doing Dad?”

“What do you mean?”

“Was the wake okay?”

I smiled and hugged him, “I am fine.  Thank you for asking.  Do you know I am proud of you for wanting to be there.  Your Grandmother is very proud of you too.  You weren’t obligated to be there but everyone knows how you wanted to support her.”

That satisfied him and he ran off to get ready for school.  After he was gone I got dressed and headed off to the funeral home again.  Today was limited to a short service around the casket.  When I arrived I sat in the back of the room and thought about Max, about family, and about the people in this room.

I mentioned earlier that I had only seen my late uncle once in 25 years…at another funeral.  It has probably been more than 30 since I had seen his wife and kids.  I grew up with them; we played a lot; and I had slept over their house on several occasions.

But then we lost touch.  We had grown; and grown apart.  Some of them were now grandparents, like me.  I would hear a story here and there about what was happening.  These were few and far between.

I stared out at all of the people here.  I could recognize my cousins though they were 30 years older.  But who are they?  And those younger people behind them.  Of course, those are their children but look at them; I didn’t even know they existed and they are adults!  Max would love to meet his “new” cousins but I can’t even tell him anything about them.

While I was moving through the bereavement line one cousin told me it was great to see me again, though I had to introduce myself.  And he said let’s do this again but not in 30 years.  I agreed but I added that I’d rather it wasn’t under these circumstances.

But now I’m home and Max just got back from school.  I watch him and realize that if something isn’t done I will pull back into isolation as parents of kids with disorders tend to do.  Am I doing it because I don’t want anyone to know about his issues?  I don’t think so it is more like the same cousin said, “we get so involved with raising our kids we forget about the outside world.”

And it is even more so when Bipolar Disorder, ADHD, Asperger’s, or any other disorder or disability affects our kids.  We get so involved in planning, doctors, ieps and schools, structure, explosions, medications, and the list goes on.  You know what?  This is just the way it is.  But in the process extended family and friends can get lost.  It takes so much extra effort to keep them together and a lot of times we just don’t have the energy.