Help

Well, it’s been quite a week.

As T unravels these past few months, we’ve experienced dramatic truancy, daily marijuana use (before and after school most days), and stealing, culminating with an arrest, for petty theft, on his birthday no less.

This week, we hit the wall. He was accused for the second time of stealing (from a teacher!), disrupting the classroom, and expelled from school. At home he was vengeful and full of rage, or withdrawn and disconnected. It’s hard to encapsulate in words, but the most alarming thing is that T is not a kid who is routinely delinquent – his nature is to be sensitive and soulful. His misbehavior has an aspect that hits you right in the gut – it feels wrong on an instinctive, animal level. Something is wrong! it screams. I suppose that’s a distinguishing quality of crisis.

Yesterday, in a tizzy, and with the help of a friend who happens to be an LCSW, I wrote a letter and emailed it to his past and present therapists and social workers. “I need help getting an elevated level of care for T” I said. It ended “We are committed to T but we urgently need help meeting his needs.”

By evening, we had an emergency psychiatric team on our doorstep. (Thanks, by the way, to his FORMER social worker, who was the only one who responded in a helpful way—we have yet to even hear back from his primary caseworker.)

I thought the problem was addiction and substance abuse. But last night I learned that I might be wrong.

They spent four hours here, talking to T, talking to us, searching his room, and formulating an opinion. Then they called us all together. It wasn’t what I expected. They said they considered hospitalizing him, because it’s clear he’s in crisis, but decided it wouldn’t help. He has PTSD and a hospital environment is likely to be overwhelming and frightening for him. They said that we are dealing with serious confusion stemming from sexual abuse, combined with puberty, and that kids like T often have their first major mental health crisis right about now. They said that his emerging sexuality combined with his abuse history lead T to fear he may hurt people and become a bad person. And so he is acting like a monster to try to save people from the harm he imagines he might do—and to try to get us to pay attention to what he can’t put in words.

I did not see that coming, though of course, as soon as they said it, it made perfect sense. They walked in and put their finger right on the raw nerve that is causing daily convulsions right now. Their skill and clarity were truly awe-inspiring. He has never discussed sexual abuse with a therapist before, and I'm the first adult he confided in about it. And yet it took these two doctors less than half an hour to identify the problem and open it up.

They had spare, direct advice for us. First, they said he feels safe with us and our home is the right place for him. He feels loved and secure here, they said, and that is part of why he is confronting his demons now. Second, they told me to adjust my expectations. “But he’s facing criminal charges!” I protested. They said yes, and there’s very little you can do about that. This is who he is and where you are right now. Deal with it.

They told us to let go of our desire to have him graduate from mainstream school. They said not to worry about the fact that his friends are dropouts and delinquents. “Those are the people he feels safe with, because he feels like he can’t hurt them or freak them out,” they said. They told us to let go of our attempts to treat the substance abuse, because it’s a symptom, not a cause. They told us to learn with him about the aftermath of sexual abuse and let him show his ugly bits. They said we must find ways to talk about what happened, and about sexuality, and help him do the same. They told us that “the human condition is to have both good and ugly feelings and thoughts” and to teach T that we are all complex in that way.

I learned so much last night. I learned that he wants help and he will comply. I learned that he trusts us. I learned that my expectations and sense of “normal” are getting in the way of recognizing his needs. We talked this morning, and he was calm, receptive and even grateful—I explained that the doctor talked to us about PTSD, that abused kids and soldiers who’ve been in wars often have PTSD, and that for now we need to make sure we reduce stress and avoid situations that are chaotic and noisy. He felt understood. He said he felt it might be best for him to be in a different school.

(As a side note, I have also learned this week that there is a HUGE difference in Los Angeles between Department of Mental Health programs and DCFS. That sounds like a bureaucratic distinction, but when you need somebody to help your troubled kid on a very bad day when the shit is raining down on your head, it’s a visceral thing. By using the right language, thanks to my friend, we got tapped into DMH, and to these two superhero ninja therapists in the middle of the night, after months of struggling with inadequate therapy and inattentive social workers.)

I don’t regret one moment I’ve spent with T. This week was horrible. I don’t know how we’ll find him a new school and a new therapist next week. I’m not sure I can stomach the external consequences that are being levied on him by people who know nothing of his story. But I understand that this is where we are, and I know that our job is to be his family. We are honest and we stand by each other in ways that I didn’t know were possible before. I am much stronger than I thought, and he is much more vulnerable than he realized. This kind of extreme parenting is exhausting, but I also find it to be soul-satisfying in its honesty, unpredictability and brutal acknowledgement of humanity in all its frailty and resilience. I find that happiness, for us, is not the avoidance of pain, but the acknowledgement of truth.

Shame and the Game Plan

One of the hardest things we grapple with is T.'s internalized belief that he's a bad person.

It's been apparent since some of our earliest conversations with him. In the beginning, he had an odd habit of opening up during happy times and merilly recounting "bad" things he'd done as a young child - school fights, stealing some candy from a store - on a "just thought you should know" basis.

It gradually became clear that he was a) testing us by seeing how we'd respond, b) letting us in on a history of misbehavior that weighs on his conscience, and c) sharing the logic he uses to make sense of what's happened to him. Like lots of traumatized kids, he believes - and has for a long time - that the abuse that was directed at him happened because he was "bad". And then, like lots of abused kids, it became cyclical, because the abuse made him feel shame and caused him to act out in ways that reinforced his belief that he's bad.

As we've bonded more deeply, I've tried suggesting that behavior is not identity, that I love him and know he's not "bad", and that young kids often indicate through their behavior things they can't explain in words. Such a suggestion often results in both a denial that he has or has ever had any feelings, coupled with further information about things that happened to him as a kid. It's a strange sort of "No, but here's another thing I should tell you that proves your point..." response.

We recently had such a conversation. He made an unwise choice at school one day. We were talking through what happened. He told me I shouldn't be surprised by his behavior because he's "always been bad." I said something like "You know, I've heard you say that a few times - that you were a bad kid. I don't think you are or ever have been a bad kid. I think you've used your behavior to send a message sometimes, and now that you're older, it's a good time for us to talk about what triggers that kind of behavior so you can make smart choices."

This time, his face contorted. He said "Sometimes people don't have a choice about how to behave." I asked him for an example. He said, "I didn't have a choice about whether to take care of my younger brother when we went to foster. I had to do it." There was real rage on his face. That happened when he was about six, and that's about the age his stories of being "bad" begin.

He told me that he thinks he's "rotten". He stopped making eye contact and curled up in fetal position in his chair. He asked me not to say nice things about him anymore. This is a painful place for him - he feels he failed to protect his little brother from some harrowing mistreatment they both endured, and at the same time, he resents his brother, who suffered from serious behavioral issues that overwhelmed T. when he was just a little kid trying to keep things under control.

He stayed quiet for a long minute. Then he snapped up, looked me in the eye, and said "Everything happens for a reason! If I hadn't been in foster care, I never would have met you guys!" He didn't smile when he said it, and he wasn't flattering me - he said it with a fierce fire. He was diverting me and changing the subject, trying to wave me off from a sensitive topic. But he was also telling himself a story that matters to him - one where fate works for him.

We came back to the topic at hand. I asked him what he would do if he were the parent and his kid were cutting class, as he's been doing. He thought for a minute, then said, "I'd observe, to see if it's a pattern. If it continued, I'd take away the things he loves most: his cell phone and the computer." I said, "Interesting, that sounds very wise. Now, how would you know for sure if it were a pattern? Would you check on him at school?" He said, "I'd ask him directly. He usually tells the truth. He told you about it in the first place." I said, "That's true. He is very honest and that's one of the things I like so much about him."

These role-reversal conversations tend to work really well with T. because of the pseudo-parental role he played as a young kid - he slips easily into that frame of mind and can parent himself quite effectively. They also crack me up.

The intensity of the moment passed and we chatted a bit longer. We invited him to let us know if there's anything we can do better as parents, to help take the spotlight off him as we wound down. He loves this question and I often use it to help him end an intense conversation. "Yes," he said in a thoughtful way - at times, he can be quite professorial. "You went too far with my consequences today," he said. "My behavior isn't that bad. We should try to compromise." We did. Then he rose from the table. "Well, that was a very mature conversation," he said, "I'm glad we had this talk." He danced around for a bit, tickled and poked us, then put himself to bed.

Before I became his parent, I thought we'd have a lot more control over how and when we parented. I thought you kind of organized your talking points, sat the kid down and delivered them. I laught at myself now. I didn't know there are all these little doors opening and closing all the time, and you kind of have to lob your parenting wisdom at them and hope to hit the mark. Two parts love - BAM! A quick shot of discipline - POW! Uh oh - incoming negative peer influence. DUCK! Pop back up, articulate reasonable limits. Hope for compliance. Dodge hormonal theatrics. That sort of thing.

It's hard, but it's fun.

Nest

We're coming up on T.'s sixteenth birthday soon. Milestones can be tricky things and this one has him in a reflective mood. We were bracing for some difficult behavior - Christmas, in retrospect, was really rough, as he processed all sorts of emotions and divided loyalties. But T. is a regular mind-blower and he's in a different frame of mind lately- one more befitting of an 80 year-old than a 16 year-old.

Last night, we fell into a most unexpected conversation. I was trying to head off some brewing mischief he's concocting for his birthday, and he was trying to earn a little money by finding extra chores he could do. In jest, I said, "You can tell me the secret you're keeping and I might pay you for that!"

He loved that and agreed immediately. I said, "Okay, we'll cover our eyes while you tell us, so you don't feel embarrassed." Somehow that opened the most astonishing floodgate of confession.

It began with a pretty ordinary sort of teenage secret, related to his birthday. Apparently that went so well, he moved on quickly to some huge and long-impacted private torments. One minute we were clearing the table and joking around, and the next, we were listening quietly to some harrowing details of his younger life. He followed with a strict instruction "Just listen and don't SAY anything!" We stayed quiet, and just showed him warm eyes and a soft expression. A little further down the conversation road, we offered a few quiet compliments about his exceptional wisdom.

We all came away happy, rather than sad - most unexpected, because his early life is a study in every conceivable kind of child abuse. Sometimes for traumatized kids still reeling and in pain, I think telling means reliving - but in this case, the telling of it was different from the living of it. He and Tim reorganized the kitchen cabinets afterwards, and that sort of mundane togetherness seemed the right transition back to everyday life. He was able to release what he needed to tell and we were able to show him, by staying calm and warm and quiet, that he can set those burdens down and nothing about our life together will change.

He's nesting now. He's incredibly long and lean (more than six inches taller than me now!), and when he winds his long limbs around us or moves in for a quick hug, or to touch foreheads as we do now at bedtime, I find myself holding my breath sometimes as if trying not to startle an exotic wild animal. He's taken over the house with his teen detritus, and established his own strange patterns of feeding and other daily routines. He brings little bits of his past now and then - a photo of his mom, a fact about what happened to him- and adds that to the insulation he's building around himself.

It's humbling to watch. Sometimes I think we are like the stagehands in his life. He is like a great actor, the star of his own life, but he had no reliable place to perform and nobody to pay consistent attention before. We construct a comfortable, intimate place for him where he can act out what needs to be aired. When he's done, we appreciate. And then he rests. My favorite times are when he rests peacefully, knowing he spoke and was heard.