Valnorran
February 16th, 2006, 11:25 AM
I'm having some problems with my 12 year old son and was hoping I could get some different perspectives from you guys. I have absolutely no idea how to solve the problem and am utterly at my wit's end.
He has Tourett's syndrom, was diagnosed when he was nine, and had Obssessive/Compulsive and ADD thrown in, too. He'll be thirteen in April. I've lost track of all the meds we've tried. Three days ago we stopped giving him meds entirely as they weren't really solving anything, and at least one seems to be making his nervous ticcs worse. Ever since Monday (I'm writing this on Thursday, 2/16, 9:35 AM) he's been obstinate to the point that he almost appears delusional. For example, last night we told him to take his bath. He'd respond "I am" while sitting on the sofa and not moving. We finally had to physically pull him off the sofa while telling him to take his bath. All the while he insisted he was taking his bath and looked at us as if we were crazy. It blew up into a huge fight that went on for an hour or so. My wife says he's been doing this since Monday. My work schedule has shifted so that Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays I don't get home until about 8:30 PM, so last night's instance was the first I personally saw. My wife's been dealing with it by herself. Now, this morning, she calls me at work to tell me he's doing the same thing. He wanted to bring some juice to school. She said no, the school wouldn't allow it. He bludgeoned her with the question of why. "Why, momma? Why?" Just constantly repeating that question, no matter how many times she told him the school wouldn't allow it. It's like talking to someone over a radio and he isn't receiving your transmission. His manner isn't one of hate or contempt or obvious wise-assness. I'm wondering if it's some sort of passive/aggressive type thing. Here are some things I've thought of:
1. This is some sort of withdrawal/detox sort of response to being taken off his meds. I can't remember what all we had him on, but I know some drugs can stay in the system for a long time.
2. The onset of adolescence might be a factor.
3. When I was home at night this wasn't a problem. My schedule changed four weeks ago. I'm the sole male influence in his life. It has been well documented, in humans as well as other social mammels, that male offspring without the guidance of an older male get very twitchy, to say the least. I saw an interesting program about elephants that addressed this issue. My father died when I was two, but I had an older brother and a grandfather to act as surrogates. Some of my son's acts are obvious and open defiance. He'll do it to his mother and both of his grandmothers, but he won't do it to me. These last three nights, though, were something else. It really was as though he wasn't hearing what he was being told, and he's not good enough at hiding his feelings for me to think it's an act on his part. I'm going to talk today with my supervisors and see how big a bite would be taken out of my meager finances if I stopped teaching my night class. It enfuriates me beyond words to have something so assanine as money make such a huge difference in my life, having something I consider so petty be such a big factor.
4. One of his greatest loves (obssessions, really) is farming. We live on a sugar cane plantation. He hobnobs with the men who work our fields. They let him drive the tractors and harvesters. The mill that we send our cane to closed down this past season, which ended in January. For my son, this was nearly the equivalent of a death in the family. He has literally cried over it. I believe this to be at least a factor in his behavior. My approach has been to simply let him be sad about the mill, though his mother is losing patience with it. She doesn't understand why he feels as strongly about it as he does. Neither do I, but I can't stop him from being sad, so I just let him feel whatever he feels, and if he wants to cry about it that's fine with me. I've told him that it's okay for a man to cry about some things.
5. His love of farming is expressed with his obssession over yard work and the riding lawn mower. It's a John Deere, just like what the field hands use. Recently he had a very close call with the riding mower. It had a safety system in the seat that would automatically cut the engine off if the driver's weight came off the seat. This was acting up in such a manner that the tractor couldn't be used. In searching for this problem, my son discovered a leak in the fuel system. He shut everything off and he and my mother went to the store to order some parts for the tractor. When they returned, my son had forgotten about the fuel leak and got on the tractor and tried to start it. He smelled the gasoline and remembered the fuel leak and had enought time to think "Whoops!" before the trator ignited. He got off wihout getting burned, but we discovered that somehow some small copper parts got lodged in his right buttock when something in the burning tractor blew. The charred remains of the tractor still sit in my front yard. I think the loss of the tractor, combined with the fact that it nearly took him with it, is still impacting him. This happened week-end before last.
6. He has twice tested for gifted and talented at school, but he didn't qualify. His younger sister is now testing for it, and I think he's jealous as hell.
7. We've been sending both our kids to a private Catholic school, but they've hiked up their tuition and we simply can't afrord it anymore. Next year they're going to public school, much to my dislike. I think he's scared about that, though he does well socially. He's much better at making friends than I ever was, especially at that age.
My wife and I have considered sending him to a hospital in Alexandria, Louisiana that might help him. I've been strongly opposed for both emotional and logical reasons, though I freely admit the emotional reasons are the primary ones. I just have a very deep, primal, instinctive reaction against sending him there. Family helps family. Family solves family problems. To me that concept is as firmly fixed and indisputable as gravity. By sending my son to outsiders, I feel like I'm abdicating my duties and responsibilities as a father. I feel like I'd be surrendering and admitting my irreversable failure. My logical reason for resistance is that maybe he'll do fine at that place, but what happens when he comes back home? At school, at other peoples' homes his behavior is fine. It's only at our home that he gives this kind of trouble, leading me to conclude that there is something about the home atmosphere that sets him off, though what that could be I have no clue. I don't think I can truly articulate just how crazy his behavior makes us. It probably doesn't sound so bad, the way I describe it, but living with it is pure madness. As a Tourettic, his episodes are easily set off by certain things. I think to some degree, all of the factors I've mentioned are part of it, and maybe some I don't know about. Talking to my son is an exercise in pure frustration because the only answers I can ever get out of him are "Nothing" or "I don't know."
The upshot of all this is that my family and I have a very big problem that needs to be solved right now and I have absolutely no idea how to do it. Any thoughts or suggestions anybody has I'd love to hear.
He has Tourett's syndrom, was diagnosed when he was nine, and had Obssessive/Compulsive and ADD thrown in, too. He'll be thirteen in April. I've lost track of all the meds we've tried. Three days ago we stopped giving him meds entirely as they weren't really solving anything, and at least one seems to be making his nervous ticcs worse. Ever since Monday (I'm writing this on Thursday, 2/16, 9:35 AM) he's been obstinate to the point that he almost appears delusional. For example, last night we told him to take his bath. He'd respond "I am" while sitting on the sofa and not moving. We finally had to physically pull him off the sofa while telling him to take his bath. All the while he insisted he was taking his bath and looked at us as if we were crazy. It blew up into a huge fight that went on for an hour or so. My wife says he's been doing this since Monday. My work schedule has shifted so that Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays I don't get home until about 8:30 PM, so last night's instance was the first I personally saw. My wife's been dealing with it by herself. Now, this morning, she calls me at work to tell me he's doing the same thing. He wanted to bring some juice to school. She said no, the school wouldn't allow it. He bludgeoned her with the question of why. "Why, momma? Why?" Just constantly repeating that question, no matter how many times she told him the school wouldn't allow it. It's like talking to someone over a radio and he isn't receiving your transmission. His manner isn't one of hate or contempt or obvious wise-assness. I'm wondering if it's some sort of passive/aggressive type thing. Here are some things I've thought of:
1. This is some sort of withdrawal/detox sort of response to being taken off his meds. I can't remember what all we had him on, but I know some drugs can stay in the system for a long time.
2. The onset of adolescence might be a factor.
3. When I was home at night this wasn't a problem. My schedule changed four weeks ago. I'm the sole male influence in his life. It has been well documented, in humans as well as other social mammels, that male offspring without the guidance of an older male get very twitchy, to say the least. I saw an interesting program about elephants that addressed this issue. My father died when I was two, but I had an older brother and a grandfather to act as surrogates. Some of my son's acts are obvious and open defiance. He'll do it to his mother and both of his grandmothers, but he won't do it to me. These last three nights, though, were something else. It really was as though he wasn't hearing what he was being told, and he's not good enough at hiding his feelings for me to think it's an act on his part. I'm going to talk today with my supervisors and see how big a bite would be taken out of my meager finances if I stopped teaching my night class. It enfuriates me beyond words to have something so assanine as money make such a huge difference in my life, having something I consider so petty be such a big factor.
4. One of his greatest loves (obssessions, really) is farming. We live on a sugar cane plantation. He hobnobs with the men who work our fields. They let him drive the tractors and harvesters. The mill that we send our cane to closed down this past season, which ended in January. For my son, this was nearly the equivalent of a death in the family. He has literally cried over it. I believe this to be at least a factor in his behavior. My approach has been to simply let him be sad about the mill, though his mother is losing patience with it. She doesn't understand why he feels as strongly about it as he does. Neither do I, but I can't stop him from being sad, so I just let him feel whatever he feels, and if he wants to cry about it that's fine with me. I've told him that it's okay for a man to cry about some things.
5. His love of farming is expressed with his obssession over yard work and the riding lawn mower. It's a John Deere, just like what the field hands use. Recently he had a very close call with the riding mower. It had a safety system in the seat that would automatically cut the engine off if the driver's weight came off the seat. This was acting up in such a manner that the tractor couldn't be used. In searching for this problem, my son discovered a leak in the fuel system. He shut everything off and he and my mother went to the store to order some parts for the tractor. When they returned, my son had forgotten about the fuel leak and got on the tractor and tried to start it. He smelled the gasoline and remembered the fuel leak and had enought time to think "Whoops!" before the trator ignited. He got off wihout getting burned, but we discovered that somehow some small copper parts got lodged in his right buttock when something in the burning tractor blew. The charred remains of the tractor still sit in my front yard. I think the loss of the tractor, combined with the fact that it nearly took him with it, is still impacting him. This happened week-end before last.
6. He has twice tested for gifted and talented at school, but he didn't qualify. His younger sister is now testing for it, and I think he's jealous as hell.
7. We've been sending both our kids to a private Catholic school, but they've hiked up their tuition and we simply can't afrord it anymore. Next year they're going to public school, much to my dislike. I think he's scared about that, though he does well socially. He's much better at making friends than I ever was, especially at that age.
My wife and I have considered sending him to a hospital in Alexandria, Louisiana that might help him. I've been strongly opposed for both emotional and logical reasons, though I freely admit the emotional reasons are the primary ones. I just have a very deep, primal, instinctive reaction against sending him there. Family helps family. Family solves family problems. To me that concept is as firmly fixed and indisputable as gravity. By sending my son to outsiders, I feel like I'm abdicating my duties and responsibilities as a father. I feel like I'd be surrendering and admitting my irreversable failure. My logical reason for resistance is that maybe he'll do fine at that place, but what happens when he comes back home? At school, at other peoples' homes his behavior is fine. It's only at our home that he gives this kind of trouble, leading me to conclude that there is something about the home atmosphere that sets him off, though what that could be I have no clue. I don't think I can truly articulate just how crazy his behavior makes us. It probably doesn't sound so bad, the way I describe it, but living with it is pure madness. As a Tourettic, his episodes are easily set off by certain things. I think to some degree, all of the factors I've mentioned are part of it, and maybe some I don't know about. Talking to my son is an exercise in pure frustration because the only answers I can ever get out of him are "Nothing" or "I don't know."
The upshot of all this is that my family and I have a very big problem that needs to be solved right now and I have absolutely no idea how to do it. Any thoughts or suggestions anybody has I'd love to hear.