Defiant Little Shit, or the Pit of Despair, Part II, and the Bear

Now that I feel like I am on more emotionally stable ground with the Boy, I can look back and see how challenging the past four years were. I wrote earlier this week about the Boy's walk to the Ravenna footbridge in May 2016. 

That was first time.

There were numerous trips to the footbridge between then and when he went to treatment. The Boy had low grade suicidality for a few years. He never had a trip to the ER where we found him half dead or he needed his stomach pumped, but there were lots of time I feared he'd impulsively take his like by walking in front of a bus, jumping from a bridge, or riding his bike down a steep hill and crashing into traffic.

When the Boy was admitted to the PBMU (Psychiatric and Behavioral Monitoring Unit) at Seattle Children's in 8th grade, Jack and I attended parent education where they showed us a graph like this one to describe the mental state of a kid like ours:

The Green Zone is a peaceful, normal state. The Red Zone is where the kid gets agitated and loses control. The Black Zone is where the kid crashes down from the Red Zone into depression. This is where they have clarity about their previous actions, and they often feel remorse, shame and embarrassment that they lost control. 

The Red Zone is where kids risking hurting other people. 

The Black Zone is where they risk hurting themselves.

Neither is fun.

The hard part is when kids repeatedly go through this cycle. It is agonizing to watch your child struggle through this again and again.

So, as a mom, my first job was to make sure the Boy avoided the cycle as much as possible, which ironically is not what you are supposed to do. Here is where life sucks.

I was talking to another friend whose kid was in rehab. "They told us we had to throw everything about being a good parent out the window and do the opposite." That doesn't mean screaming at your kid like a maniac. It means detaching. It means when you see them slowing destroying their life, not to nag and tell them they are ruining their life. It means watching them crash. It means letting them fail. It means not enabling them. 

In this case, I am dealing with a minor, not a grown adult. I am still a responsible parent.

All the while, my heart is breaking.

Now the Boy is in a safe and supported place where he will get to practice his new coping skills. He will be living with three other guys who had similar struggles. He will live in Montana where he can ski, mountain bike, fly fish, hike and swim in lakes.* This weekend, the kids went floating down a river on inner-tubes in Glacier National Park.

"We saw a bear," the Boy said. "It was about thirty-five yards and across the river."

I had never thought there'd be a day where I'd be excited my son encountered a bear in the wild. After the past four years, I am glad his is exactly where he is.

* I asked the Boy if the school ever takes the kids hunting, as hunting is a major outdoor activity in Montana. "Mom," he said, "Do you really think they are going to take a bunch of trouble youth into the woods and given them guns?" Fair point.