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Ordinary Time
The church has a season called “Ordinary Time.” It’s not Lent or Easter, not Advent or Christmas, and much of the year is spent here.
I’m in this kind of season with my son right now. We had 5 years of crisis mode: unsafe situations, navigating suspensions (for a 2nd/3rd grader, mind you), and just plain surviving.
Then, at the end of 2020, we found relief.
His second inpatient visit offered the life-giving diagnosis of Bipolar I, and he transferred to a specialized school that has support for him. He now has meds that help him. Family members who didn’t believe in mental illness in children now see the actual results of proper treatment and are supportive in new ways.
At the end of 2020, when others were enduring a new crisis mode of their own with the pandemic, our “ordinary time” began.
My therapist, on one of our telehealth calls, noted that I had spent so long in crisis mode, I needed to re-learn how to exist in a different season; one where you didn’t get daily calls from the school to pick up your son, and where he didn’t share suicidal ideations on a weekly basis.
It’s a year and a half later, and I think I’m still learning. I’m still terrified that we will be thrown into an unsafe situation once again. We have different struggles than other families– like how missing one evening dose could through him into a tailspin that lasts for two weeks. But, our baseline is so much lower. Despite how painful it is to reflect on our times of crisis, I try to do that so I can remember how far we’ve come. How far he’s come. My ordinary time might look different than someone else’s, but I’m grateful for it.
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Sliding Scales
My therapist charges for her services on a sliding scale, meaning her prices adjust depending on her clients’ income. It was an amazing gift to be able to receive mental health care during a time when I was our only source of income and my husband was a student.
I sometimes look at the age-old greeting, “how are you?” with the same kind of scale. If the person genuinely wants to know, I have to ask myself, do they know where we’ve been in the last week? Month? Year? If the analogy of a baseline income = our baseline “okay,” then our scale has shifted considerably from 2020 to 2021. We have new treatment, a new diagnosis, more people on our team, and most significantly, appropriate medication that keeps our son stable, able to sleep, and functional in relationships. It’s a place I could hardly imagine, and when I compare it to last year, I’d give it a 10 for sure.
Then there’s that awful thing where you start to recognize the baseline for other families. That my 10, which I want to celebrate and enjoy, is really a 3 for a “typical” kid. Sometimes I get too confident or used to our new normal, and I think we can go to a park with someone else or do something out of routine. Life is better! Why shouldn’t we try to live a little?
And then I’m rudely awakened. I’m living on a sliding scale, where our normal is nowhere near the norm. We still need to adjust our routines, how and when we venture out in public as a family, because it is almost certainly going to present challenges.
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Surprising compassion
Surprising compassion
There are many, many moments when I am bereft of compassion towards My son. Today I experienced a rare moment of the opposite: understanding and empathy for my boy. (It helps that he had a super sweet moment of tenderness toward me last night. Just to give you an idea of the whiplash that is being his mom, about an hour before the tender moment he called me a fucking bitch. So, baby steps.)
My eldest son has been super motivated to earn a new Nintendo switch game. He knew clear ahead of time that cooperating with an evaluation would achieve that goal, and he even put $30 of his saved money toward it. He finished his lessons for the day in record time and with reasonable effort, we went on a mile walk, and had a pretty pleasant experience overall. He cooperated during his 3 hour appointment nearly the entire time… until the evaluator discovered a dead frog in his pocket. Now in his defense, the frog was alive when he put it in his pocket. And in my defense, I didn’t know he brought it inside! But she freaked out and started yelling, which set him off in a major way to where he was reacting— not choosing the next move. He sprayed hand sanitizer in her face and ran out of the office, prompting her to call me to come get him immediately.
Ordinary parenting techniques would say that he didn’t keep his end of the bargain, so I shouldn’t get him the reward. I was really, really torn. He started bawling on our way to the car: “I did my BEST and it wasn’t enough!”
His dejection hit me deep.
This kid is struggling with something so much bigger than he is. I called my husband, and together we arrived at the conclusion that typical if/then scenarios don’t really apply here. I fully believe that he did his level best, not just in the appointment but the night before and earlier today. And I wanted to reward his effort. Because if he loses hope, if he gives up trying… well, I don’t want to think about it.
So I abandoned what I would do with a kid like me and tried to parent the kid that I have in a way that will help him grow. I thank God for the empathy that surfaced today— and pray for more of that in the days to come.
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What is it like to be a mom to a kid with mental illness?
It fucking sucks.
You think you’re going to fulfill your dreams as a woman and mother, raising this Godly man who will be strong and sensitive and socially aware. You believe you’re going to instill in him a spirit of generosity and hospitality. You hope he will be kind and thoughtful and smart and all the things.
Then he hurts you.
Then he hurts his brother.
Then he says he wishes he didn’t exist.
All your beautiful dreams, your admirable hopes have dissipated. Day after day, month after month, you think maybe now you’ve turned the corner— you’ve crossed the threshold into the promised land. But day after day you are disappointed and wondering how you got here.
You see your friends with these kids who make messes, poke their siblings, lie about stealing an Oreo, and they say, “parenting is hard!”
And you want to scream.
You want to shake them and tell them, there’s parenting, and then there’s parenting a kid with mental illness.
Your struggle is not my struggle.
If you can’t relate to my experience, that’s ok. But please affirm what I’ve endured instead of trying to offer platitudes of “parenting is hard.” It’s incredibly disheartening.
If you can relate, well, this is for you.Where are you, mother with the bipolar elementary kid?
Where are you, parent of another suicidal treasure?
This world is messed up and tragic and brutal. I don’t know how to do any of it, but life keeps coming and I keep showing up in messy and weird ways. I am heartbroken at the grief my boys feel, at the adult emotions that fill their childhood. In many way I feel that I’ve failed them… I’ve made so so many mistakes. But I do love them deeply, and I hope to goodness they always remember that.