Obsessive Behaviour, is it a Curse or a Blessing? (Part I)

When my older son was 14 years old he asked me for an electric guitar for Christmas. Having learned to play the piano myself when I was only seven years old, I figured it was in my best interest to sponsor his sudden interest in music. I let him pick what he wanted and went about delivering the Santa goods on a beautiful Christmas morning. Being a good sport I also bought him some music books, a couple of videos of lessons, an amplifier, and smartly enough headphones. Like most typical children, he played the cool looking apparatus for a couple of days and then just leaned it against the wall of his bedroom attempting to give the impression that a rock star occupied the living space he called his room. He had taken some keyboard lessons in the past and I could tell that he had musical talent. I also knew that if it seemed to him that playing an instrument was my idea, he would not go for it in the end.

A year went by and suddenly out of nowhere, what seemed more like cats fighting in the alley, not music, again began to emanate from the no longer retired rock star's room. Obviously a chain of events had transpired within the clan on teenagers he hung around with and the concept of forming a band became the primary goal of the free spirits. Mind you, none of them were actually any good, but at least they looked great in the photo shoot they took at the park to be able to post their picture on My Space. Hours were spent arguing about band names, who would be lead guitarist, and all other sort of apparently crucial decisions needed to freak out the neighbors within a half mile radius. All of this happened within the same time that I was still living in an apartment, so most of the joy of experiencing the creation of a true garage band was delegated to his mom. For this I am eternally in debt to her, since by the time I was finally able to buy a home, they were actually not that bad.

I offered to pay and drive him to guitar lessons but that would of meant accepting defeat to the adversity of learning on his own so he rejected my offers. Obsessive behaviour comes with its perks. Six months later he was actually quite good on the electric guitar. He would spend endless hours practicing over and over the things he wanted to learn. He researched all the great guitarist of our time and a few more, and studied their techniques and styles. Eventually he borrowed my old acoustic guitar and decided to learn how to play that one too. The hunger for learning was insatiable, just as it had been with his hunger to devour interesting books at age six. Such was his compulsion to learn how to play these instruments that everything else in his life was dropped and grades and school went out the window.

At the time I could not understand that he truly had very little control over this obsessive behaviour. To me he just seemed like a lazy child not wanting to do school work in order to play with his toys. The fights started, the arguments grew larger and larger, and I was up to my ears in frustration because his behaviour was getting harder and harder to control.

Control, that is an interesting word. I thought that I had some kind of power as a parent to control the outcome of his obsessive behaviour. Every time he got a bad grade or report from his teachers, I would take away his guitar to punish and try to control him. After all, at his age all the books tell us to do is to punish the behaviour not the child. Consequences, make the child understand that for every improper action, there is a consequence. Go ahead, spend the 12 long weeks that we did at a behavioural medical center trying to find ways to control an "Intermittent Explosive Disorder" diagnosis and I guarantee you that 90% of what they will teach you is about enforcing consequences. The other 10% is about communication.

Let me ask you this, what if the improper action that you are punishing is actually just part of a disorder? Worse, what if the consequence that you are using to punish the behaviour is actually one of the few things that keeps the child functioning properly? It took me a while to see the reality of my dilemma, but when I finally caught on to it, EUREKA! It sounds all so simple now in retrospect. I would of never considered taking away one of his books when he did something wrong in school, who would deprive a child from knowledge? The real reason not to do it though should of been, who would deprive a child from what keeps him well, stable, calm, and composed? So I admit it, taking away his guitar was not really that great of an idea, in fact, it was one of those times in which enforcing a consequence was worse than not enforcing one at all.

Music to him became not only his outlet for creativity, but it also centered him. When I would deprive him of his obsession, he would pace up and down the apartment like an anxious dog waiting for his owner to finally walk into the house from the garage to greet him. On the other hand, during some of the times that I was upset with him for whatever reason, if I allowed him to have his music, he stayed calmer than ever and our arguments didn't tend to escalate as much as before.

Obsessively he also learned to play the Ukulele and a bit if Banjo too. Not only does he play them beautifully, but he also composes music and lyrics that I find impressive in many ways. I find myself stealing some of his compositions from his computer just to listen to them over and over on my IPod searching for him, his essence, inside of the rhythms and words that he creates. I do, I swear that it feels as if I have honestly found his soul lurking around his creative melodies. What a blessing and yet also a contradiction has life given me by allowing my heart to find peace inside the same chaotic process that so many times has frustrated me in the past.

My son's obsessive behaviour has its merits. His creative side shines brighter than the sun when he puts his whole mind and soul into the tasks he focuses on. When he was six years old and obsessed about reading books, that was actually a pretty cool parental experience. However, in the middle of the realization that his obsessiveness would prove to be a wonderful process in which to gain intellectual and artistic advantages, another realization materialized to show the ugly side of this gift. It was always obvious to me that if he could not control himself obsessing about positive things, obviously he would not be able to control himself obsessing about negative things either.

Suddenly, and probably in an effort to find something to help him feel balanced, my sixteen years old son began obsessing about drugs. (to be continued...)

Dad