GO AWAY AND DON'T COME BACK!!!

There is a really good reason for which entertainment parks like Disneyland have all those safety features built into all of their rides. For example, the boarding gates will only open after the ride has come to a complete stop and the previous passengers have gotten off the ride. Also, there is a pretty safe distance between any fun seeking attendees and the moving vehicle to avoid anyone from losing a limb or their life by accident. While in line there are multiple signs warning us in advance of any risk we will be taking, minimum age and height requirements, health predispositions that could be aggravated, and all the rules we must follow in order to stay safe. Once we have boarded the ride the contraption will not continue until all of the participants and their belongings are all buckled and tucked into the proper place. Even with all of these precautions, as we board and get ready to go for the short ride, our heart rate increases anticipating the thrill of the moment about to come. Typically, less than 60 seconds later the ride is over and most of us are smiling about the excitement we experienced and how happy we are that we made it back in one piece. One of the reasons we do these things in the first place is because we feel confident that we will not get hurt. If we felt that our lives were in any real danger, chances are that we would not participate in such adventures in the first place.

Last year, around this same time of year my oldest son got himself into a bit of trouble for not taking our advice about staying home instead of trying to get to school when he finally decided to get out of bed. The story of this incident and all of the fallout is contained in a previous post, so I promise not to revisit the details again. However, there was one thing that I learned from that experience that I believe merits being addressed shortly today. As a parent, at the time I felt compelled to intervene in as many ways possible to try to help my boy get out of his predicament with the law, plus make sure that he was educated in many of the things he was doing wrong with his life by the choices he was making at the time. I have but a single regret from that past experience and it is that I should have taken more of a spectator position in my involvement rather than a participant. At the moment I thought that if I showed my full hearted support and made every effort to put myself into the equation, in the end he would be able to see how much I love him and want his life to be ok. The price I paid for my unwavering support was that in the end he mostly blamed me for all of his bad choices and decisions instead of taking responsibility for himself. In less than a day, I got on an emotional roller coaster to which I had absolutely no control over its path and found myself not being able to get off the ride until it came to a complete stop six months later. Worst of all, I got in without reading any of the warning signs, and had absolutely no clue as to what rules I needed to follow to stay safe and sound. By the time I was able to get out of this treacherous ride I felt pretty much like a rag doll that had been dragged around the yard by a cute but extremely hyperactive puppy which in the end simply dug a hole and buried me in hopes to conceal any evidence of my existence. You might feel that I exaggerate, but I am here to tell you that the above description is more than accurate and fair.

For the last two weeks I’ve found myself having to control my parental urges to get emotionally tangled in another crazy roller coaster ride that my oldest teenage son initiated after doing something really dumb on his part and getting in trouble again. This time, a whole different set of circumstances led him to do something similarly stupid which again has gotten him enrolled in the juvenile court system with a pending court date, a sure community service penalty, and a fine. I am not going to go into all of the current details, mostly because regardless of the crime the purpose of this post is not dwell on what I have no control over, but to share what seems to work instead. Ever since I got off the previous out of control ride I have been dreading when the next one would begin. Fortunately I still have a few remaining good neurons that allow me to learn from my mistakes, so I have decided to take a much more passive role in him recovering from his mistake.

I have learned that my oldest son’s wiring, probably just as most of ours is too, is not only different, but also fixed. Short from a brain transplant there is very little I can do about how he is wired. When something bad happens to him, the chaos that follows in his behavior is much different than many of us. To you or me, getting fined by a police officer for speeding will ruin our day, maybe our week. In the end though, we will accept our punishment and take note to try to avoid getting into any more trouble that will end up costing us more money. On the other hand, to him this same event would cause him to binge in all kinds of erratic and unproductive behavior escalating the simple act of getting a speeding ticket to eventually getting arrested. As far back as I can remember most of his behavior towards events to which he has become accustomed to be the same as everybody else. However, just as the neurological assessment that was conducted when he was much younger revealed, change does not come easy to him at all. When something breaks the pattern of normalcy in his life, it is as if at that very moment King Kong decided to sit in front of the doors that keep his self control abilities in check…good luck moving that fat ape out of the way! For this same reason, when he does something that gets him into trouble I have learned that it makes very little sense to drag the consequences out for long periods of time, since this only holds the doors open inviting more problems to come in. The longer the process inflicting consequences, the harder it is for him to adapt and get back to being in a healthy state of mind. Typically, I have discovered that doing everything possible to minimize any significant change in his life is key to maintaining a sense of normalcy amongst us.

GO AWAY AND DON’T COME BACK!!!, read the hand written note that he posted on the window of his bedroom facing the front of our home for everyone of his friends to read. I first noticed it as I was driving back home after work. The letters where all large, capital, and it was obvious that a dark black pen had been angrily used to etch them one by one, over and over again, to cover the entirety of a sideways white sheet of printer paper. The night before he arrived at home around eight at night and spent a good two hours driving me crazy while searching all over the house for his guitar capo to use with my guitar. Earlier that afternoon I had came home and found his five hundred dollar guitar laying on the family room floor in several pieces. Later that week he revealed that he had fallen back while playing outdoors on a patio chair and the still not totally paid by his mother instrument had found its demise when it flew out of his hands and hit the concrete floor. He seemed more like a caged animal wandering back and forth while searching everywhere for his music tool in places like the kitchen cabinets in which it obviously had no reason to be in. In one of these instances he walked into his already messy room and in less than a minute turned it completely upside down and non-livable. As he walked out of his room with a handful containing at least fifty sheets of paper of songs he had recently composed, he went into the dinning room and dropped them all on the floor and kept walking to go outside and search again in the backyard. It had been almost a week after the incident that got him into trouble in the first place, and the note on his bedroom window had been erected at the peak of his defiance and rage which had slowly found its way into affecting everyone around him. This time however, I already knew better to keep my fingers out of the initial wrath and avoid getting them squished by his erratic, compulsive, and reactive behavior. Just as I was calling his mother to ask her to please go buy him a guitar capo to replace the one that had been lost and was causing all of the momentary commotion, suddenly I heard the closest sound to peace coming out of a corner of the dining room area. A friend had showed up and somehow found the elusive guitar capo and now my son was sitting calmly playing a beautiful self composed melody on my guitar. He stayed locked inside his room for the next two days after the angry looking sign was displayed. Anxiety cruised through my body like it always does when I feel helpless towards saving him from his own pain, but nothing ever works and things only get worse when I try to intervene. Once the moment took its course I found him back in the family room watching TV when I got back from work and I offered food for which he initially rejected, but later discovered on his own to be a good idea. As I brought the source of nourishment he paused the TV waiting for me to leave him alone, but I took the single moment in time to offer just the simplest of comments. “I know you are going through a rough moment, I just want you to know that I am here for you if you need me,” I told him. He lifted his eyes to look into mine for the first time in almost over two weeks and simply said, “OK, bye!”

It has been over three weeks now and still I am not totally aware of the status of it all. The letter confirming his need to be in Juvenile court in a few months already arrived, but it makes absolutely no sense to bring it up to him again this far in advance since it would only serve to make things worse instead of better. The original furry of erratic behavior following the triggering incident has decreased in intensity just as if the roller coaster has been replaced from a ride you might call “Death Mountain” to a much tamer “Scary Mountain” instead. This time though, instead of getting on and not being able to get off at will and contrary to last year’s mistake, I am more like the guy guiding people on and off the ride safely. I have chosen to just ride once a day to make sure it is still safe, but then keep my feet on solid ground. After all, who will be there to pull on the brake handle if something goes really wrong? It is not like I can do that while sitting inside the ride, right? Still, I feel spent in a very short amount of time. It is as if the second time around just watching has many of the ill effects of riding during the first time around. There are many reasons to why I feel this way, one being that once you’ve done it, it is not easy to forget what it feels like, the other being that second hand smoke kills too. However, at least this way I am able to keep myself under control even if I am not able to do the same for my son.

Dad