Hard-Wired

My littlest love, Isaac Reed, is failing kindergarten this year.

Since the start of the year, I have been receiving emails and phone calls from his teacher regarding his behavior. In short, he is extremely impulsive. He has been known to walk out of class without asking… on more than one occasion. He also cut his own hair with scissors (although I was super thankful and relieved that it wasn’t someone else’s hair!) And, as of late, he kissed a little friend in class. A boy, to be exact, and right on the lips! I know he means no disrespect by these actions but just cannot help but follow through with some of his less-than-ideal intentions. And, if that wasn’t enough, he is having a hard time staying focused and on task.

When he was put on a behavioral contract by the assistant principal, I knew we should look into the source of his unexplained actions. Firstly we scheduled an autism evaluation. Isaac is smart. He is detail-oriented. He has always “played” a bit differently than those around him.

At age 2, Isaac would line up his animals in this way, all over the house, multiple times per day.

However, his evaluation showed a less than 1% chance of him having autistic behaviors.

When Isaac was diagnosed with a severe case of combined ADHD and ADD, Dan and I were shocked. Isaac was our “easy” one - our go-with-the-flow kid who wasn’t loud or rowdy or had to be the center of attention. When the psychiatrist asked him if he struggled at school, his perfectly verbalized explanation was:

““My head is telling me to focus and listen to the teacher but my body is telling me to move and make my friends laugh.””

I don’t even know if you’ll find a grown adult who could better explain what it’s like living with ADHD.

You’d think hearing a diagnosis would be a relief for us. An answer as to WHY sweet Isaac was struggling so much. Instead, I felt completely and utterly defeated.

You see, just 2 years ago, my middle love, Bennett Lee, was diagnosed with anxiety and OCD, after years of struggling with daily meltdowns and explosive behavior. He had begun showing signs of distress around the age of 4, when he was in preschool. Being as since this was soon after youngest brother was born, I assumed it was just a natural reaction to losing his “baby” title as well as less undivided attention from mom and dad. These explosive moments worsened the sooner we got to entering kindergarten and I thought maybe it had to do with the upcoming BIG transition. So I found a therapist who could help him to self-soothe and calmly adjust to change.

After 2 years of therapy, Bennett’s struggles were only worsening. He had begun to self-harm and lash out at his brothers and, at times, me. So we sought the help of a psychiatrist.

After a 45-minute one-on-one session with Bennett, the psychiatrist diagnosed him with anxiety and OCD tendencies. He had even begun a sort of tic with his mouth that we couldn’t explain or understand - a “coping mechanism” when he was feeling overwhelmed.

Bennett’s first day of 1st grade: full of anxiety about the unknowns of his day and royally cursing me under his breath for making him smile.

Within 2 weeks of taking Zoloft, our sweet Bennett returned. He was able to breathe and calm down and logically talk through his frustrations, rather than exploding like a volcano. It was amazing to see such a huge transformation.

Most recently, Bennett developed ARFID: Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder. He began obsessing over the fear of choking. During meals, he would chew his food up until it was mush and then, when attempting to swallow, would freak out, gag it up, and spit it out. He even went as far as to require a trash can next to his bed so he could spit out his own saliva, for fear of choking on that in his sleep! When he had lost 5 pounds in less than a month, we sought out the help of a Nutritional Counselor. Bennett worked with the counselor, both virtually and in-person, to calm his worries regarding food. We had to log his food intake, check to make sure he wasn’t throwing his food away, and watch him swallow correctly for a few weeks. And then, just as quickly as it had come, Bennett’s choking phobia vanished (although he still refuses to eat certain foods that make him “cold”, i.e. cause chills).

Bennett still struggles with anxiety - specifically when things are not done “correctly” or when he is asked to choose between this or that. But, with the tools he has been equipped with after years of therapy, along with the ability to naturally calm himself via Zoloft, he is able to breathe, relax, and talk through his frustrations.

And, sadly, my oldest, Jackson Dean, hasn’t slept through the night since he was an infant. He struggles with sleep anxiety; nightmares, sleep walking, and multiple wake-ups. Our nightly routine, besides dinner-bath-books-bed, now includes melatonin and/or magnesium supplements. Though he has his own room, he refuses to sleep in there alone and so moves from his bed, to a mattress on the floor of his brothers’ room, to his brother’s bed, to the couch, and to the hard floor of our room. He wakes up every 3-4 hours and just moves from room to room until daylight. He wakes up tired almost every morning, and for good reason!

He had a sleep study done a few years ago - it revealed slightly elevated numbers but nothing drastic. We even looked into having his tonsils and adenoids removed, in case that was the issue, but alas, his issues seem to be mental and not physical. So we did 6 months of talk therapy but nothing has helped!

Jackson’s sleep study in 2019

“All of my boys struggle with mental health issues.
I am failing as a mother.”

A few weeks ago, during one of my own therapy sessions, I was detailing my daily struggles with our boys, including the unmistakable GUILT I feel over the fact that all 3 of them struggle with such fierce, can-not-be-ignored mental health issues. And her reply has stuck in my head for days. Her reasoning was so simple and yet so utterly truth-filled:

My boys are hard-wired with these imbalances. Nothing I am personally doing is CREATING these dysregulations. I should count my blessings that it is “only” ADHD, OCD, anxiety, etc. Because it could have been worse. MUCH worse.

“I grew up in a household of unmedicated and undiagnosed bipolar and schizophrenia disorders, as well as anxiety and depression.”

This is an extremely difficult sentence for me to write and to send off into the universe of words.

These are lifelong struggles that affect everyone in their paths. Being a family member of those who struggle with these afflictions can cause such catastrophic repercussions. Everyone processes in their own way and I took the title of “peace-maker” as it was easier than fighting the darkness in our home. I am the people-pleasing, smile-plastering, abuse-taking, tender-hearted girl who adjusted to our reality in ways I can never understand. And when I am truly ready to unpack my years of emotional trauma, I will put those thoughts to words and type them out for the world to see, to understand, and to maybe sympathize with. But for now, I will say that these conditions have been woven into my DNA and made me who I am today - the good, the bad, the unexplainable, and the glorious.

Me, circa 1994 (5th grade’ish), sporting a chipped front tooth

They’ve also been genetically passed down through our family’s bloodstream. And so for now, I will stop beating myself up for not having all the answers. I will stop hiding the mental illness that is part of our lineage. And I will always verbalize the importance of talking about (and not ignoring) mental health illnesses.

I will never stop speaking words of encouragement over my boys and I will always remind them that these “conditions” will only strengthen their character.