My Biggest Fear

Yesterday was a bad day. Right up there on the list of really bad days. I would have run to the freezer and drowned myself in chocolate ice cream if it wasn't so cold out, and we weren't all out of ice cream. More than binge, though, I felt like hiding, pretending it didn't happen. But here's the truth: my son beat up the babysitter.

Mo was tired and hungry, and didn't feel like going to occupational therapy (for ADHD and sensory integration dysfunction), so he took off. The sitter had to run to catch up to him, hold him so he couldn't go out into the street. He went ballistic--kicking, pulling her hair. He bit her--three times, leaving marks. When the sitter, through tears, described the incident, I was horrified. The phrase "chunks of hair" sticks painfully in my mind. Mo did that? My sensitive, thoughtful, caring, generous-spirited Mo? No!

Not that he's an angel. He's amazingly adept at getting his older sister, Sasha's, goat--snatching the book she's reading, ripping up her art work, barging into her room. And some days with him seem a lesson in non-stop exasperation: He's climbing the stairs on the outside of the banister. He's chewing up yet another shirt beyond redemption (literally). He's stomping and whooping, fingers in his ears when he's requested to stop, until the downstairs neighbors complain. The last several months, though, Mo has taken a further dip below angel status. Tiredness or hunger seem more and more often to get expressed as anger. He wants eggs for dinner, not chicken, so he up-ends a chair, then looks around to see what other destruction he can wreak. He gets a look before he revs into high gear, like his body is harboring an explosive he can't contain. The techniques his father and I typically employ to calm him or divert him from further negative behavior--tight hugs, rough-housing, having him lift or push heavy things, or simply getting some food in him fast!--aren't working. Last week, Mo awoke in the middle of the night and went from zero to sixty in an instant. It was like a seizure, the way it came on. He was clearly unable to stop himself; I'm not sure he was even awake. I had to hold him (tightly) for forty minutes while he lashed out at the closest available target: me. But it's one thing to lose it with mom or dad, quite another with the sitter.

My biggest fear is that Mo is heading down the same road as his sister...to special ed. I'll admit this is a HUGE leap, a paranoid fantasy. Mo has none of the social or executive function difficulties Sasha, diagnosed with ADHD and Asperger's Syndrome, has. He is well-liked, plays well with others. He had one bad day. He's five and a half. These things happen.

But here's how my paranoid fantasy plays out: He hits the sitter, which opens the door to exhibiting inappropriate behavior with others, in other venues. One day in school, he hits another child. An isolated incident. Then it happens again. Word travels. Other parents talk. They start to keep their kids a safe distance. Mo begins to see himself as a problem, feels more out of control. He "loses it" in public on a regular basis. The school, adding aggression to his already established issues of distraction and auditory processing, wants him out. And where could he go? Not to public school--that would only exacerbate the impulsivity and distraction issues we put him in private school to avert. So what's left? You guessed it: special ed.

The other inevitability I dread is medication. Sasha started meds at the tender age of six--a particularly difficult decision for me and my husband, both of us medication-averse granola types. But after several incidents in school, and the normally-unflappable first grade teacher informing us that Sasha would not be allowed on class trips without a personal escort, we decided medication was worth a try. Her first day on Ritalin, when I picked her up from school, Sasha's first words to me were, "Mommy, I tried my best today...and it worked!" My husband and I had to reckon with the fact that our daughter's body lacked (or didn't process efficiently or didn't produce in great enough quantities) the chemicals necessary for basic everyday functioning. She attends better, and is happier and safer, using medication.

But with Mo, we're determined for things to go differently. We know the family history now, our genetic weakness for neurological dysfunctions, the most common one being ADHD. When Mo first exhibited signs of it as a toddler, we saw the writing on the wall, and it read, "Ritalin". We still think we can beat it. He's had occupational therapy since age two to help with his sensory and motor issues. We employ charts, rewards, the same behavioral methods we use with Sasha. We try (with varying success) to be consistent, structured, prepare for transitions. All of this to prevent Mo from developing ADHD. As if we can.

After we'd all calmed down from the sitter incident , I asked Mo how we could help him control himself better. "Give me calm medicine," he said at once. "Every day." He meant the homeopathic sugar pills (mainly chamomile) I'll sometimes give when he's particularly hyped-up. Personally, I think they do little more than provide me with a course of action to follow during stressful moments. Placebo-effect or no, Moe thinks they work.

What does that say? For one, that he feels out of control, and wants help. Maybe his calm medicine really does calm him--physically, not just emotionally. By that token, real medication would help him more. Would I deny him that help simply because I have trouble enough accepting that one of my children needs medication, let alone two?

But is medication the answer? Mo’s response was clear, but the situation is far from it. How often has he heard Sasha, caught at some wrongdoing, whine, "It’s not my fault! My medicine’s worn off!" While my husband and I always counter that excuse by reminding her she is responsible for her behavior, medication or no, that’s probably not the part Mo hears. He sees that, despite what we say about responsibility, we continue to administer medication. And pill-popping carries its own (peculiarly American) mystique. Every day, Mo watches his older sister complacently accept the pill I hand her, wash it down with water. A ritual to inspire envy. The way, growing up, I envied kids who wore retainers.

Now, although I’ve hardly begun to plumb the depths of this issue, I'm also over-complicating. I’m looking at the situation through the lens of my fears, of what I know about family genetics, of what I’ve already gone through with Sasha. And one could argue that, given past events, this is justified. That I’m wise to prepare myself. But I need to keep perspective here. There is also the possibility that yesterday’s events are best forgotten, and that dwelling on them could actually increase the likelihood of my fears coming to pass. There’s no way of predicting the future. I can’t prevent Mo from developing ADHD, nor can I spur him on towards it. His central nervous system could be showing signs of trouble to come, or simply maturing slower than average and will eventually self-regulate more efficiently. For now though, all I know for sure is that yesterday was a bad day.

"My Biggest Fear" appears in the the forthcoming anthology, The Elephant in the Playroom: Ordinary Parents Write Intimately and Honestly About the Extraordinary Highs and Heartbreaking Lows of Raising Kids with Special Needs, edited by Denise Brodey (Penguin, 2007).