Bart

Friday was crazy. Skylar went to a dance class sleepover. I took her while George stayed with the rest of the kids. He and Bart played some Wii and messed around while I was gone. Sky, Lucy, and I had to run to Walmart to pick up a couple of things before going over to the sleepover, including a quick McDonalds' dinner. So it took me about two hours to get back home.
When I got home, we ate McDonalds fare, and it was pretty late by then - about seven thirty. It was definitely too late for the children to watch a movie. Bart had asked me earlier if he could watch Star Wars: The Revenge of the Sith. I had told him maybe, if there was enough time. Well, there wasn't enough time, and it was apparently just too much for Bart.
He started moping around and not listening to us. I made him come with me to take Skylar some PJ's which she'd forgotten in the van. Bart didn't really want to come with me, and he would barely talk to me the entire time. I tried to get him to talk to me, to tell me what was bugging him. He was acting really depressed.
When we got out of the car, he was still being weird, and not even wanting to give me a hug or anything, so I stopped him before we went inside, to try to talk to him. He would hardly say three words to me and he had this look on his face, this look he gets when he gets in one of these moods - kind of glassy-eyed and despondent. It's really pretty scary when you can't even get your kid to look you in the eye and talk to you.
Well, I was freaked out and George got freaked out, too, after we couldn't get Bart to respond to us besides a whimpering "I don't know" when asked what was wrong. He began crying and subsided into a kind of whiny moan that he wouldn't stop doing.
I tried picking him up and holding him and trying to soothe him and get him to respond to me, but he just fought the contact and stared at me with that despondent look in his eyes, which were half-shut. The only thing we could get out of him, besides "I don't know" is "I don't think I can do anything special".
I think both George and I were thinking, "he's too young to be doing this. What are we going to do when he's a teenager if he's already shutting us out?"
When he wouldn't even let me hold him, I dissolved into tears. George took Bart outside where it was cold because he just couldn't even get Bart to LOOK at us, not to mention speak to us. They were out there for a long while, and when they came in, Bart was totally back to himself. His eyes were open and bright, he was responsive and he came right over to me to hug me and say he was sorry. I told him he didn't need to apologize, but that he had really scared us. He let me hold him and hug him. He said George had told him a funny story.
I just held him and wanted to cry so hard for my little boy. I don't know what makes him snap into that depressed, glassy-eyed person who won't even hug his mother. He's always had some emotional issues, I believe. He has mildly ODD, which is Oppositional Defiant Disorder. That's Bart alright. He just cannot deal with the word no, or disappointment. When he was a toddler, it showed itself in terrible tantrums. I used to have to put him in time-out in his room. Only he would tear the room apart. He would turn over his furniture, pull all the linens from the bed, hurl his toys. It was like turning on and off a light switch with him. One time I came in to find his room trashed and the diaper pail overturned. The bag of dirty diapers had been pulled out of it and Bart was curled up inside the stinky pail head-first.
It got to the point that I had to sit with him on his bed and hold him tight to me, so he couldn't destroy the room or hit me. One time, he twisted around and got my earring and ripped it halfway through my ear. I still have the scar from that. There were also times I had to practically sit on him to keep him from going berserk.
I know now there were some things we could've done that would've helped, but back then we did the best we could. I used to be pretty proud of myself that I could come out of one of those struggles with my patience pretty much intact. I would grit my teeth sometimes, literally resisting the hysterical urge to laugh or cry. It was pretty rough.
But it got better. And then it got worse when he started school. It was like he would come home and bam! a bomb went off. Like he kept himself in check all day at school and then he just exploded when he got home. We had tantrums (no hitting or tearing up rooms, though) and tears and couldn't get him to respond to us during these times. It was like Jekyll and Hyde. Then we took Dr. Barden's advice and changed some parenting strategies to become more flexible and forgiving parents with Bart. He's a different little person from Skylar, after all, and he requires different teaching and discipline strategies.
For probably a year, the change was amazing. It was like we had never had a problem with him in the first place. Then, moodiness and depression took the place of the tantrums. Disappointment for him could result in a time-out where he whimpered and whined and cried and refused to look at us or respond to our attempts to talk to him about the problem.
We learned we should just let him go at it - get it all out of his system. Eventually, that light switch would switch back on and Bart would be our sweet little boy again. But Dr. Barden cautioned us that he doesn't really know what he's doing during these episodes, and when he finally works it all out with himself and realizes how he's behaved, it's humiliating for him. He's hard on himself, and we shouldn't make a big deal about it at all. If we let him see that we are going to be there for him no matter what, even at his worst, it will build his trust in us. He will see that we love him unconditionally, and it will build his self-esteem. Bart is indeed very hard on himself after a tantrum. He generally says, "I'm a bad boy" or "I'm naughty, I don't deserve dessert" or "Don't give my toy back, I don't deserve it." It's really hard to listen to. Particularly because he is such a sweet and loving boy. Most of the time he is extremely well-behaved at home, and he is always well-behaved at school.
Another concern of ours was that he has not been sleeping well. He is always tired, even though he had a reasonable bedtime for his age - between 7:30 pm and 8pm. Bart kept saying he couldn't sleep, that he was lying in bed awake until after midnight sometimes. As soon as Dr. Barden heard this, he asked Bart whether he was up worrying about things. Bart said that he was up worrying about bad things happening. The doctor felt that it was a good indicator that Bart has issues with anxiety, coupled with the fact that both George and I are on anti-depressants and so are many members of both our families. He explained that Bart's anxiety is exhausting him - constant adrenaline will drain you. However, Bart's anxiety was also keeping him awake at night, so he prescribed him a medication used also for high blood pressure that would help him sleep at night and help with the constant anxiety. He also gave him Prozac, since George and I both have been using it with good results. He feels that once Bart's sleeping problems improve, many of the other problems will resolve themselves. He may not have to take the medications long-term, perhaps six months to a year.
The doctor also feels that even though Bart is an excellent student, he is probably still not even living up to his full potential due to his anxiety and/or depression. He feels that once these problems are working out, Bart will prove to be even brighter than he is now. He feels that we will probably have to reiterate to Bart that he doesn't have to be perfect.
Heck, maybe I have the same issues as Bart. Sometimes I am so hard on myself.
I feel comforted that Bart (and all my kids) is getting great medical care. I really love our pediatric practice here, and I am grateful for all the help we've received. I am so happy that Bart is going to get the help he needs to calm his anxious little mind and help him achieve his full potential.