Sputterpub's Blog

Not. That was our first clue that Margaret might be a keeper. She was the only child therapist who did NOT claim to be my boy’s special friend. Which is kind of ironic, because she was so effective that we didn’t have to keep her for long, and after the therapy was over, she did become something of a friend.

There were four others before her. We were ordered to counseling in kindergarten, first grade, and second. Alex was always impulsive and quick to anger, and when he ran into the school’s zero-tolerance policies, the crash reverberated through class, afterschool programs, and our dinner hour.

First was Anita, with the smarmy hand-puppets. Alex was five years old and saw right through her. He completed the assigned six sessions, but his behavior didn’t improve.

Then came Nancy. She favored a small sand box in her office. Alex tossed the sand around every chance he got. I think he was baiting her, but that was when he wasn’t answering even my questions. They let him stay in school, but his temper continued to flare.

Moe and Mary were a husband-and-wife team. We met them after the carpentry incident. That was not a classroom event; it occurred in an afterschool program. Alex never did get along with Jonathan, and maybe I’m delusional but I believed his story that Jonathan started it. But Alex should never have picked up that 2 x 4. Everyone thought a male counselor might be effective then, which is how we met the Martins, but Moe was even more saccharine than his wife, and the couple didn’t make any headway with my delinquent.

It’s easy for me to write about all of this now that Alex has proved the prognosticators wrong, but his early childhood was a nightmare. No matter how I went at him, his only regrets then were that he got caught. He never admitted that his behavior was bad. I prayed for a consequence that would teach him, and couldn’t discover one.

When he got suspended for bringing a weapon to school, the administration left the treatment to me. They told me he couldn’t come back until I took some action to correct him. The weapon was a box of kitchen matches, and I believed him when he told me he found them in the vacant lot outside the playground (I had none at home, and he had no money), but I couldn’t afford a private school or the time to homeschool, so I had to go along with the program.

I got Margaret’s name from my best friend. Mellie has been in therapy as long as I’ve known her, and she asked her guy for the best child psychologist he knew. Margaret was almost out of private practice then – well on her way to her position at Children’s Hospital as resident expert in Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy – but she agreed to take us.

Most therapists are like dermatologists – rarely does a patient die but just as rarely does one get well. Margaret was different. She was an effective professional. She met with us, defined the problem, and worked closely with us till the problem was resolved. Then she withdrew. In Alex’s case, the solution turned out to be teaching him to accept the fact that his mind, his personality, and his vocabulary were years ahead of his peers, and helping him develop the patience to wait for them.

Of course there was more to it. His abusive father was a fact of his weekend life. And I had to learn that my yelling hurt Alex more than his father’s fist.

And the cure wasn’t immediate. We made enough progress to see a light at the end of the tunnel, and Alex steadily improved after second grade, but there were bumps and occasional booster sessions with Margaret till he finished elementary school. From then on he flourished. He was so successful in middle and especially high school that I worried he might peak before 18 (a groundless fear, as it turned out, but I’m getting way ahead of my story).

Because in some ways it turned into my story. We looked into my childhood a bit during the regular sessions with Margaret, but it was those later visits, looser and more comfortable than when Alex’s problem was acute, that afforded us time to get into details about things my parents did to me.

I’d told Margaret and Alex the tonsillectomy tale shortly after we started. It was a horrible experience: dropped off at five and a half for an ether-filled operation and overnight hospital stay, with no information from my parents about what the plan was. I confronted my mother long afterward – how could she and Dad have just abandoned me with no warning? I’d asked – and she insisted, he agreeing, that the doctor told them not to inform me. Margaret commented that if she were asked to write a script to drive a kid toward autism, she couldn’t have come up with desertion, confusion, and torture better than what I endured. Personally I think the experience shot me into mini-adulthood before kindergarten, because ever since then I’ve been the most willful individual I know.

We’d gone over that episode several times during Alex’s early visits, but it wasn’t until the irregular sessions that I told them what happened when I was three, and when I was eight, and we derived how it must have been for me even in my first year.

My first brother was born shortly after my third birthday. I guess I wasn’t done with diapers, but my mother was, regarding me. She decided it was time for me to use a toilet. I didn’t agree. I started defecating in secret, in the closet. That’s when she consulted the doctor. Who advised her to control when I went so she could guide me about where I went. She told my father and he was the one who administered the enema. In the bathroom, with him sitting on the edge of the tub, me bent over his knees, and Mom hovering above us, making noise. That’s how I remember the event.

I also remember it as repeated, but when I mentioned the memory to my father, he corrected me vigorously. Apparently the experience was almost as traumatic for him as it was for me – he swears he only did it once and I believe him. I also believe my mother’s “doctor’s orders” explanation.

I don’t know if the seating arrangement on the flight to California had anything to do with a doctor. I was eight and we were moving cross country. Dad was already on the west coast, and Mom had her hands full with my younger brothers, but I’ll never understand why I wasn’t even seated near them. I was placed between two grownup strangers.

I was freaked out about the airplane toilet. I wouldn’t use it alone. I held my pee as long as I could. I implored my mother to go with me. She couldn’t, but she didn’t seek any help for me. “You’re old enough to go alone,” she snarled at me under her breath. I can still see the hateful look of exasperation on her face. “Can’t you see I have my hands full? If you can’t be a help, just leave me alone.”

I held it some more. When I couldn’t restrain my stream any longer, I released it into the upholstery beneath me. Then I sat on the wet until it dried.

Looking back, I think that was the last time I explicitly asked my mother for help.

Finally I tried to reconstruct events from my infancy. I can’t pretend to remember them; my earliest recollections involve fear of the front-loading washer, and I was between two and three for that. But I’ve asked my mother why she didn’t breastfeed me (“the doctors said formula was better”), and I’ve inquired about my first weeks (“the baby nurse made us put you on a schedule, so we determined when you ate and slept”) and about my birth (“I didn’t know what was happening – the doctor was in charge – when I came to, they told me I had a girl”) and even about my first year (“that was when your dad and I lived with my father, and I swear I spent all my time with my arms straight out, trying to keep those two from arguing”), and all I can see is a young, insecure woman, following the instructions of others.

Mom’s still that way. She’d elderly now but relatively healthy, and her calendar is full of appointments with internist, gastroenterologist, cardiologist, ophthalmologist, dentist, periodontist, vascular specialist, et al. She’s an instruction-gathering, contraindication-reading machine.

I know. I hold her advanced health care directive and I go with her to most of the appointments. I was there when Dr. Phillips mentioned that there’s no medical reason not to eat nuts and seeds, but that some of his diverticular patients report less discomfort if they avoid those sorts of foods. That statement got turned into “doctor’s orders” when she now refuses pepitas and peanuts. I heard Dr. Abrams suggest that maybe Mom should walk outside some days instead of always on the treadmill; that too became “I’m not allowed to use the treadmill any more.”

But at least she’s doing it to herself now, and not to me.