(Mis)Adventures with Boy 13
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I’ve had a month to process and can now maybe write with some clarity about the latest drama at Chez Five.
One day in gym class last December, Boy 13 was farting around in gym class and put another boy in a Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) choke hold that made him pass out. They were sitting on the bleachers at the time, and the kid fell or was pushed (so says Boy 13) off the bench and slammed his forehead on the ground. He chipped a tooth and cut his tongue. He came to a couple of seconds later to a crowd around him asking if he was okay.
He wasn’t. He went to the next class, but his teacher noticed blood and a growing goose egg and sent him to the office to call his parents. His dad came and picked him up and took him to the hospital for evaluation.
Because, you see, if Boy 13 had tried to pick a worse “victim,” he couldn’t have. It turns out this boy has had traumatic brain injury in the past, which makes him more susceptible to additional injury. On the way there, he started having difficulty breathing so the trauma teams were waiting for him when they arrived and they were able to stabilize him. The difficulty breathing was due to swelling/bruising of the tissue around his trachea from the choke hold.
Meanwhile, Boy 13 is in the assistant principal’s office getting a good talking to. A stocky guy with a full beard. Says he put the fear into him, and I hope it’s true. He said boys in all the schools are doing this to each other and they have no idea how dangerous it is. He said one more incident and Boy 13 will be suspended. I almost wish they hadn’t given him that warning. No, there have not been earlier incidents, thank goodness.
Where did he learn this choke hold? From his sunday school teacher! He came home and told us what he’d learned and we warned him, “Don’t you EVER try this on anybody. Never, ever.” Fat lot of good that did. Boy 13 seems to do whatever the hell he wants, or whatever he can get away with. We haven’t found consequences that are deterrents yet. Yeah, he’s grounded, and yes, he’ll lose privileges, but he’s been there before. Obviously it’s not tough enough. I wish I were the beating type, but a couple of hard swats and some yelling are about all I can muster.
Anyway, I digress. The assistant principal called Her Hotness and explained what had happened, and she…”mentioned” to me in an e-mail while I was at work, “Oh, your son sent another boy to the hospital today. I’ll tell you the details later.”
We tried to call the other boy’s parents that night but they weren’t home. They were still at the hospital. The doctors kept the boy overnight for observation because of his susceptibility to brain injury. He came home the next day and we went to see them the following morning to grovel. It’s a long story and I’ll spare you these details, but the boy won’t be going back to school because his brain needs time to re-learn some things.
We haven’t talked about money yet, but it’s going to cost us something. How many thousands is the question. We signaled that we want to do something to help, and the dad said, “Well, costs are going to be the hard thing.” And then we stopped talking about it because his wife gets diarrhea of the mouth when she’s uncomfortable, and that little exchange sent her into a 10 minute blabfest about the schools.
All of this was about one month ago. We have since talked to Boy 13’s therapist and he assured us that, no, this was not normal and that he should see the kid right away. He has ordered some tests. Says there are learning disabilities that interfere with cause-and-effect reasoning. It would almost be a relief to have a name. Some label that would help us understand this creature we have created.
January 12th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
Oh, Joe! You and Her Hotness will be in my prayers as you navigate through this minefield.
January 13th, 2009 at 10:39 am
Thanks, Amy. The drama never stops with that kid.
January 21st, 2009 at 7:12 am
Fathered,
What else would a psychologist say? Clearly boy13’s behavior is disappointing, but I wonder if it is abberant behavior. Kids do weird stuff. Boy13 does more weird stuff than others maybe. I remember a conversation with your nephews in which they were making bombs. No incident in their case doesn’t equal normal behavior. If they had been injured, received a little shrapnel in the arm, or a neighbor had the story would be told differently.
I realize that with boy 13 this event is not an isolated event. I realize the money is painful, your consequence for having him - congratulations it’s a boy! But I wonder if the shrink visits would do more harm than good for him? Will he feel humiliated? Will he reject his treatment? Will it make him worse?
I’m not sure what all you’ve been through with him or considered in the past as a consequence. The diappointment of a parent in the right time and in the right way may be enough. Tell him you were advised to send him to a shrink, but that you trust him, that you trust this will be an isolated incident, that you hope it will all work out, that his actions are serious enough that a real consequence is not affixable, that his actions put the entire family and it’s future at risk, that you love him, that as the father of the family responsible for the welfare of your family - that you forgive him. It’s paralyzing to think an action you take that you think may help him, may actually do him harm.
I was a boy like boy13 once and I received a little charity from someone who had no reason to offer it and I never forgot it. I won’t say it changed my behavior entirely. At 15 a friend and I pretty regularly stole, yes stole, his father’s van and/or hot rod and drove around all night long, stealing beer and harassing - well harrasing civilized society. The cops were often called. To this day I feel my behavior was bad, but not very far past the norm and I did actually come back from that mania.
It’s just that boy13 seems very, very normal to me, a great kid even. Maybe his high profile behavior gives him greater experience, lessons learned upon which he may reflect a great deal unprompted and recognize as he develops the severity of his actions. He seems that kind of boy.
I really feel for the other kid. Two head injuries ain’t good. What can those parents do? The thought of this happening to Dan or William breaks my heart. I’d want to be killing me some boy13. It would be very saddening. I would have to pray a lot for the ability to forgive the other kid. I would wonder what kind of parents would raise such a monstrosity. But I know young uns take unecessary risks. It’s in their DNA and I think I would come around - I hope I could anyway.
Being a parent is a hazardous occupation. We are so often stuck in a place with ridiculous choices. We have to choose the best bad one. I feel this way about km18 and I rather think I’d take the discrete mishaps of boy13 to her value based living. I disagree with her values rather a lot.
In the end I don’t know what I’m saying to you. It’s probably the same muddled feelings you’ve had, the same regrets that a path isn’t clear. We men need a clear path, we need to fix things. Learning to just let our wives cry is excrutiating - why can’t it just be fixable!
I’m hope you’ve prayed a good deal about it. I believe in answers to prayers. I believe God loves us all, enough to keep us from making fools of ourselves. He loves boy13 and he loves you. Maybe a better answer than any of us have is to be found in that conversation.
We love you brother. I miss you. I think we all do. Be good in the North and we’ll try to do the same here.
Samson
January 21st, 2009 at 12:01 pm
There’s wisdom in the rambling, Samson. You should turn it into a post:) Or maybe I will.
You are largely correct, as it turns out. Stay tuned for the Boy13 update (later today).
January 21st, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Oh, yeah. What else would a psychologist say? At some point you have to trust people to act in your best interest and not exclusively their own. We trust this guy.
January 21st, 2009 at 3:11 pm
On comment 2. It isn’t about trust, it’s about the stick you measure with. I’m sure the psychologist is a good psychologist, but they are measuring behavior in a different system than we are. If a young boy peeps into a neighbors window repeatedly then you migh say he was a schizophrenic, deranged, bi-polar sociopath; or you might say he’s a kid in the midst of puberty who needs a lesson in privacy first and the destructiveness of giving in to their primal urges. They’re the close up and we’re the long view.
It’s just different perspective and the language matters. In one case you medicate the crap out of the kid and send him to therapy, in the other case it’s a process with a destination that time will probably help a great deal to achieve. And hey, if it gets worse he can always rehabilitate in jail with a huge tattooed junkie name of Bubba.
When you say you trust the psychologist I’d ask what you would think of the psychologist if they told you boy13’s behavior is normal? You might ask yourself, so…putting another kid into a choke hold until they pass out and then letting them fall head first off of the bleachers is normal? …and then you might walk out, but that’s the close-up.
I just feel like the best part of this berg is out of sight. Maybe your psychologist has scuba gear, but I’m loathe to believe it’s better than yours. At the very least it seems like your participation in the process will help make sense of the process for you and boy 13.
January 21st, 2009 at 3:15 pm
And by process I mean therapy, but what do I know, I’m not a shrink?