"Oooh, Child, things are gonna get easier..."

I'm listening to Beth Orton singing: "You just wait and see how things are gonna be..." It's a beautiful song that is somewhere between a lullaby and a spiritual, offering the kind of hope that gives a person the courage to get up again after being beaten down, and not give up in the face of adversity. It is exactly what I needed to hear. It reached just the right spot in my heart. I'd order it from itunes, but we had a little scare with a missing pocketbook over the weekend, and cancelled both our credit cards. The replacements haven't yet arrived. It's weird being without plastic. But that's another story...

Here's why I need that encouragement.

Today our youngest son, who is a senior in a high school for kids with learning disabilities and emotional issues, was suspended for a fight he had with a classmate when they were spending the night at the home of a third boy. Our son struggles with learning disabilities and bipolar disorder, as do a number of members of my husband's family tree. He had significant absences for psychiatric reasons in grades 6,7,8, and 9. He was hospitalized more than once. He tried to kill himself more than once. He and his doctors tried many different medications. Lithium was what we finally thought of as the "magic bullet."

Also, we found this amazing school that he attends. My husband has an apartment in Roswell (an Atlanta suburb about 45 miles from our home) so that our son can go to this school. It has very literally saved his life, we believe. In the last 2 years, our son has missed no more school for psychiatric reasons. His grades moved into the "A" category. His teachers' comments made us proud to be his parents. He was recognized for his leadership. He played on a varsity sports team each season where before he had never been able to focus or get along with other kids well enough to complete a season on a school team. He was wondering about a career in the military, after seeing how his older brother loved his work in the Navy. He needed to be off his meds for that to be an option. Last spring, with his psychiatrist's supervision, he was weaned off them, and he had a pretty decent summer. But about a month after school started, he began to have a lot of trouble focusing and staying out of trouble at school. He came to us and admitted that he was feeling depressed. We got him to his psychiatrist right away. He was able to participate in a clinical trial for a mood stabilizer in addition to his lithium. Due to his depression which has always been made worse by stimulant medications, he was taken off his Focalin. (I think he needed to be off also to be on the clinical trial.)

Our son's impulse control and ability to regulate his behavior has been a problem that we'd figured he was handling pretty well, until this fall. Even at home, my husband became aware that our son was on about a two-minute "interrupt cycle." It was hard for Dad to get work done (he works from home), and it was hard for Son not to feel constantly squelched as he was rebuffed for his unwelcome interruptions and random brain core-dumps.

He wasn't supposed to do overnights. My husband was up in Jasper for the weekend with me when the friends called and convinced him to come over and spend the night. Our son is a year ahead of the other two boys, though they are more skilled at sports, more popular, and more physically skilled. Our son can drive other kids around (in Georgia you have to have had a drivers license for a while before it's legal to carry passengers), so he is wanted for his driving skills, even though he doesn't have a car of his own. He also has virtually no pocket money, because we simply have put all our resources into his school expenses. He talked his 21 year old sister into driving him over, convincing her that we had given our permission. (We hadn't.) I guess both the other boys and our son were feeling annoyed an used by the other. Our son said he'd drive the other boys for food (in the car of his host friend's mother) only if they would buy him some food, too. They thought our soon was being a mooch. Our son was imagining sitting at a Waffle House with a glass of water while his friends ate eggs and hash browns. Names were called, words were exchanged, and all of a sudden one of the boys punched our son in the face. He grabbed the kid and shoved him across the room. The host boy separated them. Our son called his sister and left. He was very upset. He felt hurt, embarrassed, angry, disappointed in his friends and in himself. He thought that the "trash talking" that he alleges happened constantly on the basketball team behind the back of the coach probably needed to be brought out into the open.

So this morning he went to school and reported it to the coach, who immediately involved the principal. I don't think our son knew how serious this behavior was in the eyes of the administration, or he might not have brought it up. The upshot was that he was informed of the zero-tolerance policy that had been articulated in the behavior contract all students of the school sign each year. The three boys were all brought together. The two boys who fought are both suspended for 3 to 5 days and it would be within the rights of the school to expell them. The third boy is not suspended. My husband went to the school to pick up our son and heard from the authorities. The principal said it just about broke her heart to apply those rules, but she had to adhere to policy.

My husband emailed me sounding totally disheartened. He reminded me of a time I'd said that parenting kids with mental illness means always wondering when the rug is going to be pulled out from under us. (I think I'd said it was like waiting for the next shoe to drop--same idea.)

It is my hope that the school will remember its mission, see how phenomenally effective it has been in bringing hope and focus to our son't life, and provide him with a chance to try again. Indeed, the principal just called me and told me that that is their plan. She told our son, "You let things pile up until they reach a point where you are no longer able to be in control. You need to step in and change things sooner." What a wonderful, supportive place that school is to learn life's difficult and important lessons.