Tag Archives: COVID stress

I told my Son’s School that he was Suicidal; They Gave him a Suspension

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Dear School,

I don’t understand what you don’t understand about mental health, but I do really think you need a little more education and training apparently. You see, a mental health crisis is just like a physical health crisis. Being sick impacts all of life and every single decision we make. When you are informed that one of your students is experiencing a mental health crisis, it sure would be nice if you took that seriously and actually helped the student, rather than adding to their stress and traumatizing the whole family by your actions.

It’s been two months since my son experienced a mental health crisis and while I’ve been busy on several fronts – finding him help, getting evaluations, starting treatment, fighting the school to understand mental health, demanding emergent IEP meetings, finding an advocate, demanding better IEPs – it has taken me awhile to process everything that happened and to share it.

The reason that I do share this personal story is to encourage other parents who may be going through similar situations and to offer support for those facing scary times, heart-wrenching times, frustrating times, and to provide hope. I thank those who offered me hugs and advice and hope over the past two months.

…………………..

Laying beside one’s sweet growing boy in bed at night listening to him ask if kids his age (newly 12) commit suicide is agonizing. “Yes. They do,” I respond. It’s been a few hours since he talked about jumping out of the window to end his life. We’ve driven down to the psychiatric hospital but were not ready to go in. We’ve talked to someone on the crisis line. We talked about his big sadness. We’ve talked about hurting.

And, we’ve talked about the fact that he can get some help and that he will feel better. But right now it feels pretty awful and it feels pretty overwhelming. And it feels pretty surreal, like something that happens to other people but I wasn’t expecting within the walls of my house. And it feels pretty scary because I know it’s up to me to chart the path forward and figure out what to do next.

But after lying there and waiting for sleep to come to him, I got up and paced the house. Then I moved the big bean bag chair under his window and gathered up my pillow and blankets and eventually dozed off. I was a mess. We had driven thirty minutes into the city to the hospital, all the while I had thought he would ask to go home as I explained what might happen, including being admitted and me having to leave him there alone. All the while, I thought he would change his mind, but he didn’t. It was me who decided after the security checkpoint viscerally scared me that we needed to go home. And it was me who lay panicked wondering if I was doing the right thing.

The next morning, I reached out to family members and changed plans for the day so I could keep an eye on Mr. Ornery. I thought through what safety measures I needed to do and finally got the power screwdriver and put screws into the window frames so the windows in his bedroom could only open six inches. And I reached out to the counselor at his middle school so that she could touch base with him first thing in the morning. I let them know of this depression and suicidality and the fact that he wasn’t on any medications for his ADHD disability. I emailed his learning support teacher as well since we’d been communicating about medication changes over the past few weeks. I was assured they would take care of him.

I spent the day Monday in a state of stress and worry and researching and making phone calls. I called his pediatrician, his insurance company, the special program for teens with depression and suicidality (they didn’t think he was “bad” enough to warrant their services). I sent him to school to try to keep his life stable and hopeful, but I worried. Finally, I hit bottom and texted a friend mid-afternoon who I knew had similar experiences and said, “I need a hug.” Thankfully, she has great hugs. I got him an appointment at the pediatrician office on Thursday, but first available for evaluation was two months away. I kept talking with as many people as I could to get recommendations and to get help sooner.

Meanwhile, by Wednesday, Mr. Ornery’s apparently now heightened limbic emotional system decided it would be quite fun to create a boxing match with one of his best friends in the middle school bathroom. His underdeveloped and currently untreated executive functioning skills (ADHD) had no chance of stopping an apparently very appealing idea. The incident had gathered a crowd of boys in the bathroom and one of them recorded it. It wasn’t long before a teacher found them.

So he jumped in the car late after school in a state of panic. He had gotten into trouble at school and he was stressed because he didn’t even know what “suspension” meant. And in a typical “normal” mom fashion, I immediately began yelling at him for making a dumb decision. “What do you mean you got a suspension?” “How could you?” “Why would you do that?!?!?”  Suddenly it hit me; in his current stressed state of mind, why would I even have expected him to make any good decisions at all. We sat in the car and cried together.

According to the National Association of School Psychologists, school personnel have a responsibility to responds to suicidal thinking and to never ignore warning signs, which include direct and indirect suicidal threats as well as changes in behavior. In addition, they note “severe disciplinary action” to be one of the “situations” that may increase suicide risk.

I made the school aware of my son’s suicide warning sign. I let them know that he was struggling and in a fragile state. Instead of keeping him safe, they provided a “suicide risk factor” on his third day in their presence and within five days of an active suicide threat. I kept him home for three days so that we could both calm down.

Every single night, I asked my son three questions:

  • Do you still feel like hurting yourself? Yes.
  • Do you feel safe at home? Yes.
  • Do you want me to sleep in your room tonight?  Yes.

I slept on the floor in his room for twelve days before he said, “I guess you could sleep in your own bed tonight.” I had made numerous phone calls to try to find treatment for my son. I had consulted with physician colleagues. I had spoken with parents who have had children with mental health crises. I got him an appointment with his pediatrician to go back to his original ADHD medication to help bring some focus to his thinking skills before we could find a child psychiatry appointment. I really did think that the school would be supportive and helpful. I was shocked to find them instead exacerbating the crisis.

I asked for an urgent IEP team meeting to review the situation. I came prepared to show how my son’s brain was sick and unable to make good choices. The principal was unwavering. He was involved in a “fight” (whether or not it was just boys pretending) and would therefore be suspended as soon as he returned to school (thankfully a “quarantine exposure” gave him another week to stay home). He was not, in her mind, acting on “impulse” since it took several hours to complete this goal. She had absolutely nothing to say about his mental health. From the schools’ perspective, he was “fine.” He told his teachers he was fine. He told the counselor he was fine. He seemed to be “fine”….as if a 12-year-old boy would share big, scary feelings with teachers.

And as I still wrestled with how adamant this principal was that he should be punished, I was floored by her words: “It’s better for you to hear from the school that he is being suspended for fighting, than to be called by the police when he is caught shoplifting.” There it was. He had been tagged as a trouble-maker, a problem child, a bad kid …. on the path to criminality and “thankfully” the school is just trying to nip that in the bud for me. What is it about him? Is it his slightly brown skin of being a multi-racial child? Is it his ADHD struggles? Is it his energy and creativity and playfulness?  What is it about my good-natured, soft-hearted and loving son that has screamed out – this kid is destined for trouble? What is it that makes a principal completely discount an emotional and mental health crisis and focus only on “bad behavior,” despite the clear relation between the two?

Me….trying to help my boy while drowning myself….

A week after our school district held a community event to sing the praises of how much they help children struggling with mental health, they punished a kid’s disability in the midst of a mental health crisis. When I was stressed and floundering and scared and most in need of help, my son’s school hurt him more.

Now that we’ve had evaluations and started treatment and my beautiful boy is feeling better, I am driven to change this system that refuses to acknowledge the role of disability on behavior and completely ignores the impact of a mental health crisis. I will work to change a system that will not consider how the stress of a world-altering pandemic, ugly politics, and visible racism happening concurrently has affected the children in their care. A system that pretends we can all just keep going, expecting children to show up for school and do their academics as if the world around them didn’t just crash on its axis. There is a better way.

Recently Dr. Abby Schlesinger (Children’s Hospital child psychiatrist) was interviewed about the marked increase in the number of children and teens needing mental health care which has overwhelmed the capacity of the system to provide that care. One of her colleagues, Dr. Justin Schreiber, also provided an update to the pediatric community in May 2021 about the impact of COVID on the mental health of children. He noted that children are expressing overwhelmingly more depression and anxiety symptoms based on activation of their fight-or-flight system of stress. While the mental health services are struggling to meet the demand, Dr. Schreiber encouraged the pediatric community and the school communities to acknowledge the toll of stress from the pandemic on children and to support children’s mental health. I sat and listened to his webinar, taking notes, and immediately emailed him to say, “What can I do to help the schools understand this?”

I had been so focused on the older son’s clear expression of stress through numerous physical issues (stomach pain, diarrhea, headache, etc) that would make him stay home for 1-2 days every 2-3 weeks, that I didn’t realize how difficult the year was for the middle one.

Life is stressful in any given year. But on top of all our normal stresses, we all have been coping with a new and foreign stress. Where I thought my boys seemed resilient and coping well, I learned that’s not always the case. It seems to me that we need to offer to those around us (and particularly our children) just a little more grace and a little more understanding, a good serving of true empathy and some actual concrete help for those who are struggling.

Know that there is help and that healing is possible. That’s what I cling to.

Pittsburgh Re:Solve Crisis Services: (888) 796-8226

National Suicide Hotline: 1-800-273-8255

Suicide Text Line: Text HOME to 741741

The Pittsburgh Study List of Resources

Allegheny County Youth Mental Health Services

Open Letter to My Sons’ School

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Dear School Board and Administration,

Do you not understand how thoroughly exhausting this is? How every single day of my life is now shaped by your decisions to constantly alter the course of my children’s schooling?

The phone rings. A recorded message informs me that my two middle-school sons will now be “remote learning” for the next two days. My brain begins its mental gymnastics (again). I begin to process what the new morning routine will look like, adjusting timings to get one kid to school and two kids logging in. My brain strums through what meetings I have to coordinate for the day and what changes we will make for the next couple days.

My brain is constantly reading, processing and filtering emails from the school. This building is now closed. A case was reported in your son’s school, but your child does not have to quarantine. A case was reported in your son’s class but your son is not deemed a close contact so you can choose whether or not you want to keep your kid home in quarantine to do remote learning or to send them to school. Because this building is now closed, your son’s basketball practice has now moved to tomorrow at 8:30 instead of today at 7:30, but the other boy’s swim practice is now shifted to Saturday to allow for….

I take a sip of wine….

Because I don’t know how else to cope with the relentless stress. The constantly changing schedules. The pervasive uncertainty. The steady level of worry of exposure to COVID or the chance of one of us getting sick. The struggle to maintain some semblance of education and growth for the boys while balancing limited social contacts and the boys’ mental health.

Is it a “he’s tired” headache or a COVID headache? Does his belly hurt because he’s hungry or he’s sick? Is there a fever? Was that a cough? Do I send him to school or keep him home? Test him or wait it out? Do I call the school nurse or fill out an absence form or ask to make him remote…..or just say to hell with it?!?!

Do you not understand how tired and stressed we parents are as we try to understand the ever-shifting “guidelines” and “procedures” in this school district? As we try to figure out whether your guidance even makes sense based on data and science? As we struggle with the basic knowledge that we can not and have not been able to trust our community leaders to make the right decision?

I take a sip of wine….

I have spent the last couple weeks starting every email with “I apologize for my delay in responding.” Sometimes I attempt humor (“my kid left the garage door open and the pipes froze; I’ve been a bit distracted”). Sometimes I am honest and confess that I’m stressed and I’ve lost track of…well, of life. Sometimes I just move right along and answer the question I should have answered last week as if there weren’t seven days missing in there.

I’ve nicknamed myself “Last-minute Lynne.” My work is done the night before or it’s late. There’s no in-between. There is no staying on top of things. There is no managing anymore. Balls have dropped. Back-burner heat went out long ago. The to-do list got so long I’ve lost the first couple pages….

There is no relief in sight. Just constant worry. New COVID variants. New guidelines on masking. New impeachment trials and messy politics. New weather patterns and slippery roads. New research and new opinions. New vaccine roll-outs and new stimulus ideas. New evidence of health inequity and disparity. New, more, different, sudden, changing, insidious, good-luck-coping-with-this-curve-ball stress.

I take a sip of wine….

I’m a physician. I trained under a great deal of stress and experience stress at work which I can manage. But this stress is different and sneaks through my coping tactics. And, as a physician, I know that this chronic, ever-shifting stress is taking a toll on me. It’s taking a toll on my family as I waffle between fatigue and irritability. It’s taking a toll on health and on productivity. It’s taking a toll on my community and my city. It’s taking a toll on our country and across the world.

Dear school board and administrators, please decrease our stress.

Sincerely,

A very tired parent.

Cheers.

COVID Waiting….

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Did you know that the “clock” app on the iPhone has a red second hand that ticks slowly along its course? I watched it the other morning, making its way through time. That’s what I’m doing right now, making my way through time. Time. Time for a neighbor friend’s COVID test result to come back….

There are moments in time when we do really stupid things that we later regret. When we slip up and can’t figure out where our brain was at that moment. Moments like when you bake cookies and decide to deliver them to a neighbor with aging parents just to “check on them.” But you forget that you should not “check on them” inside their house when it is COVID time and you didn’t bring a mask.

For when you “check on them” and spend too much time inside, you meet the definition of “significant exposure.” And if you have significant exposure you find yourself in a “triage protocol” trying to figure out the chances of getting an infection and the guidelines for what to do to prevent the spread of infection. The problem is that you don’t actually fit into the protocol until you know if your neighbor is actually positive for COVID. And to find that out….you have to wait….you have to pass the time.

Passing time waiting for test results is passing time in self-quarantine. What a delightful word. This is different than the “stay at home” that you just finished for two months. This is “stay in your house and don’t even go to the grocery store” type of situation. This is the don’t take your child to the neighborhood pool, don’t take him to his golf lessons, don’t run to get a cup of coffee, don’t move the car from the driveway and just stay home.

This is the beat-yourself-for-being-so-stupid kind of situation. The “you’re a physician, for goodness sakes, you idiot!” kind of situation. The “how could you possibly jeopardize the health of others?!?” kind of situation. The wake up at 3:00 am and beat yourself some more type of situation (It’s not healthy or helpful….but it is what it is….). The apologize profusely to dear friends with whom you came into contact in the first two days type of situation (where you feel embarrassed and awful….and awful and embarrassed).

As much as The Little Guy rarely has a meltdown, he had a meltdown on Day 1. He was sad. He was oh so mad at me. “Why did you do that?” he asked over and over. “I don’t know, buddy,” was all I could say. “I’m so so sorry.”  I wanted to hug him, but I also didn’t want to hug him as my brain kept yelling to stay away from the boys (an impossible scenario). But we made the most of the first day. Because I didn’t drive my car to work that day to see patients, I had more of a sense of being available. I actually said “yes” when he wanted to do an experiment in the kitchen by combining ingredients and spices and anything else he could find (and tasted it and spit it out). And, I said “yes” when he wanted to start power-washing the back deck (though he soon got tired and articulated that it was me who was actually “obsessed with power-washing”). By the end of the day, he remarked that he had had a good day after all.

Day 2, however, was a day when it was possible that the test result could come in and The Little Guy asked me every hour or so whether I had heard anything. It was getting hard to wait and make our way through time….but that’s what we do. I worked, he watched TV, Mr. Ornery and Super Tall Guy continued their video game addiction, and we all waited…. But somehow we were all getting along better and interacting more and enjoying our time. And my heart was heavy for my neighbor who was feeling unwell, stressed about her parents, and waiting ….alone….in her house….waiting….

Pop-up fort

Waiting, though, is tremendously hard on an action-oriented person who likes to have answers. Waiting is hard when you know that some tests come back in 15 minutes, some in 24 hours, some in 8 days (and that it doesn’t have to be this way if we had a coordinated testing system). Waiting is hard when it’s wrapped in the frustration of an inadequate national response to a deadly virus that marches its way through communities causing stress and angst and illness. Waiting is hard…..

Day 3,…..we wait….

Edited to add: At exactly the moment I pushed the “publish” button on WordPress was the moment my phone buzzed…. ” Negative” — Talk about “Time”!

Emerging from the COVID Fog

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There were moments on the Jersey Shore a couple weeks ago with such intense fog that we couldn’t see the water from our seats on the sand. We couldn’t see the buildings where our rented house was tucked. We couldn’t see the lifeguard stand holding up trained rescuers. We couldn’t see danger, shelter or safety, but we could see each other.

And each other is who we have seen for the past three solid months during the COVID pandemic. Yes, we have gone for walks in the neighborhood with other people. Yes, we have passed people in the stores. Yes, the boys have played outside with other kids, trying to keep distant and not “sharing” despite years of reprimand to share their toys. But most of our entire human interaction has been within my nuclear family and that of my sister’s.

It was exciting to get away. Everyone was ready. But the weather was awful and uncooperative and full of fog and rain and wind at a steady 15 miles/hour and gusting into the 20s. The beach wasn’t welcoming and the playgrounds and basketball courts were closed. We spent most of our time inside and unlike other vacations, the boys were given plenty of electronic time because the adults were tired and solely focused on resting at the jigsaw puzzle table.

The fog on the shoreline seemed to match the fog of our brains during the shut-down. Time stood still or sped up but we couldn’t figure out what day it was. Work was either too stressful or we couldn’t get to it and that was stressful as well. My kids were suddenly home from school for the entire last quarter of the year, missing their friends and their teachers and completely missing out of academics.

We rallied and did what we had to do to “flatten the curve,” to not overwhelm the capacity of the medical system to care for those who had contracted coronavirus. But after three months, people were tired. Summer had arrived and we were ready to live to again. Escape to the shore offered a chance to change the scenery and start seeing the world in a different light.

One day I noticed that my three guys were standing looking out into the ocean. I’m sure they were just trying to judge the approach of the next wave and were unlikely to be as reflective as I am. I, on the other hand, snapped a quick photo of “my hearts” standing at the crest of the earth, pondering the vastness of the world that seems to go on forever in its steady form and yet is a constantly shifting landscape up close. I doubt they were contemplating the ill-preparedness of our country for the deadly onslaught of COVID-19. They likely were not wrestling with how to dismantle the racist systems that impact their very existence. They probably were wondering what seafood to have for dinner.

The beach week offered a chance to reflect on and talk to the boys about resiliency – the weather is awful, but we can choose to be happy and enjoy the moments we have. Mr. Ornery had started to refer to “bad” things that happened with the phrase, “We’re cursed.” I began to reframe it for him, “Actually, dear, we’re blessed.” We laughed at the ease of pedaling a surrey with the direction of the wind versus the return trip of pushing against it.  We found new activities like burying a yoga ball into the sand to bounce off it like a trampoline. And since the water was unfriendly, the boys finally had time to dedicate to learning to skimboard.

And while the older teens refused to engage in their previous almost daily excursions to Wawa, the local convenience store, because of the mask-wearing requirement, it gave us a chance to talk about responsibility. In a time of spreading virus, we cover our face to protect the health of the community because that is our responsibility as human beings. We could find fun masks to wear. We could laugh about how many times we turned around to run back inside to grab the masks. We could make it work.

And, the week gave us a chance to relax and reflect on the importance of rest. The Lord calls us to rest because He knows it’s important for the human body. We need sleep every day and we need times of rest every week. Rest renews us and heals us. After three months of a country in crisis and shut down, we needed to rest and help ourselves become prepared for the peaks and surges of the virus, for the next challenges we would face, for the next battles we would start to fight on behalf of ourselves and our communities.

While it took a good week to dig out from under the work that piled up in my absence, I felt grateful to have a glimpse of emerging from my COVID fog. I am grateful for the privilege of a job that has allowed me to work at home and provides me with times of rest. I am grateful for the friends and family who have walked beside me in the fog and continue in constant support. And I am grateful for the privilege of sharing my life with three growing boys and sharing the wonder of horseshoe crabs and sand-sharks and brown sharks and turtles and ice cream and parasailing.

May they take that sense of resiliency and responsibility and rest as they continue to look out in wonder and face their huge world.