I'm Starting To Re-Think My Plan

Thelly is enrolled in an online school. He will have a teacher that will assign his work and be available to help as much as we need. But I am officially his learning coach and that really means I'm responsible for making sure he gets his work done.

And when I am responsible for making sure he gets his work done there is a lot of fighting. Because most days he cannot not do the amount of work that would reasonably be expected of a child in school (at any age). And many days he cannot do any work at all.

Of course that's not exactly true. Even on the worst days he can do work if he is given a large enough incentive. Remember the day I drove him to school threatening to send him back to his old classroom? He was about as locked up he could be that day but with a big enough stick he was able to move forward. It was ugly though. It was tears and screaming and hitting and serious emotional trauma on both sides.

Today the threat has been no birthday party. He gets closer and closer and closer to losing it every time. He gets stuck and says he can't do the laundry, he can't do his math, he can't go out of Dallin's room and he's not lying. He really can't. Until the threat is big and real enough he absolutely cannot bring himself to act.

Of course Jim Fay and Foster W. Cline, M.D. would just tell me to stop threatening and take away the birthday party. And they would be right if the goal were to teach Thelly that I mean what I say so that he would make the rational choice and get his work done next time. But Thelly knows I mean what I say. He just can't make him self be rational.

We talk about it all the time. "Thelly, is yelling and screaming going to make me change my mind?" "NO!!!" (imagine hitting and yelling sounds here) "Is yelling and screaming going make any thing better?" "NO!!!! (more screaming and hitting things). "So why are you continuing to scream and hit things when you know it will only make things worse for you?" "I DON'T KNOW, I CAN'T STOP, I CAN'T STOP, I CAN'T STOP!!!"

These scenes frequently end with him begging me to help him stop hitting his leg or stamping his feet or hitting the counter or whatever he is doing that is causing him pain but he can't stop on his own. No matter how much I love my son I cannot make him be logical.

So it's 2:00 and he's finishing up his sentences. He has also done 3 loads of laundry (he had an extra today because he was late for church yesterday) and he did 10 math problems on Khan Academy (awesome site btw).

Does that mean today is a victory? I don't really know.

On the one hand it seems extremely unhealthy. A 12 year old should not spend this much of his day crying. His mother should not have to sit right by his side (or literally on his lap so he can't dig holes into the skin on his feet) every minute in order for him to accomplish anything.

But at least he is accomplishing something. If I didn't push this hard, he truly would do nothing but play legos and the piano all day. Of course I've thought a lot about just trying to take away every privilege he might want so that he won't have anything to do until he does his work. But aside from that being impossible I'm not sure it would work. I'm pretty sure there is no carrot big enough. I think it takes a stick.

And at school it's no different. Some days his teachers could get him to do a little work. But many days they couldn't. He didn't have screaming crying fits. But he didn't get any work done either. They don't have big enough sticks at school. Not at any school. And that's why I don't have any real hope that there is a program out there that is going to change everything; because every program is based on rational and logical behavior. And Thelly's brain is broken.

So I see two options for school. I battle with him every day and he does work. Or he goes to school and sits and does nothing and then I battle with him outside of school hours to get homework done.

Or I could just bag the school thing all together. I could just say "Thelly is too mentally ill to educate." But I know that's not exactly true. So I could just try to teach him as much as possible entirely on my own, but without the added stress and pressure of an external system. Except that without that accountability I'm pretty lame.

And then there's the issue that I really think it would be healthier for him to be away from me and be directly accountable to someone else besides me. But then we're back to whether anyone else could actually get him to do anything. And would he be given homework that I would be responsible for getting him to complete? And would they be required to teach him "grade level material" when he's really a year or two behind? And everyone tells me that the resource program at the middle school is terrible and they won't help him at all.

But maybe there really is a school that could......