Seth Returns!

I’ve been wanting to do a post about our Sethie boy for a while, but it’s hard to know just when to write it. He has been home three weeks, every day still feels a little uncertain: are we in a honeymoon? Is there worse to come? Can I write about him today and brag about all the ways he has grown and matured only to see him throw his fist through a wall or window next week? (Edit: 4 hours after I posted this, he had indeed punched/kicked a hole in his bedroom wall.)

Seth left due to aggressive and violent behaviors (both at home and school) and an unwillingness to address or change these behaviors. Honestly, when he left for a long term therapy program that was outside of our home I wondered if he would be given even more mental health labels and diagnoses. I wondered endlessly if we had done the right thing. Would he ever trust us again? Would he return even more broken? I felt so much guilt and desperation to just get through the experience: just let it be over. 

As time ran its course though, Jon, Ollie, and I all participated in family therapy and much of that guilt abated. Jon and I also had family therapy sessions with Seth via speaker phone, where Seth would often become unglued over the smallest bits of information. One session he sobbed hysterically because Jon and I told him we would be setting some things up at home that he was used to from therapeutic living, such as I would only cook one dinner for the entire family, we would all eat the same food for our evening meal. While he was gone, I began to see how toxic our family functioning had become with every decision our family made had an underlining current: How will Seth respond? Will Seth be safe? Will others be in danger because of Seth? In short, no way to live. Highly stressful.

As the months wore on with Seth gone, he surprised everyone. All of this therapists, doctors, and everyone who had a place on team Seth was pleasantly surprised to see him thriving. No assaultive or unsafe behavior and Seth had a preoccupation with one question: When will I go home? It was conveyed to him that he had to meet his goals before going home (mostly revolving around safe behavior and participating in school again) and Seth did everything he could to the very best of his abilities. We were told most kids stay at the therapeutic environment for 6, 12, 18 months. Seth was out of there in 4 with zero write-ups and zero episodes of unsafe behavior.                 

While shocking, this was obviously wonderful news. Jon and I joked that it was a good thing we all jumped into family therapy right away. We did not have as much time as we anticipated. We worked with the therapists in Seth’s life to set up a system at home that mimicked what he had lived outside our home and at school with points and levels. Seth was not happy about this, not one bit. But everyone had decided to set the bar and expectations quite high. This made sense to me. Basic classroom management 101, start off super strict but loving, then you can back off as appropriate over time. It is very difficult to go the other way. Start off loosey-goosey then try to firm up, and well, good luck. Plus Seth had proven me wrong in the very beginning. Rather than coming home with even more diagnoses to describe his behavior he showed everyone that this behavior was in fact under his control. Maybe this surprised him more than anyone? All this to say, Seth is on a short, short leash.

To have Seth home has been so sweet. While he is definitely still the same kid, he is also so happy, sweet, and tender. He has made numerous comments that show how grateful he is for the things that we are doing or providing for him. He has thanked me every morning for his breakfast and went on and on about crepes one night for dinner in gratitude. I’ve made him some of his favorite dinners, but also have made salmon and baked potatoes which he has eaten with quiet determination. He has done his chores and talked about how easy they are for him, how he has gotten so much better at this kind of thing. He has gotten mad and reached the end of his rope since coming home (in fact, almost daily) but has mostly talked himself down, walked away, tried to stay in control.

One thing that remains very hard for Seth is solitary time. If Ollie chooses to play by himself, and Nolan in napping or otherwise playing, I am cooking dinner, and Jon is not home or busy, Seth can absolutely not handle it. I can ask him to help me cook, or give him 20 suggestions of something to do but for some reason this really rubs him the wrong way. My best guess is that trauma and the life he has lived makes him terrified to be by himself. I could be wrong though. Right now I feel like the biggest blessing we have is our pesky three year old brother that pretty much always wants to play with his big brothers. Maybe in time being alone will get easier for Seth as well.

School has also been a hard adjustment for Seth. We tried to get him into an alternative school in our district for kids with emotional disturbance issues like Seth, but at the last minute our district vetoed that plan and he went back to good ‘ol Waters Elementary across the street. On one hand, I’m glad and overall I think this is good news. But Seth has struggled and has already been physical and assaultive at school since coming home. This is obviously such a bummer, but it may be that he is just finding his footing and will get it figured out. Or he may not, in which case he will end up at the alternative school, called Reach. Jon and I’s concern is that Seth gets momentum and it’s hard to break. Our fear is that his behavior from school will carry over to home, which won’t fly with our new family boundaries in place.  

Overall, we are so proud of Seth’s determination and resilience. He has shown growth in hundreds of small ways since coming home. He is talking while feeling mad, before he was almost non-verbal. He is telling us when he feels “yellow” and we talk about how to get back to “green”. He tells me how easy it is to calm down when you are yellow, but if you let yourself get to red, it is so much harder and takes so much work to calm down. He is telling us about people faces and how you can tell what people are feeling. The other day in the car he told me that he was getting “emotional”, which I took to mean, “mom! Help! I need help to gain control of myself again!”.

He does do so much better with familiar structure and routine. Last Saturday, for a spring break treat we drove to Caprock Canyon State Park to hike and picnic for the day. A fun outing, by everyone’s standards. Seth sobbed before we left, insisting he wouldn’t go, lost it several times on the trail (possibly not knowing his body was hungry  or thirsty?) and really almost lost it on the way home in the car with a couple of tense minutes where I was sure he was going to try and harm Ollie in the back seat. But! He didn’t! And every time he would calm down and apologize, we would forgive, and we would all move on. It did highlight some of his needs right now, though, and showed that most travel seems to be too stressful for him. I really hope in time that can change.

Most importantly, we love Seth. He has so much potential and such an empathic and tender heart (especially when he is feeling “yellow” or “green” – ha!) He is extremely literal, super duper athletic, and I believe he would sacrifice himself for his brothers. We are glad to have him home.