As I mentioned in my last blog, we are bringing my youngest son, soon to be 18, home from a wilderness program in a couple of days. Having sent my older daughter several years ago to a mental health residential treatment program and seeing her slide immediately back into old behaviors upon returning home, I was somewhat jaded by the whole “therapeutic program” idea. I knew though that just because my daughter chose to discard the “coping tools” she learned, I still needed to keep an open mind that a therapeutic program could be helpful. It was helpful…enormously helpful. I would even call it life changing for both my son and for us as parents.

My husband and I made the decision to send my son away based on the belief that if we were going to err, we needed to err on the side of caution. I was scared that he was depressed and worried that if he continued to slide further down into a dark behavioral isolation, he might try to harm himself. As it turns out, he was unhappy however only mildly depressed and I read more into his behavior than was probably there. I am nonetheless glad that he went to the wilderness program as the letters we sent back and forth enabled us to share on a far deeper level emotionally than we ever would have without his therapist coaching us and him. I believe that also we now have a better understanding of my son’s makeup…how he is wired together and how he thinks…than we ever would have had without this experience.

In a letter to my son recently, I used a metaphor of standing outside a house, looking in through a window at night and trying to discern what the interior of the room looked like. Once in a while my son would open up and it would be like looking through that dark window and seeing the light switch flicked on for a brief time; I could see inside briefly but then the light switch would flick off and once again darkness would envelope the room. I would stand there wondering if I really perceived my son or just thought I did. He is highly verbal so he views the spoken word as superior to the written word. I am a visual learner however so when he finally wrote down in a letter how he viewed life and how his perspective of looking to the future molded his current actions, I finally felt that the light switch had come on long enough for me to really understand him. I love that letter he sent and will treasure it forever.

My son thrives on open ended options; I like to plan and know exactly how my actions will impact my goals. I find structure comforting as I know where I am in relation to where I am headed. For him, structure…such as the structure of school classrooms…feels like prison. Getting a GED is way too risky for me to envision but for him, it’s another option and gives him the creative opportunity to launch onto another path in life sooner than if he waited until June to graduate. My husband and I are so driven and goal oriented that we were adamantly against the idea. My son was just as adamantly for the GED and we were in a tug of war; his therapist pointed out that someone needed to put down the rope and perhaps the world would not end if we considered my son’s viewpoint. A novel thought…my son’s viewpoint…and as we understood his makeup, we both realized that we needed to give him support no matter the decision he made.

The other illuminating aspect of the wilderness program is that a battery of testing on my son gave a more clear understanding of how he learns. We have always known he was bright and have been enormously puzzled as to why he has struggled in school since junior high. I suspected he might be ADHD and it is confirmed that he is. There is also a learning/processing aspect that makes the memorization of new information…learning facts and then spitting them back out on a test for example…more of a challenge. He is what is sometimes called “twice special”; gifted cognitively but also has it a bit harder with memorizing facts. It might take him longer to process new information and cramming the night before a test would not work well.

What is fascinating about the battery of test results is that I recognized myself in some of them. Although I have never been diagnosed with attention deficit, I am well known in my family for being somewhat of a “ditz”. Along with that, I have a terrible short term memory. My kids have capitalized on that… “Mom, I told you last week that I was going to….”. In the diagnosis of my son, I realized with some shock that he probably got that processing/memory challenge from me. The good thing about that is that I can tell him that I learned to cope…I always knew in high school and college that I needed to start studying for finals well ahead of time. My twin who had the same chemistry undergraduate major as me, told me once that several hours before each final, she would read over her notes and textbooks and the information would just “pour” into her brain and it would be there for taking the final. Good grief. How annoyingly easy.

A third aspect to my son’s internal “wiring” is that he displays some rigidity in problem solving. There is a name for it which I am unable to remember at the moment. When it was first suggested part way through the program, I rejected the idea however as I have come to understand it more, my son’s stubbornness at repeating unsuccessful behavior patterns (school) makes sense. Intuitively, I believe that if this youngest son has that trait, my middle son has it as well as he is known for stubborn “black and white” thinking. For that matter, I’m a “rule follower”. Does that mean that I may also have that trait? Psychological testing can cause more questions than provide answers.

I’m glad to understand what is going on with my son and am determined to support him as he figures out which path to take in life. Given the fact that he likes to “keep his options open”, he will likely try a number of different paths before settling on a career. My job is to keep cheering him on without counting the number of paths he has tried or worrying about where he is going to end up.

A last note…we visited my son earlier this week for a few hours, before making the decision to bring him home. Toward the end of the visit, he told us that while he would not have “signed up” to come to the wilderness program, he is glad to have gone through it. Furthermore, he told us that in a year, after turning 19, he would like to come back as staff in the program. That said the world to me…he “gets” what we tried to do for him and wants to pass it on.