If You Really Must Know

It's been a week of some seriously bottomed out lows, interspersed with a few surprising highs, and it's only Wednesday. And I'm so sleep deprived that I started crying when I told my husband tonight that I will never again have the energy to clean up the den of filth that is the playroom.

He sent me to bed at 7:30 and cleaned up the playroom himself with "help" from the guys.

Here is what's happening, though I am loathe to address it:

Jack has been increasingly more aggressive. He has been randomly attacking his brothers, small children at church, and classmates at school. It's embarrassing to even write about this. I don't know why it makes me feel such shame, but it does.

We can't parent away the aggression and destruction from our intellectually disabled nine-year-old. It's a helpless and worrisome feeling. Who is he going to hurt next? How we will cope with such embarrassment and awkwardness? When is going to really hurt someone?

So I called the psychiatrist's office Monday hoping for an appointment within a few weeks time, knowing I couldn't hope for anything more. The heavens opened and the sun streamed through and the receptionist asked if I would like to come in the next morning. There'd been a cancellation.

So we went, Dutch and me, with Jack, to the psychiatrist who has always steered us on a logical, helpful course. We left with a plan, a new Rx, and renewed hope.

Hope.

That the Code Browns will not stay.

That the destruction of our house and everything in it will cease.

That the biting and lunging, the smack-downs and assaults will be nothing but an uncomfortable memory.

That things will improve.