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Post by Beth W on Mar 21, 2004 9:59:41 GMT -5
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Post by Diane on Mar 21, 2004 10:16:43 GMT -5
I'm posting at least part of the story here because after 14 days, I think you'll have to pay to read it.
Raising Austin
Sunday, March 21, 2004; Page W12
Jeanne and Chuck Harple are working like mad to keep their 9-year-old son's behavior problems from wrecking his future. No one knows why, but it appears a growing number of families are in the same boat.
Jeanne Harple is, as always, prepared for anything as she climbs the polished wood stairs of her three-bedroom brick colonial in North Arlington. It is 7:50 a.m. on a freezing Monday in January, and it is time to wake up Austin for school. When she or her husband, Chuck, hits Austin's door, they never quite know what to expect from their 9-year-old son. Some mornings, he will just grunt in protest or flail around in the bedsheets. Other days, he might loudly refuse and call his parents jerks, or worse.
Occasionally, Austin will start the day by blurting out curse words.
"Austin, you gotta get up," Jeanne says, tugging gently on his blanket.
"No, I don't," Austin declares, staying buried beneath the covers on his bottom bunk bed.
"Yeah, you do," she says.
"Naaaaaaah!" he whines. He yanks off a black blindfold that he wears because his eyes are particularly sensitive to bright morning light, just as his ears are severely offended by loud noises. Austin pokes his head out from the blanket; he has pale skin, clear hazel eyes, an angular face and close-cropped brown hair. His smooth cheeks bear a few faint scars because of a habit of picking at his face. Physically, he is a fairly average fourth-grader, 53 inches tall and 65 pounds.
"What do you want for breakfast?" his mother asks. She is an energetic woman, wearing workout pants, a loose jacket, and a tired expression because she hasn't gotten much sleep lately; her long brown hair is held off her face by a clip because she hasn't had a chance to fix it right.
"I don't know," Austin answers impatiently.
Jeanne knows she has an hour to wake up her three kids, get them cleaned up, dressed and fed, lunches packed, backpacks filled, and then drive two of them to school in her Chrysler minivan, with her 19-month-old daughter in tow.
"You want waffles or eggs?" She always offers a choice, which she has learned is crucial for Austin. "I don't have hollandaise sauce," she adds, "but I could make some."
No response. Austin looks dazed, unresponsive.
"Austin?"
"I'll take some waffles," he mumbles.
Jeanne then wakes up Austin's sister Madison, who is 7, but lets the baby, Julia, sleep. As she passes Austin's room and sees him still in bed, she calls, "You gotta get up, Austin."
While mom is microwaving waffles in her tiny kitchen, Austin and Maddie, both half-dressed, drift downstairs and curl up sleepily on the couch in the adjacent family room.
"Come on, Austin," Jeanne calls as the microwave beeps.
"Shut up!" he yells.
Jeanne ignores his rudeness, as she has learned she must do in some circumstances, particularly in the morning, before Austin has had his meds. She cuts up their waffles. "Come on, Austin," she calls again.
"Aggggh!" he shouts.
"Austin, what do you want for lunch?"
"SpaghettiOs" he announces, trudging behind his sister to the dining room table.
The phone rings twice in the next 25 minutes, and Jeanne, while serving breakfast and trying to prepare lunches, takes two calls from Austin's special education teachers. Austin attends an Arlington County program called Interlude, which is for children who have been in special education because of learning disabilities but have been removed from class because of additional disruptive behaviors. Interlude is the public school system's last resort for Austin, who has been suspended or sent home countless times ever since kindergarten for cursing, screaming, and threatening, pushing, punching and kicking other students -- and occasionally his teachers.
"Austin . . . You missed Level 5 and dropped down to Level 4," Jeanne tells him when she gets off the phone. "You missed by one point." In his class of eight children and three adults, Austin has his behavior graded by teachers every hour, every day, and if he maintains a weekly score of at least 92 points out of 100, he stays at 5, the top level. This incentive system earns him privileges to play on the computer, watch videos at break time, and ultimately win a fast-food lunch.
Austin's small face contorts into a scowl. "I can't wait to get to school, to call them something bad!" he sputters.
His sister starts to say something, but he cuts her off. "Shut up, Maddie, I'm gonna kill you."
Jeanne frowns but determinedly ignores this. "Did you take your medicine?" she asks. She reminds him quietly that the reason he fell to Level 4 was that his conduct was not great last week and that he had expected to earn bonus points by behaving well and doing extra math on Friday -- but bad weather caused him to miss math.
"I'm gonna call them a beast, and anything I want," Austin says.
"That's not going to get you anything," Jeanne says.
Austin responds: "It gets me nothing because I don't have a GameCube. I can't get back the GameCube by good behavior at school -- only by good behavior with the babysitter." This apparent non sequitur involves Austin's major obsession: his Nintendo GameCube video toy. Under a separate incentive system at home, Austin earns minutes of weekend playing time by reading and behaving himself at home. But this past weekend, he acted out so wildly with a babysitter that the GameCube was confiscated until he earns it back, under a new contract with his parents.
"Can I kill you?" Austin asks matter-of-factly. Jeanne again ignores him. Psychiatrists and behavior therapists who have worked with Austin have told the Harples they believe his cursing and verbal threats come from a lack of impulse control arising from a complex combination of problems. They include an underlying neurological disorder that disrupts his sensory abilities; attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), which creates constantly recurring anxieties; and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), which makes him inflexible and explosive. Austin's therapists have described his verbal venting as "mental debris" resulting from the volatile swirl of his emotions.
Jeanne has opened two capsules and mixed 250 milligrams of Depakote, a mood stabilizer, into a small bowl of applesauce. Austin swallows it, along with three pills of Trileptal, a similar drug. He also takes methylphenidate, the generic name of Ritalin, to help focus his attention.
"Austin, what do you want for lunch beside SpaghettiOs?"
"I don't know . . . a jackass?" He smiles naughtily.
"If you go in there with an attitude, it may be worse," she warns him, but if he behaves at school, "they may not drop you a level."
"No, they already did." Austin scowls. He is now eating breath mints and chewing gum.
"Austin, let me have the gum, please."
"Jesus [expletive]," he mutters.
"I don't know if you are showing off for our guest," Jeanne says, referring to me this morning, on my second of what will be more than a dozen lengthy visits over two months.
"I'm showing my [expletive]," he says, raising his voice. "Yo! Gonna party!"
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Post by Diane on Mar 21, 2004 10:23:41 GMT -5
"Okay, Austin," Jeanne says sharply. "Forget the next time you want a piece of candy. Forget it." While hurriedly herding the children into winter coats, shoes and hats, Jeanne tries to calmly draw a lesson for Austin from his Level 5 disappointment. "You can't come in on a Friday and expect to pull it out for the week," she says.
"I hate them," Austin mutters. "I'm gonna call my teachers the baddest word I know."
The Harples straggle out to the minivan, and Austin continues taunting Maddie. "Can I kill you?" he says. Madison, a round-faced, giggly second-grader, has a milder attention-deficit problem, but unlike her brother, she has a steadily sunny disposition and plenty of friends. Often, though not always, she ignores his teasing.
"Yo! Yo! I'm gonna kill you," Austin tells Maddie.
"AUSTIN RAY!" Jeanne snaps at him. "I'd stop with that, Austin. That's enough!" He climbs into the van and remains quiet for the mile-long ride to Nottingham Elementary. At 8:57, they reach the "Kiss and Learn" drop-off sign at the front curb. Jeanne leans over and kisses Austin as he steps out. She says, "I love you. Have a good day." Most days Austin will say, "Love you, too," but today he just bails.
After dropping Maddie at her separate portable classroom, Jeanne steers her white minivan back home. "Today was actually a good morning," she tells me. "It was really pretty good. Normally he will curse, but it wasn't too bad." She glances at me, seeming to assess my reaction.
As a baby, Austin was so mellow, so contented, that Jeanne used to call him "my little old man." He was healthy and sweet at birth, blond, eight pounds, and 20 1/4 inches long. As he grew, he was curious, cuddly and rarely cried. He was such an easy baby that Chuck and Jeanne took Austin on vacation to Italy when he was only 16 months.
Chuck used to brag about his son, especially about his apparent gentleness and compassion. Austin would often ask sensitive questions about handicapped kids or homeless people, and, as he got older, would plead with his parents to give them money.
When Austin, like most toddlers, hit his "terrible twos," he seemed to define himself by defiantly declaring, "No. No. No!" But for Austin, this developmental phase never really passed, only deepened. In part-time day care, at parks and playgrounds, something would inevitably infuriate him, and he would often end up screaming, and eventually hitting, kicking and biting. Other kids -- and their parents -- began telling the Harples with scornful looks and even words that they were failures.
By age 3, Austin hated being in groups. He still loved to kiss and hug his parents, but loathed being touched by others. He couldn't stand socks that felt scratchy. He was irritated by the seams in his clothes and the tags on his shirts. He went on major prolonged kicks of eating only scalloped potatoes or chicken pot pie or SpaghettiOs. Loud noises made him clamp his hands over his ears and scream.
Austin began having what his parents called "total meltdowns," transforming into a snarling, spitting, raging force, occasionally for up to three or four hours of foot-stomping, door-slamming, toy-breaking fury.
Jeanne vividly recalls one such time when Austin was 4 and attending a birthday party at a Discovery Zone. Running amok, he punched a little girl in the stomach and began shoving aside other kids who blocked his path. Jeanne grabbed her son and dragged him outside. She remembers watching through a glass wall as kids played happily while she screamed at Austin. "I remember leaving there, just bawling," she says. "I remember one friend calling me and saying, 'Don't take it personally. It's not a reflection on you.' But I couldn't help it."
It would be a long time before the Harples finally learned what they were confronting and how to begin correcting it. For Jeanne and Chuck, who are both 41, the past six years have tested their faith in themselves, strained their marriage nearly to the breaking point, and forced them to dig deep -- psychologically, spiritually and financially -- to try to master a challenge that could be called Extreme Parenting.
It is an experience that is shared, in varying degrees, by millions of parents whose children exhibit behavior that can be puzzling, infuriating, embarrassing, and sometimes frightening. It creates a family life in which tenderness, understanding and love threaten to be crowded out by ignorance, anger, isolation, fear and guilt.
Experts debate whether childhood behavioral problems like ADHD and ODD have increased in recent years, or whether normally rambunctious kids, particularly boys, are being overdiagnosed and overmedicated. Most believe that behavioral problems are indeed on the rise, but their causes are also vigorously argued. Many researchers point toward genetic tendencies, brain-chemistry imbalances, neurological disconnections, viruses, allergies and even environmental toxins as possible contributors. Others blame the behaviors on two-career families, permissive parenting, dysfunctional marriages, violent media, poverty, the decline of community spirit and countless other social factors. The arguments are often based more on personal ideologies than medicine or science.
"This whole field of childhood psychopathology is still in its infancy. We are still figuring out what is developmental normalcy," says Ross Greene, a noted child psychologist at Harvard Medical School and author of The Explosive Child. Greene says far too much emphasis is put on labeling children rather than figuring out how parents and schools can help children conquer their disabilities.
These ailments are many and bewildering: ADHD, which tends to run in families, is often characterized by frequent and severe distractibility, impulsivity and impatience, and is estimated in psychiatric studies to affect anywhere from 2 percent to more than 10 percent of school-age children. Many other kids at varying ages also suffer from depression, bipolar disorder, OCD, ODD, and a spectrum of neurological and behavioral problems, often grouped loosely under the label of autistic-type behaviors, which can make children detached, antisocial and explosive.
Nobody has comprehensive statistics, and many of these conditions are difficult to diagnose or even specifically define. One of the nation's leading child psychiatrists, Stanley Greenspan of George Washington University Medical School, the former director of the National Institute of Mental Health's Clinical Infant Development Program, says that cumulatively these ailments affect far more children than most people realize. "It would not be far-fetched to think that somewhere around a quarter of the population could be involved," he says. "Conservatively, anywhere from 12 to 25 percent."
For parents of these children, grappling with extreme behavior can wreak havoc on family life. Yet the Harples say they have also discovered sources of strength, support and closeness. With the help of a team of medical and behavioral experts, they say, they are relearning how to be Austin's parents and renewing their sense of control and optimism. They are also learning to stop blaming themselves. They've done the best they know how, they say -- putting limits on television and video, reading to their children daily, taking them to church on Sundays and constantly stressing positive values.
"God gave us this child, and I think it is for us to learn something," Jeanne says late one night at the dining room table, after the kids finally have gone to sleep, and she and Chuck are sipping red wine. "I think it's a gift." They agreed to share their story because they believe their experience might help other families. "I'd like to let people know they are not alone," says Jeanne. "It was very lonely." Still, they realize some people inevitably will blame them for Austin's behavior. Of such critics, Chuck says, "God bless 'em for not having to deal with it."
Late at night, in the Harples' cozy dining room, Chuck takes off his jacket and tie after a 10-hour workday, and slumps back in his chair. He is a solidly built 6-foot-1, a big, amiable guy with a big, demanding job as the political director for the million-member International Brotherhood of Teamsters. He lobbies Congress, helps supervise more than 30 staffers, works on election campaigns, and knows how to play Washington hardball. His colleagues nicknamed him "the Hammer."
Chuck thought he was fully capable and prepared to be a good father. But he had never encountered anything like Austin's rage. "Sometimes, I would just hold him down, restraining him, and it was horrifying," he says. "Holding your first-born son, and we are yelling at each other. I got afraid of him." Chuck began abandoning the hard work to Jeanne. When Austin turned 3 and Maddie was born, Jeanne decided to give up her job running her family's automotive business in Arlington and stay at home with the kids.
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Post by Diane on Mar 21, 2004 10:25:24 GMT -5
Jeanne, who comes from Arlington, and Chuck, who grew up in a struggling working-class family in Prince George's County, were both raised by parents who strongly believed in spanking, with fathers who used belt-whippings as the major form of punishment. Austin's grandparents insistently told Chuck and Jeanne they needed to spank him. And they did. They tried other strategies, like washing Austin's mouth out with soap for cursing, but none of them worked. "We would threaten, we would talk him to death, we gave him timeouts," Jeanne says. Eventually, she adds, "you lose your temper, you end up spanking him. We didn't believe in it, and it just didn't work. It didn't faze him, and he wouldn't remember."
"We thought we were bad parents," Jeanne says. For months, stretching into years, the Harples rarely ventured out socially. Teenage babysitters couldn't handle Austin; so the Harples joined a local baby-sitting co-op, but very few adults could deal with Austin either. The Harples became hermits, they say. "We went into a bunker mentality," says Chuck. They feared public meltdowns because it took a heavy emotional toll on Austin, and because they felt ashamed. Some friendships faded, and the couple felt increasingly alone. They even stopped going to church because of Austin's inevitable outbursts. The rare family outings were often done in two cars, because they frequently had to bring Austin home early.
The Harples, particularly Chuck, had great trouble believing that Austin simply could not control his outbursts. Chuck began to understand when a psychiatrist described Austin by saying: "If you held a gun to his head, and told him, 'One more word and I'm going to shoot,' he would still say another word."
"It makes me cry to think how bad I was to him" in earlier years, Chuck says. "I was abused as a child myself." His voice trails off and his eyes well up. In later interviews, Chuck says he was "physically beaten all the time" by his stepfather, a former drill sergeant. When Austin was born, Chuck bought him a tiny Harvard University hat and T-shirt, and promised himself that he'd give Austin a better childhood.
Instead, Chuck says, he began to run away from his family's troubles by working longer and longer hours in the office, taking solace in extended road trips that his job required, and drinking too much. "I started hanging out and drinking, and playing 'big man'" at work, Chuck says, "and I didn't have to talk about my son's problems."
Jeanne, meanwhile, was fighting to help Austin conquer his problems. She describes Chuck as "already broken off into his own world, his own job, the politics of Washington." Their marriage in crisis, they separated, and Chuck briefly moved to his mother's house. Exhausted, discouraged, Jeanne got herself a lawyer and was ready to face divorce. Instead, she decided they should try marriage counseling.
They worked hard on their marriage over four years of counseling. Chuck started individual therapy for his childhood issues and joined a church men's group, belatedly realizing, he says, how precious his wife and children were to him. Says Jeanne, "I really realized that Chuck was changing, and becoming the person I knew he could be." Jeanne began personal counseling, too, and both of them started reaching out for more help. They enrolled in weekly classes offered by the nonprofit Parent Encouragement Program that began to teach them that if irrational behavior could not be overcome by force, perhaps it could be diminished by trying, somehow, to ignore it.
But that strategy didn't work consistently, and the Harples still had no clue what was causing the bizarre conduct. So, as school age approached, Austin began to be evaluated by a succession of pediatricians, psychologists, psychiatrists, neurologists, nutritionists, sleep therapists, allergists, occupational therapists and special educators in the search for answers.
When Austin started kindergarten, the experts began to officially label his problems. The initial reports determined that Austin had above-average intelligence but the social skills of a 2 1/2-year-old. Part of his problem was attributed to a "sensory integration dysfunction." Essentially, Austin was overwhelmed by the onslaught of his own senses. A flood of sensory information overloaded his nervous system, resulting in a panic reflex sometimes described as "fight, flight or fright."
"Kindergarten was the first time they gave it a name," Jeanne says. "People would call him a 'bad kid' . . . and I guess I thought he was a bad kid, too." Austin ran wild in groups, she learned, because "he had no sense of his body, or of space . . . He was floundering on his own by himself and he was screaming for help, and we were trying to parent him. Austin was not trying to be vicious or vindictive intentionally. It was his way of saying, 'I just can't handle this situation.'"
Jeanne was referred to a 1998 book, The Out-of-Sync Child, by Carol Stock Kranowitz, the first major popular study of the sensory disorder. "Ohmigosh, it was incredible. This is Austin!" Jeanne recalls thinking. She started furiously highlighting passages and reading aloud to Chuck. "It was the book that brought light to how Austin is wired," she says, and showed the Harples "that there was a reason for it -- and not just our parenting."
When Austin was in first grade, the Harples were told he also had ADHD, a diagnosis that rang true with them because they each see signs of it in themselves, in their frenetic multi-tasking. Stimulants such as Ritalin are the most popular treatment, but Jeanne was strongly opposed to drugging her son. Instead, she experimented with his diet, put him in occupational therapy to work on his motor skills and, she says, "I started regulating. Trying to figure out what he could handle and what he could not." At first, she sent Austin to school for only one hour, then two. He was placed in smaller, quieter special ed classes, given more quiet time, more sleep, shorter outings, fewer parties, less playground time. "We felt we just had to shelter him."
Yet the meltdowns continued. One of Chuck's most awful memories is Austin's seventh birthday. He arrived at Austin's school, planning to take his son and a friend out to Chuck E. Cheese. Instead, Chuck saw two teachers "carrying him out, kicking and screaming," holding Austin's arms and legs, "like a human straitjacket . . . On his birthday! It was horrifying."
The Harples' resistance to drugs ended when his doctor told them, "Forget about yourself and think about him. Think about how bad he feels when this is going on," Chuck recalls. Finally, "when the Ritalin started, it was miraculous," he says. The stimulant and the mood-stabilizing drugs took the edge off his anger. The meltdowns were fewer and shorter, he says, "and we were high-fiving." But Austin was still intermittently violent, and the Harples realized that they were in for a long haul.
After taking him to school, "I used to come home and just pray he'd get through the day," Jeanne says. She realized she needed more help. The Harples, with the benefit of good coverage from Chuck's Teamsters insurance plan, began assembling what they now call "the Team." In addition to working with Austin's pediatrician, psychiatrist, special ed teachers and occupational therapists, they started sending him to a behavioral "play" therapist, and they hired an experienced behavioral consultant to advise them on how to parent a challenging child, eventually putting themselves thousands of dollars in debt.
The Harples also read everything they could find. One book that particularly resonated was Greene's The Explosive Child. Kids like Austin weren't intentionally being infuriating, Greene suggested; rather they could not learn naturally how to be flexible. So parents had to learn to teach them. The heart of his advice was for parents to avoid escalating a war they can never win. Essentially, "pick your fights," but do so in a systematic way: Save the most extreme discipline for preventing physical violence, and rely on compromise and ignoring for most other behaviors.
Chuck Harple is pale, red-eyed and exhausted after a 16-day trip to Iowa for the Democratic caucuses, where he helped run the union-led effort on behalf of Rep. Richard Gephardt. It was his longest separation from his children in memory, and Maddie flies into his arms when she spots him sticking his head into her gym class at Nottingham. "Daddy! Daddy!" she cries joyously as she hangs off his legs.
Minutes later, Chuck spots Austin in the school lobby. His son walks toward him, clutching a video-game magazine and making only glancing eye contact.
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Post by Diane on Mar 21, 2004 10:26:22 GMT -5
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