January First

I am a friend of the Schofields, who have a daughter named Jani who has Child Onset Schizophrenia. His book "January First" is being published in August. Please check it out. I'm going to be sharing more of our story in the following months. We have also been on Jani's mother's radio show "Bipolar Nation Radio" about how I could not get care for Michael at Kennedy Hospital when he needed inpatient treatment.

One thing I have noticed with parents of children with severe mental illness is that we are highly scrutinized, far more so than our counterparts who have neurotypical children. I have a second son now, who is completely and utterly normal. He also sleeps about 12-14 hours per night and takes a 2 hour nap per day. He is usually cheerful and happy. When I am out with my younger son, strangers often tell me what a wonderful mother I am and what a happy child he obviously is growing up to be.

On the other hand, when I am out with my 8 year old I get nasty glares from other parents when he begins to get upset about cats, crabs, or any other number of horrible things that he sees. If he says "LEAVE ME ALONE" to any of his hallucinations, he is badly behaved.

When I am out with both of my children- I get plenty of stares. One reason is that they look absolutely identical, except my younger son has beautiful blue eyes. We are of middle eastern descent so it's striking that he has blue eyes. Except their looks- they are polar opposites. Michael requires nearly constant stimulation and interaction while his brother is happy to play by himself. Michael often pushes his brother's stroller when we are out with a constant stream of encouragement from me. "Michael! You're such a good brother. You're making great choices. Your brother is lucky to have you." All the while, I can see him struggling to ignore his hallucinations which come from a place he calls "The Troll Bridge." His brother, on the other hand, is happily waving and saying hello to strangers. Despite Michael's violence in his early childhood and sometimes even now, he has never hurt his brother, nor does he show jealousy for him. He confidently says "My brother is luckier than I am because he has an awesome big brother who loves him a lot!" As sick as Maddox is, I would agree with his statement.

As difficult as he can be to parent, I deeply love and enjoy my older son. I wanted so badly for him to be okay. He is getting better as he gets older, but he is still schizophrenic. After he spent 6 weeks inpatient I didn't want to blog, or talk about him anymore because it was too painful to remember all the times I had to walk away from him in the hospital. Now, I have some distance from it and I can see how it did set him up to succeed in his school district that didn't believe he was severe enough to warrant a personal aide until they evaluated him inpatient. I still remain very angry that he was inpatient all that time and ultimately came home more unstable than when he went inpatient.


Since he has come home and he has a new psychiatrist, he has made such amazing progress. He is on a great medication regimen that helps keep him stable. He has a PRN for when his psychosis is too much to handle. He often asks for this medication, rather that an adult needing to offer it to him. I see him maturing everyday, even with his setbacks.

As I look back upon our life and how we moved halfway across the country I am happy. I am happy to be on the eastern seaboard, I am happy I live 10 miles away from my best friend, and I am happy to mother my sons. These are things I never thought I'd have. Our family is still in the midwest and we hope to see some of them this summer, but we're still really happy to be here. Here is home in a way the midwest never was for us.