Hound dog
Nana's are Beautiful
I'm so worried about my little Connor man that I can hardly stand it. I've never been so frustrated in my life. And really there is nothing I can do about it.
easy child is a good Mom. She's a nurse. And to me, this only makes her denial of his issues worse. I can understand where she's coming from, I can totally understand her feelings because I've been there. But dammit, she's wasting in my opinion valuable time in which to get him help that could make an enormous difference in his life, his future.......and I get to the point where I just want to shake her until her head rattles.
I'm so frustrated because every single time I attempt to discuss it with her, she seems to take it to heart that it's her parenting that I'm "attacking" or her personally. And that doesn't have a darn thing to do with it.
C'mon. I've raised Travis, a brain injured child with autism. I helped get BFF's son diagnosed with cerebral palsy/autism. I spotted Alex's issues years and years before he ever got even an unofficial diagnosis. What easy child doesn't know, is that during Travis's childhood I've helped many other children receive similar dxes because their behaviors ect sent up red flags and I pointed their parents in the right direction to find the right specialist to get them diagnosed and help FAST so they could start Occupational Therapist (OT), PT, speech therapy, ect. I might not be a doctor, but this is something I know.....inside out and backward.......at least enough to say "hey, there are these red flags, this child needs evaluated." So far?? I'm batting 100 percent.
What she doesn't seem to realize? Is that I hope and pray I"m totally wrong about Connor, but I know in my heart and in my head, I'm not wrong.
I've been watching Connor since he was very young, only a few months old. Forever I kept my mouth shut, thinking for certain easy child would surely due to her own medical training and living with Travis and even after Alex, figure it out and spot the red flags on her own. When she didn't, I cautiously spoke up. My first main concern was that he was behind developmentally....and has lagged behind from the beginning, quite a bit behind. He was nearly 6 months old when he could roll over finally and he was late sitting up. I never thought he'd crawl.....but finally he did. Then walking.........walking he was like at least 15-16 months old. He's almost two and he still stumbles around and I watch and his steps aren't right. I can't tell you why they're not right, they just aren't. Connor at almost two can't get a spoon full of food to his mouth, he doesn't even seem to "get" the concept that the food goes onto the spoon and you put it into your own mouth. He eats fine when someone is feeding him and he'll eat with his hand.....no go with the spoon. He's still putting it in upside down when empty. He is only now starting to talk and while he will astound you with some of his words.....most of it is gibberish, but at least he's trying which is more than he was doing not that long ago.
A huge red flag is that he doesn't understand the concept he should've had by 6-9 months that when you come to an edge (like a step) that you can fall. He'll just keep walking like it's still flat. I've finally got him holding my hand to go down steps but you've no idea how many times Nana has swallowed her heart trying to catch him as he just walked off the edge. This is a neuro thing. I had hoped it was a vision thing, depth perception, but he's had his surgery on his eyes long ago and the problem persist. You can see it in other areas of his play.
I spotted at about 5 months or so that Connor's eyes were crossing, easy child would get upset and tell me I was seeing things not there and only stopped denying it when both eyes were basically planted on his nose.
In an attempt to get her to understand what I was talking about, I took a wild stab in the dark. Connor and Evan are the only grandchildren that I didn't attend their birth. I knew nothing about what had gone on in her labor room. So I asked easy child if there were any issues with Connor's heart rate dropping during labor. (my gut told me there had to have been) She looked shocked and said yes, there were issues with his heart rate getting very low during labor and they made her wear the O2 mask, but that couldn't have been an issue because he was born and was fine. My heart sank. Because people just don't understand unless you have a brain injured child (and that injury occurred during birth) that it does not take much to cause a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) in a newborn. A decreased heart rate= decreased O2 to the newborn, which is why they made easy child wear the O2 mask. The resulting injury will vary depending on how long the O2 was decreased and to what extent. I explained this to her. Travis has cp because of this......not only did he have his heart rate decrease, but his heart stopped. Nichole also has a mild Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) due to the same thing, neurologist is certain it's what caused her dyslexia because there is not a single person on either side of the family who has it and she has a severe form. Nichole's O2 issues were as bad as her brothers during labor but they were able to do the C section fast enough that not as much damage was done. Know what I mean??
Connor is showing neuro red flags and with his birth history........that is NOT a good thing.
My little man is also about as autistic as you can get without being full blown. I adore this child, you've no idea. He's like having a clone of Travis, yet in many ways he's worse. I don't know if this is because of compounding neuro issues or what. But Connor will be 2 in August and he does not at all act like a child about to turn 2 years old. I'd age him about 16 to 18 months tops and in some areas, that's pushing it. He's as sweet as he can be. But social is not his cup of tea. Only now does he like to crawl up into a lap for a little cuddling. He just recently learned to kiss someone and it's the sweetest thing in the world and it makes my heart soar. He was a major head banger..........and once in a while he'll still do it. He likes to take your hand and literally just walk and walk and walk and walk, around in circles in a room or the yard or whatever. He likes to touch cars (I mean my car, easy child's car) and hugs the tires......this can occupy him for extended periods of time. And he can rage like a champ like someone flipped a switch. Connor can't be consoled when injured or upset, he'll have no part of it.
Autistic as heck, Travis at two could tell you his name, count to 10 plus, tell you his colors, say his alphabet. You'd have trouble understanding him because his tongue was basically stuck to the roof of his mouth. He was developmentally behind.........but yet at two, I pretty much saw a two year old.......it was after age 3 when his peers started soaring ahead of him by leaps and bounds. His development behind at this age was motor skills more than other skills. I think some of this was he had a burning desire to do everything easy child did.
Connor plays "around" his brothers, not really with them most of the time. Although he likes to push trucks around with Brandon. He is learning to share and actually does better than Brandon in this area.....as long as he has something to play with, pretty much he's ok with it. It's that no interest in joining their play that throws up the red flag. Most of the time he's off doing his own thing.
I've spent a lifetime watching children. I have basically the same medical training as easy child. I've raised my own two difficult children, one of them with a brain injury and autism. I'm not pointing out these things to easy child to criticize her as a parent in any way shape or form. I point them out because the younger Connor is when he's diagnosed the faster any therapies he needs can be put into place and his future could turn out to be vastly different than either his uncle or his cousin. That is my motivation. Because I love my grandson, ****, I utterly adore this little guy. He has his Nana's heart wrapped around his pinky finger because he's special. He's eyes.........they sparkle in wonder.....with I dunno, but they melt my heart. And while I watch him playing or whatever.......like tonight when I watched him playing his simple play or when he walked me laps around the yard.......I fought back tears of heartache.
easy child has so much at her disposal that wasn't available for Travis as a child. I watched BFF's infant son who was paralyzed on one side of his body progress through developmental milestones with the aide of therapy that he would've never done without it. I watched that child, who would've been unable to speak and in a wheelchair, walk, talk, overcome his neuro sensory issues to become a profoundly different child by the time he went to preschool. He still had cp and was autistic, but omg the progress was utterly amazing!! And as an older child now? You'd never guess what he went through to get where he is now.......even if that isn't "normal". If the right therapy ect could do that for BFF's son, imagine how they could help Connor, the progress he could make.
It makes me cry. I can't help it. It was so hard to raise Travis with no help whatsoever. I can only say that I think I had some guardian angel helping me do the right things at the right times because most of what I did for him was guessing. When Travis was discharged from the NICU there was no therapy at all given to a brain injured infant. I took what I knew from stroke patients and used it on him and worked with him every single day all day long. I turned Range of Motion exercises into games played at every single diaper change. I used to roll him around on the floor to teach him to roll over as a game. I used a mirror to motivate him to hold up his head to look at the baby. There were no OTs, not PTs. Speech therapy didn't start until kindergarden.
What easy child doesn't know........because I've had periods of time watching the kids in between sitters and such .....I used some of these same things with Connor whenever I had the chance. I used them because he was behind and it worried me. easy child would tell me he was in "normal range" (which by the way varies depending on who you talk to, a pediatrician docs normal range doesn't match a neuro's normal range much of the time) and act like I was trying to find something wrong with him. So I'd keep my mouth shut and just do some of the things I used to do for Travis. I do them now, but she doesn't know. And I saw a kid who screamed bloody murder when put on the floor at like 5 months learn to like it and eventually learn to roll over.....later sit up.....later pull up.......and then walk. I'm not saying I did it all or whatever....but before I did the things I did with Travis there was little or no improvement.......after......there was. So whatever. And it's not like at that point I had him all the time, so someone else could've easily been encouraging him too in other ways.
I think easy child is scared. Growing up with her brother was not easy. She knows parenting him was even harder. So I think maybe denial is much easier than admitting she's scared to have a special child.
I have news for her. Nana is scared too. Nana sees a little boy who needs help and is not getting it, and the time when he can make enormous leaps and bounds in progress via therapy is quickly slipping away. Nana is scared because Travis was not born with crossed eyes (which is also a red flag for a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) by the way)......it was a gradual onset like Connor's. Anyone else see the pattern here? Because I'm not making it up. It's how I knew before easy child told me that here had been issues with Connor's labor. Nana is scared because her daughter is firmly buried in denial so Nana can't help either the daughter or her grandson.
And I admit, I'm angry. I'm angry because all she has to do is ask the pediatrician doctor for an MRI. And because they've spent years working together and are actually good friends, he wouldn't hesitate to do it. But easy child won't ask. She'll come up with every lame excuse in the book instead. And I have to back off because she gets upset and takes it personally, which is not what I want. But that damn MRI, if it shows anything, can get him evaled by Early Intervention here by the best neuros in the area and all the therapy he could possibly need tailored to his needs and if there insurance wouldn't cover it, it would be FREE. (and yes, they'd evaluation for autism too)
And it all gets tangled up, these lovely emotions, because I DO know how she feels. I know exactly what it feels like to think there might be something seriously wrong with your child, that he is not normal. I know what it's like to hold that toddler who is raging and you can't reach them and think OMG what am I going to do when he's older and bigger??!!
I hope that if he ever gets that MRI that it shows nothing. I hope if he gets evaled properly by Early Intervention, that they say he doesn't need their services. She has no clue, because she has not raised a child with the issues her brother has, how with everything that I have I hope that I am dead wrong.
Soooooooo. Instead of experience motherly advice, she gets the answer she wants to hear.......oh well maybe he'll do better as he gets older........or yes, he can do that now.......or yes, he's trying to talk isn't that great. Which is basically hot air. Because while those things might be true, it's not the point of what is going on in reality. I can't coach her on how to handle a full blown autistic rage when she refuses to admit he's autistic. I can't coach on how to help motor skills or speech whatever when she refuses to admit there is a problem.
Which is why while I watch his sensory issues with Maggie, or as I walk laps with him, or as I watch him discover the baby reflection in the shine of my car and keep looking under it trying to find the baby, or hugging my tires, or stuck in the open/shut door stage, or try to walk off the top step of my porch because he forgot to hold my hand.......my heart just hurts.
So I do what I can on the days I have him. I have a thing I do that most times works to ease him out of a full blown rage. I strongly urge him to use his words and engage him in speech. I keep putting his food on his spoon and putting it into his hand and try to get him to put it into his mouth no matter how huge a mess it makes. I offer him a cup that he has to tilt to get the water from to drink and don't care if it gets spilled on the floor or whatever. I repeat colors and counting with both him and Brandon. (this is just a normal thing I do, nothing special there) I encourage him to join in group play.
And I'll say, I enjoy every moment I spend with him. He truly is a gift from God. He has that special spark in his eye that Travis had as a young child, and it zings me right through to my soul.
I dunno what else I can do. Even unloading here, I risk easy child reading it and getting extremely upset. But I don't know what else to do. I made the mistake of venting to Nichole on some of it.....who brought it to easy child's attention and that went over like a lead balloon. But I wanted to see if I was the only one seeing issues. And since Nichole isn't around Connor much.....she'd pick up on things we miss because we're always around him and it seems "normal".
Nichole knows that Aubrey was severely delayed in all her large motor skills and in speech. At the time she was so young she accepted the pediatrician docs assurances that Aubrey would grow out of it she was fine. Despite the fact that Nana had to start teaching Aubrey sign language to stop rages because she had no words with which to communicate even basic needs. (seriously?) But now.....with Oliver.........Nichole sees just how delayed Aubrey really was, even given the normal variances with children. And she realizes that Aubrey should have been evaled to see if there was something wrong. That the pediatrician doctor dropped the ball. (same pediatrician doctor easy child uses by the way)
Connor is the one going to lose in this situation. Which is horrible when there are so many services to help him that were not there for Travis. And I'm sorry, but that IS hard to know and to just go on pretending nothing is wrong. Even when you understand the reasons why, maybe more so than the person going through it.
easy child is a good Mom. She's a nurse. And to me, this only makes her denial of his issues worse. I can understand where she's coming from, I can totally understand her feelings because I've been there. But dammit, she's wasting in my opinion valuable time in which to get him help that could make an enormous difference in his life, his future.......and I get to the point where I just want to shake her until her head rattles.
I'm so frustrated because every single time I attempt to discuss it with her, she seems to take it to heart that it's her parenting that I'm "attacking" or her personally. And that doesn't have a darn thing to do with it.
C'mon. I've raised Travis, a brain injured child with autism. I helped get BFF's son diagnosed with cerebral palsy/autism. I spotted Alex's issues years and years before he ever got even an unofficial diagnosis. What easy child doesn't know, is that during Travis's childhood I've helped many other children receive similar dxes because their behaviors ect sent up red flags and I pointed their parents in the right direction to find the right specialist to get them diagnosed and help FAST so they could start Occupational Therapist (OT), PT, speech therapy, ect. I might not be a doctor, but this is something I know.....inside out and backward.......at least enough to say "hey, there are these red flags, this child needs evaluated." So far?? I'm batting 100 percent.
What she doesn't seem to realize? Is that I hope and pray I"m totally wrong about Connor, but I know in my heart and in my head, I'm not wrong.
I've been watching Connor since he was very young, only a few months old. Forever I kept my mouth shut, thinking for certain easy child would surely due to her own medical training and living with Travis and even after Alex, figure it out and spot the red flags on her own. When she didn't, I cautiously spoke up. My first main concern was that he was behind developmentally....and has lagged behind from the beginning, quite a bit behind. He was nearly 6 months old when he could roll over finally and he was late sitting up. I never thought he'd crawl.....but finally he did. Then walking.........walking he was like at least 15-16 months old. He's almost two and he still stumbles around and I watch and his steps aren't right. I can't tell you why they're not right, they just aren't. Connor at almost two can't get a spoon full of food to his mouth, he doesn't even seem to "get" the concept that the food goes onto the spoon and you put it into your own mouth. He eats fine when someone is feeding him and he'll eat with his hand.....no go with the spoon. He's still putting it in upside down when empty. He is only now starting to talk and while he will astound you with some of his words.....most of it is gibberish, but at least he's trying which is more than he was doing not that long ago.
A huge red flag is that he doesn't understand the concept he should've had by 6-9 months that when you come to an edge (like a step) that you can fall. He'll just keep walking like it's still flat. I've finally got him holding my hand to go down steps but you've no idea how many times Nana has swallowed her heart trying to catch him as he just walked off the edge. This is a neuro thing. I had hoped it was a vision thing, depth perception, but he's had his surgery on his eyes long ago and the problem persist. You can see it in other areas of his play.
I spotted at about 5 months or so that Connor's eyes were crossing, easy child would get upset and tell me I was seeing things not there and only stopped denying it when both eyes were basically planted on his nose.
In an attempt to get her to understand what I was talking about, I took a wild stab in the dark. Connor and Evan are the only grandchildren that I didn't attend their birth. I knew nothing about what had gone on in her labor room. So I asked easy child if there were any issues with Connor's heart rate dropping during labor. (my gut told me there had to have been) She looked shocked and said yes, there were issues with his heart rate getting very low during labor and they made her wear the O2 mask, but that couldn't have been an issue because he was born and was fine. My heart sank. Because people just don't understand unless you have a brain injured child (and that injury occurred during birth) that it does not take much to cause a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) in a newborn. A decreased heart rate= decreased O2 to the newborn, which is why they made easy child wear the O2 mask. The resulting injury will vary depending on how long the O2 was decreased and to what extent. I explained this to her. Travis has cp because of this......not only did he have his heart rate decrease, but his heart stopped. Nichole also has a mild Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) due to the same thing, neurologist is certain it's what caused her dyslexia because there is not a single person on either side of the family who has it and she has a severe form. Nichole's O2 issues were as bad as her brothers during labor but they were able to do the C section fast enough that not as much damage was done. Know what I mean??
Connor is showing neuro red flags and with his birth history........that is NOT a good thing.
My little man is also about as autistic as you can get without being full blown. I adore this child, you've no idea. He's like having a clone of Travis, yet in many ways he's worse. I don't know if this is because of compounding neuro issues or what. But Connor will be 2 in August and he does not at all act like a child about to turn 2 years old. I'd age him about 16 to 18 months tops and in some areas, that's pushing it. He's as sweet as he can be. But social is not his cup of tea. Only now does he like to crawl up into a lap for a little cuddling. He just recently learned to kiss someone and it's the sweetest thing in the world and it makes my heart soar. He was a major head banger..........and once in a while he'll still do it. He likes to take your hand and literally just walk and walk and walk and walk, around in circles in a room or the yard or whatever. He likes to touch cars (I mean my car, easy child's car) and hugs the tires......this can occupy him for extended periods of time. And he can rage like a champ like someone flipped a switch. Connor can't be consoled when injured or upset, he'll have no part of it.
Autistic as heck, Travis at two could tell you his name, count to 10 plus, tell you his colors, say his alphabet. You'd have trouble understanding him because his tongue was basically stuck to the roof of his mouth. He was developmentally behind.........but yet at two, I pretty much saw a two year old.......it was after age 3 when his peers started soaring ahead of him by leaps and bounds. His development behind at this age was motor skills more than other skills. I think some of this was he had a burning desire to do everything easy child did.
Connor plays "around" his brothers, not really with them most of the time. Although he likes to push trucks around with Brandon. He is learning to share and actually does better than Brandon in this area.....as long as he has something to play with, pretty much he's ok with it. It's that no interest in joining their play that throws up the red flag. Most of the time he's off doing his own thing.
I've spent a lifetime watching children. I have basically the same medical training as easy child. I've raised my own two difficult children, one of them with a brain injury and autism. I'm not pointing out these things to easy child to criticize her as a parent in any way shape or form. I point them out because the younger Connor is when he's diagnosed the faster any therapies he needs can be put into place and his future could turn out to be vastly different than either his uncle or his cousin. That is my motivation. Because I love my grandson, ****, I utterly adore this little guy. He has his Nana's heart wrapped around his pinky finger because he's special. He's eyes.........they sparkle in wonder.....with I dunno, but they melt my heart. And while I watch him playing or whatever.......like tonight when I watched him playing his simple play or when he walked me laps around the yard.......I fought back tears of heartache.
easy child has so much at her disposal that wasn't available for Travis as a child. I watched BFF's infant son who was paralyzed on one side of his body progress through developmental milestones with the aide of therapy that he would've never done without it. I watched that child, who would've been unable to speak and in a wheelchair, walk, talk, overcome his neuro sensory issues to become a profoundly different child by the time he went to preschool. He still had cp and was autistic, but omg the progress was utterly amazing!! And as an older child now? You'd never guess what he went through to get where he is now.......even if that isn't "normal". If the right therapy ect could do that for BFF's son, imagine how they could help Connor, the progress he could make.
It makes me cry. I can't help it. It was so hard to raise Travis with no help whatsoever. I can only say that I think I had some guardian angel helping me do the right things at the right times because most of what I did for him was guessing. When Travis was discharged from the NICU there was no therapy at all given to a brain injured infant. I took what I knew from stroke patients and used it on him and worked with him every single day all day long. I turned Range of Motion exercises into games played at every single diaper change. I used to roll him around on the floor to teach him to roll over as a game. I used a mirror to motivate him to hold up his head to look at the baby. There were no OTs, not PTs. Speech therapy didn't start until kindergarden.
What easy child doesn't know........because I've had periods of time watching the kids in between sitters and such .....I used some of these same things with Connor whenever I had the chance. I used them because he was behind and it worried me. easy child would tell me he was in "normal range" (which by the way varies depending on who you talk to, a pediatrician docs normal range doesn't match a neuro's normal range much of the time) and act like I was trying to find something wrong with him. So I'd keep my mouth shut and just do some of the things I used to do for Travis. I do them now, but she doesn't know. And I saw a kid who screamed bloody murder when put on the floor at like 5 months learn to like it and eventually learn to roll over.....later sit up.....later pull up.......and then walk. I'm not saying I did it all or whatever....but before I did the things I did with Travis there was little or no improvement.......after......there was. So whatever. And it's not like at that point I had him all the time, so someone else could've easily been encouraging him too in other ways.
I think easy child is scared. Growing up with her brother was not easy. She knows parenting him was even harder. So I think maybe denial is much easier than admitting she's scared to have a special child.
I have news for her. Nana is scared too. Nana sees a little boy who needs help and is not getting it, and the time when he can make enormous leaps and bounds in progress via therapy is quickly slipping away. Nana is scared because Travis was not born with crossed eyes (which is also a red flag for a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) by the way)......it was a gradual onset like Connor's. Anyone else see the pattern here? Because I'm not making it up. It's how I knew before easy child told me that here had been issues with Connor's labor. Nana is scared because her daughter is firmly buried in denial so Nana can't help either the daughter or her grandson.
And I admit, I'm angry. I'm angry because all she has to do is ask the pediatrician doctor for an MRI. And because they've spent years working together and are actually good friends, he wouldn't hesitate to do it. But easy child won't ask. She'll come up with every lame excuse in the book instead. And I have to back off because she gets upset and takes it personally, which is not what I want. But that damn MRI, if it shows anything, can get him evaled by Early Intervention here by the best neuros in the area and all the therapy he could possibly need tailored to his needs and if there insurance wouldn't cover it, it would be FREE. (and yes, they'd evaluation for autism too)
And it all gets tangled up, these lovely emotions, because I DO know how she feels. I know exactly what it feels like to think there might be something seriously wrong with your child, that he is not normal. I know what it's like to hold that toddler who is raging and you can't reach them and think OMG what am I going to do when he's older and bigger??!!
I hope that if he ever gets that MRI that it shows nothing. I hope if he gets evaled properly by Early Intervention, that they say he doesn't need their services. She has no clue, because she has not raised a child with the issues her brother has, how with everything that I have I hope that I am dead wrong.
Soooooooo. Instead of experience motherly advice, she gets the answer she wants to hear.......oh well maybe he'll do better as he gets older........or yes, he can do that now.......or yes, he's trying to talk isn't that great. Which is basically hot air. Because while those things might be true, it's not the point of what is going on in reality. I can't coach her on how to handle a full blown autistic rage when she refuses to admit he's autistic. I can't coach on how to help motor skills or speech whatever when she refuses to admit there is a problem.
Which is why while I watch his sensory issues with Maggie, or as I walk laps with him, or as I watch him discover the baby reflection in the shine of my car and keep looking under it trying to find the baby, or hugging my tires, or stuck in the open/shut door stage, or try to walk off the top step of my porch because he forgot to hold my hand.......my heart just hurts.
So I do what I can on the days I have him. I have a thing I do that most times works to ease him out of a full blown rage. I strongly urge him to use his words and engage him in speech. I keep putting his food on his spoon and putting it into his hand and try to get him to put it into his mouth no matter how huge a mess it makes. I offer him a cup that he has to tilt to get the water from to drink and don't care if it gets spilled on the floor or whatever. I repeat colors and counting with both him and Brandon. (this is just a normal thing I do, nothing special there) I encourage him to join in group play.
And I'll say, I enjoy every moment I spend with him. He truly is a gift from God. He has that special spark in his eye that Travis had as a young child, and it zings me right through to my soul.
I dunno what else I can do. Even unloading here, I risk easy child reading it and getting extremely upset. But I don't know what else to do. I made the mistake of venting to Nichole on some of it.....who brought it to easy child's attention and that went over like a lead balloon. But I wanted to see if I was the only one seeing issues. And since Nichole isn't around Connor much.....she'd pick up on things we miss because we're always around him and it seems "normal".
Nichole knows that Aubrey was severely delayed in all her large motor skills and in speech. At the time she was so young she accepted the pediatrician docs assurances that Aubrey would grow out of it she was fine. Despite the fact that Nana had to start teaching Aubrey sign language to stop rages because she had no words with which to communicate even basic needs. (seriously?) But now.....with Oliver.........Nichole sees just how delayed Aubrey really was, even given the normal variances with children. And she realizes that Aubrey should have been evaled to see if there was something wrong. That the pediatrician doctor dropped the ball. (same pediatrician doctor easy child uses by the way)
Connor is the one going to lose in this situation. Which is horrible when there are so many services to help him that were not there for Travis. And I'm sorry, but that IS hard to know and to just go on pretending nothing is wrong. Even when you understand the reasons why, maybe more so than the person going through it.
You'd think it would be the other way around.
