Unraveling

I know it's been several days since my last post.

It's just that we've really been struggling with a couple of my children lately.

Big Guy and Little Guy have been doing really well; Big Guy is gearing up for finals, and Little Guy just started a new class at preschool designed to meet his higher intellectual level.

No, it's my other kids - Sis and Middle Guy - that are giving us problems.

Sis is our beautiful teenager who has never given us a bit of trouble. She is intelligent, outgoing, and a very talented athlete. However, in the past couple of months we've seen some attitude changes at home, and a sharp decline in her scholastic performance. In fact, there have been a few of weeks where we've been notified that Sis has had an "F" in a couple of her classes. We sat down with our daughter and tried to figure out what's going on. Although we strongly believe she would never do drugs, we addressed the issue and feel that Sis was honest with us when she told us she is not - and never plans to - use drugs. After speaking with her in depth, my husband and I feel that perhaps she is experiencing some depression. Things have improved a bit for now, but if Sis begins to struggle again, we plan to seek professional help.

Middle Guy is our active, creative, and sensitive seventh grader. He has a zest for life coupled with an extremely fertile imagination. He is a very likable kid, so it was very troubling for us when he began to come home from church youth activities acting very upset. This went on for several weeks before he finally opened up to us, admitting he was constantly being bullied by some of the older teens. My son was afraid of looking like a tattle-tale; his purpose in telling us was that his attempts to stop the bullying had failed, and he honestly didn't think he could take it anymore. My heart ached as I watched my son cry brokenheartedly while relating the cruel things some of the bigger boys were doing and saying to him. This behavior had escalated from isolated incidents to happening on a weekly basis, so my husband and I felt like it was time to intervene. We sat down with the youth leaders to come up with a plan to ensure that proper supervision is in place during these church activities, as the bullying happens when adults aren't around.

Because Big Guy and Little Guy have special needs, I rely on my middle children to be the grounding force in our family. It has been quite unsettling these past weeks as we've dealt with some major issues with Sis and Middle Guy. I feel like our family is starting to slowly unravel, and it's taken all of my energy to keep things from falling completely apart. I know things will get better; until they do, I've decided to cut down on the number of posts for this blog. I'll probably check in briefly about once a week during the holidays, and hope to return to more frequent posting sometime in January.