How Not to Find a Shrink

The new headmaster convinced me that the school could do it. A big, bearded guy with a long career in education, he was exuberant about getting a kid with some issues. He showed me every room in that school, spreading his arms wide, booming "Doesn't it look like we can do everything here? We can do everything but a self-contained classroom." He adjusted his blue and white knit kippah and gave me a goofy grin. I was sold; that was before we knew.

Max's entry into kindergarten was okay. His teacher, Mrs. M., had a quality that Dave and I can't quite describe. Sometimes we meet someone, and we tell them about Max, and there's a look they get; they know what we're talking about. They don't say anything that would tell us that, they don't have to, Dave and I can just tell. Sometimes they say less than most people do when we talk about Max. But Mrs. M. had that quality.

Prospects was part of our weirdo routine. Max's notebook from Prospects traveled everywhere with him now. He had goals for school, goals for home, goals for Prospects. He got points for doing things he was supposed to. He never understood that some rules are the same everywhere. If he wasn't allowed to scream obscenities at home, then that wasn't allowed other places, for instance. max could make no sense of that. He was transitioning poorly. When recess ended and the kids came inside, Max would stay riled up for hours. He couldn't just settle down and listen. Things were deteriorating as October approached, and somehow, Prospects rushed him into a graduation. I know now that September is always a good month for Max. I don't know why, although lots of kids with bipolar have a seasonality to their symptoms. So Max graduated, and we were done. But things were getting worse, not better.

We needed a new psychiatrist. We had been able to continuing seeing Dr. L. because Max was at Prospects. Now that Max wasn't at Prospects, we had no shrink. And Dr. L. had no advice on where to find one. I think he knew that most of them are awful, and that Max was totally out of their league. in an extreme cop-out, he proclaimed, "Max is not a private practice kind of kid". He was right of course. Dr. L. was always right. but my kid needed a shrink.

I called all over. The Yale Child Study Center was going to be seeing kids at Greenwich Hospital, where Dave works. But they didn't know when that might be, and never called me back when I left messages. The Child Guidance Center of Stamford felt that Max was "too sick" for their agency. Thus began an inter-agency battle between Prospects, hosted by the Norwalk Child Guidance Center, and Stamford's center.

I had a hard time understanding that Max was too sick. I mean, they offered psychiatric care, right? To whom? There were un-sick kids who saw a psychiatrist? I couldn't read between the lines yet.