Special needs adolescence: enter the unknown country.

To us raising a healthy neurotypical child seems almost absurdly easy. Send them to school, try to avoid major injuries, apply some basic behavioral modification measures, don't do bad things, have fun. It seems more of a hobby than a job.

Except then comes adolescence. Sometimes it's fairly quiet, sometimes it's hell -- even for a neurotypical child. Parenting starts over as the human brain goes through a painful and problematic reboot. Considering what we have learned about the extent of brain remodeling during adolescence, it's astounding that the young male can function at all. It's not surprising that things can go badly.

Special needs adolescence, is, of course, even more complex. It is truly an unknown country; unexplored and unmapped. In special needs adolescence brain remodeling is running against a background of dysfunction and compensation. Even more than neurotypical adolescence, it would be surprising if it went well.

In our case #1 does not disappoint. He is complex and challenging. Our mission therefore is to get through this with an intact family, no jail time, and have him positioned to resume life.

It may be helpful (or discouraging) to share part of his story - at least in the abstract. Imagine, to begin with, a mixture of behaviors from ages 3 to 15. A taste for both stuffed animals and educational web sites (I've learned a lot.) Imagine previous disabilities, but now with new features. So anxiety and irritability ("Explosiveness") remain - but now there are features of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Compulsions and obsessions not only with airport schedules and soccer teams, but also with unearned acquisition and icons of lost childhood. Now add confusions in sexual identity. Next add a growing and well deserved fury at newly recognized limits for independent life, for education, for sexual expression and partnership. Did I mention integration of an exceptionally difficult adoption narrative?

Yes, complex and challenging. Travel, for one, is far more difficult. Just as we would want him to be more independent, he requires even more monitoring. Alas, his guile and stealth belie his measured IQ; our monitoring is not always successful.

It could be worse of course. He's not a threat to himself or others. He's not hitting or biting. He's reasonably good to his siblings and kind to animals. He can still be charming. Alas, going by past experience, things will get worse before they get better.

So, somewhat creakily, we pivot. (Our pivoting doesn't get easier as we wear out.)

Now we need to learn about behavioral management for OCD. Now we need to meet with his psychiatrist and review medications. Perhaps we will need to decrease stimulant use, and consider SSRIs (though he did poorly on them as a younger child). We may ask his therapist to consider family rather than individual therapy, especially since he now likes to engage his younger brother as an advisor and "lawyer" in matters of family discipline.

We can expect some confusion from our consultants; #1 is usually a bit out of their playbook. As always, we will have to come up with our own program, based on bits and pieces from books and experienced therapists and our own experience and judgment.

We will have to map the unknown country as we visit it.