High school has a rocky start, as you might imagine. John is suspended for one day, then three days, then five days, following the standard school policy known as "progressive discipline." In the game of life, a doctor trumps a school administrator, so we get a note from his therapist, declaring this escalating series of punishments unworkable, and even counterproductive. With that battle behind us, John continues to swear, and act out, but he can no longer be suspended indefinitely for these actions; though he can be sent home for the day if it is just "not a good learning day". Unfortunately this happens a lot. He misses sixth hour almost every day. (No hope of passing that class.) Meantime he misses first and second hour two or three times a week, because of his arthritis (described below). Looks like he's going to pass two classes, third and fourth hour. At this rate he'll graduate in 12 years.
To our surprise, the principal suggests an aid, something we have requested since elementary school. He finds the money in the budget somewhere, bless his heart, and John has an aid who can redirect his behavior, and help him academically. They also have the option of working in the library, if the classroom is too distracting for John, or if John's nonstop rambling is too distracting for the classroom. Thank God for an understanding principal. But it's probably for naught. John still gets in late at least twice a week, and comes home early almost every day.
Around mid October, I was stupid enough to fall into the same trap. I found yet another book that distinguishes between good carbs and bad carbs, and yes, you can eat all the good carbs you want, if you avoid the bad carbs. No kidding - I stepped into it again. Sometimes I'm as dumb as a stump. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me 167 times, shame on me! That messed him up, through no fault of his own, and he effectively missed several weeks of school. (Sometimes he was there, but he didn't get anything done.) When I finally put that book on the shelf, and return to the basics of counting carbs, things should have improved, but they didn't, mostly due to his noncompliance. He eats fries and breads at lunch, and cookies from other kids, and more carbs at night after we are asleep. We still lock up the sugary treats, but we can't lock up every source of starch. Last night he took oatmeal out of the pantry and cooked a bowl for himself - an extra 45 carbs at the end of the day. Then there's toast, and leftover macaroni that the girls didn't finish, and so on.
I started doing something I should have done years ago. I post, on the fridge, everything he eats and their carb counts. It's not abstract any more. He can see his subtotals, and how much he has left for the day, and, I hope, he will be able to see that high carb counts lead to bad days, and low carb counts lead to good days. Of course it isn't that simple. Sometimes you need five low carb days in a row to recover. And there is noise in the system - other reasons why he might have a bad day. So I'm asking him to see the correlation, and that may be asking a lot of a 15 year old whose mental faculties are already compromised by the illness we are trying to treat.
His juvinile arthritis has gotten much worse, and that might be a good thing. When he is mentally ill, he doesn't know he is sick. In contrast, when Mary has a headache, and is in bed under the blankets all day, she knows very well that she is sick. She can't live in denial. She can't claim she is stuck in bed because somebody else has a character flaw. If John has a similar symptom that is 100% physical, aggravated by his microbial imbalance, we may finally be able to push him out of denial. But it's harder than you think. "My back hurts because I fell down on the way to the bathroom." Then, three days later, "My back hurts because I fell off my bike." Never underestimate the ability of an addict to justify things. If you have ever been around an alcoholic, you know what I mean. Have you read <the study> wherein rats prefer sugar to cocaine - even if they were addicted to cocaine at the start of the experiment? No wonder John keeps sneaking, and no wonder I keep looking for another answer. But there is no other answer, and we're going to have to beat this thing the hard way.
We have started doing something else we should have done years ago. We are taking the advice of The Explosive Child to heart. We don't force him to do anything any more. Homework, housework, chores, cleaning up after himself, whatever. We ask once, and if he doesn't do it, we just leave it at that. I can't keep getting into fights, sometimes verbal and sometimes physical, over this crap; and I can't keep exposing my daughters to this chaos. They never want to have a friend over, in case there is a blow-up, and I don't blame them. That's no way to Live. John may reach adulthood without knowing how to do laundry or load a dishwasher, but I'll still have my sanity. He can learn these skills on his own, when he's 18.