Pitted, Cored and Shucked: My School’s Dead!

The newly sworn Colonial President demanded to know why the captain of Battlestar Galactica lied to the gathered shocked human survivors of the Cylon attack.  Earlier, Commander Adama had told everyone he knew the location of the legendary home called Earth.  He replied to the President that at a time of such deep despair both individual and collective existence required hope and by providing a commonly known destination he had given an objective for the long and arduous journey ahead, he had give a reason for hope, and hope, as the characters and the audience knew, is the fuel propelling human existence forward.

Two recent events have ripped away my purpose in getting up and moving through the day crashing me back into the pit of depression.  One is the fact that my school isn’t going to happen.  It’s dead!  I am in great need of a destination.  Where is my Adama?

Okay, Bob sighed.  This thing isn’t going to get off the ground:  There is no money!  Philanthropy has dried up, both individual and foundation.  So, taking your school non-profit isn’t going to work.  And taking it for-profit isn’t going to work either.  Venture capitalists want their investment back within five years with at least a twenty-five percent return. 

Non-profit fund raising taps private, individual philanthropy first then foundation, but with both in a deep drought, I was exploring the notion of going for-profit.  I had explained to my good friend with the business acumen I lack I needed five million dollars over four years and a steady enrollment increase in that time to one-hundred-four all paying thirty-thousand per year.  This is an early childhood program through early college meant for the Twice-Exceptional, disabled gifted and talented, as well as those gifted and talented who do not fit into the conventional acceleration and enrichment regime.  As a special private school here in New York City I thought the tuition price point while excluding some would include enough so it could start and expand according to plan.  The initial start-up would be the early childhood program then the elementary, then the secondary education piece and finishing with the early college.  But, I had said, this unique project needs its start-up funding until the tuition takes over, which I figured would be the end of the fourth year when the early childhood and elementary programs were established.  Still, I had continued, the needed expansion to secondary and through early college while able to be sustained by tuition, assuming continued enrollment, would return nothing to investors as every tuition penny would have to be put back into the school until it topped out at just over four hundred, projected to be at the end of year nine.  And after that, with maintenance and replacement as well as other costs I thought there would be very little money left to carry-over which would be “pure-profit”. 

Well then, Bob said, I cannot see anyway by which the needed capital can be gotten from the Venture folks and individual as well as foundation philanthropy is out of the question now.  So, he concluded, the school’s dead. 

Game’s over…but the deep guilt I feel remains.  Our son is the passion for this school, and the guilt I feel over my full culpability in his personal destruction the fuel of the passion.  I thought if only I could help other children like my son, I could purge the dark feeling.  But, now I can’t.  I have to find the means of living with it.  Where is my Adama?  Where is my hope?

I wrote what appears below and in the next blog post in late 2009 and so far they exist as the best explanation as to what happened.

We parents, when we make decisions so much affecting our children’s lives, do not understand what we are doing.   I made some rather bad choices for our son which resulted in his personal destruction.  There were many signs of who are son was but I just could not read them.  And because I was so ignorant, our son’s life so much full of promise is now one full of struggle with mental illness self-induced through substance abuse.

My wife and I were married near seven years before our son’s birth, but we hadn't really a clue about who we were both as separate persons and as a married couple, no less about the big wide world of children.  We certainly did not understand how child behavior spoke to the needs of that child.  In other words we were your regular young married couple excited about our newborn and the glorious prospects for his future. 

As we saw our son as an infant we noticed he would try many things well before his body was yet developed to be successful at them with the concomitant frustration and anger.  For instance, he was no more than maybe, five or six months when we saw him a few times a day over weeks and months place hand over hand on the vertical bars of his crib moving his body upward to a standing position.  Then he would let go and boom, back onto his bottom.  The first three or four times he went boom were fun, but the sixth or seventh were anything but.  He wanted to stand up right then, but his body wasn’t yet physically ready.  There were many other things he wanted to do as he looked at us and wanted to do the same things as we did.  He tried and some attempts were successfully, like holding a small glass to drink from, some not so much, like cutting food with a knife.  And the not so much would not dissuade him from trying again, but with each unsuccessful attempt would come frustration and with recurring frustration anger.

As he grew through his first three years we supported his efforts in growing in his own way and in discharging the resultant frustration as much as we could.  But we really didn’t understand what was going on inside him at all.  Further, we didn’t recognize how this would later manifest in making his way through the world. 

My wife went back to work not too long after our son’s birth and I was working as well, so we needed to place our son with baby-sitters.  Rather than see that the placements would support his explorations and give him an opportunity to cope well with his frustrations, we just placed him with local folks we knew through the parish.  We noted his tell-tale behaviors of upset over his day, when we picked him up, but felt we couldn't do anymore than hug him and give him attention and send him back to the babysitter the next morning.  What he was really saying went well over our heads.

Our son was very energetic, a real “American Boy”, running and jumping into, onto and around everything inside and outside the house, being curious about everything and especially in exploring how the world felt inside him as it he ran quickly through it, jumped onto it and played with it.  I didn’t catch-on to the deeper meaning of it all.  So, when it came time for pre-school, I said:  our son needs to be able to cope with "structure" for him to do well in school; so, we should be looking for a pre-school with structure.  Of course when parents talk about structure they all the time are talking about a heavy dose of external discipline, strict obedience to authority and a high degree of quietude, just the opposite of who are son was and opposite of the kind of pre-school environment he needed. Long story short: the mis-match showed in many little ways but we did not pay it attention as we were, as said, quite ignorant of all this kind of stuff and didn't have it in us to translate his behaviors into statements of need until they became quite obvious cries for help.  Oh, we were attentive, as loving parents usually are, but his little unhappinesses we could not see as his way of saying that this pre-school thing was definitely not working for him at all.

And as to his parochial school which he entered as a kindergartener, as I will relate next, well, I was such a good and dutiful person of faith I just couldn't believe what was happening was happening, believed I could with constant talking with these good people mitigate the troubles and believed all would turn out okay in the end.  As one should have anticipated, it didn't turn out well at all and it took nearly four years of our complicity with that school system before it became crystal clear that we had to act to remove him from it.  But, by that time the awful damage was already done.

All along he was telling us very clearly of who he was, but we just couldn't translate his kid behavior to statements of need and from statements of need to doing well by our most cherished life we so intentionally worked to bring into this world.