When my third child, Jett, was 5 years old I heard a huge crash in his bedroom.
I raced up to his room in a panic, to find him on his brother’s top bunk…his face buried in his pillow.
“What’s going on Jett?” I asked with an exhausted, pleading voice.
“I just want to die,” he said as he buried his head into the pillow.
“What do you mean? That is a horrible thing to say.” My mind raced as I sorted through what could possibly have led to this, “Why don’t you come down here?”
I looked around the room to discover that while he was in his 10 minute time out to “cool down” he had broken apart a Lego creation he had spent hours on and had continued to throw hundreds of pieces all over the floor.
I held him and asked him why he had torn all the Legos apart….his response, “I just want to die in a hole.”
This was a cry for help and one that I felt completely inadequate to fix.
So let me back up a little bit to give you some context of how we got to this point.
I am a working, stay at home mom. I’ve been the owner of the website
MyMommyStyle.com since 2012. This gig of being able to work at home and still be with my babies is one of the best things ever. It also comes with its own challenges and balancing acts. I have for the most part, been able to use nap time as my “get it done” power hours. Things were thrown off for me a bit when Jett decided he was done with naps.
So to allow for the same amount of time to get things done I allowed for this 2-3 hour block to be his show or video game time.
It seemed like a completely innocent way for a 4 year old to spend his afternoon. I never imagined it would lead to explosive behavior, suicidal toned thoughts, or bitter sadness.
My son is extremely imaginative. He can spout out the most creative battle scenes, imagine secret lava layers in the carpet or zombie invasions.
By the age of four he had developed anxiety over things that never bothered him before. He didn’t want to engage in group sports, he was afraid to get out of the car at a family party, he very strongly protested going to a preschool he once loved.
Then his nightmares began to take hold and we were in a constant state of fight or flight in situations that never used to scare him at all.
We had no idea what was causing all of this to happen. We had never gone through this with our older 2 children.
But when he declared to me he wanted to die in a hole, I knew at that moment I HAD to make a change.
We tried a lot of different things to try to improve his behavior.
We tried being more stern and strict with him. It caused him to have an even shorter fuse with more explosive behavior and anxiety.
We tried showing him extra love and attention, this helped a little.
We even tried taking him to counseling, which helped a little more.
One morning I went down during his “show” time to spend some time with him. He had his favorite show on. An Amazon original called “Pair of Ducks”. This is a show with two men playing Roblox (a game similar to Minecraft) and commentating as they are playing. I never understood why my kids like to watch other people play video games, but it seemed harmless.
The title of this particular episode was “Assassin Time”. As these two men went around killing everything in sight and commentating as they went, I became so disgusted and upset with myself. This show was waging war on my child’s heart and brain and I was pretty much clueless.
