ADVICE RATING |
 5.00 (Highly recommend) from 5 votes (356 Visits) |
My son started to miss a lot of school when he started grade 8. It became harder and harder to wake him up and/or get him to go to school.
We had no idea how to handle this very frustrating problem so we went to the school for help.
They were very supportive and had a councilor there who made appointments with Adam and tried to find out what was really wrong. As I was a single parent and my ex-husband and I had only divorced a year ago, it was assumed that this was the underlying problem that Adam, then 13, was acting out from. That and the fact that he was a teenager and most of the time all teens want to do is to sleep in.
Needless to say, Adam had problems through grade 8 to and including grade 12 and past that. It was not until he was failing classes in grade 12 that we actually found out that Adam had Sleep Apnea and Social Anxiety Disorder. Although he spent 3 years in grade 12 he still has not received his diploma due to the SAD (Social Anxiety Disorder).
SAD is a very difficult illness and at its worst the person experiencing this disorder is depressed all the time, sleeps and does not want to leave the safety of their room and/or residence. They are loners and want nothing to do with most people except those closes to them. Panic attackes occur when the teen is in large crowds, like the mall, shopping, theatre, school hallways and classrooms.
If your teen has an extreme change in his/her behaviour, grades and social activities don't assume the worst but do get it checked out because there could be more involved than just laziness.
Adam went from being a very social, high grade, active student/teen to an introverted, low to failing grades and totally inactive teen. He would no longer go out to play with friends or go to other friends homes to play. His friends did come over but that too stopped eventually and he spent more and more time in his room. I wish I had pressed for more information sooner than when he was 16/17 because he may have completed high school if we had gotten him the help he needed earlier.
SAD and Sleep Apnea are not usually diagnosed in teens as teens tend to be lazy and sleep a lot anyway. The things that should have set Adam apart from just laziness, should have been the complete behaviourall changes that we did not notice or clue into when the changes became more of a problem.
Adam is now 21 and is still getting help for this disorder. He has yet to experience the social circles that those of his age group become a part of. We hope that now he has the tools to become more active and more social but it is hard to overcome the anxiety he feels when he is in a large social setting.
(December 2008) (
