After a pretty fantastic weekend, everything came to a crashing halt yesterday. I got a call from the school, from a teacher who meets with the kindergarten class once a week, because Ian had an all-out tantrum. When faced with the decision to go back to class or to call me he chose to have the teacher call me, but then he refused to speak to me. In speaking with her the most poignant sentence was, "I raised three boys myself and I know boys and tantrums. However, this is something else entirely."

I cried at work. I locked myself in the file room and just sobbed.

I am not a crier; in fact I think I've cried in front of my husband twice since I've known him, and I've cried in front of my mother once. I am not a crier because I feel that it makes me seem weak (but I think it makes other people strong. How weird is that?), and I won't put myself "out there" for anyone. However, when I am really angry I cry... and apparently I cry when I am so scared and lost that my heart breaks.

I picked him up after school. He was embarrassed, but he was honest and told me the story, complete with the part about seeing the principal (who I'm sure was doing an "assessment" to see if the problems were stemming from home) and about the temper tantrum he threw prior to the one that warranted a phone call. I was in the middle of trying to get a time-line for the events when I noticed that he had on different pants then the ones I sent him to school in.

My son wet his pants on the playground.

Well, that was it for me. I have never, ever felt like I did at that moment. It was somewhat surreal in that everything became so clear, so necessary, but I also felt hollow and sick at the same time.

The short version is that he is no longer going to the after school program he was in. I have a therapist coming to see him on Wednesday afternoon, and I am going to be spending the next few weeks in a frantic search/quest for a new job, or a new way to do things, or begging for help. I have to find a way to make this work because I don't have an alternative. This is the way it has to be whether it kills me or not.