When we first meet Mitch in the book, he is banging on his mother’s locked bedroom door, cursing her for not taking him to meet his friends. Molly, his mother, is sobbing into her pillow, at her wit’s end about how to deal with her teenage son who is now bigger than she is. All he had to do before going to the movies was complete a simple homework assignment. He had all day to do it and it should have taken 15-minutes.
As a kid, Mitch was bigger, stronger, and faster than his classmates. He was the first to be chosen for a pick-up game on the playground, but the last one invited to a birthday party. Mitch was labeled early as ADHD, with attention and hyperactivity as part of that diagnosis. Without Molly’s efforts to keep him organized and motivated, Mitch would have floundered everywhere, except perhaps the ball field. For Mitch to be a Cub Scout, Molly had to agree to be his den mother. In other words, Mitch needed constant supervision. With her husband at sea, the solitary burden of keeping Mitch out of trouble and on track was often too much for Molly to handle.
His size advantage ended in adolescence and the kids who practiced hard passed him by athletically. Unwilling to put in the hard work to improve, Mitch watched his sports-based esteem slip away. He came to rely upon excuses and bullying to not feel bad about himself. Adolescence was even harder for Mitch once he wore out his welcome with coaches and teammates. In school, he was seen as oppositional and defiant. After school he was usually stoned.
We will follow Mitch’s trajectory that looks pretty hopeless, especially after he is expelled for threatening his math teacher. But after hitting bottom, we see how several significant adults in his life help him start to turn things around. The first is the dean of students who chooses treatment over punishment, giving Mitch the opportunity to earn his way back to school with hard work. The second important adult is a crusty old baseball coach who wouldn’t accept excuses, but also wouldn’t give up on him.
For much of his childhood, Molly felt the bind of helping too much and maintaining his dependence on her, or not helping enough and watching him crash and burn at school or with peers. Eventually, with a better understanding of how to promote resilience and self-reliance in Mitch, Molly came to feel less burdened and unappreciated.
Parents of teenagers will probably enjoy reading the vignettes that capture some of these better possibilities for Mitch as an older adolescent. Parents of preadolescents will want to read the vignettes that capture the “what if” possibilities during his childhood that could have made his adolescence much more satisfying – for everyone.