More Fodder for Therapy

Yeah.  Poor T had a rough weekend.

Well, not exactly, but there was an incident that will probably leave a mark on his psyche.

Yesterday, I took all three boys to J's first basketball game.  I was sitting in the (three-row-high) bleachers with T and S and J was on the court practicing with his team when the fire alarm began to sound.  I thought T was going to have a nervous breakdown.  As soon as the alarm started going, T stood up and booked down the bleachers and towards the door, turning only to scream at me that we had to GET OUT NOW BECAUSE THERE IS A FIRE!  That nobody else felt any sense of urgency to evacuate only made T even more apoplectic.  The poor kid was nearly hyperventilating, tears streaming down his cheeks.  It broke my heart to see him so sincerely upset.  Some parents must have felt the same way, because a few went out of their way to explain to T that somebody must have bumped into the alarm, accidentally setting it off.

Once we got outside, T noticed that we were right next to the playground.  That perked him up, despite the continuing alarm.  And a new noise, sirens from the fire chief, arriving to evaluate the scene.  Still, T's moods were giving me whiplash, alternating between happily climbing up the playground structure and fretting and worrying that the school was on fire.

Fortunately, happy T won out, since once we were given the all clear to resume basketball, it took some wrangling to get T off of the playground structure and back into the gym.

Something tells me that T is going to be like I was when I was a kid -- panic-stricken every time there was a fire drill at school.

As I said, it'll be one more thing to discuss in therapy.