We Told Everyone It Was Her Stomach

The phone would ring and it would be one of her friends.

"Is Maddie there?"

And I'd say she was in the hospital. Stomach thing. They were still figuring it out. She'd be home soon.

Then I'd hang up and stand in the kitchen for a second before going back to whatever I'd been doing.

I said it more than once. I got better at saying it.

She asked me not to tell anyone.

That's the part I want to be accurate about, because it matters and because it's the part that lets me off the hook if I let it. She was in the youth psychiatric ward in North York and she did not want a single person outside the family to know where she was. Not her friends. Nobody.

So I didn't tell them. I gave them a story that made sense and hurt nobody and closed the subject.

I told myself I was respecting her wishes. I was. That was true.

It's also true that I didn't know what else I'd have said. There's no script for that call. Somebody asks a normal question in a normal voice and you've got about two seconds to decide what kind of answer you're going to give.

I picked the easy one.

She was there twice.

I went every day. There's not much to say to a fourteen-year-old in a place like that, so we played a lot of games. Cards, mostly. Whatever was on the shelf. You show up and you sit down and you fill the hour with something, because the alternative is sitting across from your kid and having nothing.

Adults. That was who came.

“We Told Everyone It Was Her Stomach. She asked me to keep it quiet. It never occurred to me that I could say no.”

No friends. Nobody from school. No fifteen-year-old walking in with gossip about who said what to who, no one to remind her that there was an ordinary life out there still running without her, waiting for her to come back to it.

She was surrounded by adults who loved her and were terrified.

That was the whole room.

I've thought about that room for eleven years.

If she'd broken her back, that room would have been full. There'd have been a card taped to the wall with forty signatures on it. Somebody's mum would have dropped off brownies. Her friends would have come after school and been too loud and been asked to leave.

Nobody would have needed to be brave to do any of that. It would have just happened, the way it happens, because that's what people do when a kid is hurt in a way we've all agreed is allowed.

She was hurt in a way we haven't agreed is allowed.

So the room was quiet, and I helped keep it quiet, one phone call at a time.

Here's what I can't put down.

She asked for the secret. Of course she did. She was fourteen and she believed, probably correctly, that the truth would change how people looked at her forever. Every instinct she had was telling her to hide.

I was the adult.

I could have said no. I could have called two parents I trusted and said, Maddie's having a really hard time and she's in the hospital and she'd be furious with me for telling you, and I'd like your daughter to visit anyway. I could have decided that her wanting it hidden was part of what was wrong, and that a fourteen-year-old shouldn't be the one running the communications strategy for her own crisis.

I didn't consider it. Not once. It never crossed my mind as an option.

That's not the same as choosing wrong. It's worse than that in a way. I never got as far as a choice.

I don't know if it would have mattered.

I want to be careful here, because there's a version of this where I tell you that a visit from a friend would have changed everything, and that version is a lie that would make both of us feel better. I don't know what would have changed. Nobody gets to know that.

What I know is that she spent weeks in a room where the only people who came were the people who had to.

And I know I told her friends it was her stomach.

If your kid is ever in that room, they'll ask you to keep it quiet. Most of them do.

You'll want to say yes. It'll feel like loyalty. It'll feel like the one thing you can still give them when everything else has been taken out of your hands.

Just notice that you're deciding something. That's all I'd ask.

I didn't notice. I thought I was answering a phone.

FAQ

Should I tell people my teenager is in hospital for mental health? There's no right answer and anyone who gives you one is selling something. What's worth doing is noticing that you're making a choice rather than following a script. Most parents, me included, never get that far.

My teenager asked me not to tell anyone. Do I have to respect that? Mostly, yes. Their trust is worth more than other people's comfort. Worth separating two things though: keeping their privacy, and keeping them isolated. You can protect the first without accepting the second, and telling one trusted parent is not the same as telling everybody.

Why don't people visit when a kid is in a psychiatric ward? Mostly because nobody knows they're there. After that, because nobody knows what they'd say. A broken leg comes with a script and this doesn't, so people who care very much end up doing nothing.

What can I do if I know a family going through this? Send something that doesn't need a reply. Say the kid's name. Don't wait to be told the details, and don't ask for them.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE

Seventeen Hours While Maddie was in the psychiatric unit I felt something close to safe. When she came home, the fear arrived properly, and her brothers were in the house for every hour of it. What that reversal does to the other kids, and why nobody catches it.

We Don't Wait to Talk About Cancer. Why Wait for Mental Health? Why a physical illness fills a room and a psychiatric admission empties one, and what that silence costs the person inside it.

You Can Worry About Your Teenager Without Telling Anyone Four parents signed up for a teen suicide prevention talk and the school cancelled it. A sign-up sheet is a public act. You can be deeply worried and still not want your name on a list in the school office.