Updated: Apr 26, 2020
If I hadn't let Soji spend that holiday with my sister and her family, who knows what would have become of my son. My sister had been going on about me keeping my child away from hers and thought it would be a good idea for him
to spend the holiday at theirs but, My husband didn't think it was a good idea because we thought Soji was a 'different' child. As a mum however, I was hoping it would be a change for Soji, maybe it would help him open up, talk or play with his cousins, unlike in school where his teachers complained that he preferred to avoid engaging in class task and had to be forced to participate in school activities, intellectual or physical.
I remember being called to his school because he had an episode which his class teacher described as “his whole body sweaty and shaky, and his voice seizing” when he was asked to present his assignment in front of the class, not to talk of the incessant abdominal pains, headaches and vomiting that kept him at home most times and affected his school attendance.
My husband, Soji's father was livid when he found out that our 15 yr old son had embarrassed the family by bedwetting constantly at my sister's while her younger children didn't. Soji couldn't look at his father as he was being scolded, the shame was too much to bear. After the berating incident, which continued long after he had returned home with my husband and I always bringing the incident up whenever he was drinking or eating, he only got quieter and withdrawn, continued to bedwet and drown in the shame, isolated himself from family and friends alike and my sister suggested seeking medical help.
I told her we had treated him for typhoid, malaria, everything (we had even gone traditional). She pointed out that she meant psychological help, but my husband and I wouldn't hear of it, we thought she was suggesting that our son was crazy, but as a mother, I wanted to get to the bottom of it.
His pediatrician was able to help us get an adolescent mental health expert who helped with his evaluation and shedding more light on my baby boy's symptoms over the years, Soji was diagnosed with social anxiety disorder.
It all made sense, the constant overpowering anxiety when he had to work with other kids, the bedwetting, which the doctor gave a fancy name (Enuresis) the physical sickness which the doctor said was related to his anxiety, all of it. I was heartbroken when I realized that he was being bullied both at school and at home, we his parents also didn't take it easy on him, the poor boy must've felt out of place and all alone. Thankfully, we listened to my sister and we sought help.
With therapy, Olasoji is doing better and warming up to life gradually and there's no other thing that gives a mother joy than that.