Next Step Therapy Blog: ‘When Your 18-Year-Old Baby Doesn’t Cry, But Probably Should’

Tracy Cowles, CEO and owner of Next Step Therapy, submitted the following article: “When Your 18-Year-Old Baby Doesn’t Cry, But Probably Should” –

One of the most popular blogs that I have ever written was last year, titled “When your Seventeen-Year-Old Baby Cries.” It was about my 17-year-old son and his teammates losing a football game, during districts. All of the kids were coming off of the field in tears, while we adults told them to get their heads up, that they had done their best, that they had gone further than their team had in ten years….and then realizing later that they weren’t crying over the loss; they were crying over the end of an era. No more football. No more brotherhood. The end of the season in their senior year….an experience that couldn’t be replicated, anywhere, in anyway.

Three months later, baseball season starts, and my kid is long past football, focusing on baseball training. The previous year, he was second or third pitcher, behind a guy who got a full ride to pitch for the University of Maryland. This year? Number one pitcher? Number two with room to grow? We do baseball, and Noah does well. Not a star, but he does well. As the season ends, he signs up for American Legion and Big League….one last summer to play ball. My kid, who hadn’t been offered an athletic scholarship and didn’t care, had a little dream in his head. He thought maybe, just maybe, he could get a walk on try out for club baseball at the University of his choice. So he was playing ball, both to enjoy his summer, and for a “maybe” dream for the fall.

Meanwhile, he had been accepted to five colleges into the athletic trainer program. We had Senior Award Ceremony, and my kid gets called up seven times. I’m in tears with pride. He won the “Athlete with Outstanding Strength of Character Award,” and I bawled like a baby. Good grades are awesome. Athleticism is fantastic. But character…omg, so proud.

Because life is crazy, and you just can’t anticipate…Noah got invited to play the District 10 North/South All-Star football game. He didn’t get a college football offer. The kid is 5’6 and 185 pounds, and just didn’t have the size to play big time. But the District 10 All Star game, voted on by coaches – my kid got picked based on his record and his heart for football.
I didn’t want him to play. Football was over, he was into baseball. Who the heck plays football in June???? I was not in favor. But, it turns out that it is an incredible honor to be picked for an All Star game, and Noah immediately decided he would play. No question. One more chance to play the game he loved….one more chance to be seen by scouts? There was no stopping him. And, because I love my children, and I support them no matter what they do, I got him scheduled for a physical, paid the $100 fee, and arranged transportation for the practices.

Practice started and the coaches yelled, “Defensive line, line up!” Out my little 5’6 kid goes. The 325 pounder next to him, from Erie, looked at him and said, “Seriously?” My kid says, “Yep” and proceeds to run the next 10 plays holding back everybody. End of questions.

Noah starts in this All Star game. 75 players from much bigger schools, everybody bigger than him. And he starts, doesn’t sit on the bench. First drive, Noah’s team, the North scores. We’re up, 7-0. Boom! This is exciting!

Second series, Noah is playing defense. 2 minutes and 57 seconds into the game, North stops South. Cheers. Then, game halted, because injured player on the field. And I look, and its Noah. My baby. Laying on the field, holding his knee, and I KNEW. I’ve watched my boy take hits. I’ve come out of my seat a time or two, saying “SH.%$%t!.” while sucking air while someone put their hand on my arm and told me to breathe. I’ve seen him get hurt. It’s never fun. It’s never ok. As a Speech Pathologist, I can tell you, I have severe anxiety over head injuries and broken necks. On this day, I knew he was ok, but I also knew he was done, and we were on our way to the hospital.

The family and friends that I was with kept telling me to take a deep breath as Noah walked off the field, got to the bench, and was given five pounds of ice to put on his knee. I knew. The game continued, and the rest of the crowd watched the game. I watched my son. He’s had the crap beat out of him before. He took a kidney shot that laid him out, took two minutes off, put his helmet back on, and went back out. Eighteen hours later he was in the emergency room peeing blood. I’ve seen him have injuries that were bad, but was still able to go back out onto the field. This time I knew he wasn’t going back.

The first quarter ended. Noah still sitting on the bench with the ice, never stretched, never tried to walk, sure as heck didn’t put his helmet back on and go stand beside coach. I KNEW. I told my crew I was going down to the fence to talk to him. Took the overprotective mom crap like water over a bridge and kept trucking. Went to the fence. Said, “Hey Noah.” “Hey mom.” “How bad is it, do we need to go to the hospital?” “Yeah, I might have torn my ACL, my knee is floating and won’t lock, hurts like hell, I need the hospital.” “Ok, the closest hospital, or can you make it back home?” “I can make it back home, I’m not dying, but I’m never going to play again.” “Ok baby, can you wave over a coach and tell him you are heading to the hospital? Can you get to locker room on your own?” “Yeah, I’ll tell them I’m leaving, I can hop to the locker room.” And, there you have it….my son’s fantasy about playing in the All Star game, my son’s fantasy about a walk on try out for baseball at college…. all ended over a quick, quiet conversation between an athlete and his mom between a fence in ninety-degree heat in June in Greenville, Pennsylvania.

Watching video, later on, we could see that Noah was coming in for a tackle when the whistle blew. Noah realized he was going to make a late hit which may have earned his team a penalty. He changed course, jumped over a player, and came down on his knee. Quite honestly, he did it to himself – it wasn’t like he got hurt while being tackled.

We just talked about the situation this weekend. Noah didn’t cry when he got injured. Got himself off the field, with no help. You go google or look at YouTube videos of a torn ACL. I cannot find one, not ONE, where the athlete didn’t cry, show agony, or need help off the field/floor. My Noah is one tough little SOB, and I am one proud mama. That kid can take a beating.
The hospital was virtually worthless on a Saturday night…no orthopedic surgeon on staff, no MRI available. Sent him home on a Saturday night with crutches, no pain pills, and a directive to call the orthopedic office on Monday. Called the ortho guys on Monday, they couldn’t see him until Thursday. By the time they saw him Thursday, his knee and thigh were three times their normal size. The knee was unrecognizable. There was no kneecap. They took an x-ray, and then stuck a needle in his knee to drain 180 cc’s of blood. He didn’t cry. He did get some Tylenol with Codeine.

They sent him for an MRI Thursday night, which showed that he had actually chipped the bone off the femur, the ACL was torn beyond repair and would require a cadaver reconstruction, the medial meniscus was partially torn, and there was so much blood and swelling that the LCL couldn’t be seen clearly. He returned to the ortho guys the next day to get the MRI report, and had another 180cc’s of blood drawn off his knee. He never cried.

He had surgery the following week. Three days before his graduation party. Laid on a futon in my living room, taking a pain pill every four hours (even at night had to set the alarm). Sat at his graduation party in a chair while everybody came to him and his friends played corn hole. That boy sucked up his agony and didn’t ruin anybody else’s time. He went to his friends’ graduation parties in pain, doped up, for fifteen minutes or a half hour at most. He felt like he was dying and still showed up. Didn’t miss a party. Supported his friends. Kept track of his baseball teams that he was now off of, and texted congratulations to his friends.

If this young man EVER shed tears over his pain, disappointment and loss, I never saw it. Maybe late night, alone in his bedroom…but never, not once in front of people.

On graduation party day, three days after surgery, the questions started. “Are you still going to let him go to WVU?” I understood the question. Since my son had made the choice to attend WVU, one of the top three schools in Athletic Training, number one school as far as having Athletic Trainers in Nationwide Professional sports (NFL, NHL, NBA), he had been injured, needed physical therapy and repeated orthopedic surgeon appointments. Was I going to let him go to WVU, or insist he switch to the local college, Slippery Rock?

I told everyone he was still going to WVU. His dad backed me up. We had a follow up orthopedic post-surgery appointment, and I asked, “Hey, he is supposed to go to WVU…how are we going to work that out?” They told me to find a qualified PT there, transferred records, and literally 5 days before he went, took him off crutches and changed his brace from a locked monstrosity to a daily use brace. I’m not going to lie. I was crapping myself. Send a kid 2.5 hours away just five weeks’ post-surgery in a brace, who needed ongoing physical therapy??? OMG.

You know why I could do that? When Noah was seven years old, he came to me and said, “Mom, you know if you got me an alarm clock, I could get myself up for school in the mornings.” So I did. That day, on the way home from work, I stopped at Kmart, got an alarm clock, taught him that evening how to work it, and turned him loose. Naturally, I set my alarm for ten minutes later. But, the next morning, when my alarm went off, I crawled out of bed and found that he was in the shower. Over the next ten years, I only had to get him up twice, when there was a power outage. When he was ten, he informed me that he had been on ball teams for five years, and that I didn’t need to sit there with him, especially when his younger brother was five and not interested. I bought him a flip phone against all parenting advice and put $20 on it. Just enough to make 20 phone calls. He never lost the phone, and never went over his minutes. When he was 15, I took him to the bank, helped him open a checking account with a debit card and put $200 into his account. Given that his parents paid for his school lunches, bought all of his clothes, he was too young to drive, and most of the time if he was heading out to a sporting event one of us handed him a $20 bill, that $200 in his account was for frivolous, fun stuff. I told him to let me know when he was running low on money, and that I was good for $50 dollars a month. He never called.

Three months later, I called him. “Hey bud…. put $200 in your account, told you I was good for $50 a month. Need money?” He said, “Nope, made a deposit from birthday, Christmas and odd job money. Spent $12.78 on a pair of Xbox headphones when I broke mine, but still have $500 in account.” Well, shut my mouth and slap your grandma…. he had twice as much money in his account three months later. Three years later, I have never made a deposit to his account because he was low. Not once.

So, Noah went to WVU. At least two weeks earlier than his peers started at their colleges. Going on week five now. He has made every PT appointment, pulled out his debit card and paid the co-pay. He’s pulling straight A’s. He’s racking up observation hours. He joined the Athletic Trainer club (one of 22/90 new freshman.) He’s already signed up for volunteer observation hours for a marathon, a 5k, and a volleyball tournament. He’s thriving. This could have been a devastating life-altering experience, if he couldn’t handle himself. It hasn’t been. It has been a whirlwind of positive experiences, and Noah loves his life. Other kids are struggling with this first semester of college; Noah is loving it, treating it like a competitive football game.
And his mom, who was a tad bit nervous about sending him so far away with a knee brace, pain, and a PT I’ve never met – every day I get texts about how AWESOME his day has been. How he’s doing observation hours at the Shell, when he didn’t have any experience with swimmers or track athletes. How week two the athletic trainers he was observing said, “Hey, too many injured, not enough hands. Get in here. This is how you massage out shin splints.” And, my kid, week two of school put his hands on an athlete in pain.

You want your kids to thrive and be ok at 18 years old? Then work on it…from 7 years old on. Get out of their way. Let them get themselves up. Let them get themselves ready for school. By 10, let them handle a flip phone. By 14 or 15, let them handle their own money. If you are still helping with homework at 15, rather than acting like a college professor quizzing a kid for midterm…. get out of your kid’s way.

This past Saturday night, my Noah sat at my kitchen table, studying for an Intro to Athletic Trainer exam. We joined forces and studied for it together. Just like in high school. Noah and I had developed a study method that worked for him, and this past weekend he wanted his mom to carry on with that. For two hours, I quizzed him. He will get an A. He always has when we study together like this.

Can I tell you something? I don’t care about the “A.” I care that he still wants mom to study with. I care that he had 15 other options on this Saturday night, and choose to study, with me.

Noah could’ve cried. Could’ve played the martyr card. Could’ve changed his plans and gone to a local university. He didn’t. That tough young man took his lumps, let some dreams go, and made a very grown-up decision that rather than wallow, he would move on with a forward trajectory life. He is kicking butt.

Some kids in this world are just tough. Most of the time when you see that, you’ll see parents standing behind them that say things along the lines of, “Yeah, that was really crappy, and I’m sorry. Let’s move on.” Today’s advice: help your kids move on.

*As always, I let my kids read my pieces when they are about them. Noah had some technical changes that he wanted me to make, and then texted me this: “I fully intend to get back to where I was before physically and hopefully even better. I’m going to be back powerlifting and playing pick-up soccer and football by next summer. I WILL be better, stronger and more athletic than I was before. I’ll have more respect for my body and I will take care of it. I will show people how strong I am.” THIS is why I am often inspired by my own kids to write a piece.

~Tracy