active.
Two days after Liam started ɹfth grade, he felt completely
overwhelmed by the amount of homework his teacher had
assigned. (I agreed with him, by the way. It was a lot.) He
was complaining about it, but he eventually went to his room
to work on it.
When I went to check on his progress, I found him literally
curled up in a fetal position under his bean bag chair in his
room. I encouraged him to come out, to sit at his desk and
keep working on his studies. He kept whining, saying he
couldn’t do it: “It’s just too much!” I kept oʃering to help
him, and he kept refusing my help.
Then all of a sudden, he jumped out from under the bean
bag chair, ran downstairs, ran out the front door, and kept
running. He ran several blocks through the neighborhood
before coming home.
When we had him safely back in the house, and he had
calmed down and had a snack, I was able to talk with him
and ask why he had taken oʃ like that. He said he didn’t
really know. He said, “The only thing I can think of is that I
felt like it would make me feel better if I ran as fast as I could
for as long as I could. And it did.” And I have to admit—he
did seem a lot more calm, and ready to have me help him
with his homework.Even though Liam didn’t know it, when he left the house and
ran, he was practicing integration. His downstairs brain had bullied
his upstairs brain into submission, leaving him feeling
overwhelmed and helpless. He had ɻoated way over near the chaos
bank of the river. His mother’s attempts to help bring in his
upstairs brain were unsuccessful, but when Liam brought his body