Hello and welcome, April,
How are you and your son doing today?
LeslieAnn

I would love to be your friend. It seems most everyone has daughters that are struggling. I don't find many other teenage boys. My son is having an especially hard time right now and I'm desperately trying to help him get it all together and finish well in school. He's only got 5 weeks left of school and his grades are slipping. He refuses to admit to anything bothering him, but I can see it.

How is your son coping?

Connie

Cool. You have a son with alopecia. No, I'm not going to the meeting in June.

It sounds like your son is just like mine! I tried to get him online too as I thought meeting others going through the same thing would be good for him, but he thinks I'm crazy. He just seems to want to ignore his condition as much as possible. I don't think he's talked to anyone about it and it's been almost a year now since he lost all of his hair. He has just recently started getting white fuzz all over his head and even a couple of dark hairs but he doesn't even seem to be excited about that.

I see from your pictures that your son doesn't wear a hat. I wish my son wasn't so afraid to go out in public without his fedora. He doesn't wear one at home, but will not step foot outside without one. He says he wants to be known as the "kid with the hat", not the "bald kid".

I really wanted to take him to the conference, but his doctors are going to be changing his medication (for another condition) after school is out and we don't know how he'll react and were told to stay close to home. Maybe next year... I'm sure we'll still be dealing with all of this then too.

I wish we were going too. Some boys would be thrilled to walk into a room full of girls, but your son sounds like mine. My son would turn around, walk out of the room and find someplace to hide until I came back. If he were to have his laptop and an internet connection he'd say it was a great day! He spends most of his time alone and playing games on the computer. He wasn't very social before, but now he avoids social interaction whenever he can. Last summer I "made" him go to our church youth group's summer trip to the lake (on orders from his dermatologist, who's more concerned about Chris' emotional health than anything else). He didn't hate me when he got back, but I heard that he never got in the water and usually just sat on the beach not talking to anyone. He wore a ballcap the entire time, even when sleeping. He even woke up early, before his tent-mate, so he could get dressed and change his hat. It just hurts to see him suffering and not having anything that I can do to help. My husband thinks I'm babying him too much by letting him have his space and not demanding too much from him. I just wish I knew what to do to bring back who he was before all of this.