I was mortified to say the least. How could my sweet little boy be doing this again? Of course he said he was just .trying to hold onto it.  His father assured me they had a long, tough talk about it, stressing how all creatures are God's creatures and it was a sin to kill. I had never been so angry with my son. and so worried and scared.  He was grounded from everything for quite a while.  I made him write letters to the bunny, the bunny's mom, to God.  Tried scaring him with the legality of animal cruelty, thought about making him watch beyond scared straight on a&e, but he was too young for most of that content. He needed to feel bad for what he had done, I needed assurance that this would NEVER happen again.  He was upset...that he was grounded.  He wrote his letters that said no more than "sorry".  I did reach out to some close friends and family for advice thinking I needed to have him seen by someone. Boys will will boys was the consensus.  I guess I chose to believe that our feeble attempts had made a difference and it would NEVER happen again.

I finally broke down and put him on Concerta at the end of 3rd grade to try and help him in school.  It seemed to make a difference in the beginning, he did read a little faster.  I did not have him take it over the summer but he started again in 4th grade where his grades actually declined the whole year.  Once 5th grade started they had to put him on a larger dose because of his size.  He was only on it for 2 weeks.  School life started off in the gutter that year and the medicine didn't seem to have any impact.  Then one night I heard a horrible muffled sound coming from his room.  I pushed open the door to find Joshua sitting crossed legged with his hands wrapped around our dog's throat and he was squeezing hard.  His eye were fixated, glassy and black, and the wickedest smile was frozen on his face.  He didn't even see me standing there. I finally gasped enough breath to say his name and it was as if he'd been released from a trance. His pupils shrunk back to reveal the baby blue of his eyes, he pushed the dog away and mumbled "sorry" under his breath and sunk back into his bed.  I remember my face turning red hot, my head feeling like it was going to explode.  What had I just walked in on?  I know I must of yelled something at him, but in the quietest way I could.  I did not want my husband to know what had happened, I didn't know what he would do. Scared he would lose his temper and I felt the need to protect my son. Not that my husband had ever or would ever be violent, but I did not want him to feel this sickening horror and shattering of trust that was pouring over me.  I told Joshua to get in bed and I shut the light off and walked out.  This would be the first time I did not "tuck" him in with a kiss goodnight.  I took a deep breath then went upstairs to join my husband and pretend like all was well.  The next morning at breakfast I sternly whispered to my son to not talk about this with dad. I told him this was never going to happen again, as if saying it in this tone would make it so.  He knew he could fool me with the dog was trying to get away, and he didn't try.  When a child is on a medicine for ADD one of the questions the Dr will ask is if the child has shown any anger or violence to animals.  So that is what I decided to blame this on, the medicine. I took him off of it and convinced myself he would never do such a thing again.  And I never told anyone about it...until April 29, 2012.