Time, Michael and I told ourselves. Evan just needed time. Time for the occupational therapy to assist with the hypersensitivity. Time to better develop his own coping skills. We had challenges, but all parents had challenges. Right?

Evan started kindergarten. He interrupted the teacher. He laughed at inappropriate times. He screamed if told to stop doing an activity he wanted to do, and refused to engage in an activity he didn’t want to do.

In the first eight weeks, Michael and I were summoned to the school nearly a dozen times. We sat there self-consciously. Well-groomed, professional parents who had no idea why our child was a five-year-old hoodlum. We loved Evan. We set boundaries for him. We fought for him.

Still, Evan wanted to do what Evan wanted to do and he was willing to employ any means necessary to get his way.

Third and fourth diagnoses: ADHD and Anxiety Disorder NOS. At the school’s insistence, we put him on the antidepressant Lexapro. Lexapro affects the serotonin levels in the brain. We were told it would calm Evan, help him focus.

Your son’s brain is a busy, busy place, the specialist told us. Imagine standing in the middle of a parade and trying to remain still while hearing the horns blow in your ear and feeling the marchers sweep by. Evan loves you. Evan wants to do well. But Evan can’t exit from the parade long enough to be Evan.

We dutifully filled the prescription. It’s the American way, right? Your child is disruptive, misbehaving, nonconforming. Drug him.

Two weeks later, while quietly sketching a picture of a race car, Evan sat up and drove his pencil through the eardrum of the five-year-old girl sitting beside him.

That was the end of kindergarten for Evan.

Later, we learned Evan suffered from a paradoxical reaction to the Lexapro. A paradoxical reaction is when a drug has the opposite effect than intended. For example, a pain reliever causes pain. Or a sedative causes hyperactivity. Lexapro was supposed to calm our son. Instead, it sent him into a new orbit of agitation, and he acted accordingly.

We found a new doctor for Evan. Best Ph.D. in Boston, we were told. I hired nanny number nine and settled in to home-school Evan.

Michael started working longer hours. Gotta pay for the specialists, he would say, as if I couldn’t smell the perfume that lingered on his coat, or see how many times he checked his cell phone for text messages.

I wondered if she was young and beautiful, maybe with frosted blonde hair that didn’t suffer from neglected roots. Maybe her womb had never filled with poison. Maybe she could take her son to the grocery store without him hurling produce at the other shoppers. Maybe she went to restaurants without her child dumping pasta on the floor and making handprints out of red sauce.