Hi everyone! I'm so grateful this site is here - I need to vent and maybe some advice....
A little backstory: my DH and I met when his son was 3, almost 5 years ago. There was no parenting plan in place at that time, so BM regularly refused visits - DH went months, and then over a year, between visits. He was really naive about his rights, but finally decided to try for proper visitation. They went to court eventually and a parenting plan was put into place, over her many objections (we currently live about 12 hours apart while DH goes to nursing school).

Since the parenting plan was put into place almost 3 years ago, she technically follows it, so that's okay.... However, she has in the past instilled in SS that we want to "steal him away" when we bring him to us for a visit, that Dad is mean and dangerous, that he must tell her EVERYTHING that happens when he gets home, and that any "secrets" we have with him (she hates sarcasm and won't allow him to use it, while it's a way of life for us - in a nice way) must be told to her immediately. Luckily, SS is smart enough that, although he may express these fears occasionally, he's beginning to understand that she is not always honest with him.

That's a big part of the story, actually - SS is scary genius smart. He was reading before he was 2, comprehends college scientific textbooks, has been doing multiplication since he was 5, etc. He manages to blow us away whenever we're with him.

BM left my DH when SS was 3 months old, and 2 years later had a baby with another man. She has now a 3rd baby with a 3rd man, who she's been with as long I've known her. Up until the baby was born, she babied SS and his sister to an extreme, but when he came for Spring Break he was a lot more independent, in positive ways. However (and this shows how smart he is), while he was here, SS said "...when Mom finds another man and has another baby..." :O

BM communicates with DH only as much as she's required to, and if she thinks she can get away with it, she omits things. Luckily, SS, when BM isn't around listening in to his phone calls, will tell us a lot of what we need to know.

Wow, that's a lot of backstory! If anyone's still reading, thank you! Now on to the meat of the problems:
Last fall SS started having trouble in school - he was bored and acting out to get attention. It got to the point that he kicked his teacher and actually threw a chair in class one day. At this point, he is allowed to remove himself from the situations which make him angry and take a self-imposed time-out, which is great. He sees a psychologist occasionally, but DH hasn't been in contact with him yet. This last visit was the first time SS hasn't thrown any temper tantrums, thankfully, although he came close once.

Usually when he visits, he comes for a week or longer, and we have in the past had really difficult transition times at the beginning, where he realizes that the rules are different in ways that are both better for him and harder for him. This time, there was no transition difficulty - until the week was ending. He had insomnia the final 3 nights (he's never been a great sleeper), and was feeling scared and upset, although he wouldn't talk to us about what was bothering him. We comforted him as best we could and told him that he could tell us anything, whenever he needed to, and it would never change the way we felt about him, no matter what (he regularly tells us that he loves Mom LOTS more than he loves us, in a testing way, and we always tell him that we understand although it breaks our hearts). One of these nights, he woke me up with his crying from his bed, and told me he needed a drink of water because his throat was dry, but that "his body wouldn't let him move" again and again. He was rigid and shaking, and he was clearly terrified. I stayed with him trying to calm him until he was able to fall asleep again, but he was unable to tell me what was wrong. This whole scenario happened again the next day....

On our drive back to the exchange point, he told us that the reason he couldn't sleep one night was that he was thinking about death. He couldn't or wouldn't clarify it any further, but I remember that when I was a kid, I had no concept of death until I was a lot older than he is.
We have wondered frequently if he is depressed or bi-polar (BM's family has a LOT of serious mental illness and suicide attempts), but BM sees him as a perfect extension of herself to the point that SS was not told that DH was his father until they went to court, and as such, there can be nothing wrong with him (yes, she definitely has a mental illness). Also, because she refused to voluntarily share custody, she has the final say on everything affecting him.

I am the only child of a severely depressed mother, DH is essentially an only child, and we have no other children to compare his behavior to. I wonder if I'm projecting my childhood onto him or if his behavior is off? I absolutely adore this boy, he is one of the sweetest kids I've ever met, so open and loving. I want him to have the best of everything in his life - we always reinforce to him how lucky he is that he has four parents who love him instead of just two. We plan to move back to his home town within the year so that we can be more involved in his life - it's already written into the parenting plan - but I would be heart-broken if he needed help and wasn't getting it because of his BM.

Any insight or ideas would be welcome! And thanks for reading, if you made it this far!