So, I’ve taken on a new job. It will eventually pay well, but not in money. It’s certainly a time investment, and, like all other jobs I’ve had over the years, it is starting out with me feeling not-very-competent.
It is the job of understanding my son’s special brain.
I wrote last time about Boy’s ADHD diagnosis, and the merry-go-round we’d been on until last month. How stepping off of that ride only led us to the current rollercoaster of ADHD. We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto; we’re in the land of alphabet soup: ADHD, IEPs, WISC-IV, PAI-A, and the like.
Moms, at least those of us who are inclined to, pray for grace all the time. Please, Lord, don’t let me kill this child. Or, Please let his dad come home so I don’t have to handle this alone. Or, my personal favorite: Lord, DO something with this kid, will you?
Lately, however, I’ve been reminded of the much more powerful, more effective prayer. Change me, Lord. Change ME.
Although I’m very good at it, I don’t love to yell. I don’t enjoy getting a major attitude, or giving my teenager the silent treatment, or letting him know with every stiff, jerky movement of my body just how angry I am at him for whatever he has or hasn’t done. But that has been my go-to position for so very long, I am awesome at it.
Part of my new job is to rein that in. I finally realized that I’ve been doing the same thing for fourteen years, and it hasn’t worked – and isn’t that the common definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? So I quit.
Hear that, world? I’ve given my notice. I quit being the hair-trigger bitch who snaps at the least mistake. Who fires off hurtful one-liners as if I were starring in a sitcom with a laugh track and timely commercial breaks. I’m done.
A few days ago, my son informed me at 6:00 PM that he had to write some poems for English class the following day. “How many poems,” I asked warily. “Thirteen,” he answered.
Now, understand that his computer account unlocks for his use at 7:00 PM and locks again at 9:00 PM, his bedtime. He had left himself a mere two hours to get this project done – despite the fact that he had just gotten off of April vacation during which he had insisted he had no homework. I began to steam immediately.
I unlocked the computer until midnight, knowing full well that he wouldn’t get enough sleep, that his poems would be utterly terrible, and that he’d have issues in school the following day.
Sure enough, his math teacher sent home a note saying that Boy had fallen asleep in Math class. Really. Imagine that.
That night, I sat down across from Boy, turning off the TV to get his attention, and . . . didn’t yell. Instead, in a calm and patient tone, I offered to help. “Boy,” I said, “I’d like to help you organize yourself so that you don’t have another last minute scramble like you did last night.”
“What do you mean?” he asked innocently. “My English teacher said my poems were ‘beautiful.’”
Not likely, I thought uncharitably. Aloud, I said, “But think how they might have turned out if you’d spent five days rather than five hours on them.”
He thought for a minute. “They’d be amazing,” he said quietly.
“And you might have been able to do some cool artwork to go with them,” I added. “But because you left it to the very last minute, you had to stay up way late, Daddy had to print them off early this morning, you were all stressed out with your wrinkled brow thing going on” (he laughed) “and you fell asleep in class.”
“Oh,” he said. “I guess you’re right. But I work better at the last minute.”
True, that, I thought. But I countered with, “What happens when you end up having two or three projects due around the same time? In high school, you’ll have more work, and when you get to college – well, your professors won’t know or even care what other class assignments you have. If you try to do everything at the last minute, you’ll run out of ‘last minutes’ and not be able to get everything done.”
You could almost see the light bulb go on above his head.
“So, I’d like to help you organize your time and your assignments so you don’t have to struggle like this again, okay?”
And, so, did it work? Depends on what your measure of success is. Do I expect him to be Mr. Super Organized all of a sudden from that one conversation? Of course not. The kid has ADHD, remember? It's going to take a lot of work to train his brain to get from point A to point C without a detour to Outer Mongolia in between. But I got buy-in from him to at least let me try to show him a better way.
But that’s not the success of the story. Remember, I prayed for ME to be changed. And for the first time, a botched assignment didn’t turn into a why do you leave everything to the last minute, haven’t I told you before, blah-blah-blah blame fest. Rather, I took a major step toward understanding Boy’s brain, and in return, he took a major step in understanding mine. And we ended the conversation without either one of us shouting, crying, stomping away childishly, or pouting in our rooms. Maybe next time he feels overwhelmed by an assignment, he’ll ask for help sooner rather than later, knowing that I want him to succeed. Maybe next time I see him flailing, I’ll step in kindly, with an offer of assistance rather than a declaration of impending failure.
I could grow to like this job. Maybe I’ll even get pretty good at it. I think it might have some pretty good benefits, after all.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Boy's Brain
I wish my son had a normal brain.
I’ve just finished reading a really great book called Delivered From Distraction, by Dr. Edward Hallowell, a very famous and very smart psychiatrist who studies and writes about and has Attention Deficit Disorder, or ADD. I read this book because my older son, Boy, has been diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), and I went looking for some answers.
We probably knew all along that there was ADD/ADHD in the picture. Teachers have mentioned it over the years – along with other teachers who denied that Boy might have it. He didn’t always fit the profile. He can focus, sometimes, and other times, he can’t. We’ve brought him to therapists and counselors, sometimes at the point of pulling out our hair, trying to find out what was wrong with this kid? Why couldn’t he function like a normal child? They would talk to him, give him a few tests, and conclude, Meh, maybe he has ADD, maybe he doesn’t.
One kindergarten teacher told me, with sympathy in her voice, “I hate to tell you this, but your son may very well be a genius.” I cried about that. Another teacher scolded me, saying I’d better do something about his outbursts before my husband and I got sued by some other child’s parent. I cried about that, too.
And always, there was the sense that maybe it was just a discipline problem. If we structured his days, if we took away his privileges, if we punished him in just the right way, maybe he would straighten up and fly right. Sometimes it worked; mostly it didn’t.
Last year, I stumbled across a book about bi-polar disorder in children, and became very scared. A lot of symptoms described there were day to day occurrences in my kid.
Things came to a head this year, his eighth grade year, when he literally spent more time out of school – suspended for infraction after infraction – than he did in class. Rev and I took days off from work to stay home with him, or brought him with us to do his school work in an empty office. Finally, in February, I’d had enough, and on the same day I registered him for the public high school assignment process, I requested a transfer from his charter school to a public school. He would finish out the year in a regular high school, and probably repeat the grade before going on to high school. He was failing all of his classes, and was not even trying anymore. We got one day’s notice, and then he was going to another school.
A few days later, we took him for a five-hour neuropsychological exam (that had been scheduled since November). It took several weeks to get a result, but there we were, sitting with the psychologist, listening to her tell us that our son has ADHD. As I was soon to learn, Boy experiences the world through constant static. Sometimes he’s able to focus through the static and actually learn. Many times, however, the static takes over, and his mind drifts. As his pediatrician observed, he’s the ultimate multi-tasker; imagine how well he’ll do when the static goes away?
So what now? Now, I get on the merry-go-round of trying to find mental health professionals that are (1) accepting patients, (2) believers in both cognitive therapy and appropriate medication, and (3) covered by our insurance. In a “team approach” specialty – you can’t see a psychiatrist until you’ve seen a therapist, and only the psychiatrist can prescribe ADHD medication – you’re left trying to put together the team. Nobody says, Here’s a referral to a group; they’ll take care of you. You might as well just take out the Yellow Pages.
I’m supposed to entrust my kid and his special brain to some person I find on my own, through an Internet search or an advertisement in a parenting magazine or a list mailed to me by the pediatrician’s office.
Are you kidding me?
In the meantime, I’m reading Dr. Hallowell’s book and a few others, trying to figure out the day to day of dealing with my kid and his issues. I haven’t jumped on the oh, this is great, you have a magical brain, I wish I were that special! bandwagon that Dr. Hallowell espouses, but I’m also learning to cut the kid some slack. He’s fourteen, and there are some things that teenagers do: argue, procrastinate, sleep a lot, slack off on their homework, and so on. Friends of mine who have or have had fourteen-year-old sons have warned me about this toxic phase. But Boy is different, now. I have to help him find a way to be organized – because he never will on his own. I have to study his diet and sleep habits because there are things we can do to make his brain function better. And I have to remind myself, daily, that sometimes he’s dealing with a behavioral issue, not a discipline issue.
This is all new ground. I am happy that Boy is not bi-polar. I’m also relieved, profoundly relieved, that we finally have a working diagnosis, one that addresses both Boy’s strengths and his weaknesses (as opposed to years of being told only what bad thing Boy did each day). And I feel like I have a second chance to be a good mom, one who takes the time to take his side some of the time.
We’ll get him through this. We all need to learn some new tools, but eventually, he’ll be able to hear us clearly through the static. And then, who knows where that brain of his will take him?
I’ve just finished reading a really great book called Delivered From Distraction, by Dr. Edward Hallowell, a very famous and very smart psychiatrist who studies and writes about and has Attention Deficit Disorder, or ADD. I read this book because my older son, Boy, has been diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), and I went looking for some answers.
We probably knew all along that there was ADD/ADHD in the picture. Teachers have mentioned it over the years – along with other teachers who denied that Boy might have it. He didn’t always fit the profile. He can focus, sometimes, and other times, he can’t. We’ve brought him to therapists and counselors, sometimes at the point of pulling out our hair, trying to find out what was wrong with this kid? Why couldn’t he function like a normal child? They would talk to him, give him a few tests, and conclude, Meh, maybe he has ADD, maybe he doesn’t.
One kindergarten teacher told me, with sympathy in her voice, “I hate to tell you this, but your son may very well be a genius.” I cried about that. Another teacher scolded me, saying I’d better do something about his outbursts before my husband and I got sued by some other child’s parent. I cried about that, too.
And always, there was the sense that maybe it was just a discipline problem. If we structured his days, if we took away his privileges, if we punished him in just the right way, maybe he would straighten up and fly right. Sometimes it worked; mostly it didn’t.
Last year, I stumbled across a book about bi-polar disorder in children, and became very scared. A lot of symptoms described there were day to day occurrences in my kid.
Things came to a head this year, his eighth grade year, when he literally spent more time out of school – suspended for infraction after infraction – than he did in class. Rev and I took days off from work to stay home with him, or brought him with us to do his school work in an empty office. Finally, in February, I’d had enough, and on the same day I registered him for the public high school assignment process, I requested a transfer from his charter school to a public school. He would finish out the year in a regular high school, and probably repeat the grade before going on to high school. He was failing all of his classes, and was not even trying anymore. We got one day’s notice, and then he was going to another school.
A few days later, we took him for a five-hour neuropsychological exam (that had been scheduled since November). It took several weeks to get a result, but there we were, sitting with the psychologist, listening to her tell us that our son has ADHD. As I was soon to learn, Boy experiences the world through constant static. Sometimes he’s able to focus through the static and actually learn. Many times, however, the static takes over, and his mind drifts. As his pediatrician observed, he’s the ultimate multi-tasker; imagine how well he’ll do when the static goes away?
So what now? Now, I get on the merry-go-round of trying to find mental health professionals that are (1) accepting patients, (2) believers in both cognitive therapy and appropriate medication, and (3) covered by our insurance. In a “team approach” specialty – you can’t see a psychiatrist until you’ve seen a therapist, and only the psychiatrist can prescribe ADHD medication – you’re left trying to put together the team. Nobody says, Here’s a referral to a group; they’ll take care of you. You might as well just take out the Yellow Pages.
I’m supposed to entrust my kid and his special brain to some person I find on my own, through an Internet search or an advertisement in a parenting magazine or a list mailed to me by the pediatrician’s office.
Are you kidding me?
In the meantime, I’m reading Dr. Hallowell’s book and a few others, trying to figure out the day to day of dealing with my kid and his issues. I haven’t jumped on the oh, this is great, you have a magical brain, I wish I were that special! bandwagon that Dr. Hallowell espouses, but I’m also learning to cut the kid some slack. He’s fourteen, and there are some things that teenagers do: argue, procrastinate, sleep a lot, slack off on their homework, and so on. Friends of mine who have or have had fourteen-year-old sons have warned me about this toxic phase. But Boy is different, now. I have to help him find a way to be organized – because he never will on his own. I have to study his diet and sleep habits because there are things we can do to make his brain function better. And I have to remind myself, daily, that sometimes he’s dealing with a behavioral issue, not a discipline issue.
This is all new ground. I am happy that Boy is not bi-polar. I’m also relieved, profoundly relieved, that we finally have a working diagnosis, one that addresses both Boy’s strengths and his weaknesses (as opposed to years of being told only what bad thing Boy did each day). And I feel like I have a second chance to be a good mom, one who takes the time to take his side some of the time.
We’ll get him through this. We all need to learn some new tools, but eventually, he’ll be able to hear us clearly through the static. And then, who knows where that brain of his will take him?
Sunday, April 3, 2011
But You Gotta Have Friends
Every once in a while, you get a lesson in friendship.
My oldest son, “Boy,” thinks that a “friend” is someone who posts stuff (usually about themselves) on his Facebook page. His idea of a conversation is a “comment” or, if he’s really pressed for time, a thumbs up “Like” for a picture or video he’s added. Most of the time, he and his “friends” are talking past each other, not having a conversation or connecting in any way.
I watch him navigate all of his social media choices, and I purse my lips. Friendship, I think to myself, is about to go the way of the dodo.
But then I think back on the last several months of my own life, and my dealings with people I would, if asked, have referred to as “friends.” Mainly, they’re colleagues and acquaintances, who fit neatly into the little pockets of my life, as I fit into theirs, and whom I like. We throw hour-long baby showers for them, email little jokes to their in-boxes, and ask earnestly how their kids are doing after a bout with the flu. But, are we “friends”?
One colleague is working on a huge case with me. Over the years, I’ve listened to her family problems, and she visited me when I was in the hospital. I would have called her a friend without hesitation up until about a month ago, when I came face to face with the fact that I really hadn’t thought about it hard enough. That was the day this colleague, I’ll call her “Mary,” threw me under the proverbial bus in open court. Her particular betrayal had to do with undermining my position and ability to do my job, and what’s worse, she did it without even knowing that she was crossing a line. As in, it never occurred to her that what she was saying was in any way hurtful or offensive. It wasn’t the first, or even the thirty-first, time she’d cut the legs out from under me; it was just the worst so far. I’d swallowed my pride and my retorts, because the case came first, and it would do no good at all to derail the train for the sake of my ego. I had my share of sympathetic looks from other members of the team, and told people – and myself – that the best approach was just not to let it bother me.
So this one day, I let it bother me. I began to explain to her that what she’d done was a new low, and her utterly blank face and its What did I do? thought bubble just pushed me over the edge. As she tried to school me on why I wasn’t qualified to do the task we had been discussing in court, I snapped, “I am too angry to talk to you right now.” And I walked away. It was a full week before I spoke to her again. It took almost a month for her to come to me and apologize.
Here’s where the lesson on friendship came in. I was raised to believe that forgiving and forgetting went hand in hand. That an apology set the counter back to zero, and you moved forward as if nothing had happened. And perhaps that’s why the concept of self-esteem has always had a slightly foreign flavor to it for me. So when faced with what I can only describe as a half-assed apology (full of excuses and reasons for the tiny subset of egregious behavior that she was willing to recognize only after a third party pointed it out to her with circles and arrows) accompanied by a plea not to lose our “friendship” and what may have been remorseful tears, I sat in silence for a moment. I waited for the Christian part, the turn-the-other-cheek, forgive-seventy-times-seven-for-they-know-not-what-they-do part to kick in. I even said a prayer for the right words.
God answers prayer, and here’s what I said. I accept your apology. I know you want me to say that we can go back to being friends, but I really can’t. I don’t know if we ever will, because you have hurt me very deeply. I will continue to be civil, because we are grownups, but I have resigned myself to the fact that I don’t have to be friends with someone to try a case with her. I didn’t raise my voice or anything; I didn’t need to – and I felt peace.
Another me would have backtracked, instinctively coupling forgiveness with assent: it’s okay, which translates to, it’s okay to treat people, specifically me, with disrespect and condescension. I’m used to it, and I’ll take it some more.
But that’s not forgiveness. That’s enabling. That’s not humility; that’s self-abuse. And it’s not friendship.
Years ago my mother said something very profound. When I was upset over a disappointing relationship, she observed, point-blank, “There are more than 6 billion people on this planet. Not every one of them is going to be your friend.”
Not every colleague is going to be my friend. Not every person who writes slogans on my Facebook wall, or sends me email jokes is my friend.
And you know what? That’s okay. I don’t know when I lost that concept. If I ask Scooby, “What is a friend?”, you know what she’ll say? “A friend is someone who helps you and who you help when they need it.”
It really is that simple. Help them get through the day. Help them see the truth of themselves. Help them move forward when they can’t. Help them in ways, small and large, to succeed. And count on them to do the same for you.
Everybody else is just baggage. A Facebook friend, in name only.
I hope Boy realizes this a lot sooner than I did.
So, to take a cue from him: Sorry, “Mary,” I’m un-friending you. Bye.
That felt good.
My oldest son, “Boy,” thinks that a “friend” is someone who posts stuff (usually about themselves) on his Facebook page. His idea of a conversation is a “comment” or, if he’s really pressed for time, a thumbs up “Like” for a picture or video he’s added. Most of the time, he and his “friends” are talking past each other, not having a conversation or connecting in any way.
I watch him navigate all of his social media choices, and I purse my lips. Friendship, I think to myself, is about to go the way of the dodo.
But then I think back on the last several months of my own life, and my dealings with people I would, if asked, have referred to as “friends.” Mainly, they’re colleagues and acquaintances, who fit neatly into the little pockets of my life, as I fit into theirs, and whom I like. We throw hour-long baby showers for them, email little jokes to their in-boxes, and ask earnestly how their kids are doing after a bout with the flu. But, are we “friends”?
One colleague is working on a huge case with me. Over the years, I’ve listened to her family problems, and she visited me when I was in the hospital. I would have called her a friend without hesitation up until about a month ago, when I came face to face with the fact that I really hadn’t thought about it hard enough. That was the day this colleague, I’ll call her “Mary,” threw me under the proverbial bus in open court. Her particular betrayal had to do with undermining my position and ability to do my job, and what’s worse, she did it without even knowing that she was crossing a line. As in, it never occurred to her that what she was saying was in any way hurtful or offensive. It wasn’t the first, or even the thirty-first, time she’d cut the legs out from under me; it was just the worst so far. I’d swallowed my pride and my retorts, because the case came first, and it would do no good at all to derail the train for the sake of my ego. I had my share of sympathetic looks from other members of the team, and told people – and myself – that the best approach was just not to let it bother me.
So this one day, I let it bother me. I began to explain to her that what she’d done was a new low, and her utterly blank face and its What did I do? thought bubble just pushed me over the edge. As she tried to school me on why I wasn’t qualified to do the task we had been discussing in court, I snapped, “I am too angry to talk to you right now.” And I walked away. It was a full week before I spoke to her again. It took almost a month for her to come to me and apologize.
Here’s where the lesson on friendship came in. I was raised to believe that forgiving and forgetting went hand in hand. That an apology set the counter back to zero, and you moved forward as if nothing had happened. And perhaps that’s why the concept of self-esteem has always had a slightly foreign flavor to it for me. So when faced with what I can only describe as a half-assed apology (full of excuses and reasons for the tiny subset of egregious behavior that she was willing to recognize only after a third party pointed it out to her with circles and arrows) accompanied by a plea not to lose our “friendship” and what may have been remorseful tears, I sat in silence for a moment. I waited for the Christian part, the turn-the-other-cheek, forgive-seventy-times-seven-for-they-know-not-what-they-do part to kick in. I even said a prayer for the right words.
God answers prayer, and here’s what I said. I accept your apology. I know you want me to say that we can go back to being friends, but I really can’t. I don’t know if we ever will, because you have hurt me very deeply. I will continue to be civil, because we are grownups, but I have resigned myself to the fact that I don’t have to be friends with someone to try a case with her. I didn’t raise my voice or anything; I didn’t need to – and I felt peace.
Another me would have backtracked, instinctively coupling forgiveness with assent: it’s okay, which translates to, it’s okay to treat people, specifically me, with disrespect and condescension. I’m used to it, and I’ll take it some more.
But that’s not forgiveness. That’s enabling. That’s not humility; that’s self-abuse. And it’s not friendship.
Years ago my mother said something very profound. When I was upset over a disappointing relationship, she observed, point-blank, “There are more than 6 billion people on this planet. Not every one of them is going to be your friend.”
Not every colleague is going to be my friend. Not every person who writes slogans on my Facebook wall, or sends me email jokes is my friend.
And you know what? That’s okay. I don’t know when I lost that concept. If I ask Scooby, “What is a friend?”, you know what she’ll say? “A friend is someone who helps you and who you help when they need it.”
It really is that simple. Help them get through the day. Help them see the truth of themselves. Help them move forward when they can’t. Help them in ways, small and large, to succeed. And count on them to do the same for you.
Everybody else is just baggage. A Facebook friend, in name only.
I hope Boy realizes this a lot sooner than I did.
So, to take a cue from him: Sorry, “Mary,” I’m un-friending you. Bye.
That felt good.
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