The Campaign for Independence is Never Really Over

Any kid who can make this out of a dollar bill should be able to make a bed, right?

Last week while the little ones were visiting their Auntie for spring break, Alex and I had some alone time.

I know – I dreaded it, too. No little bro to distract from Alex’s house rule breaking? No sis bullying her way into the conversations? Just us and the earphones and what seemed like a good opportunity to do…something. Just Lord don’t make us talk!

I decided that the only way to make it bearable for both of us was to make it a learning experience. For Alex. Not me. I’ve already been through it. It became Teach Alex Independence Week.

We started with basic chores. Housework. Put stuff away right. Change the bed. Sort laundry. Empty the dishwasher. They aren’t hard to do, it’s just trying to remember them all. Then he had to make his own dinner. The next morning, it was breakfast and packing his own lunch. In the evening, he made his own dinner again. It was all going so well. Except for cleaning up the kitchen. We all know that boys, teens and men NEVER get this right.

Wednesday I added the responsibility for getting himself up. What a shocker to find him up, showered, dressed and eating eggs he cooked himself when I was still trying to open my eyes enough to find the “brew coffee” button. All along I’d thought it was enough for Alex to handle getting his schoolwork together in the morning and running through the morning checklist to be sure he remembered his meds — there he was cooking eggs and it was still dark outside.

The week continued like this. Alex consistently, with only a slip-up or two, did for himself what I have been doing every day, robotically. Which lead me to two very important conclusions.

Kids – even easily distracted, obstinate ones – rise to the challenge of responsibility when you take the time to teach, and praise at every opportunity. (Thanks for the link, Tracee). It was nice to have a genuine reason to say, “Hey, great job!” every day.

Second conclusion: I’m pretty sure I’ve been bamboozled into doing too much for a very capable kid way  longer than I care to admit, given the ease with which Alex took to these new tasks. It was a learning experience for me, maybe even more than Alex. But then, hasn’t this all turned out that way?

You’re Still Talking? Because I Stopped Listening

More than once this week I have found myself in a conversation that resembles that of a really awful first date. You know the kind where everything you say, the other party either talks right over you, or says something wholly self-absorbed such as “That’s just like the time I blah-blah-blah,” and you’re left thinking, “Nope. Not even close.” Or the other person just says, yeah, right, uh-huh, mmm-hmm and fidgets before finally interrupting to shut me up.

I am convinced that listening is the single most important thing parents can do, no matter what the parenting challenge. But it’s hard to remember to do it. We try so hard to be heard that we don’t focus on listening. That’s when conversations take a trip to nowhereland. I talk, he talks, we talk over each other, I get louder, he gets louder, next thing you know we are both fast-talking and hearing nothing.

I once saw a counselor who said nothing. She lead me into her office, gestured to the chair where I was to sit and picked up a notepad as she sat down. Then she said absolutely nothing. It was uncomfortable as sitting on a burlap sack full of pinecones. Eventually I’d say something  just to get rid of the awful silence.

Not listening is often accompanied by the problem of mis-hearing. Or hearing what you want to hear. Or misconstruing and spitting back what someone said to make it sound more awful than it really is. These are all just symptomatic of the same problem: You Aren’t Listening.

Example:

Mom: “If we get you a laptop, it is only for school, not video games.”

Alex: “So you’re just getting me a laptop so you can take it away and use it to punish me.”

Mom: “Where did that come from? If you don’t want to follow my rules, then no laptop.”

Alex: “You just want to use everything against me!”

It may not be obvious, but this conversation went off the rails a few stops before anyone ever brought up the subject of a laptop. Alex wanted a laptop for his birthday. Mom has a small budget. Alex knew what he wanted and Mom knew what she wanted Alex to have. But neither one actually ever said that. Alex jumped right to the “Mom is trying to control me” assumption and Mom jumped directly into the “How am I going to keep him under control if I give him exactly what he wants?” puddle of mud.

If everyone had a sign on their foreheads that said, I’M LISTENING, I wonder, would more people actually listen?

Just try being quiet for a few minutes. Kids love to fill the silence. I’m hearing a lot more from Alex. Like last night, while we were sitting alone in the living room after Little Bro and Sis had gone to bed, here is what Alex had to say to fill the silence:

You really don’t know much about me, do you?

And I don’t, not yet.

but i’m listening

A Ship is Safe in Harbor, But That’s Not What Ships Were Made For

We had a rare moment today when Alex opened up a little. It came when I remembered to use my listening skills, to try to understand how he felt about the probability that our forthcoming move to a new house would mean changing schools. Short version: I’d rather live with cave trolls, Mom.  

Then he broke all conversational rules of mom and young teen: he told me how he really felt. If the words social outcast don’t shake the salt off your crackers, the rest of this brief encounter will.

At thirteen, I was a lot like Alex. I didn’t gel that well with the other kids. By gel I mean: If my peer group was a jello salad, I’d be the chopped celery: everyone wondered what it was doing there. However, the last thing a boy wants to hear from his mom is that he resembles HER AT AGE THIRTEEN in any way remotely possible. That didn’t stop me from trying, unfortunately.

For grown ups, we know other kids that we think are fantastic. We see qualities in kids they don’t see in themselves. Alex is one of those kids. I was one of those kids. Why did I fight with my mom so much? She was trying to mother a completely different version of me. It doesn’t matter how much we know about these kids’ potential and inner awesomeness if they don’t believe it themselves.

Alex doesn’t believe it. Not any of it.  It’s discouraging to see him so low, because he was flying high last week, and it seemed like smooth sailing ahead. In his mind, the closest thing he has to a friend base are kids he’s afraid to invite over because he’s sure they’ll say no. He gets nervous having to talk in front of them because he thinks he is dumber than everyone else.

But leave them behind for another school? Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.

That’s as far as I could get Alex in this conversation before the doors slammed closed. If I could only get my foot inside, maybe I could see it better, maybe I could bring some light in. It could be a very dark place he’s headed, and I’m not talking about cave trolls.

PS. Since I started writing this blog, a lot of friends and people we don’t know have read and given their support to me. I notice every “like” and every comment, and I’m very grateful. Thank you for the random acts of kindness. Please keep sharing and talking so that others can learn how to help kids like Alex. 

Why An Orange Balloon Made Me Cry This Week

After everything we’ve been through in the past 18 months, when I got an email from Alex’s school inviting me to an award ceremony to celebrate my child’s academic achievements, I wasn’t celebrating. I was wondering if it was a mistake. Alex’s second quarter grades were most definitely an improvement on the first quarter, but an academic achievement?

We already had a tough week riding the rollercoaster of ADHD: meltdowns, oversleeping, forgetting homework, and Alex’s love/hate relationship with Vyvanse. I hoped it was true. Alex could really use a little pick-me-up this week.

Despite my skepticism, I went to the award ceremony and sat in the back row so Alex couldn’t see me, just in case. Awards were handed out for high honors, the very top achievers in the seventh grade class. Each got a balloon of a different color. The very last award to be given was, in the words of the head of school, “the most significant.” Only five kids got this award and Alex had no idea that he was one of them.

The award for most improved was based on a real metric: Alex had to be in the top five percent of kids who had pulled their grades up from the previous quarter. So even though he was still barely passing most of his classes, his scores were so significantly higher that he was out of the danger zone.

And I’d almost missed it.

Here’s where I have to force myself to accept that sometimes you just can’t do it all alone. Alex didn’t get his name called to that stage because of what I did to help him. At least 15 other people helped Alex. They did what I couldn’t do. Others had to take the lead. I’m never going to be able to help him with Algebra and Chemistry. I don’t speak teenage boy and probably never will. It’s okay, because I’m not in this fight with Alex alone.

This story segues into another. No secret: I complain too much about being a single mom with three complex kids. It’s expensive, it’s exhausting and sometimes not all that rewarding. I get up everyday and push through it anyway. Some days are great, others I just want to put behind me forever. And the challenges never end: it’s something new every week. It’s hard to get up and know I’m going into combat again when I’ve barely recovered from the last round. That’s when I get a text from a friend informing me of a random act of kindness, generosity and words that I don’t hear all that much.

“You are an awesome mom.”

When I picked Alex up that afternoon, he was still carrying around his orange balloon. He had it tied to his computer bag. And he briefly let little bro hold it before he took it back.

Me: I’ve got my own orange balloon, and I’ll be carrying it around for a very long time, too.

Turning Thirteen? Parent-Deafness Meets Friend-Blindness

Alex turns thirteen in about a week. For awhile now I’ve been trying to coax him into planning something to celebrate. I’m met with the side of his face and the stare of the earbud.

And a really long silence. Since the only really close friend he made in middle school (also a twice-exceptional ADHD & gifted kid) moved away, Alex hasn’t really gotten close to anyone. I had high hopes when he cut his hair a few months ago, finally revealing to the world that he did indeed have a face. And again I was thrilled when he was enthusiastic about participating in his first strings concert and wearing a tie. Just little indicators that he was gaining some confidence and opening up.

But on the birthday thing, I feel like I’m trying to talk him into his first rectal exam. He can’t name a list of kids he would invite. (I’m really curious to meet the friends he claims he has). I offered to send him to play laser tag. Backyard barbecue. Movies.  I’m beginning to think it’s me.

Of the four suggestions offered here, I haven’t managed to pull off one.

1. Work on his social skills. The comments in the article linked above made me sad — kids voted out of their own playgroups or the lunch table. I’ve hovered by the kitchen the few times Alex had a friend over and nothing strikes me as a problem. Am I the one who is deaf? 
2. Build up his defenses. Alex was bullied in the past, but that was solved by my phone call to the kids’ parents and the police. Did I intervene too much? 
3. Identify potential new friends. This has failure written all over it. I can’t even pick out pants he’ll wear. 
4. Keep up with trends. If I could only figure out what they are today. Cause yesterday they were something else. 

You win, thirteen. You’re gearing up to be everything that’s promised, and more.

At least there will be pie!

I’m Too Tired to Tell You How Awesome You Are

The normal for parents is exhaustion: crazy-business with no time to stop and think, rest or give feedback. From the moment we start moving around in my house every morning, I’m plying kids out of bed, approving outfits, issuing reminders, instructing breakfast-making, packing lunches, and handling a hundred other details that have to fall into place for me to consider it a successful morning. If we all make it into the car on time and no one is in tears, it’s a successful morning.

Exhaustion is not a status symbol

This fabulous interview from the Washington Post with University of Houston professor Brené Brown, author of Daring Greatly, is filed under corporate leadership, but I read it as a parent. Because running a family is a business. It’s a tough business and no one has perfected it. Why? Because, perfection is the wrong mission. Improvement, self-satisfaction, vulnerability, goal-setting and achievement: these are the things that make a leader better. And they are also the things that make a family better.

The expectations of what we can get done, and how well we can do it, are beyond human scale. And because there’s always this readily available technology and you can get your emails all night long, there’s no stopping and celebrating or acknowledging the accomplishment of anything.

– Dr. Brené Brown

Driving a kid to the brink of tears over the morning routine isn’t exactly a goal of mine. I’m just trying to get them to take responsibility for their own stuff. And, I don’t want to be late to work. Some days, kids, like employees, just need more time. They need to slow down and think about what they are doing – both right and wrong — and take time to play. Yes, Brown is talking about “play” in an article about business. Driving yourself to the brink of insanity via exhaustion is not doing anything for your self-worth and we risk losing sight of what we really love and want. Take time to rest, reflect and celebrate.

But long weekends, sick days at home and holiday breaks often leave me feeling anxious. According to Brown, I’m not alone:

A lot of people told me that when they put their work away and when they try to be still and be with family, sometimes they feel like they’re coming out of their skins. They’re thinking of everything they’re not doing, and they’re not used to that pace.

A 2E kid already lives in a world like Brown describes above: “..like they’re coming out of their skins.”  If I’ve learned anything about Alex in the last few months since his diagnosis as a 2E learner, it’s that I have to keep an eye on the small stuff. Not to pick him apart, but for every small victory. Twice-exceptional kids challenged with ADHD are like opposing magnets. The two will never make a connection. If Alex makes it to the car and only forgets his violin, that’s worth the two seconds it takes to remind him how awesome he is. No matter how exhausted I am.

I’ll see your marshmallow and raise you two forward flip half turns

Last night’s dinner conversation:

Alex: What’s your greatest fear?

Sis: That I won’t be able to live my dreams.

Little Bro: That a monster comes out from under the bed and stabs you.

Alex: Mine is that I won’t be successful in my life.

I’ll take credit – or blame – for instilling these thoughts in each of their heads. Here’s the difference between them. Alex’s sister knows exactly what she wants to do, so the “live my dreams” is a specific, known goal. Little Bro lives in six-year-old monster-fighting land just hoping to emerge victorious. Alex, while he still spends a fair measure of time in monster-fighting land, has an evolving concept of his future with a fuzzy outline of what it means to “be” something.

For a time, that something was a lawyer. Or an engineer. Once he suggested it would be fun to be a cab driver. Now, he’s starting to get a real taste of failure, and he hates it. But the bigger question is, can he overcome it?

Paul Tough’s How Children Succeed walks straight through the minefield of education principles and assumptions. Standardized testing, IQs and other rigid doctrines of how kids are taught, evaluated, disciplined and eventually turned out into the world are flawed predictors of success. How many times have you heard, or uttered, about a flunky family member or friend, “He’s just so smart, why can’t he get his life together?”

If the word “marshmallows” means anything to you in this regard, you are probably an educator. Tough’s premise argues that a set of character traits, some of which can be taught, determines if a child can weather through challenges to obtain a desired reward. Sometimes, those challenges can be extreme boredom, busy work with no clear benefit, laborious work with reward that doesn’t come for a very long time…aka delayed gratification. You know some of these as grit, persistence, conscientiousness.

I like Tough’s own description of the book from this Washington Post Q&A:

The book is about two things: first, an emerging body of research that shows the importance of so-called non-cognitive skills in children’s success; and second, a new set of experimental interventions that are trying to use that research to help improve outcomes for children, especially children growing up in disadvantage.

I’m forced to rethink my motivational strategies with Alex and the other two, which consists of frequent, but small, desired rewards for compliance. The ability to push through an unpleasant task and endure a delayed reward (again: Marshmallows) is one of the most difficult for Alex.

But remember: Tough levies the proposition these things can be taught. I want to levy the idea that kids will find their own path if you just let them venture off the trail.

Last night Alex went to his second parkour class. This is a somewhat obscure, demanding physical sport that attracts kids who like weirdness. And, I have to say, the nicest group of young men I have ever met. They welcomed Alex with out a hitch and before I knew it, Alex was launching from a springboard and doing a forward flip with a half-twist and landing into a foam-filled pit.

And high-fiving the others every time, as if the crash were its own reward.

2013: The Year of Accountability

Every year on New Year’s I write a letter to the kids. It started in Jan 2000 just before Alex was born. I recap the family news, good and bad. I describe our successes and our failures and mention the most important social and political events. I assess our vision for the future. I describe each child’s personal struggles, growth and accomplishments.

This isn’t like one of those nauseating holiday letters that people send out to self-congratulate. Nothing is sugar coated. I’ve covered the tragedies. People we love have died. I’ve been laid off from four jobs. Our family was devastated by divorce. Some years the letters reflect my own despair and a clinging hope; some years are a more wishful glance at the future.

In other words, these aren’t really letters meant for the children. It’s a solid marker of where I am in my struggle to raise them well. And it’s not always a pretty picture.

Recapping 2012 for Alex was a particularly difficult task to do this New Years. I wanted to highlight the positive, diminish the emotional blows of heading into teenhood while subsequently slipping down a slope at an almost irrecoverable pace. Alex had a tough year. It’s been bad before, like the year I had to tell him that his father and I were splitting up. But never before did the perfect storm accumulate in Alex’s atmosphere. Looking back on it I feel like the air has left the room.

A few weeks into the new year, Alex’s world has already collapsed, inflated, deflated and caught its breath once more as he regains his footing. Accountability is the most recurrent word in my household now. Consequence is a close second. I was caught off guard in 2012 at how quickly age 12 turned into young adulthood and that Alex is faced daily with choices, situations, and information that I didn’t have to handle until I was well into my teens. I’m stunned at how much he thinks he knows, and how incorrectly he knows it.

It feels like a betrayal to unload so much on a kid. You all know what I’m talking about. Mass murder of children in their own classrooms. Drugs. Rape. Incoherent violence. Sex ed isn’t about sex anymore, it’s about how not to violate another human being.

Maybe, next year, I’ll ask Alex to write a letter. To his future self. I’d expect something like this:

Dear me of the future, can you remember at all what it was like to be a kid?
I’m 13 now, and I think those days are over…  

Ah, Truth, How You Vex Me!

I’ve often wondered what motivates kids to lie when they stand to get a) caught and b) in a lot more trouble for lying than for whatever they did that was worth lying about.

There’s the typical “Yes, mom, I washed my hands/brushed my teeth/changed my underwear”” class of lies. There’s the “I didn’t break it!” class of lies which are quickly undone by younger siblings fired up to deflect the blame. We’ve had our share of these and my standard answer is “If you are lying to me, I guarantee I will find out and you’ll be in a lot more trouble than if you just told the truth.”

That’s served me well until recently, when Alex developed a seriously good poker face. Alex’s pattern of dishonesty was benign until middle school began. That’s when the grades went down the slope at an alarming pace, and he mysteriously had no homework. Ever.

After 3 weeks on Vyvanse and one dosage upping Alex answered my daily quizzing on its effect with “No difference except that I can’t eat.” Indeed his weight has dropped alarmingly and he barely eats half a sandwich for lunch. I’d been encouraged to stick it through the fear of malnutrition for the greater good. But if there was really “no difference?” I was perplexed.

A chance meeting with his Chemistry teacher changed everything. “Night and day difference,” she said, “He’s not only doing well in his own work, he’s helping other students.” She went on to describe her own son’s experience with Vyvanse and how it was life changing.

It was good news, for certain, but unsettling. Really, Alex can’t detect the difference? Why not? It’s not subtle–it’s tremendous. Two of his classes – previously failing — are now passing grades. He still has a long way to go in several others, but there is significant progress.

Worst of all, I feel like I missed opportunities to encourage him and bestow praise. And I can’t see past the poker face.

The Biology of Simple

Locker Before

I just read this and felt kind of sick inside.

It’s a biological fact: the ADHD brain needs simplicity.

If there is anything Alex’s world is NOT, it’s simple. Chaotic, complex, undone, yes.

Simple? Never. Not once.

And it makes me feel queasy because just taking on one thing, like cleaning out his locker, turns into an hours-long ordeal, with multiple starts and re-starts, and Mom having to remove herself from the room at least once. Ending with “okay, we’ll finish up tomorrow,” and a martini (for me, not Alex).

The day before Thanksgiving break I brought Alex a large box to empty the entire contents of his locker.

Locker After

It was completely stuffed. Over the holiday we sorted through it all. He never throws anything away so the first pile was “Stuff I don’t really need.” This was the largest pile. Like his pockets, the locker was mostly a collection of stuff with perceived value and purpose, that really just clutter up his space. I had to dispense with a lot of it when he wasn’t looking.

In the end, after about a total of 4 hours and a trip to Staples the next day, we had whittled it down to fit neatly into 6 notebooks, one for each class, and handful of supplies that he absolutely needed to carry to each class.

I know that this actually was the simple part. Keeping it that way is the ultimate challenge for Alex. But right now, it feels like we made a little progress and it was worth it for him to feel he had some control over the chaos.