I Think I’m Doing Really Well.
The end of the year is always a bit crazy for Dylan. I don’t know how or why, and I certainly have tried everything humanly possible to change it, but Dylan is always behind in his school work.
He described his perception of school a few weeks ago in a way that made real sense to my non-ADHD mind. I thought it was very astute.
I am paraphrasing, of course, but Dylan said he had finally figured out the real problem. He described school work like this:
I sit down in class and they hand me a paper, so I start working. Then about halfway through finishing that paper, they hand me two more papers. I look up and everybody else is on their phone because they’re already done with the first paper. So now I have three papers, so I try to get some of the new papers done, even though I’m not done with the first one.
I work and work and I think I’m doing really well, until the bell rings and I realize that everybody else is done and I haven’t finished any of the three papers. So I shove them all into my binder to finish later, and I go to my next class.
In my next class, I suddenly remember that I didn’t finish the paper from yesterday, so I pull it out and try to finish it really quick before class starts. But then class starts and the teacher asks for the homework, which I also forgot, so I get a zero on the homework, even though I’m trying to finish it, and before I can even get yesterday’s classwork done, I get three more pages of work. So I start doing that, too.
And that’s how it goes all day, every day. By the time I’m caught up with all the work from yesterday, today’s class is over and I have all of that work left to do, plus homework. And if I have a quiz, I can’t finish the quiz in time and I have to go back at lunchtime and finish it. And that’s not even counting all the big projects. So I think I’m just really slow.
After all these years, this description is the first one that really made sense to me. Dylan admitted that it was hard for him to keep up.
Knowing one’s limitations is more than half the battle.
Hopefully, someday, knowing the problem will translate into his own search for a solution.
Personally, I am exhausted from offering so many, many solutions. But I really, really feel for him.