I have a friend whose son is much like Dylan. He’s 17 now, and doing well.
The biggest difference in our parenting styles, I think, is that Randy’s parents go a step farther than I went with Dylan. I think about this often, when I think that I’m going too far in doing things for Dylan, instead of allowing him to do things for himself.
They wake him up for school, for example. How will Randy learn to get himself out of bed in college if his parents wake him up for high school? Dylan has an alarm, and he uses it – or he misses school.
Randy’s parents make his breakfast, lunch and dinner – every day. Dylan regularly makes his own lunch for school, and has been learning to cook since he was 10. For Easter, he made a pie for the family. Possibly more importantly, he knows how to make scrambled eggs with cheese for breakfast – high in protein, and loaded with choline for his brain. Dylan knows about food, because we’ve taught him. Randy eats almost nothing because nutrition is forced upon him, rather than taught to him.
Dylan may not turn in his homework, and he may not do it – but it is Dylan not doing the work. Randy’s parents sit with him to work on his homework. Still. At age 17. I can remember Randy’s mom saying they once did his homework for him, because he was too tired to do it and they didn’t want it to be turned in late.
And they stay up all night studying with him, whenever he needs that extra help in the wee hours of the morning. This is great practice, I guess, for the all-nighters in college. And Randy has been accepted to college – which, I’m sure, is partly thanks to his parents’ over-indulgence in Randy’s work.
But what is Randy going to do when he gets to college? Who is going to get him through those tough assignments when he can’t focus? Who is going to make sure he’s up in the morning and ready for class? Who will feed and clothe him? How will he learn to do these things for himself at age 18?
Sometimes I think I’m a great parent.
Many years ago, I had one yellow paper clip. In the midst of all the common silver clips, the yellow one was special.
Having been a secretary during my pre-mom years, I know that colored paper clips cost more than regular paper clips. But I liked their relatively thick texture, and how they made my paper bundles seem just a bit brighter. Even though I didn’t want to waste the money to buy them, I loved colored paper clips. So I used the yellow one as often as I could – and only if I was sure I’d get it back.
Even as a very young child, Shane noticed this.
One day, as I was going through his preschool papers with him, he said, “I have something else.” He dug around in his pocket. “My teacher said I could give this to you.”
Shane pulled out a colored paper clip. “Thank you!” I beamed, because I now had two colored paper clips.
A few years went by, and I collected a few more colored paper clips. Sometimes they would be related to my work. Sometimes Shane would bring one home for me.
Then, last year, Shane bought me a whole set of colored paper clips for Christmas. I couldn’t have been any happier if he’d bought me a car.
So today I was putting together some paperwork for an upcoming vacation, and I noticed that I had a colored paper clip on all eight sections of the travel itinerary. (The fact that I have eight sections tells a different story entirely.)
And while I didn’t say anything to Shane about it, I sure did think about him – his chubby little preschool hands reaching into his pocket for the paper clip he’d specifically requested as a gift for me. I thought about him wandering around alone in Target at age 10, and seeing those brightly colored clips on a shelf – thrilling to find that they were within his budgetary reach.
Mostly I thought about how he pays attention to what people like and, when deciding on a gift, considers what they might really want.
And while I’d love to take credit for instilling in him this wonderful quality, I have to admit: he was just born that way.
So now I can learn from him – again.
Our summer started with Dylan getting sick. We went camping anyway, and when we got home, Shane got sick. So our first two weeks of “vacation” were quite restful – and not much fun.
One night at 4 a.m., early in his illness, Shane woke me out of a dead sleep.
“Mom?” he said in the darkness. “I have a few issues.”
(The poor child remembers when he was a toddler, and he’d wake me from a sound sleep. I used to leap out of bed screeching, “WHAT?! Why did you wake me up?!” I was a terrible night nurse for a few years. Now, though, I am a bit more balanced and mature.)
“What are your issues?” I asked, sitting up and reaching for his hand as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. He sat next to me on the bed.
“Well, I haven’t been able to sleep since 2:00. Maybe I got a little sleep but I don’t know and it’s been two hours. And my throat is still scratchy but the worst part is that my heart is beating like this.”
Shane tapped a really fast beat on my leg. Really fast.
I put my hand on his heart which was, indeed, pounding very rapidly.
“Okay,” I said. “Take a deep, slow breath.” He did. “Now do it again.” He did it again. His heart slowed a bit, so I had a feeling that it was mostly psychological.
“You’re better at this than Daddy,” Shane said. “I woke him up at 2:00 and told him about my heart. I asked him if he thought I would be all right and he said, ‘yeah.’ And then he went back to sleep.”
I felt proud. My night nurse behavior had improved.
I gave Shane some medicine, then walked him back to his room. Having lived through a few panic attacks myself, I knew how to slow that heart back into a regular rhythm.
“Just close your eyes,” I said as he climbed back into his own bed. “I don’t want you to think about anything. Just be aware of your body and breathe.”
I stroked his face and his hair, and he relaxed. I admired his beautiful little face. I thought, He’ll be in college soon enough, and we won’t have these moments anymore.
Then I realized: He’ll be in middle school in three months, and we won’t have these moments anymore.
After half an hour, I kissed his forehead and told him to come and find me again if he needed me.
“Okay,” Shane whispered.
Then I went back to my room and spent another hour trying to get myself back to sleep.
Before Dylan went to private school, he was bullied mercilessly by a classmate. We’ll call the bully “Andy.”
Andy and Dylan had gone to kindergarten together, and even had playdates when they were younger. Dylan went into the GT program for two years and the boys lost touch. Then, for whatever reason, Andy decided to unleash his wrath on Dylan on the very first day of middle school.
Dylan didn’t tell me until months – maybe years – later.
Andy knocked Dylan’s books out of his hands, or punched him in the stomach – hard – whenever he saw Dylan in the hallway. Andy tried to slam Dylan’s head into his locker – but Dylan pulled the pin on the locker, causing the metal to slam backwards and hit Andy in the head instead.
I thought this was brilliant.
“I saw Andy doing it to other kids,” Dylan told me later, “so I figured out how to make it backfire when he tried it with me.”
We never reported these things to the school or to Andy’s parents because Dylan begged me to stay quiet.
Later I learned that Andy had been in plenty of trouble without any reporting from Dylan. So I figured it was fine that we’d kept quiet, although I felt odd seeing Andy’s parents around town and saying nothing.
Then I ran into Andy’s mom this summer, and we started talking about middle school.
She told me, “The people at the school were driving me crazy. They were calling me at work all the time! They called me because Andy threw gum at somebody. C’mon! You’re going to call me at work because Andy threw gum?”
I almost said nothing.
Then she said, “If you’re going to call me at work, at least call me for something that’s actually dangerous.”
Dangerous, I thought.
“Well, Andy slammed Dylan’s head in a locker,” I said. “And he knocked Dylan’s books out of his hands, and punched him in the stomach a few times.”
Andy’s mom didn’t even blink at these accusations. “Well, I didn’t even know about that!” she said.
“I didn’t either,” I said. “I didn’t find out about it until way later.”
And we kept right on talking, like moms sometimes do, as if nothing had ever happened.
But a great burden had been lifted from me.
Andy’s mom never apologized for her son’s behavior. In fact, I don’t think it even registered. She has no idea that her son was the class bully, that he abused so many kids.
She’s in complete denial – and I probably would be, too.
Dylan had a run-in with Andy after he went to private school. He tried to intimidate Dylan and Dylan just laughed.
“He’s just embarrassing himself,” Dylan told me later. “And that’s just how it’s going to be from now on.”
I’m not sure Dylan realized that Andy’s power had diminished not because Andy is less powerful, but because Dylan now has the power he needs to ignore Andy.
So I’m not worried about Dylan’s future, and I can face the past with a clearer conscience.
The power of a bully comes from suffering in silence. And Dylan’s bullying is not a secret anymore.
At least I told her, I think.
Whether or not she ever knows.
Shane won tickets to a Taylor Swift concert eight months ago.
Taylor Swift – who has, at minimum, nine huge pop hits – had two shows scheduled in D.C. “Which show are we going to?” we asked the radio station staff, who gave us the tickets.
“I think you’re going to the July 13th show,” she said, as I signed for them. Then the morning radio show ended and Shane got his picture taken with the disc jockeys, right in their studio! It was awesome.
We spent the following months planning for the concert. Taylor Swift is no small deal. First, Shane had to choose someone to take with him, because he only won two tickets. That was a six-month process – but in the end, he chose me. (I still feel flattered.)
Then we spent more than a month counting the days to Taylor Swift. The show was on Monday, July 13. We planned all of our summer activities around it. We knew we’d be out late – so we planned nothing for the next day, so everyone could sleep late. Bill had a meeting after work, so we also got someone to watch Dylan (thanks, Mom and Dad). We made sure we had plenty of time during the day to do absolutely nothing.
And finally the big day arrived: Monday, July 13.
I spent all day studying on the internet so we would have a safe and pleasant trip. We were taking the subway to the event, and had to plan to return on the subway with the other 44,809 people who would be riding the subway after the concert.
I made my plan. I took a five-minute nap. I forced the kids to do all of their chores before we left. I made peanut butter sandwiches and shoved them in our raincoat pockets. We took Dylan over to my parents’ house at 5:30, and raced out.
We had a fight with the subway fare machine, which ate my money. We got help from the guy who sits in the little bubble at the station, and finally got our fare cards loaded with appropriate fares. Then, finally, we started riding toward Washington, D.C.
Shane said, “Do you have the tickets?” He was kidding, of course, because we have had eight months to prepare, and I am the most prepared person on the face of the earth.
I said, “Yeah, do you want to take a look at them, and see what section our seats are in?” We’d done this, too, on the computer, on an interactive seating chart. We knew exactly where our seats were.
Shane said, “okay,” and I pulled out the tickets. Shane looked at them – something I have done ten times already, once that morning, even.
He said, “Oh look. The ticket says Tuesday, July 14.”
I thought he was kidding.
But no, he was not kidding. Taylor Swift had two shows – and we were on our way to the wrong one. After all those months of planning, it had never occurred to me to double check the date.
And we sure didn’t need to ride public transportation on Monday for a concert on Tuesday.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s get off at the next stop!”
We had only traveled a few miles. We got off the subway, and walked to a nearby mall. We triple-checked the date on the tickets over dinner at the food court.
And then we went home.
The Taylor Swift concert the next day was, of course, spectacular.
I’d been asleep for less than an hour when, for some unknown reason, I popped up out of my bed to check on Dylan.
Some little voice in my head was just screaming, Go see what he’s doing!
So I headed down the hall, for whatever reason, and stood outside of his room. Something didn’t seem right, but it was pitch black and I had no idea what was out of place. I couldn’t tell if he was asleep or awake or even there.
So I turned on the hall light. And sure enough, there was this huge mound in the middle of the bed – not like a sleeping boy. I walked in and tossed the covers off of him. He tossed the covers back on quickly and I heard a familiar THUNK! – the sound of something hitting the floor.
He tried to hide it, but sure enough, the kid with the electronics limit of two hours per day was using electronics – at 1:00 in the morning.
“What are you doing?”
“Huh?” he said, as if he didn’t hear me.
“What was that?” As if I didn’t know.
“It was my iPad,” he said, hanging his head.
And then we talked for a long time about self-control and discipline – a conversation that was likely useless, since it took place in the middle of the night. And then I spent another hour tossing and turning, trying to get back to sleep.
And now we’re back to square one, where I can’t trust him again. Where he is hiding things from me. After all these weeks – two months! – of impeccable behavior, I now have to guess whether or not he is doing what he says he’s doing, being where he says he will be, and acting in a trustworthy manner.
I know, full well, that this is the way of teenagers. That they have to break free of their parents and move forth with their lives. I know that sometimes that means lying and doing other things that they won’t do as adults, just to prove that they can.
But I am tired of being the heavy-handed disciplinarian, the “only” Mom who limits electronic usage to “only” two hours a day – and the “only” one who forces her children to put away the screens at 10 p.m.
My question is this: why did I even get out of bed?
During Shane’s first day of middle school orientation, he and a dozen or so other children gathered together in a classroom.
The teacher – who has been doing this every summer for at least three years, and possibly 30 – said, “Raise your hand if you know anyone else in this room.”
Hands went up everywhere. Even though kids come to this middle school from five different elementary schools, everyone knew someone.
“Now keep your hand up if you know two or more people,” said the teacher. Some hands went down; Shane’s hand stayed up.
Shane had friends from both of his elementary schools, and knew two girls from church.
“Three or more?” said the teacher. Some hands went down; some stayed up. This went on for a few more moments, until the teacher got to eight. Shane’s hand stayed high in the air.
Then, in what was probably a foretelling moment for Shane’s middle school career, the teacher completely overlooked Shane and said, “All right, so everyone’s hand went down after eight.”
Then he moved on to something else.
And Shane – who is all about numbers, and accuracy, and who really did know more people than anyone else in the room – quietly put his hand down, and said nothing.
When he told me this story in the car, I said, “So did you say, ‘Hey, I still had my hand up!’?”
“No,” Shane said.
I sighed quietly to myself. “So who were all the people you knew?”
Shane rattled off a list of names. He was so excited to finally be able to tell someone all 10 names.
We drove home – him, none the wiser that he doesn’t have to remain invisible. And me, knowing that he will anyway.
After a few weeks on L-Tyrosine, Dylan started taking something called “Focus Factor.” I found it at Costco while browsing in the vitamin aisle, and told Dylan to take that as a supplement, too.
I never gave it a second thought.
Then summer came. I looked at the ingredients. The vast majority were in the Vitamin B category – 750% of the daily recommended dosage of B6, and 333% of the daily recommended dosage of B12 – along with 250% Vitamin C. Some other stuff is thrown in – Vitamin A, iron, manganese – but not to such an extreme level.
I’m not a fan of “extreme levels” when it comes to vitamins. In fact, I decided that Dylan didn’t need to take this vitamin at all over the summer.
So one day, he didn’t take it. He still took his L-Tyrosine, of course, because it was so important.
Within hours, Dylan was on my last nerve.
He was boisterous, rambunctious, spinny and bouncy. He was loud and seemed unable to stay quiet. When I asked him to do something, he forgot. Then he forgot again.
At one point, I looked at him and he was completely spaced out. I’d just been explaining how to pack his suitcase for a weekend trip we were taking.
“Did you hear me, Dylan?”
“What?” he stammered. “Yeah, yeah, I heard you!” And then he halfway repeated what I’d said.
Ten minutes later, I heard him yelling at Shane: “You’re not supposed to put your clothes in a suitcase!”
And yet, Shane was supposed to put his clothes in a suitcase. At precisely the time Dylan had spaced out, when he said he’d heard me, he simply hadn’t been focused at all.
It wasn’t until almost dinnertime when I remembered that he hadn’t taken the Focus Factor.
I re-studied the ingredients. Tons of Vitamin B and some Vitamin C, too.
I take Vitamin B, I thought. It’s supposed to help with irritability. So I got a Vitamin B Complex tablet and gave it to Dylan.
“What’s this?” he said, still reeling from whatever random joke he’d just screeched at his brother.
“Vitamin B,” I said. “Just take it.” And he did.
I looked up foods high in Vitamin B12: shellfish (particularly clams and crabs), liver and soy. Dylan gave up seafood awhile ago, when he got hermit crabs as pets. We limit soy to once a week because of the cancer link. And no one ever eats liver.
Bran cereal is loaded with B12, but Dylan hates cereal. There is a bit of B12 in eggs (an ADHD-kid’s best friend!) and cheese. Beef is also very high in B12 – and Dylan devours beef.
I looked up foods high in B6, too: sunflower seeds, pistachio nuts, fish, poultry – a bit in beef and pork. I made Dylan a cheeseburger for dinner.
But it didn’t do any good. Dylan was still very unfocused, unable to control his own impulses, and incapable of the responsible behavior I’d seen for nearly two months.
I’ve no idea if this was a fluke or not, but the next day, he went right back to taking both vitamins. Someday soon, when I get really brave, we’ll see what he’s like on just the Focus Factor and no L-Tyrosine.
But not today.
My husband is a bit deaf. So a month ago, when the dryer started making a high-pitched squealing sound, Bill couldn’t hear it.
Then Shane came downstairs one evening and said, “Mom, there’s a really loud screeching sound coming from the laundry room and I don’t know what it is.”
I raced upstairs. The sound I’d heard earlier was substantially louder, like the wail of a dying walrus.
I calmly told Shane, “The good news is, Daddy will be able to hear it now!” Then I bellowed, “Oh Bill! You should probably hear this!”
I “helped” Bill by pointing at the dryer. “Do we need a new one?” I asked.
He was already pulling it away from the wall, seeking the source of the sound. “Maybe,” he said. “It’s awfully dusty behind there. Has it always been this hot?”
“What do you mean?”
“Put your hand here,” he said, laying his hand on the top of the dryer. So I did – and nearly scorched my palm.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t usually touch that part.”
“Huh,” Bill said. I figured my work was done, and left.
A few minutes later, I saw Bill going upstairs with the shop vac – normally reserved for basement flooding and gravel spills in the kitchen.
Wow, I thought. He must be cleaning up, for when the repairman comes.
The shop vac ran for 15 minutes. There was some clanging and a whir, some kind of electric tool. The shop vac ran for another 10 minutes. Eventually, Bill came back downstairs.
“Go up and tell me if you still hear the noise,” he said. As I mentioned, he’s a bit deaf.
I went upstairs. The dryer wasn’t making a noise. In fact, it sounded like it did when it was new. There wasn’t even a remote hum.
I put my hand on top, in the place that had seared my flesh. The dryer was cool. I checked other places. The dryer was cool all over.
I couldn’t believe it.
“You FIXED it,” I said to Bill. “What on earth did you do?”
“Oh, I just took it apart and cleaned out the lint. You wouldn’t believe how much lint I found. And I took the back off, you know, where the engine is? I cleaned out around there. And I made sure the area around the main bearings was clear, too. And then I just put it back together.”
“You fixed it!” I said, still awestruck. “I thought we needed a new one!”
“That was the next step,” he said. “I’m just glad you told me about it before the house caught on fire.”
And then I remembered my age-old worry that our dryer would catch fire, which is the reason I always clean every single scrap of lint from our filter.
Apparently, that’s not enough.
Dryer fires are one of the top ten causes of house fires. And no wonder! That thing was hot, the engine was caked in lint, and other than the almost-ignored squeal, we had no idea what was happening.
[Click here to save your own house from burning down.]
Bill may not be very organized. Like Dylan, he has an absolute inability to sit still or stay on one track for very long. And he forgets a lot of stuff – like what time the kids’ concert is, and to take pants on vacation.
But who cares?
The man saved our lives!
Of course, a few days later, the sound started up again – quietly. “Probably a bearing,” Bill said.
So we bought a new dryer anyway.
I went to see the movie, Inside Out. While it is billed as a movie for children, adults will have far more appreciation for its message and especially its subtleties. My kids didn’t much care about it. But after I saw it, I spent hours reflecting.
Looking back on my life now, knowing myself as I finally do, it’s easy to see what drove me as a youngster. I was driven by the desire to be happy.
ALL. The. Time.
I am not generally ecstatic. I’m rarely truly unhappy, either. I was born in sort of a melancholy state. I don’t know if it was nature or nurture. And now, quite honestly, it doesn’t matter why I was the way I was.
Because I’m still that way.
And until Shane was born – and came out of the womb also in a melancholy state – I thought there was something wrong with me.
So I decided at a very young age to change, and to be happy.
ALL. The. Time.
Unfortunately for me, I searched outside of myself for things to make me happy. I enjoyed swimming pools, riding bikes, and dogs. I lived in a northern climate, so swimming and bike riding wasn’t always an option – although I have very happy memories of both. Mostly, I just loved dogs. We didn’t get one until I was 12.
I also liked to read. After we got a dog, I took the dog for long walks and then went home and read books. I especially liked books about dogs – but the dog nearly always died at the end. Dogs don’t have long lives, even in books.
And I loved music. I especially liked sad, moaning pop songs about losing the love of my life. I had many loves, none of whom knew I existed, and I had a song for all of them. I rarely danced to music – just wallowed in it.
In my twenties, I drank enough alcohol trying to be “happy” that it put me into a decade-long depression. So I learned to look elsewhere.
Examining my quest for happiness more closely, I see now that what actually makes me happy is embracing the sadness I spent a lifetime trying to ignore.
In other words, I know now that it is okay to be myself.
I learned that when Shane was five, and I found him playing alone at recess. He was quiet, but he was perfectly content, playing in the dirt under an empty basketball hoop.
“Why don’t you go play with the other kids?” I asked him – for the second time that week.
“Why?” he said.
And it hit me like a brick in the head. Shane is happy. He’s just not jumping and running and laughing. He’s never run from his own sadness – just experienced it, and moved on. And that’s why he is, so far, content in his own skin.
I learned the same lesson six years later, when I watched Inside Out.
Maybe no one else will understand why it was such a powerful movie for me. But maybe, just maybe, it doesn’t matter if anyone else understands.
