The third quarter grades are in.
If left, essentially, to his own devices, these are the grades Dylan gets.
Dylan has an A in P.E. He got 100% on absolutely everything. Dylan loves P.E. and needs constant movement, so this makes sense.
His other six classes are loaded with classwork grades of 90-100%. In all of his classes, he was capable of getting A’s. He has the potential to get A’s.
But he didn’t do that. For one thing, he chose to ignore his homework. In Spanish, he has an A – except that he is missing seven homework assignments. Even though homework only counts for 10% of his grade, the missing assignments brought down his grade to a B.
He had the exact same experience in Computer Science. His classwork and projects grades averaged 94.4%. But he was missing two assignments. So he got a B in Computer Science.
He eeked out a very low B (80%) in English. His English teacher gave him every opportunity to do the work – and turn it in late, which Dylan did with nearly every assignment, including written assignments that were supposed to be done in class. Still, Dylan is missing one assignment completely. That, coupled with low grades on “reading checks” got him an 80% – barely a B.
In Biology, his teacher (surprise!) wouldn’t accept two assignments that she’d asked for repeatedly that he finally turned in – on the last day of the quarter. So Dylan got his first C this quarter.
It’s not his only C, though. In History, Dylan had five missing assignments, and he didn’t study for quizzes or tests. His grades reflect that – and he got another C in History.
Perhaps the saddest grade is from Geometry. Dylan now has a Geometry teacher he adores, and he expected to get an A in the class. And he got almost exclusively A’s during the quarter. Then, right before the quarter ended, he got a C on a quiz, and then failed a test, bringing his overall grade down to a B.
He was busy scrambling to catch up in his other classes, and just didn’t take the time to keep up with Geometry.
In fact, the absolute worst thing about the entire third quarter was watching Dylan helplessly during the last two weeks. He was desperately trying to dig himself out from under the pile of rubble that he created, but the pile was just too huge. He ignored his work for so long; there was no way to do it all.
So he has one A, two C’s and four B’s.
A lot of parents would be thrilled with these grades for an unmedicated child with ADHD. And maybe I should be thrilled.
But I want Dylan to have his choice of colleges. I want him to get in everywhere he wants to go, even if that’s an unrealistic goal. I want him to be able to choose his future. I want him to enjoy – not just college but his work, and his life.
And no matter what job he has, even if he is somehow catapulted to super-stardom, Dylan is going to have responsibility. He’s going to have to show up on time. He’s going to have to meet deadlines. He’s going to have to turn in his work on time, whatever his work may be.
And he just hasn’t learned how to do that yet.
I don’t care about the grades. I care about his future.
Today, Dylan got his braces off.
He looks stunning, like someone out of a magazine. He’s happy and smiling huge like he did when he was little. But now, his teeth are straighter and his smile is even more beautiful (if that’s possible) than it was then.
No one expected it to happen today – least of all me. Dylan did great with his braces, until he was in the final stretch. During the last few months, he was supposed to wear rubber bands.
Dylan didn’t wear his rubber bands faithfully. In fact, he almost never wore them. He would show up for his appointment and the orthodontist would say, “They look pretty good. Are you wearing the rubber bands?”
“Yeah,” Dylan would say. Simultaneously I would say, “No.”
So at every visit, the orthodontist would say, “You need to wear the rubber bands for longer every day, to make up for the time you didn’t wear them before.”
During the past month, he was supposed to wear the rubber bands for 12 hours a day, with an extra rubber band in the front, to make up for his not wearing rubber bands for four months.
And for the past month, every night, Dylan was supposed to put on his three rubber bands at 6:30 p.m. Invariably, I would remind him at 10 or 11 o’clock at night to put rubber bands in – and he would say, “Oh, I forgot.”
So it was a surprise to everyone when, today, the orthodontist said, “He’s 98% done. And since he’s obviously not going to wear the rubber bands, I think we’re going to take them off.”
And so, they’re off. And Dylan looks gorgeous.
And I can’t help but think, gee, my five months of nagging about rubber bands was utterly useless.
Today is the last day of the third quarter.
According to the online system, Dylan is still missing a ton of work. But he assures me that he has turned in most of it – or, at least, he thinks he turned in most of it.
“For some of it,” he says with genuine surprise, “I was just too late.”
He’s referring to assignments that were due months ago, that he’d like to turn in today, please.
On Wednesday, he came home with a ton of work to do for English. He had two major assignments that were still “zeros” in the grade book. Dylan spent more than an hour working on them, even after a five-hour play rehearsal. He was exhausted and finally – eventually – went to bed.
On Thursday, I emailed his teacher to make sure he got the assignments (finally) from Dylan. It was really overkill, I know, but Dylan really worked hard on those assignments.
At the end of the day, I got an email. “He had neither of the two assignments listed,” he said. “Dylan told me that he has done them, but that he didn’t turn them in.”
Immediately, I texted Dylan – who claimed everything was done, really, but he didn’t know how to turn in the assignments.
There is no logic in this. It just doesn’t make any sense.
There is nothing rational about being in a classroom for seven months, talking to the teacher after class nearly every day, and not knowing HOW to turn in work.
So Dylan came home with less than 12 hours to get those assignments turned in – two months overdue – and he went upstairs to his computer. Half an hour later I asked him what he was doing.
“I’m adding another paragraph, to make it really good,” he said.
Another half-hour went by. “Did you turn in your English yet?” I asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Let me check.”
Let me CHECK?!?
Ten minutes later: “What are you doing, Dylan?”
“I’m turning in my work. Apparently it didn’t go through the first time.”
Right. Okay.
Perhaps, Dylan actually did what he was supposed to do.
Perhaps he did not.
If he did, he may get a B in the class. If he didn’t, he will have a pretty solid D.
In spite of all my meddling and the substantial teacher assistance, there is nothing anyone else can do.
Dylan’s fate lies squarely with Dylan.
The quarter ends at the end of this week. This was the quarter where Dylan did everything for himself, and my job was to back off and say only positive things.
As we rounded the corner of the home stretch, I forgot my job.
I checked his grades. As usual, he has tons of 100%s and tons of zeros. He had a zero in Spanish – the class he’d just “fixed.” He also had eight zeros in history, five zeros in English, and six zeros in Computer Science, where he’d previously not missed a single assignment!
This usually averages out to “not college material.”
I started going off the deep end. I screamed at Dylan to fix everything over spring break. Quite honestly, he doesn’t know what is missing. I mean, he literally has no idea what the assignments described are.
How can he do the missing work if he doesn’t recognize the assignment?
This, in fact, is the crux of the issue. He always doesn’t know what it is – as if he slept through the class and couldn’t possibly be expected to know what they did.
Dylan doesn’t sleep through class. And he doesn’t do anything else during class (i.e., stare at his cell phone). Instead, his brain just shuts off.
Apparently.
He has two days left to make up everything. I am not holding my breath.
Dylan stayed after school one day to catch up on his Spanish work. After he was finished, I went to pick him up.
“Before today I had a 73%,” he said. “Guess what it is now?”
“72?” I asked.
“How could it be a 72 if it was 73 and I just went in there today?”
“I have no idea,” I told him. “You didn’t tell me anything.”
“It’s an 84,” Dylan said. “I did everything. There was one assignment that was only worth three points, and I even did that.”
“That’s great!” I said. “Did you talk to your history teacher?”
“No,” he said. “Today was kind of my Spanish day.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah. I go in there and I get all this work done and it’s always great when I finish,” he said. “And I think it would be so much easier if I would just do it right away when it’s due, instead of just sitting around and worrying about it.”
There was a pause as my jaw dropped to the floor.
“Don’t judge me,” he said quickly.
“B-b-but… I’ve been telling you this the whole time!” My voice started to squeak. “I don’t know why you don’t learn things when I say them to you.”
“I had to learn it the hard way,” Dylan said. “I learn everything the hard way. Haven’t you figured that out by now?”
Thanks to the Great Blizzard of ’16, the school has prolonged the third quarter of the school year. Thank God.
This quarter, both boys are having trouble keeping their grades up. They need the extra time to recover.
Shane hasn’t been able to bring up his science grade above a B since the first quarter. One morning, Shane came downstairs and announced that he had three upcoming tests – that day. One of them was in science.
“You didn’t study at all last night!” I said.
“I don’t have to study,” Shane said. “I already know everything there is to know.”
His is 12, after all.
And Shane was serious. And there wasn’t a thing I could do about it, because he was on his way out the door.
And his math grade is similarly screwy – sometimes dipping down into the C and D range. Shane re-takes a lot of math tests, because he makes simple math errors and doesn’t realize it.
“You should go over your answers at the end of the test, before you turn in your paper,” I advised. I mentioned it several times, explaining that he knew the math – just didn’t always pay close enough attention when he was doing simple calculations. (This is a problem that has always plagued me with math, too.)
Then Shane went and re-took a “D” math test at lunchtime.
“Did you go back over your answers this time?” I asked hopefully.
“No,” Shane said. “There were only four questions.”
“If there were only four questions, then it’s even more important. If you only miss one question, your grade drops to a C,” I told him. Then I droned on and on and on about the importance of going back over his work.
He probably didn’t hear one word I said.
I am not really all that helpful.
Shane – my sweet, angelic little Shane – was digging in a drawer for a piece of gum when I stopped him.
“It’s dinnertime,” I told him. Bill had just pulled into the garage, which means dinner is imminent.
“It’s not dinnertime,” Shane said.
“It is,” I repeated. “Daddy’s home, which means it is time for dinner. Pretty much, you should just reserve 5:00 to 7:00 for dinner.”
“Whatever,” he said. Then he went upstairs, gumless.
Seconds later, I heard a loud THWACK! followed by a BOOM! WHAM! WHACK!
It sounded like a heavily framed work of art – if we’d owned one – had fallen on the floor. I raced to the stairs.
“Shane!” I yelled. “What happened?”
He came out of his room.
“I was angered,” he said. He put two thumbs up and nearly smiled at me.
“Angered at what?”
“At my game,” he said. He’d been playing his allotted video game time, just before the gum incident.
“So you beat up your room?” I asked.
“Just the door,” Shane said. “I just hit it a few times. But it’s done now.”
And he walked away.
He had some anger. He harmlessly (thus far) released it on a door. And now he’s not angry anymore.
And it had nothing to do with my not allowing him to have gum.
I always learn from Shane.
Shane gets an allowance, gets paid for an occasional job, and sometimes gets money as a gift. Like most kids, he keeps his money in something akin to a piggy bank.
Shane knows exactly how much he has – because he enjoys counting it far more than he enjoys spending it.
One day, I decided (with his permission) to take a pile of money to the bank, to put it into his (already established) savings account. He said he had $500 to put into the bank.
When I got to the bank, though, there was an odd amount: $302. I put it into the bank, somewhat befuddled about Shane’s counting, and went home. Later that day, I asked Shane about it.
“I had $500 in that bag,” he told me.
“I thought you did,” I said. “But I gave the bank all the money that was in there. I counted it twice. And it was only $302.”
The money had been hanging haphazardly in a bag on his doorknob for a month. Before that, the bag was tossed about on the floor. So now $200 is missing. Gone. Kaput.
When you make $3 a week in allowance, and you don’t have a job, it takes a long time to earn $200.
But Shane lives in a slovenly fashion. Walking across the floor of his room is like navigating a mine field. I never know what I might break. When he cleans – and he does, occasionally, clean – he puts his books in piles. He puts his CDs in piles. He pushes his toys under the dresser. He has pieces of various magic tricks mixed in with toys, toiletries and writing utensils.
I’ve tried to help him with organization. I’ve helped him get organized with new shelves, bookcases, baskets, drawers and cubbies.
Nothing works.
About an hour after he realized the money was lost Shane said, “I think I’m over the losing of the money. I guess if God wanted me to lose that money, there must have been a reason for it.”
He may be slovenly, but he is wise beyond his years.
I got a call from the middle school.
“There are new vaccination requirements for all sixth graders,” said the automated voice of the school principal. “Please check with your doctor to be sure that your child has the necessary vaccinations.”
Unlike 99% of parents, I immediately emailed my doctor. They sent me back a note the next day, complete with Dylan’s and Shane’s records, and assuring me that Shane did, indeed, have the necessary vaccinations.
A week went by. I got another call.
“If you are receiving this message,” said the voice, “it means that your child does not have the necessary vaccinations to enter seventh grade.”
You have got to be kidding, I thought.
My kids are very fortunate. They have parents who care about them, a dad with a job and health insurance. We haven’t missed a check-up since we brought the first baby home from the hospital. The kids have gotten every single vaccination they needed since the day they were born. We even get them weighed and measured once a year, to be sure they are growing properly.
And we just finished their 2016 annual check-up.
So I called the school nurse.
“The last thing we have is from 2011,” said the nurse. “Shane got a flu mist at the school clinic.”
“Yes, he probably did,” I told her. “But what vaccine is he missing?”
“He needs a blah blah with a blah blah blah,” she said, speaking medical mumbo-jumbo.
I pulled up his records on my computer. All of their vaccination records were from prior to 2011. And I found the one she’d just “blah-blahed” about.
“He has that right here!” I said. “Can I just email this to you and you can tell me what’s missing?”
“Sure,” she said. She gave me her email address, which is not available on the school’s website. For some reason that I’ve yet to learn, nurses are exempt from being included on school websites.
I emailed the vaccination records, with the note from the doctor saying that both of my children were up-to-date with their vaccines.
“I don’t understand what could be missing,” I said. “Even the doctor says they are up-to-date. Please let me know ASAP what I can do.”
Then I waited. And waited.
Eventually, I got a note back: “Thank you! Shane’s immunization record is complete and updated.”
No explanation.
In other words, the school lost Shane’s original records, and needed a new copy.
So glad I could provide that for them.
A week or so after I played Diva Mom and tried to get the school to change the key of a song for Dylan’s sake – which, I maintain, is still a good idea – I realized what was really bothering me.
The technical director screamed at my son.
The man stood next to Dylan and shrieked at him: “SING! JUST SING!” He was loud and intimidating and burly and demanding.
And my barely-15-year-old had enough sense to tackle the issue calmly, like an adult: “I don’t feel comfortable singing in this key.”
Dylan knows something that I didn’t know at his age: how to maintain control while in the presence of a control freak.
The man obviously has serious control issues. And most kids with ADHD – I would guess – would either blow up at the control freak or self-destruct. Even without ADHD, maybe, most kids would blow up or self-destruct.
At Dylan’s age, I always chose to self-destruct.
But Dylan handled the situation like an adult. Like a mature adult, one who is able to stand his ground, stand up for himself, and not “attack back.” In other words, Dylan did something that I am rarely able to do myself, even at the ripe old age of half a century.
So I went to the band director and told him about the real issue, about the harshness of the technical director’s teaching methods. The band director suggested – directly to Dylan, who was standing next to me – that after the heat of the moment, he should talk to the technical director, and tell him that his teaching methods were not working for Dylan, that they frightened him more than encouraged him.
Dylan said he would do that.
I don’t know if I could, but Dylan might actually do it.
