I admit it freely: I have a dark past.
While I have a happy, glorious, ridiculously wonderful life now, my adolescence caused great angst in my immediate family, and it lasted for years longer than it should have. I continuously made poor decisions from the time I turned 15 until at least the age of 25.
In my earliest years, I was a mouse. I rarely, if ever, spoke at school before the age of 10 – which is when I also began to be bullied mercilessly by a girl who never explained her cruelty. I suppose I was an easy target.
The bullying went on for three straight years. During this time, I never made a sound in my own defense, got straight A’s, and obeyed the teachers and the rules without fail.
But I was a bit too sensitive. By 7th grade, I was somewhat of a basket case. When a random snowball hit me one wintry day, I assumed it was meant for me. I cried for a week.
We moved twice during my 8th grade year, and my shyness wasn’t helping me get through puberty. I was lonely and sad and way too sensitive for middle school.
So in 9th grade, I decided that rule-following hadn’t won me any friends, and went into full rebellion mode. My parents were great role models, so I decided to do anything they didn’t want me to do. I went from A’s to F’s in less than a year.
By the time I went off to college (having gathered my senses enough to graduate from high school with honors), my parents must have been thrilled to have me out of the house.
In college, I was such a trouble-maker that the dean called me into her office regularly. I was on “social probation” more often than not, and I was frequently blamed for things I actually didn’t do. Such was my sterling collegiate reputation.
So when I think back on myself as a youth, I don’t see myself in a kindly and forgiving way. Until I heard that one line in The Judge movie, I didn’t know how harsh I’d been to myself.
I thought of myself as a monster.
And my behavior then makes Dylan’s behavior now look like pixie pranks.
Dylan is sweet and sensitive and kind. He has a heart as expansive as Montana. He is trusting and caring and beautiful from the inside out. Plus, he’s brilliant and funny and wildly interesting.
I was all of those things, too.
And then I got bullied, and hit by the snowball, and moved out of my comfort zone one too many times.
So, in an attempt to avoid future pain, I turned myself into “a monster.” This decision didn’t actually keep me from future pain, and actually created more pain, so I do not recommend this path!
But I was afraid that Dylan would head that way, too. I was so afraid, I forgot to notice all that good stuff that’s still in him.
And suddenly, thank you, God, and whoever wrote The Judge script, I can stop judging Dylan as harshly as I’ve judged myself.
And maybe, for awhile, I’ll remember not to see myself like that, either.
SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t seen the movie, The Judge (in theaters now!) – and you want to – skip this blog post. I can’t tell my relevant parenting story without spoiling the movie – so don’t read on! unless you are okay with knowing all about the movie.
(I can’t believe I just asked my six loyal readers not to read the blog today.)
I went to see The Judge on Friday, all by myself. I took the day off, or so I thought, from the stresses of parenting. I got my bucket of popcorn at noon and plopped myself down in the dark front row.
The movie was about an old man and his grown son, who had unresolved relationship issues. The son had been headstrong and run a bit wild in his youth. The dad was a small town judge who took his job very seriously. Judge/dad raised his son with severe punishments for youthful indiscretions, and the son fiercely resented those punishments.
Near the end of the movie, there was a telling statement by the father/judge. The judge was discussing a horrific criminal he’d seen in his courtroom, a murderer with no conscience. And the judge said to his son, “When I looked at you, I saw him.”
When he looked at his teenaged son, he saw the murderer.
Upon hearing these words in the theater, I burst into tears.
Suddenly I realized that that’s what I was doing to Dylan. I have been looking at Dylan, with his “wild” ways – his bouncing around the classroom and forgetting his lunchbox and dragging his brother around on the trampoline – and I’ve been seeing someone else entirely.
Someone not entirely real, I thought.
I looked at my baby boy, doing those things, and saw a horrific criminal. A horrific criminal. A murderer with no conscience.
In my fear that someday Dylan would become such a monster, I had been treating Dylan like that monster.
I cried through the rest of the movie. It’s a good movie, not a great one, but that one line spoke so loudly to me that I was barely able to watch the rest of it. I could hardly function on the way home.
“When I looked at you, I saw him.”
And after the movie was over, it was nearly an hour before I made an even more startling realization.
The monster I thought Dylan would become … that monster was not a random, fictional character in a movie. That monster was not a murderer without a conscience.
The monster I really believed Dylan would become … was me.
I can remember parents of teenagers telling me that they felt like chauffeurs, so I vowed to cut down on activities and make sure we had plenty of family time.
But so far, with the private school 45 minutes away, this is ridiculous.
On Wednesday, I played softball with my dad. Playing softball is one of the very few things I do for myself, rather than for the kids, and I am not willing to give it up. So my dad took Shane to breakfast and then took him to school, so we could meet at the field after I dropped off Dylan.
But there was a major accident on the highway, which closed down traffic in both directions for a large chunk of the morning. I was caught in the traffic, shuffled off the highway, and made my way through the back roads and got to Dylan’s school only 20 minutes late.
I stopped at home to let out the dog, shove a piece of peanut butter bread into my face, and race to the softball field barely in time for the game. We played (yay!), then I got back in the car to drive BACK to Dylan’s school because Wednesday was, randomly, a half-day at Dylan’s school.
When I got home, I dropped off Dylan, took a shower, ate my lunch (at 3:00) and raced back out the door to get Shane.
I picked up Shane at school, took him home, gave him a snack, then drove him to church. On my way out the door, I yelled to Dylan to feed himself before we had to leave (in 45 minutes) to go back to the same church.
I got stuck in rush hour traffic both ways – so I got home from dropping off Shane, picked up Dylan, and drove back to the church. I picked up Shane from the church, left Dylan there for two hours, then drove back home.
That’s when I started thanking God that I have a husband who was on his way home from work, and would pick up Dylan at church.
Which he did. Thanks, God. Oh, and thanks, Bill!
Sigh.
On Thursday, I got up and did it all again – with the added bonus of having Shane’s friend’s mom taking care of Shane while I got Dylan after cross country practice – and then drove an additional 16.82 miles – and back! – to a birthday celebration for the boys’ half-brother.
So when my dad showed up this morning – miraculously and unexpectedly – to drive Dylan to school, I almost wept with joy.
Thanks, God!
Oh, and thanks, Dad.
“Mom,” Dylan groaned. “I have something to tell you.”
We had just been sitting down to discuss his plans for staying organized in school.
“Yes, Dylan?” I said.
“This school is really hard. Like three of my friends are failing, so it’s not just me. Is there any way I can go back to my old school?”
“No,” I said. “You are staying at this school for the full year. And it’s not the school. You went through this same thing last year at your old school.”
“But everything is so different,” Dylan said. “They expect me to remember stuff like four days after I learn it. It’s really hard.”
A friend had just reminded me, earlier that day, that it is Dylan’s choice, not mine, how his life will proceed – and that he is responsible for his own choices and behaviors.
I owe my thoughtful response – and everything that followed thereafter – to that friend. Even one day prior, I might have started jumping through hoops to fix all the external stimuli so that Dylan’s world would be easier.
But instead, I thought, he has to do this himself.
“It is hard,” I told him. “Maybe you’ve reached the point where you can’t just get by on your intelligence. You’ve been doing that for a lot of years. There comes a point in everyone’s life when they hit a wall. And maybe you’ve reached that point. You can keep ramming into the wall and complaining that it’s hard, or you can choose to do the work that you need to do to succeed.”
“I am doing the work,” he grumbled.
“You are doing some work,” I told him. “But I know you can do more. You are brilliant, and it’s not your ADHD that’s making you fail. It is your choice – and you are welcome to keep failing. It’s your life. But if you want to succeed, maybe now is the time to starting opening books at home and studying before you take a test, so that you can remember what you’ve been taught.”
I used his algebra homework as an example. “Remember when we found the chapter in your algebra book for your homework, and there was a bunch of crap for four pages, and then there were the exercises?”
“Yeah,” Dylan said.
“That crap between the chapter title and the exercises is the stuff you study!”
“I know how to study,” he said.
“I know you do. You’ve studied more in your life than I ever did. Even when you were really little, you only wanted to read nonfiction books because you wanted to learn about things. You’ve been studying Lamborghinis for three years. You just need to study other things, too.”
I swear, I saw a light bulb go on above Dylan’s head. It had a halo effect, and I saw my angel so clearly underneath its light.
That night, he got out his social studies classwork, and studied for a quiz. The next night, he did all of his homework with no complaints, and then did extra (not-yet-due) homework later that evening.
The following morning, he came downstairs early for school. That afternoon, he did homework in the car. He did more homework when he got home. And after he pounded out his third homework assignment, he went upstairs to create digital music for an hour or so.
He stepped up.
I am afraid to be hopeful, but I can’t help myself. I’ve always known he could do it – and now he’s doing it.
He’s doing it!
The boys said, “Let’s go to the park!” And so we did.
On the way out the door, Shane said he was hungry. “Can I have a mint?”
A mint didn’t seem like a sufficient snack when we were about to walk a couple of miles. And I thought we could all benefit from a small snack.
“Why don’t you get a granola bar and split it?” I suggested.
“Okay,” he said. He got a granola bar, split it in half, and gave half to Dylan, which was gone before the boys walked out the door. Shane took a huge bite out of his half and almost nothing was left.
“What about me?” I said, still a bit hungry.
“I didn’t know you wanted any,” Shane said, pulling off a few crumbling chunks and trying to give them to me.
And this is when I discovered my quandary. My baby was hungry, and he needed that granola bar. But I was hungry, too.
Worse than my hunger was the feeling that I had been forgotten. Overlooked. Neglected. Like I wasn’t worthy, in my son’s eyes, of getting a piece of the granola bar.
I certainly wasn’t starving, and I could stand to lose a few pounds anyway. And if hunger were the issue, any reasonable, rational person would have gone back into the house and gotten another granola bar to eat, or split again.
But I wasn’t feeling rational. I was feeling neglected.
So instead of getting another bar, I stormed away with the dog in tow, walking 15 feet ahead of the kids all the way to the park, grumbling the whole time.
“It’s like I don’t even count,” I said. “I spend all day, every day, making sure that you’re happy and fed, but when you get a granola bar to split, it never even occurs to you to give me a piece!”
Shane apologized at least eight times, but it didn’t help. I didn’t yell, but I certainly wasn’t a pleasant walking companion.
When we got to the park, I sent the kids to the playground and took a solitary walk through the fields without them. I stopped to watch some softball, which helped me to separate from my anger and see it in better perspective.
By the time we got home, Shane was holding my hand and we were almost joking about it.
But these are the moments that keep me awake at night, feeling guilty – when I let my emotions get the best of me, and take out my personal issues on my innocent children.
So as I was tucking in Shane I asked, “Have you forgiven me for the granola bar incident?”
“Have you forgiven me?” he asked without hesitation.
I hugged him. “Of course I have,” I said. “And I’m so sorry for my behavior. It wasn’t your fault; I was just feeling sad.” I kissed his head. “And I will always forgive you.”
Dylan is taking Algebra I again.
After a month of pre-algebra, he told me about his 8th grade math quiz:
. -7 x 5 =
“Are you serious?” I asked him. “Was that really one of the questions?”
“Yup,” he said, being his usual enthusiastic teenage self.
I went home and asked Shane, who just started 5th grade. “Hey Shane, what’s -7 x 5?”
“We haven’t done negatives yet,” he told me. Shane is very concerned with sequential order and rule following.
“I know you haven’t done negatives yet, but what do you think would be the answer?”
“Negative 35?” he guessed.
“That’s right!” I said, thrilled for my 5th grader and mortified for my 8th grader.
So after a lengthy meeting and a lot of juggling, we managed to do two things:
- put Dylan back into Algebra I, where he belongs; and
- save Dylan’s guitar class, which he wanted to keep above all else.
Dylan lost two periods of art, one period of P.E. and a period of drama – but he will be learning Algebra I in only four classes per week. On Tuesdays, he will play guitar instead.
Now that is something the public schools wouldn’t do! But wow, he lost art, P.E. and drama.
To make up for all the losses, he “gets to” take Physics. There is simply no other option in the entire school available for him, unless he wants to take Algebra I and pre-algebra simultaneously.
“That would be death,” Dylan said about the option of back-to-back math classes.
So, Physics it is!
If he does well in Physics, and passes Algebra I, he will have two high school credits. If he doesn’t do well in Physics, he can “audit” the course – so it wouldn’t count against him on his transcript. (I think he’s going to do just fine.)
Meanwhile, and completely unsurprisingly, Dylan loses focus at the end of the day. His last two periods – English and Spanish – are suffering considerably. Or, I should say, his English and Spanish teachers are suffering. They have emailed me to let me know that Dylan is unfocused and disruptive in class.
Hah! I thought. Dylan? Disruptive? He hasn’t been disruptive since preschool!
But yes, indeed, Dylan is being disruptive. Now that he’s in private school, where they are not so strict about staying in a seat, Dylan is up and around and probably singing and dancing. He is not staying focused.
He is also not on medication. And he is tired at the end of a long school day.
So, our only attempt at changing this behavior – besides a long talk with Dylan – is that Dylan goes to school with a big bottle of iced tea to drink before English class. It’s caffeinated, so we figure it’s the junior version of what my husband does to stay focused. My husband lives on coffee – so maybe iced tea will work for Dylan.
And maybe it won’t.
Shane and I were driving home from the library one fine Sunday, windows down, sun shining, enjoying the breeze. Suddenly a motorcycle with two passengers roared past me on the left, swerving barely in time to avoid being hit by oncoming traffic.
The motorcyclist thrust up his middle finger and roared on.
Huh, I thought, he must not like the Steelers. I have a huge Steelers football magnet on the back of my minivan.
We drove several miles, and came to a light behind the very same motorcycle. The driver glared into his rearview mirror. Then he gave me the finger again.
Oblivious, I thought, maybe he’s just talking to the woman on the back of the bike. Some people gesture a lot when they talk.
The road was two lanes now, and I was inching past him to get to another stoplight when he gave me the finger for a third time.
This time, I was sure that finger was meant for me. I had no idea what it was about, but I felt sure that I should be standing up for myself. So I shrugged and, since I already had my arm out the window, I gave him the finger right back.
So he snapped.
He marched his motorcycle up between the two lanes of traffic so that he could bellow right into the driver’s side window.
“You f*@$in’ f*%@!” he screamed at me. “You f*%$in knew that I was f*#$in passin’ you and you f*%$in sped up, you f*%$in a%$*hole!”
“Really?” I asked, incredulous. “That’s what you think?” I was dumbfounded.
The woman on the back of the motorcycle was saying, “shhhh…” and trying to cover his mouth. He nearly bit her.
“You’re f*#$in right, you f@*#in f@&^!”
“Let’s just go!” the woman pleaded.
Cars honked behind us. The man revved the gas and roared away, having said his piece.
Shane was in the back seat. “That was interesting language,” he said.
As a mom, I try to plan for every eventuality. I am learning, every day, that one can never plan for any eventuality.
I drove very calmly for another three miles. I didn’t want Shane to be afraid, so I didn’t even let my voice waver.
“Some people just don’t have any other way to express their anger,” I told him. “Anger comes from fear, and he was afraid that I was trying to kill him with my car.”
But I also wanted to make sure Shane knew that I could handle the unwarranted attack. I wondered what I should have said, besides “really?” I was calm, but didn’t really get my point across.
Then as luck would have it, at another light, I pulled up right next to the motorcycle.
If it hadn’t been for Shane, I would have likely slunk away without another word. But the boy needed a positive role model.
“Hey,” I yelled at them.
The driver stared straight ahead. The woman in the back said, “Yeah?”
“I honestly never saw you,” I told her.
“Oh, that’s okay,” she assured me. “We aren’t wearing bright colors or anything.”
“I mean, I wasn’t paying any attention to you,” I said. “I was just driving.”
“I know,” she said. “He just thought you did it on purpose.” She patted her man like he was a trained monkey.
I aimed my next comment at him, and said it loud. “Not everyone is out to get you.”
“He just didn’t know,” she said, still patting him. “I’m sorry.”
She probably spends most of her life cleaning up after this man’s idiocy.
“My 10-year-old didn’t appreciate the language,” I told her.
She looked in the back of the minivan for the first time. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry, Honey,” she said to Shane.
Then the light changed, and we went our separate ways.
My baby has gone camping. So he’s just grown past 5′ 9″ tall, and I needed him to put the cereal on the top shelf yesterday. He’s still my baby. And I miss him.
The school has a two-day camping excursion where they stay in yurts, eat who-knows-what and commune with nature. I keep checking the schedule to see what he’s doing now.
As I write, he is on the climbing tower. He will love the climbing tower.
He will actually love everything. Except, possibly, the exceptionally rustic restrooms. But he’ll forget all about those, since he’ll be so busy hiking, climbing, playing and bonding with the other kids.
After a month of school, he really hasn’t made any close friends at his new school. I’m hoping this will give him an opportunity to get to know them better, and to realize that they are all, like him, just struggling to fit in.
Before he left, we had a talk about the cell phone. We allowed him to take it with him – even though it is strictly forbidden until times of rest – so that he could send us a text at the end of the day, letting us know all is well.
(Last year, we all went to China. Dylan was traveling with his chorus, and Shane, Bill and I were on the family bus. So I actually pre-wrote several short sentences for Dylan, already cut and stored in a baggie, so that he could just slip me a note and let me know how he was doing. In 10 days, I only got one note. I think it said, “I’m okay” and I got it on Day 2 of the trip.)
So while I’m not actually expecting to hear from him, Bill and I also told him to limit his outgoing texts to family and friends from his current school. I had this vision of the boys sitting around in their yurt, wanting to text the girls – and not having the right number for Dylan’s favorite girl because I didn’t let him take his cell phone.
So now he has his cell phone. And his sleeping bag, and his toothbrush and some soap and deodorant and other necessities that he will likely ignore for the next two days. And he has his iPod, which he adores and will probably lose.
But he has everything he needs. And I keep reminding myself that he is in the company of plenty of great kids, being chaperoned by lots of adults, and he is probably having a fantastic time.
I am the one, sitting at home, agonizing.
How am I expected to survive when he goes off to college?
I am beginning to believe that the curse of all school is, in actuality, just one simple thing: algebra.
Dylan has been in advanced math for years. Until middle school, though, he was in “levels” – which are all now defunct with the new national curriculum.
As an explanatory side note, Shane is coming through school with an entirely different attitude toward math. He, too, is in an advanced math class (which they purposefully invented in our county, thanks to loud parents with smart kids) but, thanks to the new curriculum, is learning it in an entirely different way.
Meanwhile, Dylan is still living under the old curriculum – which means that he skated along in math until he got to algebra, and then crashed, with a thud, into a wall. This wall also negated the mathematics careers of 58 of his classmates, who also took algebra in 7th grade and need to repeat it.
So Algebra I is essential for moving on to, gosh, Algebra II – right after he finishes Geometry. But in Dylan’s private school, which we essentially put him in to save him what seemed to be imminent self-implosion, taking Algebra I is reserved for only those who are willing to give up P.E., art, drama and instrumental music.
Dylan lives for P.E. and music. Music and movement are primary reasons why he loves his new school. He also loves drama. But the only time Algebra I is taught at Dylan’s school is during the “arts period” for 8th grade.
So Dylan chose to take pre-algebra this year, and take Algebra I again in 9th grade. But he didn’t count on doing 5th grade math in his 8th grade class. He is so bored.
The only option, they told me two weeks ago, is to lose those arts classes and take physics.
PHYSICS?!?
That’s what the other 8th graders in Algebra I are taking, along with their regular 8th grade science class.
How could that possibly be good?
So I’ve emailed the teacher, the person in charge of his special ed plan, the scheduling coordinator, the headmaster and the admissions counselor. I told them all that this is simply unacceptable. I tried to be nice about it, but I am not sure I was as nice as I should have been. I am too frustrated to be nice.
I’ve volunteered for Dylan to drop out of Spanish, take an online course, have a tutor after school or take algebra
I am tired of fighting for Dylan not to take algebra, then to take algebra, then to have algebra again. The way it stands, if nothing is done, he will basically be taking three years of algebra, his least favorite class in the world. Then he’ll have one year of Geometry, and hop right into Algebra II, which promises to be equally awful.
So, after one month of school, and in what I thought would be a school that – for a change – didn’t require fighting, I am on my way in to the school to see the headmaster and the scheduling coordinator to see if there is anything that can be done.
I am not hopeful. I think algebra is going to be the thing that, once and for all, breaks the spirit of my child and sends his engineering dreams into a tailspin.
We shall see.
Top 10 Things I Didn’t Consider Before Committing to a 45-Minute (four times a day) School Commute:
10. The news. Shortly after September 11, 2001, I stopped paying attention to the news. The angst was too much for me. Now, while searching for traffic reports, I often hear about turmoil, unrest, wars, murder, manslaughter, destruction and other horrors. The angst is back.
9. Commercials. Since there isn’t much to do during three hours of driving, I often resort to to scanning the radio. I search for songs – with very little success. Rush hour drive time is 90% talk and commercials. Yawn. I’d subscribe to XM, except I can’t afford it with my kid in private school.
8. Breakfast. Since we have such a long ride, Dylan eats breakfast in the car. He eats an egg sandwich almost every day. Shane, on the other hand, makes his own breakfast at home, so he eats a bowl of cereal every day. “Variety” is no longer on the menu for breakfast.
7. Traffic back-ups. Because I take back roads and go against traffic, I somehow believed I would be immune to rush-hour back-ups. In two days, I missed incidents that happened within minutes after I passed – so I now know I’m not immune. I also drove around a back-road back-up that cost me 20 minutes one morning. Thankfully, my dad was taking Shane to school that day, or he would have been late.
6. Other drivers. I was almost crushed by a box truck behind me (with loud squealing brakes). Half an hour later, an obviously blind woman pulled out directly in front of me. This doesn’t count the number of people I’ve seen texting while driving, including other moms – some of whom I know personally! This terrifies me above all else.
5. Gas. I used to fill up the tank once a week, maybe every 10 days. Now I am always in need of gas. Those 15-mile trips (60 a day) really add up – and I hadn’t budgeted the time or the money to cover it.
4. Dead animals. The number of dead animals I have seen in the last three weeks is absolutely astounding. In addition to the typical dead squirrels, groundhogs and raccoons, I have seen two baby deer, a cat and a kitten in the past week. I’m a sensitive soul, and seeing this breaks my heart.
3. Bathroom breaks. I don’t even get out of the car when I get to Dylan’s school, whether I have been drinking my morning soda or my tons-o-water in the afternoon. So I am always wishing I were home, and vaguely considering any porta potty I see along the route.
2. Time with Dylan. While Dylan and I have 90 minutes of time, per day, to spend together in the car, there are times when it’s tough to sit there together. Sometimes it is really fun – truly – but other times, we argue over having the windows down or turning on the radio or the post-school text-your-friend debacle. Exhaustion (see #5) seems to be a key factor.
1. Time with Shane. Last year, I had an hour a day to play with my baby before school started. This year, I am lucky to have 15-20 minutes each morning to spend with Shane. Next year, that “baby” will be in middle school and he will go to school much earlier in the day. I’m wasting his last year of elementary school driving in very large circles.
I am tired of driving in circles.
