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.
Dear Performing Arts Teacher,
What you did to my son is just plain mean. You are supposed to be teaching him, helping him to grow, giving him a love of performing arts – and all you did was squash his interest in something he adored when he started the year with you.
You are a tyrant. You demand things from children and young adults that are totally unrealistic. You demand hour upon hour of rehearsal for even the smallest scene. Perhaps this was the way you were taught – and indeed, we all know that rehearsals have a solid and important purpose to improve performances. But your methods for teaching such an important rule are ancient and cruel.
My son has ADHD. He can’t sit and focus the way you want him to. He can’t bow down to your screams for silence and stillness while the same scene unfolds over and over and over again. He was incredibly bored in your classroom, and learned more on his own at lunchtime than he did from you. He has immeasurable talent and he will not learn from being forced to sit still.
You have no understanding of ADHD. So you had the audacity to team up my son with two other students with ADHD – and then to demean and demote them all when they couldn’t perform independently and by your rules. You had no patience, no tolerance, and certainly no caring. And no one on earth should teach without those three invaluable qualities.
You shouldn’t be teaching at all. Luckily, your class only meets twice a week and you teach at a school so small, you really don’t count for much in this world. You are old enough to retire, though, and you should – or go elsewhere, where they are seeking someone to militarize rehearsals and demand greatness from all performers. Perhaps you should try Broadway. I hear they are looking for you. Meanwhile, now that I have written this – even though I have no intention of sending it – I will rest easier, knowing I have said my piece.
Mom
Many weeks after Dylan finished his year at private school, his report card arrived.
Dylan got 7 B’s, an A (in P.E.) and a C (in Spanish). For his high school transcript, which will eventually be sent to colleges, he has some hard-earned B’s in Algebra I and Physics.
When Dylan saw it, he could hardly contain his excitement or his disbelief: “I got a B average?!” In public school, this would have put him on the honor roll – again.
And he did it without the aid of any medication (except vitamins and amino acids). He pulled himself up – out of a deeply dug pit – with only two months to go, and brought up all of his grades – including what was a D in Physics and an F in Algebra I.
Not bad for a kid with raging ADHD who was, at one point, a major behavior problem!
The comments that come with Dylan’s report card are always interesting. We had two big surprises from the teachers this time.
First, and what kept me awake at night after we got the report card, was Dylan’s drama and music teacher. While he had all A’s and high B’s for three trimesters, she clubbed him in the knees and gave him a B for the year.
As usual, this comes from a teacher who has no patience for, or understanding of someone as bouncy as Dylan. By the end of the year, in spite of Dylan’s extreme talent in both music and drama, Dylan’s teacher simply couldn’t stand to be around him. (We know this because, during the last week of school, she sent Dylan to the office for beat-boxing only five minutes after someone else threw and smashed an apple against the wall and got only a minor warning.)
So when Dylan was paired with two other ADHD-diagnosed boys for the performance of one final Shakespearan scene, the teacher nearly lost her mind.
“Although he learned his lines, he would not rehearse the scene with his peers as needed. Unfortunately, that resulted in a lackluster final performance. He is very talented, but effective dramatic performances are developed through rehearsals.”
In other words, he knew what he was doing, but wouldn’t do it her way. Her seething came through loud and clear. She gave him a C on Shakespeare – and he thereby earned a B for the year.
But it was his 8th grade English teacher’s comments that shocked me most of all. Dylan had serious trouble turning in his work in English. It was last period – a deadly time for Dylan – and focusing was all but impossible. We’d had many meetings, and the teacher had not said a single nice word about Dylan all year.
So the English teacher’s final comments spoke volumes:
“Dylan has so much potential. His academic success is so dependent on his investment. He’s smart, talented and insightful.”
And that about sums it up.
One weekend, with Bill out of town and weeks before I started taking my daily amino acid, I woke up in the middle of the night.
Dylan had gone to bed with a fever, so I decided to check on him. First, I turned on the hall light and went into Shane’s room. Shane was completely sideways on his bed, so I straightened and covered him up.
Then the doorbell rang.
AT 3:45 IN THE MORNING.
Our dog awoke and started barking ferociously. Dylan – whose fever had miraculously vanished – bounded out of his bed, wide-eyed and asking, “What’s going on?”
I panicked. I was home alone with two kids. And I knew there wasn’t a Jehovah’s Witness on our porch.
I raced into Dylan’s room and peered through the curtains. A renter lives in our basement, but there were no cars in her driveway. There were no cars ANYwhere. And I didn’t see anyone on the porch, or the yard, or … anywhere. I was too scared to believe it was a prank.
I grabbed a phone, and pulled Dylan into the dark room at the end of the hall – the “bonus” room, which is pitch black but has lots of windows. I didn’t want to wake up Shane, so we hid there. I peeked into the blackness again. I saw no one.
But I knew someone was out there. And I wasn’t going to wait around for that person to come in and start shooting. My heart pounding, I called 9-1-1.
It rang and rang. A “hold” message came on.
Really? I’m on HOLD?!? I pictured the intruder strolling right into the house, heading up the stairs while the hold message repeated. After maybe three minutes, someone answered.
“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”
“Somebody just rang our doorbell and I can’t see anyone. My husband’s not home and I’m alone with two kids.”
“What’s the address, please?”
After the technical stuff, the operator said, “We’ll send someone over to check it out.”
Still huddled in the dark, Dylan said, “Do you want me to get Shane?”
Oh WOW. How did I leave my baby out there alone? And how could I send my other baby to get him?
“I’ll get Shane,” I said. “Take the phone. If I’m not back in 5 minutes, call 9-1-1 again.”
Then … I heard voices downstairs.
It took a minute to register: the voices emanated from our answering machine. The ringer was turned off, but the phone was lighting up in Dylan’s hands.
“Is somebody calling us?”
“It says, ‘Bill cell,'” Dylan answered.
“Answer it!” I shrieked. Bill was calling?! In the middle of the night? Dylan couldn’t figure out how to answer the phone in the dark. I grabbed it, and my husband spoke from a hundred miles away.
“Our renter’s locked herself out,” he said. “Can you let her in?”
Ah…. The proverbial light bulb appeared over my head.
I raced downstairs to let in our renter, who’d rung the doorbell so long ago.
I called 9-1-1 to cancel the posse.
Dylan and Shane – who’d been awake and terrified the entire time – came downstairs to see what had happened. We all laughed like idiots – even though it wasn’t very funny – to break the tension.
Eventually, we all went to bed. Dylan was still sick, and couldn’t get back to sleep without some water and a spoonful of honey. Shane got some water, too, then got into my bed and slept with me.
I didn’t get to sleep for a long, long time.
Dylan – my ADHD-afflicted parenting challenge – is a singer.
When I say that Dylan sings, I mean he always sings. In second grade, one particularly permissive teacher said, “The only time I ever have a problem with him is when his singing gets too loud.”
“He sings during class?” I asked, knowing he sings at home constantly.
“Sure, all the time,” she said. “But I don’t mind unless it distracts the other students.”
So we’ve always known Dylan was musical. He got a starring role in the second grade musical. He started taking voice lessons in third grade. He performed solo at church and school talent shows and county fairs. He auditioned for the prestigious Children’s Chorus of Washington and went directly into the top tier – meaning he sang in some world famous venues, including six in China. He also performed O Mio Babbino Caro to a standing ovation at school.
One night, during a particularly high note of Panis Angelicus at church on Christmas Eve, Dylan’s voice cracked. Once.
It was starting to change. And that’s when Dylan determined that his singing career was over. He hopped on YouTube and learned to play piano. He took guitar class at school. He created digital music for awhile.
After two years of hiatus, Dylan took his guitar to audition for the high school choral director – who also teaches guitar class. Dylan said if he couldn’t sing, he would at least audition for Guitar 2.
But he could still sing.
The choral director was quite excited, hearing Dylan sing, and selected him for the traditionally upperclassmen’s Chamber Choir. Then he suggested that Dylan take a few lessons over the summer, to get reacquainted with his new, lower voice.
So we scoured the earth and found a voice coach we liked. Later, we learned that this voice coach – whose own singing voice has the power of a locomotive – is a Peabody graduate with 40 years of musical experience. This man is one of the most impressive musical talents I’ve ever met.
After Dylan’s first lesson, the new voice coach said that Dylan had “perfect pitch” – a term I’ve yet to understand. Apparently it is unusual. Then the coach said that most people with perfect pitch don’t have Dylan’s talent for singing.
“I’m really looking forward to working with you,” he said on our way out. “And I don’t say that about everybody.”
After his third lesson, the voice coach asked Dylan to sing a few operatic-style lines for me.
It was astounding. Dylan’s new, lower voice had a strength and power that I’d never heard come from Dylan before. My little boy sounded like a full-grown man, with an absolutely incredible range – nearly two full octaves of awesome perfect-pitch power.
When the voice coach looked at me, I had tears in my eyes.
He said, “Yeah. All the way to a B flat. You won’t find many 14-year-olds who can do that. In my 40 years of teaching music, I can tell you that it is very, very rare.”
I see Dylan every day, struggling with school work, homework, remembering simple things like shoes and a lunchbox. I know that everyone is given their unique set of challenges and gifts.
And sometimes, it is nice to just sit back and be awestruck by the gifts.
The family went camping this weekend – urban camping, I call it, with a chlorinated pool and not many hiking trails. Within the first hour, Shane and I went to a playground – a great one, with a fast slide, plenty of swings and a real merry-go-round.
“That’s not a real merry-go-round,” Shane told me. “Real ones have horses.”
“No,” I assured him. “Real ones are made of wood and you have to hang on tight while I push you!”
There aren’t any merry-go-rounds without horses in our area, so Shane had never seen one. And since I’d driven to Pennsylvania when Dylan was young, just to push him on a real merry-go-round, it had been a very long time since I’d pushed one, as well. Pushing a merry-go-round is utterly exhausting.
Anyway, while we were there, a girl who looked to be about Shane’s age, maybe slightly older, popped out of her camper and walked quickly down the hill to the playground. I noticed that while she walked, she never took her eyes off of Shane. Then she sat on a swing and stared at him. When she caught me looking at her, she halfway smiled and averted her eyes.
That girl is checking out my baby! I thought. Being female myself – and the kind who always admired her conquests from afar – I recognized the behavior immediately.
Shane was utterly oblivious.
Later, in the pool, I told him what had happened.
“I’m not sure if you’re old enough to understand this,” I said. “But when we were at the playground, there was a girl who came rushing out of her camper as soon as we got there. She was really looking at you. She sat on the swings and just stared. Do you know what I mean?”
“I guess,” he said.
“I think she thought you were really cute,” I said. “You are really cute, of course. And she was kind of checking you out.”
There was a long pause. I wasn’t sure if he understood the ramifications of what had happened. Maybe he had questions about why a girl would do this, or wondered about crushes. Maybe he’s shy himself, and has done this sort of thing before. Maybe he’s just overwhelmed by the whole boy-girl thing.
The silence seemed to last forever. I could almost see his brain processing the information. Finally, Shane spoke.
“Was she hot?”
I didn’t expect to get through Shane’s elementary school graduation without sobbing.
After all, I cried through the entire thing when Dylan graduated. My baby is going to middle school! I thought, worried sick that the three years ahead of him were going to be brutal. And they were.
But at Shane’s graduation, I felt almost upbeat. (Yes, I am still taking my amino acid.)
My baby is finally leaving elementary school! I thought. Instead of worrying about the upcoming three years for Shane, I recognized that this is an opportunity for him. He gets to choose some of his classes now. He’ll have seven different teachers, and he’ll be exposed to all the different teacher personalities. He’ll be able to sit where he wants to sit at lunchtime, instead of at an assigned table.
After school, he has the opportunity to play a variety of intramural sports: softball, baseball, basketball, football, even ultimate frisbee. If he’s not feeling up to sports, he can be in the school play, drum in the jazz band, help the school recycle on Green Team, write or take pictures for the school newspaper, or be on the Morning Show.
I guess it helps, having watched one son go through the process already. There are good points about public middle school.
It also helps that, since Shane is my youngest child, I am stepping out of my PTA role. I tried to join the middle school PTA before, but it was a lot of debate and discussion, without much else going on. There were many bake sales – and I don’t bake. I helped with the book fair, which I still intend to do. But for the most part, my PTA role is going to shrink.
When my kids were in elementary school, I did a lot. I helped with class parties. I coordinated movie night – including a school-wide poll and marketing campaign. I was the teacher appreciation person, and took in breakfast for staff every month for a year. I volunteered at book fairs, and spent hours xeroxing for teachers. I helped run the school talent show. I coordinated magic classes, sat through cultural assemblies, wrote letters for staff files, volunteered at holiday events and on field days. I chaperoned dozens of field trips. I wrote, designed and edited the school newsletter for two schools and eight years! I even designed the t-shirts for the school graduation.
I’m not even sure that’s everything.
I can’t count how many times people asked me to be PTA president – a job I would have hated beyond measure. I am a follower, first of all – not a leader. I hate PTA meetings. And I’m NOT even really a devoted PTA parent.
I’m actually quite selfish. Most of the things I did were just things I wanted for my own children – and no one else stepped up. I wrote the newsletter, for example, because I always got the dates for upcoming school events before anyone else did. It helped me to plan my own life.
So when I was watching – with awe and indelible pride – as Shane walked across the stage to receive his 5th grade diploma, my feelings of sadness were overwhelmed by a somewhat stronger emotion:
Relief.
Yes, my baby is leaving elementary school. And I am, too.
“So, Dylan, are you glad you went to private school this year?”
“Absolutely.”
“Why?” I asked. “I mean, what makes you glad you went there?”
“Everything.”
“But you complained about it all year: ‘Mom, can I please go back to my old school?’ You even went and sat in a geometry class, remember?”
“Yeah, but that was before I realized how good it was at private school.”
“So what is so good about private school?”
“Well, I do have a lot of freedom,” he said. “I can get up and walk around in class. And really I can do whatever I want, instead of just sitting there.”
“So you’re glad you went because you had more freedom.”
“No, I’m glad I went because now I know it’s not the school that was the problem. I mean, I just had a lot to learn and I’m glad I learned it.”
“So that’s why you’re glad you went to private school?”
“No,” he said. “I just used to care about a lot of stupid stuff that I don’t care about anymore. And I wouldn’t be who I am today if I hadn’t gone to private school. I think it just made me who I am.”
I had to pause, and think about this.
Because it is, truly, the sum of our experiences that make us who we are – and my 14-year-old knew it intuitively.
There are a few things I would have changed about our private school experience:
- I would have found out that Dylan couldn’t take sign language before we paid the tuition, rather than trusting the admissions officer.
- I would have budgeted for the extra $400/month in travel expenses.
- I would have figured out a way to spend more time with Shane – even if that meant taking him with me in the car.
- I would not have bothered to attend the homecoming festivities.
I wish I’d had enough forethought to visit the school before it closed for the summer – but it wasn’t until the year was over that we made the decision to move Dylan from public school.
I don’t regret the decision, or the absurd amount of money we spent. I’d spent Dylan’s entire life wondering if he needed a special school to meet his special needs. And now I know that – NO – he doesn’t need a “special” school.
In fact, he mostly just needs to socialize and learn to find his way in the world – just like every other young person.
