After Dylan started buckling down on his homework, and started diligently trying to bring up his grades, he seemed to be having a little trouble with one subject.
Algebra.
This is Dylan’s second year taking Algebra I. He took it in 7th grade and struggled mightily. His teacher kept telling him (the kid with the ADHD) that if he would just “pay attention” he would know the answer to his question.
She didn’t answer his questions, such was her frustration. If Shane gets this teacher, I will petition madly to move him.
So we got a tutor, and paid him for months to get Dylan through Algebra I. He passed the requisite exam for graduation, but only got a C in the class – and was therefore required to take it again in 8th grade.
And now, after another full year of algebra, under practically private tuteledge with only 8 kids in his class, and mostly B’s and C’s on tests, Dylan said he was having trouble with Chapter 9.
“What are you studying?” I asked.
“We’re factoring the square roots of polynomials or something,” he said.
“So specifically, what are you having trouble with?” I asked – as if I remembered any algebra from high school.
“Well first,” he said, “what’s a polynomial?”
(sigh)
It occurs to me – again – that Dylan’s issues with school have nothing to do with his inability to control his behavior – and everything to do with his personal frustration with school and learning. ADHD makes every class into a major challenge – unless it’s hands-on learning (which none of them are).
So we’ve hired a new tutor for Dylan. He’s an engineer by trade, a relatively recent college grad who has only ever tutored his 15-year-old brother in math. The new tutor’s email just sounded like he’d be a good fit for Dylan – the way he talked about working with his brother.
Probably not completely coincidentally, we later learned that the tutor’s brother has Asperger’s Syndrome, which falls right there in the autism spectrum next to ADHD in the brain. Three sides of the same coin.
So Dylan is learning. And he’s trying to learn fast and well – and bring up those grades.
After already spending hours on algebra, he was in his bedroom working on problems after 9:00 at night. I went in and kissed him on the head, and started to walk out.
I stopped, and turned around.
“You’re doing this because you’re really a good kid, right?” I asked. “And not just because you want to go to King’s Dominion?”
“No,” he said, although he clearly meant “yes” – and then explained. “I mean, it’s a good incentive, but that’s not why I’m doing all this.”
I knew that.
But still, it was nice to hear Dylan say it.
Dylan wants to go on the class trip – with his old, public school – at the end of the year. With the loss of electronics, the lying, the grounding, the suspension… we still think he could go.
If he earns it.
We went to a play at the old school, which Dylan earned by getting all of his zero’s “erased” from his record – and bringing up his grades substantially. We thought he earned the right to see his friends in their production of Fiddler on the Roof, Jr.
During intermission, however, Dylan ran off with Shane and one of Shane’s friends to the basement of the school – which was off-limits to the public.
“I just wanted to show them the rooms down there. I didn’t know there was anything wrong with that,” Dylan whined, after we finally found them.
Later, Bill suggested that we needed to be more specific about the rules. I am not sure how this would have stopped Dylan from going to the basement, but he suggested that I make a chart for Dylan, so that he could visually evaluate his progress toward the goal of going on that end-of-year trip.
The chart includes everything from taking vitamins in the morning and going to bed before midnight, to having no zero’s or final grades of D or F on his school’s online system. He has to bring his grades up in 10 days and keep them up until the end of the year.
It’s amazing how much homework he suddenly has – and how much more he is doing.
Best of all, I put a disclaimer at the bottom of the chart, which says:
In addition to doing these things for yourself, doing anything that shows incredibly poor judgment for the safety of yourself and others will immediately take away ALL of your rights and privileges.
While this currently includes using electronics, it also includes lying, cheating, stealing, cutting, smoking, drinking alcohol, using drugs, breaking the law in any way, driving a car, bus or plane without a proper license, leaving home without permission, jumping off a cliff, diving out of a moving vehicle, touching or using a handgun or other deadly weapon, attacking, raping, molesting, abusing or murdering anyone, including yourself, or jumping out of a plane, off a bridge, off a cliff, or off the roof of any house or building.
Sad that we need to clarify, but this list is not all-inclusive and there are other things you could do that would be equally stupid that would cause you to lose your privileges. Suffice it to say, you know right from wrong. DON’T DO ANYTHING MORALLY WRONG – including anything STUPID, MEAN, RUDE, HARMFUL, HURTFUL OR ILLEGAL!
We have great hope that he will stay smart, be healthy, and follow the rules. He’s always been a good kid. But for teenagers, sometimes we have to be very specific in laying out the guidelines.
Once a year, our church scatters itself throughout the community, spreading goodness wherever we can. It’s not a promotional thing, since we don’t even mention where we’re from. We are told to “just give” and not entice people to our church.
The church provides materials for a variety of activities: a car wash, wiping windshields, collecting food for the homeless, cleaning up garbage, passing out flowers to people and dog treats to pets. We can choose to march in the annual parade, write letters to various people, do crafts and sing with nursing home residents, make crafts for local preschools or make goody bags for shelters.
It’s a big church.
Last year, Shane and I arrived late and we did the only thing left: handed out flowers in front of a grocery store. On our way to the store, Shane was very concerned about exactly how to give someone a flower.
He was, of course, the cutest flower boy ever.
Some people didn’t take a flower, but most were gracious and happy to get a flower.
One man almost cried. “Today is the anniversary of my wife’s death,” he said with tears in his eyes. “This means so much to me; thank you.”
It was a no-brainer what we would do this year. Shane wanted to hand out flowers. He also wanted to hand out dog biscuits, so we signed up for two shifts. Meanwhile, Bill and Dylan went to wash windshields – but their reception was underwhelming.
“We washed like ten windshields,” Dylan said, “in two hours!” Their customers didn’t believe it was a free service.
Meanwhile, Shane and I had similar issues. After the first few people rejected Shane’s offer of a carnation, Shane said, “Maybe I should say, ‘Would you like a free flower?'”
After he added the word “free,” a few people took flowers. But traffic was slow – so we went across the street to Starbucks. On such a nice morning, people were sitting at tables outside, and the place was hopping. We gave flowers to all five people outside.
But nearly everyone else rejected us.
Shane, his too-long hair in his eyes, walked right up to people with his arm outstretched. “Would you like a free flower?”
“Not right now,” some said.
“No thank you,” most said.
“Well at least they’re saying ‘no thank you’ and not just ‘no,'” Shane observed.
I’d estimate that two out of every three people said no. Some people offered us money – which, of course, we refused.
A woman who was sitting inside Starbucks saw how Shane was struggling to give away the flowers, and waved at me through the window. She wanted a flower! Shane went in – and I could see the woman reaching for her purse. I shook my head outside the window; Shane shook his head inside. She could hardly believe her good fortune – we gave her two free flowers. And all she did was ask.
She was Shane’s favorite customer.
Eventually, we gave away all the flowers. Those that took flowers were quite gracious and kind, and we were glad we’d done it.
But we had the same experience at the dog park. No one wanted free dog biscuits, either. It’s sad that we are so conditioned to feeling obligated that we can barely accept anything for free.
Not even simple human kindness.
I left Dylan alone in the house for 30 minutes while I went to pick up Shane at school. Our computers are password-protected and armed with tracking devices – so I was shocked to find that the cache (internet history) had been cleared when I got home.
“Dylan, were you using my computer while I was gone?” I asked.
“For school, yeah,” he said.
“Is that all?”
He knew I’d figured out something. “Oh, and I might have been reading your blog, too.”
Bill was calling him to help plant tomatoes. Dylan raced out as fast as his size 13 feet would carry him.
I started to seethe. He was lying to me again. And I was sitting, like a lump, knowing this and feeling stuck. My blood began a low, rolling boil.
I went outside.
Dylan and Bill were planting tomatoes, and Dylan was in the process of confessing everything to my husband. Later, Dylan told me, “He’s gentler to talk to than you are.”
This is, of course, quite true.
Dylan was explaining that he’d gotten up in the middle of the night and taken Bill’s phone out of his room. Then he’d started to search the internet – when he caught himself, and got off as fast as he could.
“I just feel like breaking the rules would be fun,” he said. “And I know that it’s stupid, but I just feel that way sometimes…. That’s why I said a prayer in the morning. I just wanted help so that I didn’t keep doing this.”
Wow.
I could relate to wanting to break the rules. I have broken more than my share of rules – and while it cost me dearly in my life, it was – if nothing else – occasionally exciting.
I thought about it, though, and I realized that my way of breaking rules is lame. It’s breaking free from societal rules that can be both positive and a great investment in Dylan’s future.
“Most people lie, or cheat, or steal, if they want to break the rules,” I told him. “But the people who don’t want to get into trouble do the right things – and still do what they want to do, even if it’s not what everyone else does.”
I made a long list of people who broke all the rules without ending up behind bars: Albert Einstein, Matt Groenig, Jimi Hendrix, Oprah, George Lucas, Jackie Robinson, Eminem, Stephen King, Ghandi, Walt Disney and Abraham Lincoln – to name a few.
I’m hoping he gets the idea – breaking free from societal rules is different than breaking the rules.
A few days later, Dylan got into the car after school. He said, “This is like the third day in a row that I’ve been having a really, really good day. Back when I was thinking about breaking rules, I was like obsessed with it. But I’m not even thinking about it anymore. And it’s been like this for three days.”
I said, “Your prayer must have worked.” Dylan blinked, remembering that he had prayed for this exact result.
He said nothing, but I think he knew.
After a week without electronics, it was hard to remember why I’d grounded Dylan. I had to keep reminding myself that he’d done this terrible, dishonest thing.
Without Kik and Snapchat and Oovoo monopolizing his time, Dylan rediscovered his brother. He spends hours and hours and hours playing with Shane. They make up games and get creative and build things and invent things and talk and talk and talk. They hang out together.
His behavior has been impeccable. His teachers aren’t complaining. There have been no more suspensions or calls home. He studies and does his homework, and makes sure his work is actually turned in on time. He hasn’t had a new “zero” in weeks.
He is acting a bit like a young adult.
Sometimes he gets frustrated – like when he decided to make an electronic bird caller out of Shane’s Kindle, and was reminded that a Kindle is an electronic device, even if it belongs to Shane, and even if you’re using it to make bird calls.
But for the most part, he’s doing well. We allowed him to go to his church group (which doesn’t seem like un-grounding him, since it’s church). And we took him to see a play at his former middle school, since – long before the grounding – we promised several of his friends that we’d be there. (Those same friends went to see Dylan in his middle school play, too, so I felt justified.)
It’s hard, grounding someone I love so much. It would be much easier if I didn’t care about him at all, if I could just toss him into a corner for a few weeks and ignore him.
But he’s precious and wonderful and brilliant and fun, just like always. And it’s hard to suffocate that in favor of an age-old punishment.
Still, we are sticking to it. Mostly.
Shane and I had “special time” together one evening. I gave him choices of things to do, and he picked dinner and dessert (at separate restaurants) and two half-hour videos at home. It was a wild evening.
On our way home after dessert, Shane said, “I want to go to King’s Dominion.”
After all the fun we’d just had – although technically, it wasn’t amusement-park standard fun – I felt a bit … kicked. As if what we’d done wasn’t enough, and he was already projecting himself into a future, more-fun place.
It was an innocent comment, really. But I claimed that it was a federal offense.
“We just had a nice time, and you picked both the restaurants. We’ve done whatever you wanted to do. And when you said that about King’s Dominion, it made me feel like what we did just wasn’t enough.”
Even as I said it, I remembered.
For years and years and years, I did exactly the same thing to my parents. We would be coming home from a particularly delightful time – sled riding, perhaps, or coming home from a week at the beach. And I would pipe up from the backseat – something like, “I wish we could go to Australia.”
I don’t know if my parents remember this. But I remember thinking, this good thing is over and now I have nothing in the world left to excite me.
I have always had a tendency to depend on WAY TOO MUCH – externally – to “excite me.” I’ve always deemed something “out there” to be the answer – something far away, something just out of my reach – that would finally “make me” happy.
This was a particular problem with vacations. I loved vacations so much, I never wanted to leave. I always wanted to live wherever I went on vacation – so I would occasionally run away the night before we left. When I got older, I started fights with my vacation partner(s) the night before we were planning to leave, so as to “ruin” the vacation and (I thought) not be as sad to leave.
I nearly lost my boyfriend (now husband) after an especially good trip to Jamaica. We got into a fight so vicious, over something I can no longer recall, that I thought we might not even fly home on the same plane.
Then, one day about 35 years after it started, it stopped. I came home from a vacation and said the oddest thing.
I said, “I’m happy to be home.”
I can’t remember which vacation inspired this – but it wasn’t a bad one. I was just happier to be back home than I was to be on vacation. I think I was finally happy enough with my own real life that I prefered it to a temporary fantasy world. I know that I was at least in my thirties by then.
So I apologized to Shane since – once again – my issues caused an inappropriate reaction to his comment.
And then I said a little prayer that Shane would look inside himself more often, where true happiness is found.
We took away Dylan’s electronics for the rest of the school year – all of them, even his phone. This time, since we can’t trust him anymore, we are going to be certain that he has no access at all.
The day after the discovery, I didn’t know what to say to Dylan, who had kept his electronics hidden and still in use, and lied to me for so long. So I decided to say nothing at all. The ride to school the next morning – the long, agonizing 45-minute ride – drowned in the silence.
After 34 minutes, I finally spoke. “You have a choice,” I told him. “This can be a mistake that you made, or this can be who you are. And it is entirely your decision.”
“Won’t you want to kill me, either way?” Dylan said quietly.
“I don’t want to kill you,” I said. “You are my son, and I love you no matter what you do. I would prefer that you make good choices. But I don’t enjoy being around people who lie. I did too much of that when I was young.”
There was a pause.
Dylan almost whispered. “And now I’m young.”
I wanted to cry, scream, pull out my hair. I wanted to tell him, to show him – YOU DON’T HAVE TO SUFFER! You don’t have to CHOOSE the painful route!
But I said nothing at all. I’ve talked too much, over the past 14 years. He knows everything I have to say. I am in his head, becoming a part of his conscience, whether I said the right things or not. It’s too late now for talking. It’s too late now for fixing anything.
It’s time to just ride the waves, and see where we are when we hit the shore.
Meanwhile, there’s a pretty good chance that I’ve sunk myself into a real depression. I don’t want to talk about what’s going on with Dylan. I don’t want to write about it. I don’t want to admit that the glory days are really over, and that this is the life I will be leading from now on.
I don’t want to admit that Dylan is a typical teenager. I don’t want to admit that I couldn’t stop it from happening. In fact, I am fairly certain that it’s all my fault.
Or maybe it’s not. And maybe Dylan will choose to pull himself up, out of the gutter, start doing the right things.
So far, all he’s done is play on the trampoline with Shane. He’s lost contact with all of his friends because the electronics are no longer available to him. Parents are useless to him. Shane is all he’s got.
What this will do to Shane is anybody’s guess.
Once, when Dylan was a toddler, he wandered off. I was getting dressed in the bedroom, chatting on the phone with my mom about all the cute things he did, when I realized Dylan was gone.
We lived in a tiny ranch style house, and I searched it very quickly – Dylan was nowhere to be found. I screamed something at my mom and threw the phone across the room. I looked out the windows – no Dylan. I was in an absolute panic when I saw a tiny red-headed dot in the distance – across the alley way and well past the neighbor’s house. I raced outside, screaming.
“DYLAN!” I screeched, running hysterically to catch him. “DYLAN!”
He turned around and looked at me, as I raced hysterically across the neighbor’s yard. Dylan had put on his black leather jacket over his pajamas – upside down. He was barefoot and carrying a large load of pastel sidewalk chalk.
I scooped him up and headed for home. “What were you doing?” I asked, trying to control my hysteria.
“I wanted to color,” he said.
“You need Mommy to go with you if you leave, okay?” I pleaded. “And you need to stay in our yard. Why didn’t you draw on our sidewalk?”
“There were too many leaves,” he said. Indeed, it was autumn – and our sidewalk was completely covered in leaves. Dylan had wandered off searching for a sidewalk to color.
Before my heart had even stopped racing, I took a picture of him, upside-down coat and all. I knew this day was going to stick with me – and I was immeasurably glad to have him home safely.
Twelve years passed.
During those years, Dylan hid from me in clothing racks. He ate cookies he had been forbidden to eat. He was reprimanded countless times in school for rambunctious behavior. He went for long walks with his cell phone, not bothering to answer my texts or phone calls. And he kicked a kid in the groin and got suspended.
He’s actually a good kid. I know he’s a good kid. He’s just trying to do his own thing – same as always – just like when he was a kid with an armload of sidewalk chalk.
I try desperately to believe he’ll do the right thing. His heart has always been in the right place. He’s doing so much right – and trying so hard – that typical teenage behavior feels deeper, somehow, and more painful than it should feel.
Maybe it’s me – my past catching up with me, the issues with which I need to deal, slapping me in the face.
For now, I’m concentrating on today only – and I’m glad he’s safe, and healthy. And hopefully, soon, he will also be happy.
Dylan was doing pretty well, all things considered. He wasn’t getting in trouble at school (except for that minor suspension). He was pulling his grades out of the gutter (except that he kept forgetting to turn in his Spanish homework) and he was acting responsibily at home – so much so, in fact, that we had started to depend on him for important things.
And he was coming through. He was doing all the right stuff.
So Dylan was only a few days away from getting his electronics privileges back… when I discovered that he’d been using electronics for the entire two weeks of electronics prohibition. He’s been sneaking onto his iPad at night, whenever he assumed we wouldn’t find out – and he’s been getting away with it.
It’s an interesting thing, discovering that I’ve been duped by the love of my life.
For example, it immediately and without discrepancy brings back all the times in my past that I’ve been duped. All the liars who have betrayed me… My best friend in 9th grade who had sex with my boyfriend. The guy I adored in 11th grade who cheated on me. The pathological liar with whom I lived in my early 20’s – and who taught me that nearly everything can be a lie. Or the woman who called herself my friend, who maliciously spat upon me, ending nearly 30 years of a perceived “deep” friendship – for absolutely no reason.
All of those earlier pains come swimming to the surface, somehow setting the groundwork for this fatal kick in the gut.
But this is not my past, haunting me with its betrayals. This liar is my son.
This liar is the son I adored from the moment he appeared on this earth. He’s the baby I fed from my own breasts, who toddled down the hall as fast as he could, just to dive into my arms. He’s the giggling preschooler who came running out to greet me, waving fingerpaintings and crafts made out of popsicle sticks. He’s the angel who absolutely shreds my heart every, single time he opens his mouth to sing – even when he’s just goofing around in the kitchen.
And now that child lies to me. He hides from me. He breaks the rules, defies me. He knows right from wrong, yet chooses wrong.
I physically removed all of the electronics from his room. He won’t have any online access, even a cell phone, until the end of the school year. And even then, his grades have to improve tremendously if he wants to get them back. And if he’s caught using any device before then, he will lose them all for the rest of the summer. And he’s grounded indefinitely.
Because Dylan can no longer be trusted.
Dylan called, shortly after noon.
“Mom,” he said, “something happened.”
The land line started to ring.
“Hold on,” I said. “The other line is ringing.”
“Oh NO,” he wailed. “Mom, that’s going to be the school calling and they’re going to tell you something that happened that I don’t even remember doing…”
“What happened?” I said, a bit wary. The other phone was reaching its hang-up point. “Hold on, Dylan,” I said.
Dylan did not hang on. He hung up.
“There’s been an incident,” said his teacher, a calm and kind man who has never done harm to anyone. He speaks very slowly. “I just found this out today. Yesterday, apparently Dylan kicked another boy in the groin area.”
I was stone silent. Dylan is the single least violent person I’ve ever known, except for Shane.
The teacher continued. “Then he took the boy’s papers and threw them around in the hall.”
Dylan sounds like a bully, I thought. Why would he DO this?
“It was physical contact,” said the teacher, “so we have to suspend him from school for the rest of the day.”
“I can’t believe this is my son,” I said, knowing full well that it was, indeed, my son. At the same time, I wanted to say, But that’s it? One day? Shouldn’t there be more of a punishment?
Dylan sat in the office while I drove 45 minutes to pick him up.
Only yesterday, I had mentioned that his behavior could get him expelled – and that he might have to completely re-do 8th grade.
“You’ve been asking to go back to public middle school,” I’d said. “This could be your chance.”
“I’m not going to get expelled,” Dylan had spat, as if he had a crystal ball.
He seemed to be genuinely surprised by the suspension. I must admit, I wasn’t terribly surprised. He’s gotten in trouble for so many impulsive, physical things, it was just a matter of time before something he did really hurt someone.
Today, on the way home, he said, “I guess I really could get expelled.”
DUH. I wanted to say. You’d think you’d listen to your mom once in awhile! Your parents COULD be right, you know! You might just want to start doing what we say instead of doing everything the way YOU think it should be done!
Instead, I said, “Yep, I guess you could.”
He says he was just “playing around” with the boy. He always says he was just “playing around.” Dylan isn’t malicious. He doesn’t like to hurt people. He seems sincerely remorseful when someone gets hurt, whether or not it’s related to something he did.
I can’t help but think back to third grade, when he was tapping his pencil maniacally on his desk, and it flew out of his hand and hit a little girl in the back of the head.
“You could have hit her in the eye,” I told him. “She could have really gotten hurt.” He seemed to understand.
He always seems to understand. He always feels awful about what’s happened.
But until he learns to control himself – because I can’t do it for him – there’s nothing anyone else can do. Except, of course, to suspend him from school.
