Dylan was sick. He had that flu that’s been going around, the same one that I had a month ago.
It comes on – WHAM! – and hits with almost no warning, knocking down its victim suddenly with fever. Then it hangs around for several days until finally, one day, you can sit up.
At some point, if you’re lucky, the congestion that’s been sitting like a boulder on your lungs starts to move and you start coughing. Eventually, a few weeks after that, it’s gone entirely.
At the end of Flu Day 2 for Dylan, he came into my room and woke me up at 5:00 in the morning – something he hasn’t done in years.
“Mom?” he said in the darkness. His voice was so raspy and quiet, I almost didn’t understand the word “mom.”
I reached out instinctively for his forehead, checked his cheeks. Still warm.
“What’s wrong?”
“When I cough, it really hurts,” he choked. “I feel like I’m going to cough up blood or something.”
Dylan has something called Reactive Airways Disease – a rare disorder we discovered when he was very young. Basically it means that when he gets a cold, it stays in his chest and makes it hard for him to breathe. He never got a runny nose like other kids – just a deep, disturbing cough that lasted from September through April.
The thought popped up immediately: that Dylan might be one of the kids I’d heard about on the news. He might need to be hospitalized for respiratory issues associated with the flu.
But I shot down the thought, and leapt out of bed. “Let’s get you some medicine,” I said calmly. We measured out three teaspoons of children’s Motrin, since a sore throat makes pill-swallowing that much more difficult.
His voice, still barely audible, croaked out, “Is there anything else we can do? It really hurts.”
“Let’s try some honey,” I said. We went downstairs and heated up some honey. While he was sipping at the spoon, I hopped onto the computer.
I googled “natural remedies sore throat” – and was reminded what to do.
“I want you to gargle with some salt water,” I told him. And I made some warm, salty water to soothe his throat.
Then we headed back upstairs, quietly, still in the dark.
“Can I do anything else for you?” I asked. “Or are you ready to get some more rest?”
“I’m okay,” he croaked. “And Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Thanks for being the good mom,” he said. “A lot of people might have been a lot more aggressive in the middle of the night. So thanks.”
I almost cried. It’s so nice to be needed.
“Anytime, Buddy,” I told him. “It’s my job. Wake me up again if you need me later.”
And we both went back to bed.
Today is Dylan’s 14th birthday. There’s no longer any doubt: he’s a teenager.
I spend every day thinking about Dylan. I think about his issues, his ADHD or whatever it is, his behavior in school, his grades, his future. He’s a frustrating kid. His gifts far outweigh his problems; his talents are extreme and beautiful, like he is. But I focus on the negative, rather than the positive, far too often – and I forget to remind him of his inner beauty, his brilliance, his inner light.
Then again, I worry too much.
I try too hard. I give him too much. I take away too much. I discipline him too often. I don’t discipline him enough. I take away his privileges too often. I don’t take away his privileges enough.
I am too involved. I need to step back. I want to be there for him. I want him to be independent. I want him to advocate for himself.
I advocate for him. I put him in a new school, a new environment. He gets new teachers, new friends. Did that work? No. Does anything work?
No.
And it’s his birthday. Today is his birthday. And all those thoughts – the thoughts that occupy every waking hour on any other day – those thoughts all go right out the window.
All I can think today is, He’s not a baby anymore.
I still see him so clearly, toddling in my direction with that huge, gorgeous smile on his face – running as fast as his tiny legs would move. Smiling all the time, beaming even, curious, excited, thrilled to be alive. Dylan smiled constantly.
I wouldn’t ever want that baby back, now that I know him now. I don’t miss those days, the exhaustion, the constant need to be on the lookout.
But on his 14th birthday, I can’t help but feel a bit nostalgic for that smile.
We’ve been trying to win Taylor Swift concert tickets from our local radio station for more than a week.
Shane sat in his room in the morning, when I was driving home from taking Dylan to school – and he dialed the number – over, and over, and over. Meanwhile, I called from the cell phone – over, and over, and over. We could never get through.
This past weekend, we had a list of times to call from the radio’s website. We called. And called. And called.
We wanted so badly to be Caller 107.
Once, it rang for so long, a recorded message came on to tell us, “Your party is not answering. Please hang up and try your call again later.”
We even got through a few times – I was Caller 29! Bill was Caller 101! That was a heartbreaker…
Until the phone rang for Shane. It rang, and rang, and rang.
“This should probably be your last call,” I told him. “I think they’ve probably got a winner.”
“I know,” Shane said.
We were used to losing.
Then he said, “Hello” – into the phone.
The entire family rushed into the room. “This is Shane,” he said.
“Well, Shane, you’re caller 107!” said the DJ.
“That’s great,” said Shane – without the slightest hint of enthusiasm. His normally laid back personality took on almost a zombie quality.
“Do you want to go see Taylor Swift?” the DJ asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “I really like Taylor Swift. That’s why I’ve been calling.”
The DJ put Shane on hold saying, “Don’t hang up!” and we heard the whole conversation on the radio. Shane was so excited, I thought his eyes might pop out of his head. But he barely even smiled, let alone shrieked.
Later, when the DJ took our name and address, she said Shane is the most laid back winner she’s ever had.
“That’s how he is,” I told her. “He’s really very excited.”
“Yeah,” he said softly, his ear still pressed to the winning phone.
We finished our conversation with the DJ, the whole family stunned.
So we’ve got two tickets to Taylor Swift, a concert we could never, ever have afforded if we’d had to buy tickets.
Shane’s biggest problem is – he won two tickets.
Who should he take to the concert?
Shane is a responsible, funny, quiet, bright, beautiful, quick-witted boy, and I love him with all of my heart and soul.
But he has never put away a single thing in his life without being asked.
When something leaves his hand, it just lands – plop! – wherever. And there it stays, for the rest of time. His room looks like a hurricane hit it. There are papers, Pokemon cards, books, coins, magic tricks, empty bags, broken necklaces and CD cases everywhere. When he plays with a toy and decides to move on to something else, the toy is dropped in the middle of the room and he goes to the next thing.
Not only does he not pay attention when he lets something go, he also doesn’t recognize the seriousness of his actions. When he and Bill were decorating for Christmas, they came across a dead light bulb. Shane held it up and asked, “Dad, what should we do with this?”
Bill said, “Oh, it’s burned out. Just toss it.”
And Shane tossed it – quite literally – a few feet away, onto the cement garage floor, where it shattered. They spent the next 10 minutes cleaning up millions of tiny shards of glass.
So when Shane was eating chicken wings and left his plate on a stool in the living room, it wasn’t really a surprise to anyone – except the dog.
Our beloved mutt couldn’t believe her good fortune. Four huge globs of meat, right at her eye level! She snatched a leg and swallowed it whole. She was working on a wing when Shane came back into the room and got the second bone away from her.
We were all pretty sure that the dog was going to die. Dylan had read a story about a dog that died after choking on a bone, and he announced this loudly. Shane started to cry. Bill remained stoic. I choked back tears. We all stared at the dog as if she would fall over dead at any second.
No one spoke. We turned off the movie. It was a comedy, and no one felt like laughing anymore.
I didn’t yell at Shane for leaving his chicken bones at doggie-eye-level.
I tried that tactic with Dylan years ago, when he left a pile of chocolate on a low table. The dog ate it all. When we discovered the shredded candy wrappers, I screamed at Dylan, “SHE COULD DIE!” – which, I think, was my attempt at getting him to understand the seriousness of the situation.
But what I did, instead, was cause my baby’s eyes to flicker from optimism and hope into sheer terror. I’ll never forget that look. There are some Mom moments that I’d give anything to change. I should have just taken him in my arms and told him it was going to be okay.
Maybe I was just too afraid that it was not going to be okay.
So I didn’t yell at Shane, but I didn’t hold him either. I called the animal hospital and scoured the internet for information. Then we all just waited to see if the dog would die.
Two days later, we called our vet – who told us that as long as the dog hadn’t choked, and as long as she hadn’t punctured her intestines, she was going to be fine. And the dog was fine.
The very next day, Shane left a bag of peanuts in his backpack. Then he dropped his backpack on the floor.
The dog tore the bag to shreds and ate every single nut.
Shane didn’t learn a single thing from this experience.
To Dylan’s Teachers and the Headmaster:
I hope that the following will help you to understand Dylan’s behavior which, as we all know, has not been ideal.
Until this year, Dylan has always been well-mannered and, while distracted, was never a distraction. He was quiet in classes, and quite well-behaved. He had organizational issues but was never late, loud or annoying in school.
Dylan processes things audially – almost exclusively – and very, very slowly. So when kids are talking during class, he can’t focus on anything. He needs things to be quiet in order to focus at all – and since the classroom is full of tiny distractions, he has given up trying to focus and decided to talk instead. This doesn’t help anyone in the classroom, and it hurts Dylan more than anything – but he doesn’t have any idea what else he should do, since he simply can’t focus with noise.
In other words, he can’t learn in this wonderfully warm, receptive and free environment. And while I know he performs exceptionally well when given more responsibility – like a side job in the classroom or any kind of monitoring task – it does seem counterintuitive to give more responsibility to a student who doesn’t seem capable of self-control. But I can tell you that giving him something extra to do actually *increases* good behavior.
I think we’ve all figured out that he is trying to overcompensate by being “silly” – which, we also know, is not working. Since the new trimester started, he says that his behavior is improved – and I even got an email from his Spanish teacher saying how well-behaved he was last week! He is really trying to stay quiet in class – so please, if you notice any good behavior, now is the time to reward him! He wants to do the right thing – he just doesn’t know how.
Meanwhile, I am drilling into his head that he must stay after class and ask his teachers what was due, and what is due tomorrow. He knows that questioning his teachers daily is expected, but it has not yet become habit. Please, if you think of it, grab him after class and remind him.
Also, I insisted that Dylan talk to his teachers after class, and he was reported as being late to his next class because of it. While I know he was seen talking to other kids (and I have spoken to him about this!) – his intention was to get done those things that I’d asked him to do. I am not advocating that he hang out in the hall, talk to friends, etcetera.
But please, if he is talking to you after class, which I’ve asked him to do, send a note to his next teacher if he’s going to be late. Dylan has assured me that he will be doing only the right things with his time.
Finally, Dylan is not on stimulants anymore, and we do occasionally provide caffeinated drinks as a substitute. Most of the time, it’s iced tea – but on days when he needs an extra boost, I have given him Mountain Dew, which I bought specifically for school. Please know that any disgusting, sugary beverages I send to school are only substitutes for medication, and not something in which we indulge at home. My apologies for any confusion!
I appreciate ALL that you’ve been doing for Dylan and I hope that, while this email won’t change Dylan’s behavior, maybe it will give you some insights, and together we can find a way to help him succeed.
Kirsten
I’m starting to feel a bit … angry about the Quaker school. Not that I want to take Dylan out, but I’d like the people to be a bit nicer to my son. I realize he’s not a model citizen, but …
In the past few days, I’ve gotten a complimentary email from Dylan’s Spanish teacher saying how well he behaved in class last week – which was awesome – and a report from the office stating that Dylan has been turned in for “excessive tardiness.”
When I asked Dylan about the “excessive tardiness,” he said that he was talking to his music teacher – which I specifically asked him to do – and then he had to clean up his stuff from algebra and make sure he had all of his work turned in – which I also specifically asked him to do – and then he had to walk from a building on one side of campus to get to his next class on the other side of campus.
And gosh, he couldn’t do all of that in the allotted five minutes.
“Did you tell your teacher that you were doing those things?” I asked Dylan.
“Yeah,” he said.
“What did she say?”
“She asked if I had a note from Ms. B, and I didn’t, so she turned me in to the office.”
So now he has this on his “record” – and I have to step in, again, and make sure his needs are being met. The number one thing that I’ve been advocating for is extra time after class for him to talk to teachers, to make sure he’s doing – and turning in – everything he needs.
And now he’s being “reported” for it.
Then Dylan told me – a few days later – that I need to send in a note to allow him to drink Mountain Dew. The school has allowed me to send iced tea because of the caffeine content, which is somewhat helpful for his brain – and we are using it in place of stimulant medication.
One day, since I knew Dylan was going to need extra help that day, I sent extra caffeine, in the form of a can of Mountain Dew.
“Ms. E was very upset,” Dylan told me. “She said I had to get written permission from my mom and the headmaster before I could drink Mountain Dew again.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “But I put it in your lunchbox myself,” I stammered.
“I know,” he said. “And I told them that. But they still said you have to write them a note.”
If I had the ability, the knowledge, and the patience, I would now be homeschooling my son for the rest of 8th grade.
Instead, I have to email the teachers, again, just like I did in public school.
Dylan has become a discipline problem at his new school. All of the teachers have emailed me and two of them are incredibly frustrated.
One teacher emailed, “He is consistently coming late to class. Walking in screeching or doing something else of a disruptive manner. Last week, I took the ‘stress’ ball from him because he was throwing it so high that it was banging against the ceiling tile.”
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard from this teacher. But now Dylan is admitting that he has a problem with self-control in the classroom.
“There’s so much talking that it’s impossible to focus,” he whined. “I have to work so hard just to ignore all the noise that I can’t get anything else done!”
Then he dropped the mega-bomb: “I wish I could go back to my old school.”
Fifteen thousand dollars and three months of private school, and he’s begging to go back to public school.
So … I let him go back to public school. For one hour.
I arranged for Dylan to sit in on a geometry class at the public middle school. On a day that he didn’t have school, he got up early and went with me – and Shane – so that he could sit for an hour in public school, and remember how he’s supposed to behave – and why he didn’t want to be there.
But that didn’t happen.
Instead, he came out saying, “It was so fun!”
I thought maybe I’d misheard. After all, this is a boy who cried, in incredible angst, last spring: “Please, just get me OUT of this school!”
So when Dylan said an hour of public school geometry was fun, I inquired further.
“Well first, there were like 40 kids in the class,” he said. “It wasn’t just 26 kids or whatever, it was like 40. And nobody was talking, so I could really pay attention to the teacher. And they only did, like, two worksheets. And everybody did them and we had plenty of time to go over them. In private school they do, like, five worksheets and it just goes way too fast. Please, can I go back to public school?”
“You begged me to go to private school,” I said. “You begged and pleaded and said you hated public school. All you wanted to do was go to private school. You have to be kidding me.”
“Why?” he whimpered. “I can really handle it now and it’s way easier to focus there!”
“We spent $15,000 on private school for you. We spent all of your college savings and Shane’s college savings just to get you into the private school. You begged and pleaded to go to private school. You are NOT going back to public school after three months!”
“But I like it way better,” he said, as if that made a difference.
“If you were in public school,” I assured him, “you would be flunking 8th grade. You would not have teachers who let you turn in your assignments late. You are doing better, but you still had seven zero’s for missing assignments in three different classes!”
“But I wouldn’t do that,” he said. I laughed out loud. I felt queasy, dizzy and a bit faint.
“NO,” I said. “You are going to finish this year at private school. You are going to learn to turn in your assignments on time. You are going to advocate for yourself. And you are going to get through this year.”
After some real screaming, I ended the conversation as I so often do:
“You are going to start doing what YOU need to do for YOU,” I said.
We got a hand-me-down shirt from my parents with “Carnegie Mellon” emblazoned on the front. It was a little too big for me, and a little too small for Bill.
So I called Dylan in to try it on. It fit him perfectly.
“Is Carnegie Mellon a good school?” he asked.
“One of the best in the country,” I told him.
“Then how did you get this shirt?” he asked, as if I were some slouch.
“Granddad used to work there,” I told him. My dad was a superstar vice president at Carnegie Mellon, if truth be told, for more than a decade.
“Oh,” he said. “Okay, I’ll keep it.” He meant the shirt, not the school, but he only accepted the shirt because the school’s a good one.
“Do you want to know what Carnegie Mellon is famous for?” I asked.
“What?”
“Engineering, drama, music and computers,” I told him.
“Okay!” he exclaimed. “Then I want to go there!”
“That sounds awesome,” I told him. “It’s one of the hardest schools in the world to get into, but we can take a look at it.”
Whichever way Dylan leans, I start leaning with him. When he wanted to go to MIT, I figured it was worth a try. Now, if he wants to go to Carnegie Mellon, it’s worth a try. He’s only in 8th grade, after all, and there’s a chance he could get through high school with an amazing resume, spectacular grades and awesome test scores.
By next year at this time, it should be easier to see how it will all play out. Meanwhile, I am reading a great book about liberal arts colleges that are much lesser known.
I’m learning that there are small colleges across the country that are experiential, offering hands-on learning in place of written tests. There are places that specifically enhance their teaching with semester-long projects, internships and study abroad – and offer substantially fewer classroom-based courses.
There are places that offer a full year of transitional “thinking” classes before students have a choice of subject-based classes. There are also colleges that offer a ton of different subject requirements before students have a choice of major-based classes.
For many parents, this might mean, Yes! My child can get in somewhere!
But for me, I’m so excited to look at the schools. I want to learn more about them, find out the real deal, get a feel for the campus. I want to wander the country looking at colleges – and can hardly wait (although I will!) to do it.
I don’t care where Dylan ends up going to college – as long as it’s a great fit for him. I just want him to know that there’s more to life – and that there are more choices – than the big-name places, or the big state places that everyone knows.
But we’ve started with Carnegie Mellon – a place that might be an exceptional fit, if he decides to self-advocate and become a champion of his own stuff.
And if he goes to Carnegie Mellon, great. As long as he knows, when he makes a decision, that there are thousands of other choices.
Getting a Christmas tree is usually a highlight of our holiday season. We put on our warmest gear, pile into the car with our ecstatic mutt, and head out to the tree farm. We usually end the visit with at least one kid sitting on Santa’s sleigh and everyone drinking hot cocoa.
This year was a little different.
We got to the farm, excited as always. Then Xena, our dog, started a fight with another dog at least twice her size. I pulled her away just as Dylan got one of the farm’s complimentary saws and started swinging it around next to Xena’s head.
Dylan had been feeling happily helpful because he got the saw and the tree carrier without anyone asking him to do so, but we crushed his joy in a flash. We suddenly reprimanded him severely for swinging the saw. He became sullen before anyone could figure out why. Looking back, I see that this was the turning point in our day.
We should have said, “Dylan! Thank you for getting all that stuff for us!” Instead, Bill and I jumped on him: “Dylan! Stop swinging the saw!” and “You almost hit the dog in the head!”
Then we headed off through an old vegetable patch, where Xena stepped in a briar bush of some sort and we spent 10 minutes pulling prickly black balls from all four paws. By the time we got to the white pines, Dylan very loudly declared that he didn’t care what tree we got – that he hated all of them. He was still swinging the saw, although I have yet to understand why Bill gave it back to him. As we wandered through the trees, Dylan unzipped the hood from Shane’s jacket and ran a hundred yards away, with Shane chasing him.
Bill and I yelled at Dylan again. “Give him back his hood!” and “Why would you do that?!” There wasn’t a lot of positive reinforcement for either child as finding the right tree suddenly became a chore. We started marking our favorites. Thankfully, we used the saw to mark one of the trees – so the swinging finally stopped. But Dylan still refused to choose a tree – or even express an opinion other than, “They’re all bad.”
Shane, Bill and I chose three different trees and then we voted that we liked number two. The kids and I stood next to it, waiting for the chopping to start, but Bill wandered aimlessly away. Nearby was a much larger, fatter tree that, for some reason, seemed appealing. It was at least nine feet tall and quite plump.
I have no idea how it happened, but we ended up getting the tall, fat tree and forgetting our first choice. It took substantially longer to cut it down than it usually does, since the trunk was twice the size of most of our trees. It turned out to be crooked, too, so it leans dramatically toward the window at home.
Dylan never did vote for a favorite, and he acted like it was a real pain to help saw it down – which, last year, he did happily. He cheered up considerably when we gave him some chili and hot chocolate.
Shane sat beside Santa for a picture and, without complaint, answered Santa when asked what he wanted for Christmas. Shane is almost as tall as Santa now, so it may have been our last stop at the sleigh.
The Christmas season – with a teenager – has officially begun.
We are not participating in Black Friday shopping, in spite of the many pleadings of my children.
Many years ago, long before I had children, I remember saying, “I am going to be part of this experience!” And I hopped in my car and headed out into the world.
I can’t remember what I wanted to buy, but with all the hoopla on TV, I’d thought Black Friday would be great fun. And as a 20-something with nothing better to do, I sure didn’t want to miss out.
I got onto the road and sat in traffic. Then I sat in more traffic. Then … I sat in traffic. The closer I got to the mall, the longer I sat. And I live in an area with lots of malls, so there were plenty of choices for our overpopulated county.
By the time I was close enough to see the mall, I sat at the same red light for at least 10 cycles. It was a left-turn light, and no one had bothered to set it for “extra traffic,” so the little green light would pop up, allow maybe two cars through, then disappear.
It was at about this time that I realized I didn’t really need to shop on Black Friday. I got out of the left-turn lane, drove past the mall and all its incoming traffic, and went home.
With the stores opening – geez – on Thanksgiving DAY now, there are commercials inundating every show on TV, every website, and the radio station – all of which Dylan and Shane have seen.
They’re intrigued by the thought of running out and buying something – anything – even though they have no jobs, little saved allowance money, and few people in their lives who require a gift from them.
Still, I have heard this regularly for the past few weeks:
“I want to go shopping on Black Friday! Can we go shopping on Black Friday?”
“No,” I said. I don’t bother to tell them why. Someday, I’m sure, they’ll learn this for themselves.
