Dylan comes home from school and tosses himself onto the couch with his iPad. He doesn’t get up for an hour, even though Shane and I are pleading for help with a jigsaw puzzle. Finally Dylan comes in, looks at the puzzle, deems it worthless and goes back to his game.
He has a quiz in science tomorrow. I’ve asked my husband to study with him, which he says he has done. So I decide to give a quick pop quiz.
“Dylan, get me your binder,” I yell cheerily. He grunts. A few minutes later, I yell “get me your binder” less cheerily.
A moan escapes him, as if I’ve asked him to carry the couch to the kitchen.
He throws the 20-pound binder onto the table. “I don’t know why we have to do this,” he whines.
“Flip to the science section,” I say.
“I don’t know why we have to flip straight to science,” he says, in great pain.
“Get me your skeletal system review sheet,” I say.
Now he is really irritated. “I don’t have a skeletal review sheet!” he says. “We never did anything like that!” He flips through angrily, and pulls out a drawing of the skeletal system.
“All we have is this warm-up,” he says, tossing the half-sheet of paper at me.
“What’s this?” I ask, pulling out the piece of paper behind the drawing.
“It’s just another warm-up!” he whines, wandering away from the table and into the next room. It’s two pages, full of information on the skeletal system.
I yell to him in the next room, reading the first question verbatim.
“We never even learned that!” he moans.
“You did,” I say. “I’m reading from your paper.” I ask him another question from further down on the paper. He answers incorrectly.
“No,” I say. Then I read him another question, and another. He guesses, and sometimes gets something close to the answer, but obviously has no idea how the skeletal system works, what bones are made of, or anything else about the functions of the skeletal system.
“Here,” I say, plopping down the paper in front of him, onto the puzzle he’d once deemed unworthy – which now has his full attention, so that he may escape the agony of studying.
He groans. He grunts. He looks at the paper for less than a minute.
We try again. I quiz him briefly, before realizing he still can’t answer any of the questions. Audible agony continues to escape him. He doesn’t open his mouth to speak, so we can hear nothing more than grunts.
“I don’t want to do this either,” I tell him.
“Then don’t,” he says. “Why don’t you just let me figure it out by myself?”
I think, because you are NOT figuring it out. You are sitting on your butt playing video games. You are not learning to study, or trying to do better in school. You are failing and you are treating me like crap for trying to HELP YOU.
I say, “I have waited four months for you to figure it out, and you haven’t done it yet. So I am going to continue to help until you do.”
Then I walk away. I give up. I call Bill on his cell phone. After less than a minute, Bill determines the problem. It’s not unfamiliar.
Bill says, “Do you want me to deal with it when I get home?”
“Yes,” I say. “If I have to deal with it for even another minute, I may put him through a wall.”
Bill comes home. Over dinner, I declare that Dylan will not play any video games for the rest of the week. There is some discussion about Dylan’s giving up video games entirely until he learns to study.
We talk about how we don’t know what quizzes he has, except this one. We talk about him getting low grades in social studies and – oddly enough – chorus. There is more discussion about Dylan’s attitude, but he continues to mumble, roll his eyes and grunt.
I took him off the medication to avoid this behavior. It’s not as all-consuming and despairing as it was when he was on stimulants, but it is just plain rotten. He may as well have TEENAGER stamped on his forehead in flashing, neon green ink.
Eventually, Bill quizzes him on the skeletal system. Somehow, they get through it. Bill gives a ridiculous lecture about respect that Dylan never hears, then they part ways.
Dylan is likely to get a much better grade on his test, thanks to all of this pushing and prodding – but it is only thanks to me. And honestly, having lived through school and studying once already, I don’t know if this is worth it.
Shane and I were in the car today, on our way home from a two-day trip. We were trying to figure out when (and where) to eat.
I said, “The GPS says we have 2 hours and 15 minutes to go. The city with all the restaurants is 45 minutes from home, and we’re going right past it. So do the math. Figure out how long it will take us to get to the restaurant.”
He did a quick calculation. “It would take one hour and 35 minutes.”
I did the calculation myself. The 35 confused me. In my calculations, it was an hour and a half away. I wasn’t as worried about his inaccuracy as I was curious about how he’d arrived at his answer. So I asked him.
“I just subtracted,” he told me. “I got 95 minutes, which is an hour and 35 minutes.”
He’d taken the number of minutes in an hour, multiplied it by 2, then added 15 to the total. Then he subtracted. He’d figured it out in just a few seconds, but it pained my brain just to think of it.
“Don’t you have a clock in your head?” I asked. Shane had no idea what I meant. So I explained that I had a visual image of a clock in my head – which, now that I’m admitting it out loud, may be kind of strange.
But my clock moves pretty easily in 15-minute increments, so I can visualize how long it will take to get from one place to another, just by “seeing” it on the clock in my head, and watching the hands go around.
Then I had a sudden, horrific explanation for Shane’s thinking.
Shane grew up on digital clocks. We do have a clock or two with hands, but for the most part, he uses clocks that display numbers only. His favorite time, in fact, is 11:11, because it is the only four-digit repetition on the digital clock. He also enjoys 1:23 and 12:34. He can’t visualize a clock with hands because he grew up on clocks without hands!
While I was realizing this, and attempting to explain it to my 21st-century son, he said, “Oh, I know what I did.”
“What you did with what?” I asked.
“I subtracted 40 minutes instead of 45,” he said. “It would take us an hour and a half to get to the restaurant,” he said.
And how long, I wonder, will it take to create an image of a clock in his head, so that he can tell time quickly and accurately without needing to figure out the numerical value of an hour?
Shane had a vision processing disorder when he was born, which continued well into second grade. I wonder if not having a clock in his head also means he doesn’t have visual images in his brain, for example, to represent words?
Maybe his visual processing screwed up the way he processes all kinds of things – and maybe he’ll never have the ability to visualize things the way I do. Maybe it’s the reason he can’t remember song lyrics, and the reason he can’t remember people’s names. Maybe he can’t visualize words in his head, which is why he can’t spell. Maybe he’s going to always have to do things in a more complex, confusing manner than most people do.
Or maybe – just maybe – he calculates time the way he does because he grew up with a digital clock.
Reports cards just came home for the second quarter, inspiring me to recap the events of 7th grade.
During the first quarter, Dylan was on stimulants. He was on the honor roll with four A’s, 2 B’s and a C. His report card also reflects that he consistently completed his work, and turned it in on time.
During the first quarter, Dylan also had meltdowns after school that sometimes lasted an hour, sometimes four hours. He started talking about a deep and profound sadness, about his terrible new life in middle school, and about how he saw no real meaning in being on this earth.
So on the last day of the first quarter (a coincidence), Dylan went off of stimulants. The despair vanished instantly.
During the second quarter, Dylan was on a variety of relatively useless drugs. He took a high blood pressure medicine for the first half of the second quarter.
During this time, Dylan’s grades tanked. He rarely, if ever, finished his work. He lost the things he did – when pressed – finish. He turned in almost nothing on time, and certainly didn’t turn in his homework without being poked, prodded and pushed.
During the second half of the second quarter, with his medication adjusted to an anti-depressant, he stopped bouncing around as much. He was able to concentrate on rare occasions. He finished more (but not all) of his work, and still rarely turned in his homework, classwork, or even his take-home quizzes.
At the end of the second quarter, Dylan had 3 A’s, 3 B’s and a C. He’s still on the honor roll.
In other words, he got a B instead of an A in ONE CLASS (science) with the shift in medication. The real difference is the agony with which he earned those grades. Comparatively, first quarter was a breeze.
But would I put him back on stimulants? After the two-day trial during the first week of the third quarter – and the resulting horrific behavior – I would have to say NO – absolutely not.
He hasn’t done any homework, studied any algebra, worked with his tutor, or even cracked a book since the new quarter began.
As a result, he has two failing grades in science class. He failed a quiz miserably, and then got a failing grade on a writing assignment, which he doesn’t remember writing. But he got an A on his lab so, oddly, he already has a B as a cumulative grade.
Shane – who is graded in a particularly unorthodox fashion, thanks to a ridiculous new curriculum – got one I, two ES’s and all the rest P’s. There are about a hundred million P’s. Since Shane’s report card makes no sense to anyone, I can translate: Shane got straight A’s, except for two A+++’s and a B (in art).
I looked over the report cards, studied them for some sign that these pieces of paper indicated Dylan or Shane. But they didn’t. They were just letters on a piece of paper.
There were no cute comments about the funny things they said in class, or what subjects they enjoyed the most, or how happy they seemed. Just letters on a piece of paper.
And these letters will determine their future.
But only if we allow that.
I hung them on the refrigerator anyway.
On Monday, Dylan took his Strattera – now up to 54mg and still not having any effect on his attention. Then he took what the doctor calls a “kicker” – 5mg of stimulant – the same one he took for years, until he became unreasonably moody and depressed.
So Strattera is an anti-depressant that is now being used to treat ADHD symptoms. I guess the doctor figured that it would take care of the depression caused by the stimulants.
The doctor figured wrong.
Two days in a row now, Dylan has come home moody and irritable. He hasn’t been like this in so long, I was stunned to think it could really be related to the medication.
But today when he called himself “basically a nobody” and then went upstairs and slammed his door – that’s when I realized that there is NO successful stimulant “kicker” in the world that is worth this.
I called the doctor 12 seconds after the door slam.
“I haven’t seen him like this since the last time he was on stimulants,” I told the doctor, via her secretary.
“Take him off the stimulants,” they told me.
So our trial is already over, faster than it really began. And I have no hope for the future.
Odd how the stimulants can make me depressed.
Today Dylan took four pills. He may end up taking five next week, or he might drop down to two next month – but the dosage will be almost the same.
We’ve added stimulants back into the mix. Strattera is an anti-depressant-turned-ADHD-medication, and it does help curtail the bounciness. But putting him back onto Dextrostat – even at less than half his earlier dose, and even with anti-depressants to combat the possible crash – seems like a bad idea.
Dylan put all four pills into his hand.
“This is just weird,” he said. Then he took all four of them simultaneously – and congratulated himself on his ability to swallow all those drugs at once.
Sigh.
Unfortunately, it worked for years. Stimulants worked. Maybe, with this perfect drug cocktail, it will work again.
Meanwhile, I’ve been reading a book called The Out of Synch Child. It’s got oodles about vision processing disorder – among other things – which is what Shane has, and I was interested in reading it to get to the heart of what’s been going on with Shane.
But last night, with sudden clarity, I re-read a section about hyposensitivity to motion. It described Dylan so perfectly. Actually, when I’d read it the first time, it reminded me of Dylan. But now I’m wondering – what if he doesn’t even have ADHD? What if he’s just hyposensitive to motion and might need some other form of treatment, like Shane did for vision processing?
It’s something to look into today…
Sometimes I think that the hardest thing about being a parent is making sure that the kids don’t kill each other.
Even on Shane’s birthday, I heard Dylan saying things to him like, “You didn’t do much for your birthday,” and “Birthdays are getting kind of lame.”
Maybe this is how Dylan is feeling. After all, he got a used tractor for his birthday when he wanted a go kart. Birthdays DO get lame as you get older – although I still fight to make mine spectacular every year. But that’s another story.
Shane, however, has just turned 10. Birthdays are still magical. They should still be magical at 13. And having Dylan drill into his brain that birthdays “are getting kind of lame” threw me right over the edge.
I pulled Dylan aside – on Shane’s birthday – and screeched at him: “It is his BIRTHDAY. He is a LITTLE KID! If you can’t treat him kindly and show him some respect TODAY then don’t bother even LOOKING at him tomorrow!”
Sometimes I think my own personal issues creep in without my knowledge.
Looking back at this comment, it seems that there was more at play than just making sure Shane had a happy birthday. There’s a bit of fear. There’s the fear that my oldest son didn’t enjoy his own birthday, and that it’s my fault. There’s the fear that my oldest son has no respect for his brother, and that he will continue to verbally abuse him at every opportunity.
There’s the fear that my oldest son is going to get all the attention, all the time, even when it’s my youngest son’s birthday. There’s the fear that my youngest son will never get any attention.
And there’s the fear that my boys are growing up, and that there’s nothing I can do to keep them young just a little while longer.
I need to back off and let them grow up. Together, and in spite of what they say to one another. In spite of Dylan and his issues, and me and my issues.
I need to back off. And let them grow up.
Yesterday was Shane’s birthday party. It never occurred to us that we would be in the midst of a crippling-the-city snowstorm.
Shane does not have a lot of friends. He is, instead, careful about the people he chooses to befriend – and as such, cares deeply for every one of them. Eight out of ten invited kids struggled through the snow to get here. The party was an absolute success.
I was watching them play together – a mass of 9- and 10-year-olds who were as likely to sit quietly and play as they were to tear apart the house. I know enough to have games scheduled, so they only tore apart the house in organized fashion – but the sit-down games were my favorite, because I was able to learn so much more about them.
One characteristic stood out above all others: Shane’s friends are smart. They are just a step or two deeper than what one would expect of fourth graders. There wasn’t a lot of talk about video games, or television. They used some creative toys in very creative fashion. And the jokes were almost adult in their intelligence.
One boy said, “Imagine you’re in a box. How do you get out?”
From my post in the corner I thought, Gee, I don’t know. What kind of box is it? Why am I there? Why can’t I get out?
Without even a beat, another boy called, “Stop imagining.”
“Right!” said the first boy. Someone didn’t understand, so he explained. “I said imagine you’re in a box. If you want to get out, just stop imagining.”
Maybe this is a popular fourth-grade joke, but I sure didn’t hear it when I was in fourth grade.
Later, it was time to break out the building toys. After cake, we had almost an hour scheduled for building. Shane wanted to make card towers and build with dominoes – so some kids did that. We also pulled out the Lego bin, and the boys swarmed all over them. Some of the vehicles sitting on my kitchen table today are awesome. And the domino tracks (which were occasionally knocked over by our dog) were also spectacular.
One boy, possibly Shane’s best friend in the world, wandered over to the bookshelf and found some incredibly hefty scientific books to study. This is a boy who has awed me with his discussions of symbolism in C. S. Lewis’ Narnia series.
The kids cleaned up before they left – without even being asked. All of them!
And these are Shane’s best friends in the world. They are kind, polite, incredibly funny, sweet and brilliant – just like Shane. They aren’t all in his class, or even in his school, but he hangs onto their friendships – in his heart mostly – just enjoying the company.
I can remember Shane playing completely and utterly alone during recess in kindergarten. Watching him for the first time, I was stunned. When I was in kindergarten, I always played alone. I didn’t have a real friend until fourth grade – and then just one. Like Shane’s friends, my one friend was bright, kind and sweet. And I hung onto her friendship until 7th grade, when I suddenly decided I needed to be cool and get new friends.
I regret it, and miss her to this day.
So I worry about middle school, and what effect it might have on Shane’s reaction to his awesome friends. But I also talk to Shane, all the time, about how hard middle school can be. I talk about how it’s more important for him to love his friends unconditionally than it is to try to be what the other kids might want him to be.
And then I sit back and watch him interact with his awesome friends, and I wait and hope for the best.
Today we visited the neurologist again. We love our neurologist. We chose her because she is exceptionally thorough. Not all doctors are as thorough.
When we were searching for the perfect doctor, I scoured the internet and studied reviews. I talked to folks for recommendations. And we went to at least half a dozen doctors.
Our doctor was recommended by a friend, and took more than an hour to examine Dylan. She took frantic notes the entire time and gave us choices about medication. She said she liked to dose low and build up, if need be.
We still had another appointment. The final visit – and the final straw – was the doctor who took one look at Dylan, asked him if he liked sports, and wrote us a six-month prescription for Vyvanse. He didn’t even listen to Dylan’s heartbeat.
We chose the thorough doctor. And she has never wavered in her thoroughness.
“How’s the Strattera working?” she asked.
“Well…” I started.
“Oh, that doesn’t sound good,” she said.
“It’s much better than the high blood pressure medication, but it’s more like a sedative,” I told her.
“How so?”
“He’s much less bouncy, but he still has no focus ability at all,” I said.
“So it’s helping with the hyperactivity but not the attention issues,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said, ever the professional speaker.
In the course of the visit, she asked Dylan about feeling depressed.
“I still do sometimes,” he said, “but not as much as before.”
“You DO?” I asked him. Then I turned to the doctor. “He smiles and sings all day, every day!” I told her. I felt like I was off my game somehow, having missed symptoms of my kid’s depression.
She explored it further, but there wasn’t much more for either of us to say. I was stunned into silence. Dylan? Depressed?! I thought.
“It’s mostly at school,” he said. “And hardly ever at home.”
Well, I thought, at least that explains why I don’t see it.
After another hour in her office, during which time she explored every symptom of every kind including those that have nothing to do with ADHD, we decided to increase the dose of Strattera and – in a week – add a very small dose of stimulant to the mix.
I asked if it might not be worth our while just to try a different stimulant, in hopes that the depression and pre-suicidal behavior might not return.
“All stimulants will have the same effects,” she said. “There isn’t one that would be better than any other.”
“I was hoping that maybe there were some that didn’t have the ‘crash’ factor,” I told her. I had been studying my copy of Straight Talk about Psychiatric Medications for Kids.
“No,” she assured me. “Once he has had this reaction, and also the way that he is talking today, I think we should really try to avoid those negative behaviors.”
So here we go again. Three pills in the morning for a week, adding a touch of stimulant – and a fourth pill – after that.
We shall see. Meanwhile, not a teeny tiny touch of depression. Dylan kicked butt in Monopoly again, and we had an absolute blast, all day long.
But that will stop me from worrying about it.
At 7:00 this morning, we got an email from Dylan’s algebra teacher.
“Good Morning!” she starts off happily. “Dylan’s effort over the past few weeks has been great. He has totally turned it around.”
It’s the most enthusiastic this teacher has been in months. Reading it, I am already thrilled.
“With the retakes he completed he was able to pull his grade up to a ‘C’!!!” (The extra exclamation points are hers.)
She continues: “He also did fabulous on his exam… 85%!!”
At this point, I mutter out loud: “Oh. My. God.” (Shane doesn’t like me to use the Lord’s name in vain, but I am still working on this.)
Dylan hears my gasp and calls from the breakfast table, “What?”
I walk in to see Dylan. For him, it is still an ordinary day.
Because I can’t be a positive, upbeat, encouraging mom, I say, “There’s good news and bad news. First, you got a ‘B’ on your English exam. And you got a ‘B’ on your social studies exam.”
He is unphased by this. I pause for dramatic effect.
“But…” (I wait for the proverbial drum roll.) “You got an 85% on your algebra exam!”
Dylan leaps from his chair, waves a fist in the air and yells, “YES!” Then he throws himself onto the floor in the next room, thundering like a fallen elephant.
Again squashing any chance of real positive reinforcement, I tell Dylan to be quiet so he doesn’t wake up Shane.
Realizing my error, I try again. “Come and see the email!” I say. Dylan reads it, looks up at me with his eyes shining, then goes back to the table and beams all through breakfast.
He says, “Now can I get Uvu?” Or maybe he said Ubu, Ooloo. I don’t know.
“What’s Uvu?” I ask.
“It’s a program I wanted to download and you said to ask you after exams.”
“Is that the one where the age requirement is 18?” I ask.
“No, that was Kik,” he says.
“You can get Uvu,” I say. I have no idea what Uvu is. But he’s a pretty good kid, I think, and I can probably trust him to be safe with it – whatever it is.
Then I rush him out the door to the bus, which he almost misses because he was so late in coming to breakfast, and because of all the algebra hoopla.
It’s a glorious day in the Hawkins household.
My son is off to his algebra exam – the test that will determine (for him) whether hard work, practice and strong effort actually bring rewards.
It’s a milestone of sorts – his first anxiety-producing exam. And when I walked into his room this morning to give him a good-morning hug, all I could think about were the days when, as a toddler, I would lift him into my arms and we would dance and dance around the living room to Rod Stewart’s rendition of Ooh La La.
“I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger…”
It’s only been 10 years. Ten short years since my baby – now two inches taller than me – would dance with me in the living room, or fly into my arms to be twirled in the air, or sit outside with me and play in a mud puddle. It was only ten years ago.
And this morning, for the first time, I thought, That’s before I knew anything was wrong with him.
But there is nothing wrong with him. He’s not broken; he’s made this way. God picked him to be just exactly like this: ADHD and all. He’s brilliant and sweet and funny and kind and optimistic and enthusiastic and absolutely perfect just the way he is.
So what if he can’t concentrate in school? He can concentrate when it matters to him. He can do things he loves – build, design, invent, re-invent – and no one has to tell him to “pay attention.”
He’s getting straight A’s in engineering – and it’s hard. He has to learn the principles of design and put them to use in building a whole slew of different contraptions. His contraptions work. And he loves doing it.
It’s just that … his brain doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do. The neurotransmitters aren’t firing on all cylinders. So it’s hard for him to concentrate on things that aren’t hands-on. He bounces to stay stimulated. He sings and spins and taps to keep his brain firing. It’s irritating as heck, but it’s how he keeps himself entertained when the subject matter isn’t entertaining enough.
So if he does well on the exam, so be it. It would be a great lesson that hard work does pay off.
But if he doesn’t do well, it would be a great lesson that studying for three weeks isn’t as efficient as keeping up with the class on a daily basis.
Either way, I love that boy. And I want him to know that, above all else.
