Dear Algebra Teacher,
Dylan and I had a long talk last night about algebra. We talked about getting him a tutor, and how he had to spend his birthday lunch retaking an algebra test. He was in tears – but not because he had to spend his birthday doing algebra.
He said some things that really concern me. I think the biggest concern is that he believes that you don’t think he’s trying – and he’s starting to believe that HE is a failure because he can’t succeed in algebra.
You haven’t known Dylan for very long, and you saw him at the beginning of the year on medication and relatively able to keep up with the class. When he started trying new medication, though, his ADHD symptoms flared up with a vengeance. Having watched him since he was born, I can tell you that he has a very real, very classic case of ADHD. His processing speed is in the 9th percentile, meaning that when he hears something, it takes an incredible amount of time for what he hears to become actual information in his brain.
So when Dylan is in class, even if it doesn’t look like he’s paying attention, he is struggling with every fiber of his being to pay attention. Sometimes he looks completely spaced out – which is when he is most overwhelmed with trying to process. Because of the processing speed issue, he can’t digest information fast enough – which means he is likely getting only about a third of the information that is being transmitted.
Dylan is incredibly bright, and his sheer intelligence has pulled him through for years. But I can promise you that when he looks as though he’s not trying, his brain is working overtime, desperately trying to focus.
When he raises his hand and asks a question, he is trying with all his might to understand. It can be very frustrating, as a parent and as a teacher, to say something three times and have Dylan STILL respond with “What did you say?” But I can promise you that he IS trying, he IS doing his absolute best and he IS still failing.
So when you say to him, “This is easy!” or “You should be paying closer attention!” – the only thing he hears is, You are a failure because you don’t understand this. His self-esteem is plummeting every, single day that he hears comments like this from his teachers. He has ADHD. He CAN’T do any better. But he is really, really trying.
We are all trying. And I know it’s frustrating. He spent more than two hours on his math homework last night, having no idea what he was doing and giving it everything he had. And because he is how he is, he may not even turn in his math today. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to do better. It doesn’t mean that he’s a rebellious teenager. It means he has ADHD.
Please know that some of your words, and the way you are treating him, are sincerely and deeply hurting him. He’s giving it all he’s got, even if he’s failing. That doesn’t mean he’s a failure in life, or that he doesn’t want to do better. It means he has a learning disability and he needs support and encouragement and positive reinforcement when he does something right.
It took me years of dealing with Dylan to learn this – and lots of outside help, too. And it is HARD to encourage someone who has so much potential and doesn’t seem able to do such simple things. But please, in the coming months, please try not to be so hard on him. We will keep working with him, together, and maybe he will come out of this better and stronger – regardless of his grades. Thanks much,
Kirsten
When I was a little girl, I wanted a pony. Horses are beautiful and I thought a pony, which is just a small horse, would be a great pet.
My cousins, who lived on a farm, had a pony named Rusty. When we visited, my cousin Billy would lead Rusty around the yard with me sitting proudly atop like a princess. Later, I would break out my copy of Misty of Chincoteague and imagine I was the girl who could tame the wild pony.
Oddly, I never did get a pony.
Now Dylan wants a go-kart. He wants one with every fiber of his being, and he’s found them online (used and in terrible condition) for about $300. A good go-kart is $1000 and would probably be ridden half a dozen times before it broke and/or got ignored in favor of some girl, or some other new hobby.
But, sadly for Dylan, we gave him our ten-year-old, used lawn tractor for his birthday. We took the blade mechanisms off, and told him he can take it apart and rebuild the engine any way he wants, so that he can race the lawn mower in the summer.
I was a little worried about giving this gift, so I tasked my husband with figuring out how to enhance the engine. I took the kids out of town for a whole weekend. Three days later, Bill had done exactly nothing – leaving me with no new parts to wrap. Just an old mower.
So I was a bit anxious about giving Dylan an old lawn tractor for his birthday when he really wanted a go-kart. I spent half an hour with a spool of yarn, winding it around the house and out to the shed, so he would have a fun way to discover his gift.
Dylan opened the shed, sat on the tractor and said, “So I got something that I already had.”
This was not exactly the reaction I’d been hoping for.
Half an hour later, Dylan was sobbing for no apparent reason. He swore it had nothing to do with the tractor and, instead, had to do with the overwhelming issue of not being a kid anymore.
Welcome to the world of adulthood, I thought. This is where you get what you get, not always what you want. You can no longer wish for something and have it magically appear. It’s a place where you can’t stop time, or turn back the clock, or grab hold of what you used to have – because usually whatever you had is now gone.
With adulthood comes more responsibility, more work, less time for play. But it also comes with the wisdom – hopefully – of being grateful for what you have, because whatever you have – like it or not – is all you really need.
I never would have learned this from getting a pony.
My baby Dylan turns 13 tomorrow. Yesterday, he hosted a party in which 5 friends (2 girls, 3 boys) came to his house, ate pizza and cake, hung out in the game room and played zombie tag outside in the mud.
In preparation, and in fear, I started reading a book called, It’s So Much Work to Be Your Friend: Helping the Child with Learning Disabilities Find Social Success. The premise is that kids with learning disabilities can misread social cues, and thereby end up having few – if any – friends.
It suprised me to discover that the person who most needs social help is Shane. The book is great, though and I’m looking forward to finishing it.
Meanwhile, Dylan’s party was a huge success.
Both Bill and I noticed that Dylan was particularly mature during his party. Screeching and Bouncing Dylan was replaced by Responsible and Content Dylan.
When all six kids wanted to do six different things, Dylan was the one who found compromises so that they could all be happy. His ideas were valid, his attitude serene. In some cultures, they say age 13 is when a boy becomes a man. For the first time, I can see why.
The conversation at the table – a group of very intelligent kids, most from the elementary GT program – consisted of debate over welfare and concern about racism. Dylan also took in donations for the local animal shelter in lieu of “human” birthday presents – and everyone contributed.
Later, Dylan stood up for Shane, who (at age 9) was in the room for a relatively tame version of Truth or Dare. He made sure the kids didn’t embarrass Shane or trick him in any way.
And shortly before the game of zombie tag, I heard Dylan upstairs with one friend who had, apparently, gotten upset and locked himself in a room. I never found out what happened, but I heard Dylan say, in a quiet voice and through the closed door, “Do you think I don’t know how you feel?”
My son has the kindness of a saint.
And I didn’t realize it until I heard him say those words.
In all the hoopla over medication, good grades, discipline, blah blah blah – I’d honestly forgotten that Dylan is so incredibly warm, kind and caring.
He is, in fact, the child who was, at age 3, walking up the stairs behind my mother when she accidentally kicked him in the face.
Dylan – a toddler – said, in a matter-of-fact tone, “Oh I’m sorry, Mimi, that my face got in the way of your foot.” He wasn’t hurt or stunned – just sorry that his face had gotten in the way of his grandmother’s foot.
And now his empathy has evolved into an ability to help his friends in a time of need. I’m astounded, overwhelmed and so, so happy. Nothing else in this world matters as much as human kindness.
And Dylan really has it.
About 10 minutes into Dylan’s IEP meeting today, Dylan came in. He sat at the head of the table, several chairs away from the adults at the long conference table: his parents, the 7th grade vice principal, his case manager, his guidance counselor and the special ed coordinator.
We spent more than an hour discussing Dylan’s issues. We had two teacher reports from opposite ends of the spectrum: engineering (A+) and algebra (F).
Dylan sat politely through the entire meeting, making appropriate comments and answering direct questions. The case manager and special ed coordinator outlined Dylan’s four main objectives – which, after 20 minutes of discussion, he could not repeat. Come to think of it, after all that lecturing, I can’t repeat his four objectives, either.
But one of the objectives had something to do with self-advocacy. Dylan has had a great deal of trouble asking for help. He thinks he knows everything already. He thinks that, if he doesn’t know something, he should know it, so he flails along aimlessly, hoping he’ll figure it out in time for the test.
Sometimes I see Dylan as a Japanese beetle that’s landed upside down, waving his legs wildly and wondering why he’s not upright.
Dylan has hit a wall which, for him, means he needs to do some actual work to get good grades. But since he doesn’t know what extra work he should do, what’s most important is that he ask for help.
“What does ‘advocate’ mean?” his case manager asked him.
“Getting what you need basically,” Dylan said.
YES! He knows what it means! We’ve only been discussing it since fourth grade – so now we know he really understands advocacy.
And yet, he doesn’t know what homework he should do.
“So you could ask a teacher to tell you what the homework is,” someone suggested.
It was around that point in the meeting that I noticed Dylan gazing off at a poster of snow-capped mountains. He didn’t seem the least bit interested. Apparently, an hour of discussing his needs is WAY too much time on one topic.
I think everyone agreed on that point.
So we sent him back to class, to self-advocate at will. Hopefully, he’ll follow some logical progression toward order and organization. Perhaps he’ll find out what the homework is and when to turn it in. Perhaps he’ll even turn in some homework on time! Miracles have been known to happen.
But I got the distinct impression that knowing the meaning of “advocacy” and actually acquiring what he needs are two different things.
I wanted to yell at him as he walked out of the meeting room, “Okay, Son, now is the time! Advocate! Advocate!” I considered leaping from my chair and doing a little cheer, “ADVOCATE! ADVOCATE! YAAAAAAAAAY!”
I always have such high hopes on the day of an IEP meeting. I expect wonderful things to happen at the meeting, and spectacular things to follow.
But Dylan just wandered out the door, and his dad and I followed shortly thereafter.
When Dylan was 3 years old, he would occasionally lament: “I wish I was a girl.” At first, I wrote it off. Then I thought, Gee, maybe he really wants to be a girl. Finally, after several months, I asked him directly.
“Why do you want to be a girl, Dylan?”
“I want my hair to be like that,” he said.
“You want to have long hair?” I asked, both relieved and incredulous.
“I would like that,” he said. At 3, he thought only girls had long hair.
“Okay then,” I said, “you can grow your hair long.” And so he did.
His hair grew very long. He was mistaken for a girl nearly everywhere we went – and the mistakes went on for years. He would laugh it off, his long, wavy, reddish-blonde hair falling into his face as he laughed, “I’m a boy!”
About six years later, when we walked into the middle school GT/LD classroom, it was full of boys – all but one with long hair. Long hair wasn’t in or out, really – but in that classroom full of 6th graders who all had issues similar to my son’s, it was an anomaly. One boy had a crew cut. All the rest had long, flowing hair.
A few more years have passed since then. Dylan’s proven himself to be somewhat of a rock star at his school – although singing Italian opera is a bit classier than being a rock star. His hair always stood out in a crowd, and he was easy to find. The color helped – but the length really stood out.
But something happened in the past week – and Dylan decided to cut his hair.
It happened on International Night, he told me, the night he sang O Mio Babbino Caro in front of a couple hundred people, including many of his peers.
“I was just standing in front of the mirror and I thought, I really need a haircut.”
And a few days later, when we got to the stylist, he chose short hair. It’s long in the front, but a good inch or two is showing on his neck – a neck I haven’t seen on a dry day in many years.
He looks awesome. I’ve always loved long hair, but his new, short haircut is great.
For the past year, Dylan was forced to pull back his hair for every concert with the Children’s Chorus of Washington – a prestigious, uniformed choir that accosted Dylan with bobby pins in spite of his protests.
“Here’s the real test,” Dylan said to me today. “Would I have to pull back my hair for CCW?”
I studied him thoughtfully. His hair is a longish style, but there is nothing to pull back.
“Nope,” I said.
“Then I really do look like a boy,” he said. He smiled triumphantly and walked away – my son, the boy.
Our first snow of the year hit today – big, gorgeous flakes that fell lazily to the ground, followed by a blizzard of said flakes that bombarded the ground, followed by hard, freezing rain that turned the white blanket to squishy mush.
The kids were elated. They spent all day working hard – pulling out Christmas things and decorating around the house, practicing puppeteering for the church performance, even doing the graphic art work on my holiday letter.
Then, just before the sun went down, they asked to go outside. Stores were closing early, the roads were so slick as to be terrifying, and stepping into the snow sounded like stepping into mud. But they said they’d get their own snowsuits (not an easy task) and boots – which they did. With only minimal help (Dylan yelling from outside because he forgot his gloves and locked himself out of the house) – they went outside to play.
I watched them from inside. They never just play. First, they had an elaborate game requiring old tennis balls. Then they got out the sleds and – in one inch of mush – created something like an obstacle course which somehow involved sledding across our perfectly flat yard and skidding down into the woods (ouch). Then they proceeded to the backyard where they designed and developed roads – or rides, I’m not sure which – so that our yard now looks like we just finished hosting a monster truck rally.
Nearly two hours later, I called them in for a warm bath before dinner. They were dripping and pink, but when I said, “How was it?” they both responded simultaneously – “IT WAS AWESOME!”
Good, clean, wholesome fun. An education beyond school. A life well-lived.
As long as I can remember that their success will stem from more than school – and it really will – we can all be happy.
Today was a beautiful day.
My son can’t remember where he put his shoes. He doesn’t finish or turn in his homework. He spins and leaps everywhere he goes. He often forgets to brush his teeth. Without a doubt, he has ADHD.
But God gave him the voice of an angel. And for a change, I just want to concentrate on that today.
Click below to decide for yourself:
Dylan sings O Mio Babbino Caro.
Our incredibly inefficient 7th grade special education “facilitator” – who has not facilitated anything, and in fact has made many things more difficult – emailed me. She asked me to please fill out the attached Parent Report form for our upcoming meeting.
“When is the meeting?” I emailed back. No one had informed me of an upcoming meeting – and parents are, by law, supposed to be notified so that the meeting can be rescheduled if necessary.
But instead, we find out that the meeting is next week. I’m certainly glad they require a Parent Report, or we may never have known.
The form asks several questions: What are your child’s learning strengths? and What have you noticed about your child’s behavior? etc. I always do fine answering them – until I get to the last question.
How do you think the school can help your child?
I am always stumped by this one. At first, I walk away from the form because it is too troubling. I come back and stare at the question a bit longer.
How do you think the school can help your child?
I want to say: I honestly don’t believe the school, as it is, can help my child. My child needs a completely different school system. Montessori would be good, I think. Dylan learns best in a hands-on environment with plenty of interaction and stimulation. He needs very little from his teachers. He excels when given a huge project, plenty of time, and gentle guidance.
Please, could you just change the public school system to one in which kids can learn by doing, instead of by sitting in a mind-numbingly boring classroom listening to someone drone on at the front of the room? Could you eliminate worksheets and homework, just for my son?
Or at the very least, could you give him teachers who don’t care if he stands on his head while he works? And could you be sure he’s not penalized for curiously studying – by touching – every single thing in the classroom?
Also, it would be good if he could sit on an exercise ball, or hang from a set of gymnastics rings while the teacher talks. Again, this is only necessary if he has to listen to lectures. If you can arrange the Montessori method for the school system, he won’t need to bounce because he’ll be too busy learning.
Instead, I stare at the page. Dylan is struggling so badly now, I doubt there’s anything we can do – except putting him back on stimulants – that will help him succeed. I know I won’t get what I ask for, because of some dated school policy that I won’t learn about until next week. But I make my requests anyway, instead of voicing my true feelings.
How do you think the school can help your child?
“Perhaps there could be a way for Dylan to re-hear classroom lectures – audio-recording them? – so that he can go back over them and gather more of the information. We also need to be sure he’s getting – and going over – notes from the lectures. Recently (and finally), we’ve also learned that his best success in math – and possibly his only success in math – is when he works one-on-one with someone else.”
How do I think the school can help? Really? By changing absolutely everything.
The boys are too smart.
If my kids were not smart, it would be so easy to get help for them. They could go to special classes or special schools and even ride a special bus maybe. Labels like “mentally challenged” mean that people expect nothing from them.
Kids who are mentally challenged don’t have to go to college. No one expects them to do that.
I spent much of this holiday weekend with my sister-in-law, Barbara, a 57-year-old woman with the mentality of an 8-year-old. She spends most of her time mimicking what she hears, often very well, but she doesn’t have the capacity to think.
Barbara and I were driving in my car recently and she said she was hot. She asked me to put down her window.
I thought about my toddlers opening their own windows.
“You can open your own window,” I said. “There’s a button right on your door.” Our car has two buttons on the door – one for the window and one to lock/unlock the door.
She looked at her door. Then she locked it. She unlocked it. She locked the door again. She unlocked it again.
“Huh,” she said, completely befuddled.
“Try the other button,” I said.
She pushed the other button. It has to be kind of pulled back, rather than pushed down, to get the window to go down. She pushed it hard. Then she picked at the button. She pushed it harder.
“Try to move it a different way,” I said, which is what I said to Shane when he was two. But she couldn’t figure out a different way. She tried to take the button off the door. She pushed it gently. She pushed it hard again. She simply couldn’t navigate a way to open that window.
“Huh,” she said again.
I opened the window for her.
Barbara took the special bus to a special school and went to special classes.
To be fair, I do not wish my kids could take a special bus to a special school. I am glad that, so far, they don’t even need special classes.
But Dylan gets up from the table to put away his glass and instead ends up dancing a jig in the other room. When reminded about what he’s supposed to do, he picks up his glass and spins around with it, all the way to the sink. Sometimes it still ends up by the coffee maker instead of its intended destination.
Dylan can’t find, finish or turn in homework without incredible amounts of struggling. And now that he’s on the second new medication, which supposedly takes another month to test, his grades are reflecting someone who can’t open his own window.
Yet Dylan can, actually, do anything. This weekend, he started playing the piano, on key, along with the radio. This morning at breakfast, he conceptualized an underwater village – with air supply – so that time could move slower (which it does in low-lying places) and people would live longer.
He’s so bright, most of the time I can’t keep up with him – and I certainly could never come up with, or do, most of the things he does. I simply can’t. He’s too smart.
So I expect that he can also find his homework. He can’t. I expect him to find his shoes. He can’t. I expect him to know when something is missing or incomplete. He doesn’t.
Dylan can think. He thinks very well. He figures out some incredibly complex problems. But he can’t get his glass to the sink, his paper to the teacher, or – often – his ideas onto paper.
He can think very, very well – but he can’t make his thoughts come to life without a ton of help. This is the crux of the problem.
If I were on a quiz show, and someone asked, What bothers you the most about your son’s ADHD?… I would think about the disorganization, the forgetting, the failing of classes, and the need to constantly repeat myself.
But what bothers me the most is Dylan’s use of other humans as a brain stimulation tool – particularly when he uses his brother.
The way Dylan’s brain works, information doesn’t flow readily from one section of his brain to the other. It goes so slowly, sometimes it doesn’t get there at all. It’s like a broken electrical circuit. And one thing that speeds up the process – just a tad – is doing something physical. That’s why he’s so incredibly bouncy. Stress balls are a great tool, except that he does tend to throw them. He jumps up and down, spins around, dances and throws things all so he can assist his brain in functioning.
But sometimes, there are no stress balls to be had. He picks up whatever is close by – and quite often, what he finds is his little brother. He uses Shane to stimulate his brain.
He grabs Shane and hugs him. He tosses him around like they’re doing the tango. He pushes him, pats him, squeezes him, pulls him, drags him and rolls on him. They wrestle like animals and Dylan is twice Shane’s size.
Surprisingy Shane, who doesn’t even like me to put my arm around him, takes all of this in good humor. He giggles and laughs and acts as though it is all in good fun. When Shane gets hurt – and he often gets scraped or scratched – he is always the first one to defend his brother, claiming that it was really just an accident.
So I suppose I shouldn’t be so bothered by the dragging and pushing and tossing. But Shane is my baby, too. I want him to be safe and unharmed.
Before Shane was even born, I read a book in preparation called Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live So You Can Live Too.
I wanted to be prepared. I didn’t realize, at the time, that I was going to have two drastically different personality types, or that Dylan wasn’t a typical three-year-old child. I just didn’t want them to hate each other.
The thing I remember most from the book is that, as long as the kids aren’t in serious physical danger, I should back off and let them do their own thing. And I have done this, to the best of my ability, since the day Shane was born. Partially as a result of that, the two of them are now very close.
Dylan isn’t really dangerous. He can be rough, but not the kind of rough that breaks limbs or causes hospital visits. His shoves are tiny, his gallumphing more of a dance than a wrestle. He’s very bouncy and ridiculously hyper on occasion, but he cares more about other people than he does himself. (He can work on this aspect of his personality in therapy when he reaches adulthood, if he’d like.) Meanwhile, he really does not intend to harm Shane.
But Dylan does intend to use Shane as a brain stimulant, whether or not Dylan is warned, threatened and even physically removed from the situation. He is constantly hanging on Shane – unless he has some other mental form of stimulation.
The only thing I can do to keep Dylan off of Shane is to keep his brain otherwise occupied. When Dylan is building, inventing, creating, designing, or researching something that really interests him, he is absolutely mellow. Playing a mental game that he loves, for example, particularly if it’s a game he invented, takes away all that physical angst. He becomes almost adult in his behavior, and his brain is firing on all cylinders. It’s amazing.
Of course, that’s when Shane ends up entertaining himself by writing or making a movie – which is also awesome, and a story for another day.
