Dylan is having trouble with a girl. He likes the girl. The girl likes him. They call each other “best friends.” The problem is: the girl’s parents don’t want the girl spending so much time with Dylan. They don’t want her to come over to our house anymore. They don’t want her to spend so much time texting him. And as a parent, I understand.
But I thought there might be more to it, so I emailed the parents to see if they knew something I didn’t know. Girl’s Mom admitted that she has been reading her daughter’s texts. (This is something I don’t want to do. I respect his privacy and see no reason to read his texts.) Girl’s Mom doesn’t like what’s in them. She says Dylan talks about me, about how I yell too much. My guess is, she doesn’t want Dylan over here because she thinks I’m some kind of screeching lunatic.
I am not a screeching lunatic, but I have had my moments. After our catastrophe evening on Monday, I made a new resolution that there should be NO yelling in the house. Someone told me that yelling is worse for kids than hitting them, that they will grow up to be depressed and despondent.
Dylan is already a bit depressed and despondent. And of course, it’s my fault. I yell at him too much. I yell that he needs to do his homework, put on his shoes, wear a coat, brush his hair. I yell at him to stop spinning in circles and sit down and eat. I yell at him to stop playing the same song every single day on the piano. I yell at him because I think yelling gets results. I yell at him because he doesn’t listen to me.
I yell at him because I think I’m losing control. I yell at him – which shows that I have LOST control.
So far, since Monday, I have not yelled. Not once. It is hard. It is very, very hard. I feel the fear welling up inside of me and have no idea how to let it out without yelling. Anger comes from fear. I am afraid that things will not get done, that my boys won’t know what to do when they grow up, that I will lose them.
But I am trying – really, really trying – not to yell, one day at a time. And I will keep posting on how that goes. Because while I started this blog to show what it’s like to raise a GT/LD teenager, I am realizing that raising myself is substantially more difficult – and essential.
This week has been hard, and it’s only Wednesday. Raising a teenager is a bit like taking a perfectly good car, beating it mercilessly with a metal rod, and then wondering why it doesn’t drive the way it used to. Except I’m pretty sure I didn’t do anything to make Dylan this way. He’s simply raging with hormones and has no idea how to live through the constant drama that comes at him from all directions (including inside himself).
I’ve been practicing the principles of Celebrate Calm and Kirk Martin since Dylan was 6. I went to hear Kirk at a local bookstore for free, while Bill took the kids somewhere. It was fall, much like today, so they probably went to a farm while I went to listen to someone talk about dealing with difficult kids. We didn’t have an ADHD diagnosis, but we knew Dylan was a handful.
Kirk talked about remaining calm as your child bounced all over the room. He talked about the way we tend to lose it with “our kids,” and scream when we should, instead, sit down with them and color. He talked so much about Dylan, I thought he’d met him before the talk. And then he said he had lots more information that would help us, on CDs that cost nearly $300.
I called Bill on his cell and explained my dilemma. This was the first time I’d ever heard anyone describing my child – and offering hope. I wanted to buy the CDs but we’d have to give up food for a few weeks. Bill said, “Right before you called, I was standing outside praying about what to do about Dylan. This must be the answer to my prayer. Buy the CDs.”
And we did.
{This is NOT a paid advertisement. It’s just that nothing else worked for us. And doing what’s on these CDs did. So I’ll go on….}
And we bought more CDs later. And we went to see Kirk Martin during all of his local visits. And we inundated ourselves with calm techniques. And they changed our LIFE. They helped us to encourage Dylan to soar with his strengths. And they’ve made the last 5 years more beautiful and positive than we ever dreamed possible. Dylan wasn’t the problem. It was the way we reacted to Dylan’s behavior that caused the most trouble.
And then Dylan kicked into high gear as a hormonal teenager. The other night, I found myself quite literally screaming at him on the street, like some low-life insane person with a grocery cart and nowhere to go. I was screaming. All the CALM went right out the window. Dylan was screaming back at me. But I remembered what I was supposed to do and, somehow, threw a Celebrate Calm CD at Dylan and forced him to listen to it.
It was the best I could do. I could hardly breathe, I was so angry at him for not listening to my sage wisdom.
The next day, he came downstairs calm and relaxed. I was still an emotional wreck. I said, “What happened?”
Dylan said, “I’m just trying this thing that I learned on the CD. It says you don’t have to hang onto bad stuff. You can just let it go and move on.”
I think it’s time for me to break out those old CDs and listen to them again, with a fresh perspective and a teenager.
I took Shane to a farm yesterday. It’s fall, the leaves are falling and the pumpkin patches are open for fun and frolic. Shane buried himself in corn, then played festival games. We got lost in the corn maze and took our picture on a giant chair. We skipped the pig races so that we could have the fun slides all to ourselves. We rode the hayride to the pumpkin patch and got a 21-pound pumpkin.
And then we played tether ball. Shane and I had a grand time, passing the ball back and forth, trying to get the ball’s string wrapped around the pole. I won a couple of times, not really trying to clobber my son, but the string wrapped around the pole before he was able to stop it. And I won. We laughed and played again.
Then Johnny came over. Johnny looked like he was raised in the country, with crew-cut hair and worn out flip-flops. To be fair, we were all filthy at the farm, and this kid could have been from somewhere downtown. But I got the feeling that this boy had done some serious outdoor time, maybe with three or four older brothers. Johnny was about the same size as Shane, al beit more bulky, and had no one to play with. So I offered Johnny my spot in tether ball.
The first thing Johnny did was thrust the ball south with all his might, which made the ball fly straight up over Shane’s little head and whiz around the pole so fast, Shane’s head almost spun around with it. Then Johnny said, “We’re going to play the real way,” and proceeded to explain his rules, proving his alpha status in less than 30 seconds.
Shane held his own, but Johnny won every time. I watched as Shane lightly tossed the ball back to Johnny, and Johnny clobbered the ball with every ounce of physical strength a boy can muster. Shane’s eyes would blink, he’d flinch a bit, and sometimes he’d get the ball back around without any pole-wrapping activity. He did pretty well, and he only lost twice.
But what struck me was Shane’s lack of desire to win. He was all defense, and no offense. He would save the ball frequently from going around the pole, but he rarely, if ever, pushed the ball past Johnny – even if he could have – to get it wrapped around the pole the other way. And I realized quite suddenly that this is also how he plays Stratego and Chess and other strategy board games he consistently loses for no apparent reason.
Shane has made absolutely phenomenal moves that could easily win him games. He has the brains for it, and I’ve no doubt that he could win. He enjoys the games, and he enjoys watching and waiting to see what happens. But he’s never on the offensive. He never chooses to attack. He doesn’t seem to care if he wins. He just enjoys playing.
He’s this way with his friends, too. No one stomps all over him, because his friends are kind-hearted and mature about winning. I’ve noticed that brilliant friends also tend to be more empathetic than kids of average intelligence. They’re always gracious winners (except Dylan, who is more of a typical big brother) and Shane is accustomed to playing with kindness.
Johnny didn’t play that way. He fought hard for his wins. At one point, Shane said, “How old are you?” Johnny said, “Nine.” Shane, also being nine, must have thought, Huh. It seems unlikely that both of us are the same age. But he kept right on playing, never complaining – and never even mentioned the game (which was the last thing we did) on the long drive home.
It’s hard to say what goes on in Shane’s mind. If I were Shane, I’d have silently beat myself up the entire way home for my pitiful play. But Shane? He just read a book.
Dylan rarely does homework at home. He crams everything into completion at lunchtime. But he had a project to do for science, and asked me to buy him a foam ball before Friday. I bought him a lovely sea-green foam chunk, the size and shape of a softball, and he sat down to work on his project.
It was going to be a 3-D model of a cell.
He started with scissors, slicing a huge triangular quarter out of the ball. He sliced and sawed and swept up foam dust for 15 minutes. Since I don’t know the eight parts of a cell, or its functions, I don’t know whether or not he did it correctly – but it looks awesome. He used pipe cleaners and toothpicks and little pieces of orange paper and markers and foam. Then he typed up the eight cell functions, wrapped the typed page around an old plastic cup that perfectly fit the foam ball, and now he has a model of a cell.
Dylan may not be organized, or able to turn in homework on time every day, but wow that kid can create! He took a bunch of junk and, using nothing but his powers of design and imagination, made a cell.
The next day, he recreated “wet tramp” – the boys’ idea of a good time. Dylan has designed a way for two hoses to reach our backyard trampoline. He sets them up just so, and the kids jump with water pouring upon them from above, and squirting up from below. Rather than looking like a simple hose spray, he also sets the nozzles so that there are different pressures and delights depending on where and how one jumps on the trampoline.
Dylan has spent hours designing a dam for the creek across the street, to catch litter and then discard it properly. He’s built a giant swing out of nothing more than a rope, some sticks and a tree. He has a flair for designing, inventing and engineering something out of nothing. He takes junk and turns it into a game. He takes a game and turns it into a more challenging game. He’s not content to let something be the way it is. He wants everything to be better, stronger, faster than ever before.
Unfortunately, he’s limited to the junk he finds in the woods near our house, and in the garage. If he had unlimited resources, the kid could save the world. Best of all, he has the heart for it. He actually wants to save the world.
Who knows? Maybe he will.
Shane has a completely different set of issues than Dylan. His personality is practically opposite that of his brother, and it astounds me when I see the differences – especially when Shane struggles to do something simple.
This morning, for the first time, Shane was supposed to practice his instrument for five minutes. He plays percussion, which includes a drum pad and a xylophone. It also includes a xylophone stand – which is basically a stick that screws into a hole under the xylophone.
So this morning, he hauled everything upstairs to set it up. Ten minutes later, I came in to his room to see the xylophone stand upright, with the xylophone balanced precariously on top of it. Shane was walking in circles – around and around and around and around – hanging onto the xylophone and laboriously screwing it to the stand.
He didn’t look up. He didn’t stop walking around the stand. He just said, “I’m dizzy.”
I waited. “Is it on yet?” I asked.
He stopped walking and jiggled the xylophone, which was barely hanging on. “Yes!” he said, and started playing it.
Shane doesn’t do anything the easy way. He also doesn’t respond quickly to problems. Yesterday, he opened a milk box at the playground and the milk poured out over the top, right down onto Shane’s shorts.
“Uh-oh,” he said. He didn’t do anything. If he were two years old, I’d expect him to sit there. But at nine years old, I expected a bit … more.
To be fair, he gets this pitiful trait from me. I’ve watched my husband solve problems like lightning. His brain is hard-wired for solutions. My brain is hard-wired to do nothing but wish there was a better way.
When Bill and I were first dating, he came over to my apartment. It was back in the days when ice cube trays were in fashion and, while I didn’t use ice, I had ice cubes at the ready for guests.
My freezer opened from right to left. When I moved in, the ice cube tray was on the right side, in the back corner. So when I refilled the tray, I put it on the right side, in the back corner. Of course, I filled the freezer with stuff, so getting to the ice cube tray became quite difficult. Frozen vegetables would tumble into its space when I took it out, and the door would start to close on me when I was putting the tray back.
Bill liked ice, so I used the last few cubes for him and refilled the tray with water. I moaned a bit about putting the tray back into the freezer – veggies falling, door in the way, blah blah blah. Bill opened the freezer and, with one arm, swiped all the frozen stuff over to the right side of the refrigerator – leaving a huge, empty space for the ice cube tray on the left side. I could open the freezer, plop in the tray, and all would be well.
I think that’s when I subconsciously decided to marry Bill. It has turned out to be a wonderful match – with my anally organized ways and ignorance, and his obscene disorganization and problem-solving skills.
Unfortunately for all of us, though, Shane seems to have acquired the ignorance gene. I’d better go check to see if he’s trying to unscrew the xylophone by walking in circles in the other direction.
Dylan’s brilliance has, apparently, only carried him through 6th grade. He’s now hit what someone on my GT/LD email list called “a wall.” He’s been able to skate by on his intelligence for years and years. Now he has to learn how to study.
I know better than to think I can teach him anything. He recoils from my advice like I’m a venomous snake. I say, “Hey, let’s go over … (blah)” and Dylan says, “WHY?! I don’t NEEEED to go over that! I already KNOW all there is to know about that!” And within minutes, we are in a screaming battle that ends with one of us storming out of the room saying, “FINE. WHATEVER.”
But his dad? His dad thinks like Dylan does. He acts like he does. And oddly enough, he probably learns the same way, too. So I asked Bill to help him.
The two of them sat at the kitchen table tonight and prepared for Dylan’s algebra test as if they were long lost study buddies. Dylan didn’t whine or moan. He didn’t fight or complain. He sat there with his notes and plodded through algebra with his dad – just like he’s supposed to do.
It was amazing. They sat there for more than an hour without any issue whatsoever. Dylan doesn’t take pills on weekends (really – why would he?) so he did the whole thing with no medication – and the tapping on the floor and beating on the table didn’t start for 70 minutes. An hour and ten minutes of STUDYING ALGEBRA.
I am beginning to think I have a lot to learn about my son, whereas up till now, I was pretty sure I knew everything.
Best of all, I think Dylan knows more about algebra now than he’s learned all year in school. We shall see…
On school days, Dylan leaves the house at 7:15 to catch the bus. He wakes up at 6:30.
I wake up at 6:40, go downstairs, make his breakfast and part of his lunch. I want to make sure he knows how to make his own lunch by the time he gets to high school, so he puts in two items the night before. Then I make the sandwich so it’s fresh.
I make his breakfast so that it’s piping hot – but not too hot – at 7:00 when he is expected to barrel down the stairs to eat. I try to give him a high-protein breakfast because, in the years before his medication, we learned that protein helps his concentration. Best of all, there is something in eggs (besides protein) that helps him focus. He only likes eggs if they’re smothered in cheese, so on most days, he gets an egg sandwich with high fiber, whole grain bread, and a piece of fruit.
On normal days, he eats and chats with me for about 15 minutes. Then he puts away his dishes and his water glass, tucks his lunchbox into his backpack, then takes his pill and his vitamins with a 6-ounce glass of milk, often chocolate. He consumes them, puts his glass in the dishwasher, throws the hood of a coat on his head because he never has time to put the coat on his body – then he struts out the door with his 90-pound backpack and heads for the bus stop.
He stops at the end of our long driveway, turns around, and waves at me – standing in my PJ’s on the porch.
Yesterday, I got up at 6:40 and found Dylan asleep in his bed, lights still off. I considered waking him, but only briefly. He knows that if he misses his bus, he misses Morning Show (which he loves) and two periods of school before I’ll drive him in – when I take his brother at 9:00.
So I let him sleep. But I made his lunch and his breakfast, just in case.
At 7:12, I heard the thumping of what-seemed-to-be a cow in his room. SLAM! BAM! WHACK! A mere three minutes later, Dylan thundered downstairs yelling that his breakfast wasn’t ready (I was microwaving it so he could carry it with him) and shrieked that I should have KNOWN that he woke up at 6:30 and fell back asleep BY ACCIDENT! WHY DIDN”T I WAKE HIM?
Of course, I yelled back. I always respond so maturely. “You do NOT get to yell at ME because YOU fell asleep!”
“I’ve only been awake for three minutes, Mom! Give me a break!” he grumbled in his defense.
(Was he kidding? Sadly, no.)
I handed him his lunchbox, his breakfast sandwich, a milk box and a pill – no vitamins today. He started inhaling everything on his way out the door. He raced up to the end of the driveway, 90-pound backpack slamming him with every flat-footed stomp as he ran.
He got to the end of the driveway, turned around, and waved. How I love that boy.
Shortly thereafter, I remembered: Today is School Picture Day.
After a two-hour IEP “review,” Bill and I prepared to present our findings to Dylan: three choices of how to take responsibility for himself and turn in his papers on time.
Being the anal mom that I am, I typed up his choices in color-coded font, using italics as appropriate. I also spent two hours (when I should have been working) printing out encouraging research about mechanical and automotive engineering colleges, and creating a collage of quotes from, and facts about Albert Einstein, who reminds me of Dylan in many ways.
We called him in to discuss the options at 8 p.m. and Dylan sat down with a loud moan. “Another hour of talking about being sad,” he said. This was in reference to the previous two nights, when he went to bed crying about his “hard” life, and how he already felt “like a complete idiot and a jerk.”
Middle school is crushing his spirit. Hence, the Einstein quote in the collage I made for him: “Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds.” I enlarged that one especially.
So we said to Dylan, no, this wasn’t time to be sad. We wanted to talk to him about the IEP meeting. He grumbled again. In frustration, I said, “Fine. If you don’t want to talk, don’t talk. You can figure this out all on your own.”
And he stormed out of the room. Took a shower, watched a video, went to his room.
He tore down the Einstein collage without reading it. He never looked at his choices. The engineering college research is sitting in a pile on the floor next to me. We certainly never got to that.
I spent my whole day working for him, trying to encourage him, helping him in the best ways I knew how. I offered love and positive affirmations. I organized everything for him into the simplest possible terms, without being condescending. I spoke to him like an adult, and he responded like a child.
He broke my heart. He crushed my spirit. He didn’t take any help.
And this morning, he went off to school with a chip on his shoulder and the right to be wrong. And I watched him go.
Shane makes movies. He’s been making movies since he was old enough to hold the big, clunky toy camera he got when he was in first grade. He makes movies with the little people, the action figures and the dog. He’s made so many movies, no one has ever seen them all. We dump them on his personal hard drive so he can make more. He’s run through that clunky camera and two adult cameras, and is now making movies on his Nexus 7.
This weekend, he made a movie starring HIMSELF – as both Shane and Shane’s evil, telekinetic twin from a parallel universe. The movie is called Parallel. On the left side of the screen, he stars as “good” Shane. On the right side of the screen he stars as “evil telekinetic twin.” And he made the entire 10-minute drama without benefit of photo editing software. Every few seconds, he would change from one outfit to the next, add or remove hair gel, and position himself on the appropriate side of the screen – so he appeared to be having a conversation with himself. He made telekinesis seem real, with objects flying from one side of the screen into a character’s hand. He even wrote and sang a song. He had no help, on any of it.
The movie is very, very good. He worked for hours (and days) making it, talking about it like a new best friend. He has sincere, creative talent and incredible perseverance for a nine-year-old – or for any age. When he finished, he ran downstairs and said, “I’m finished with Parallel! Do you want to see it?”
And like any good mother I said, “Not right now.”
To be fair, I was in the middle of something – although I have no idea what – and I put him off until afterward. Then his dad assigned him a job in the yard, so he did his job for awhile. When he came back inside, out of breath and excited, he said, “Do you want to watch Parallel now?”
And I said, “Not right now.” I was putting batteries in something, and was late to pick up dinner (since we were ordering out again).
And then, seeing the thin veil of disappointment cross his face, I kicked myself HARD and said, “Wait, yes, I can watch it now.” I put the batteries in quickly, delayed the food pick-up (and dinner) and sat down on the couch with him, and we watched. It was the best 10 minutes of the entire day.
And it was really good. He has passion for this, and I’d like to find him a good software program for Christmas that would make his life easier. I’d like to get him a class in filmmaking. I’d like to give him STUFF to encourage his wonderful talent.
But mostly, next time he makes a movie, I want to drop everything I’m doing and say, “Yes, I’d love to watch your film!” Because that’s what he needs more than anything in the whole, wide world.
Last night was Back to School Night at middle school. Meanwhile, the IEP meeting is next Tuesday, so I received written teacher comments from all 7 teachers. You’d think my kid had no problems at all.
Dylan’s teachers talked about him in such glowing terms, I started to think they had the wrong kid. They said things like:
“Dylan has started the year fantastically.”
“He seems motivated and responsible.”
“Dylan is a delightful student in my class. He is polite and has good interactions with students and staff.”
“No concerns at all about Dylan thus far.”
“Dylan is off to a GREAT start.”
Then, when I met his teachers, I found them to be knowledgeable and interesting. They seemed to know what they’re doing, and they had a great grasp on their material and how their class was responding. I was very, very impressed (which is not always the case) with ALL of Dylan’s teachers.
So how could they be talking about Dylan?
WHAT I SEE:
“Dylan forgot to turn in his homework again.”
“Dylan hasn’t done a single minute of school work at home all year.”
“He missed 2 out of 4 questions on his test. I mean, he DIDN’T SEE THEM.”
“Dylan needs a computer for his writing, but never uses one.”
“He’s disorganized, disheveled and often forgets to brush his hair or wear deodorant, or both, on any given day.”
Sigh. I know I’m right – but maybe they are, too…
So I became wildly encouraging, praising my son for everything he’s doing right. We read the teacher comments together. I made a big fuss and high-fived him. Because gosh, he’s doing GREAT.
Then I sit back and worry about letting my guard down. What if I’m not vigilant, if I think he’s doing great and I let him fall on his face?
I remember years ago, when I went to my first (and only) CHADD meeting. Dylan was in first grade and I was in a panic. “What if I let him do everything by himself and he FAILS?” I gasped.
And more or less they said, “So what? Let him fail. That’s how he’ll learn.”
So it’s been six years since that meeting and I’ve been trying to let natural consequences take their course. It is VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY HARD. I want to jump in and fix everything, and I DO jump in and fix too much.
Hm. Maybe I fix too much. Maybe I should let him SUCCEED, as well.
