Brilliant … But Bouncy

We Offer A Large Variety of Courses Each Year.

Dear High School,

I didn’t hear back from you about deleting the IBCP Video Production offerings from the course catalog. I would like to explain my concern.

Both of my kids wanted to take part in the IBCP Video Production program. Dylan was redirected toward Computer Science – which was a fine choice for Dylan. But for Shane, there are no other IBCP options.

Shane is planning to major in film in college. While I know that there’s a chance that he’ll change those ambitions, we are going to be searching for colleges in California and touring the best film schools in the country. If he really wants to have a career in film, this is the best way for him to do it.

When colleges look at individual transcripts, they know what different high schools offer. They will see Shane’s transcript and – because it is still listed on the high school website – colleges will assume that Video Production was actually offered as part of the IBCP program.

It will be impossible to explain why Shane’s schedule instead includes classes like Culinary Arts and Theater. It will look like Shane simply didn’t want to challenge himself with the IBCP option.

Shane’s high school obviously does not offer the Video Production program. Yet the IBCP Video Production program is still outlined in the course catalog.

Before the colleges see Shane’s transcript, I think it’s important that the Broadcast Media pathway – the one that doesn’t exist – is either REMOVED or OFFERED. Leaving it in limbo for seven years – which is what it has been since Dylan first expressed an interest in the program – seems like a very unfortunate decision for Shane, if not for the rest of the students who want to follow that pathway in the future.

Please let me know how you will proceed, so that I know what to expect with Shane’s college search.

Thank you.

After emailing our school’s IB coordinator, I received the following response:

I have been asked me to respond to your questions regarding the IBCP Program.  Students in the Broadcast Media pathway participate in our Journalism Program.  The course sequence is determined by county CTE programs that the county offers.  We offer a large variety of courses each year in our course bulletin.  Ultimately student enrollment determines if a class will run or not.  Thus, courses may be in the bulletin and may not run due to low enrollment.  This varies from year to year.

That was it. THAT was what she had to say in response to my plea.

Fortunately, our high school is spectacularly wonderful and supportive. The vice principal, who also received the above note from me, took charge and started removing Broadcast Media options from the course catalog and school website. She stepped up.

In other words, my begging was met with prompt, professional responsiveness in the most efficient way possible.

I get the feeling that Shane would have had no support whatsoever from the IB coordinator.

In Fact, It Was a Disaster.

When I was young, my family held occasional “family meetings.” With three children, my parents probably determined that this was a good way to discuss things that all of us needed to hear. It was fairly democratic, in that we were often allowed to speak.

I remember having family meetings about washing dishes, keeping our rooms clean, moving to a new house, and the all-important, once-in-a-lifetime family meeting: “We’re getting a dog.”

So it was natural when, as my kids started growing up, Bill and I decided to have family meetings of our own. Most of them have centered around vacations, school, and video games. None of them compared to our most recent family meeting.

This time, we had a family meeting to discuss the fact that the kids rarely do anything around the house unless they are asked to do something. In fact, I would almost use the word “never” to describe how often Dylan or Shane steps up and fixes, cleans, or helps with something without being asked.

Bill, as CEO at his company, is always tasked with opening the meeting. He talked for several minutes saying absolutely nothing, which was obvious by the way the rest of the family waited impatiently to hear his point.

Bill tried to focus on encouraging everyone to reach his full potential, but that’s not what came across. Then he showed a video about the temperature of boiling water which, somehow, related to success.

No one understood anything Bill was saying.

I jumped in and tried to explain that we really just needed the boys to do more things around the house, like …

… throwing away their own garbage instead of leaving it on the counter;

… emptying the dishwasher if it’s clean, instead of putting dirty dishes in the sink and walking away; and

… doing laundry instead of asking me to buy new underwear.

I just wanted the boys to do some of the things we’ve been doing for them for the past 18 years.

But that didn’t go over well, either. In fact, it was a disaster.

Dylan claimed that he already knew how to do everything, and that if only he could get a decent list of what exactly needed to be done, that list would be done forthwith. And Shane – who asked to be excused while Dylan was still arguing with Bill – said he didn’t really understand why a list was a bad idea.

I explained that, if Dylan had a list of 25 things to do, he would do them all. Then he would buy a beanbag chair, leave the oversized beanbag box in the middle of the kitchen floor for three months, then sit on the chair, throw his socks on the window sill and say, “What’s wrong? I did that whole list!”

Shane said, “Ohhhhh… I think I finally understand what you’re saying! Can I tell Dylan?”

“Sure,” I said. “He might even listen to you.”

So Shane repeated the story to Dylan, who said he also finally understood. Then Dylan got up and left the room – leaving Bill seething, wondering why the boys didn’t realize how close they were to “success” even after he’d shown that inspirational boiling-water video.

Sometimes, family meetings don’t go as planned.

The next day, Dylan was home alone all day and Shane came home after school. I got home at dinnertime.

When I arrived, I found a sink-load of dirty dishes and a full, clean dishwasher. No one had even thought to empty it.

And They Are Thanking ME.

In anticipation of Dylan’s college life beginning, I received an email from the school. It said:

Thank you for encouraging and supporting your student in the decision to attend Belmont University. We are grateful for your trust in our faculty and staff to provide an academically challenging education that empowers your student and others to engage and transform the world with disciplined intelligence, compassion, courage and faith.

I breezed through the paragraph, then went back and read it again. And again. And again. In spite of my newly recognized OCD, I wasn’t re-reading because I didn’t understand it. I was re-reading because I think the second line is one of the best written sentences I have ever read in my life.

They are grateful for my trust. That alone was enough to make me feel warm and fuzzy toward them.

But what am I trusting faculty and staff to do? I am trusting them to provide a challenging education that empowers my son – and his soon-to-be friends – to transform the world. My son is going to change the world! There is hope! The obscene dollars we are pumping into his education are going to be not only worthwhile, but they are going to allow him to do what we always knew he could do! He and his friends are going to transform the world!

But how? How, you wonder, can that be done? How are they going to learn how to change the world in only four years? It seems impossible! But no… it’s not. They are going to use disciplined intelligence – not just plain intelligence, but a disciplined, more productive kind! And in case that turns out to be insufficient, they will add compassion – the stuff of the angels – and courage – the stuff of heroes.

And if all of that won’t do it, then there will be faith, without which nothing could ever change – not the world, not education, not the college, not my son.

We’re going to have some faith that this beautiful, positive transformation will happen.

And they are thanking me.

Often, I am sarcastic in tone, and I usually detest professionally presented emails. But in this case, I am totally not sarcastic. In fact, I think I am in love with this college and, especially, the person who wrote that note.

Whoever that might be.

Shane Had To Tell Me.

When Shane was little, his kindergarten teacher said to me, “I love the way he thinks. He’s just so out-of-the-box!”

Out-of-the-box? I thought. He’s the first normal person in our whole family!

Then it hit me: Shane thinks like I do, so I deemed him “normal.” We are both a little off-center, a little bit too literal, and focus maybe a bit much on tiny details. But I adore having Shane in my life, in my family, and watching him grow – hearing what he thinks. His is the opinion I value most, because it’s often most in line with my own.

That doesn’t mean Shane is perfect. In fact, I often learn a great deal from Dylan, whose thinking is so often vehemently opposed to my own.

But I’ve always been interested in Shane, since he’s not only an out-of-the-box thinker, but more emotionally balanced than I ever was.

I thought maybe some of Shane’s personality was skewed in a positive way due to his vision processing disorder. He did everything so easily and perfectly when he was undergoing treatment!

The staff at the vision therapy center even called to see how Shane was doing at home, since he seemed so wildly well-adjusted at the center. They expected him to complain substantially more about his therapy exercises.

Shane never complained.

I’ve been taking Asperger’s tests online, for Shane, for as long as I can remember, because I knew something was going on with him. Longtime blog readers will know that I determined (without professional help) that Shane definitely has Nonverbal Learning Disorder – which explained many of his symptoms, but also gave him some symptoms Shane didn’t have. I’m still not sure if I was right on that one.

I wondered, and wondered, and wondered: What is going on with Shane?

And then, when it came right down to it, Shane had to tell me. No matter how hard I looked, no matter how much I guessed, I couldn’t figure out how to solve the puzzle without some substantial clues from Shane.

I’m so proud of him for talking to me, after being bothered for so long about what was bothering him. He didn’t know enough about OCD to know that’s what was going on, in his brain, in his life. He had to tell me what he was thinking – how he was thinking – before I could even suspect OCD.

And at the same time, I’m so incredibly saddened that I didn’t see it, didn’t know it, didn’t even guess it, until Shane told me. How could I not recognize such a huge thing in my own child?

A friend told me, when I confided my angst, that it’s not so much that I didn’t recognize the OCD as I “embraced it” as being simply Shane. And that’s true: I just chalked it up to being part of his personality, and loved it along with everything else.

This tiny statement from my friend made me feel so much better.

But what about the great likelihood that I have OCD, too, and never knew it? I don’t know if my having OCD – if I do – made it easier to recognize, or harder to recognize, in Shane. And I sure don’t embrace anything in myself.

For Shane’s sake, I am glad he’s able to move right into treatment – a pretty simple, flexible treatment – and get help for what’s been ailing him.

I just wish I would have known about it sooner, so he wouldn’t have had to suffer alone.

It’s Only Been a Week Since School Ended Forever.

Dylan came downstairs this morning and said, “Every day I come down here and wonder, where’s Shane?”

Shane, of course, is still at school. Dylan finished his school year several weeks before the rest of the students which, I assume, cuts down on senior skipping and the like. I mean, all the seniors are already done with school long before it’s over. How could they rebel against that?

Dylan secured a summer job in spite of his insane schedule, but he doesn’t train for that job until just before school lets out. He’s working as a host for a zip line park, so the customers start swarming in after the school year ends.

So Dylan stays in his room until noon. He plays video games at night. He’s got no homework, no studying, no job. He’s free of responsibilities for the first time in eons and he loves it.

But he might want to consider preparing for college. There are music placement tests to take in a couple of weeks, for example. Since he wants to major in music, he might want to prepare for those. But he doesn’t.

He has to pare down his belongings from the size of a mountain to a size that will fit in the back of a Honda Pilot – and still last him a year. He’s got a paperwork mound in his room that started growing sometime in kindergarten, but he doesn’t want to go through that – or anything else. And he’s got two months before he goes to school.

Still, it’s only been a week since school ended forever – and I can’t see any reason to declare that he “must” do much of anything. In fact, he’s not going to have me pointing him in the right direction in a few months, so who would it help?

Besides, he deserves some down time. His job will start soon enough and we can worry about cleaning out and packing up sometime between shifts.

I’m going to let the boy rest for awhile.

I Don’t Know How to NOT Do It.

One evening, late, Shane texted me: Can you come upstairs, please?

Shane rarely asks me to visit him. In fact, this may have been the first time. I went straight into his room without knocking. “Are you okay?”

He didn’t respond, but he was lying quietly on his bed, clearly upset. Shane was not okay.

It took awhile, but finally he started to talk. He talked about how he was struggling with reading, that it felt like he could never get through a paragraph. He talked about an obsession with crimes – and how to be sure he wasn’t committing any. And he talked about his phone, which he kept under his sheets.

“Do you know why I keep it there?” he asked.

“I thought you didn’t want to be distracted by it,” I said.

“It’s because I think somebody can see through the camera lens,” he said. “I know they can’t, but I can’t keep the camera on top of the sheets because I’m worried that someone could be watching me.”

And that’s when the light bulb went on over my head.

“You know nobody is watching you, but you do it anyway?”

“Yeah,” Shane said. “And I don’t know how to not do it.“

Never before that moment had I suspected Shane had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). And then, just like that, I knew he did.

I gave him some suggestions: things he could do right away to alleviate the stress of feeling horrible about doing things that didn’t seem “normal.” He could concentrate on some positive things, make a gratitude list, take deep breaths and be proud of himself for talking about what was bothering him.

“Tell you what,” I said. “I’m going to find a quiz online for you to take, and one way or another, we’ll find someone who can help you learn how to handle what’s bothering you.”

I found a quiz on PsychCentral, and Shane took it immediately. With 12 being the lowest possible OCD score, Shane scored 19. The site said:

Based upon your responses to this screening measure, you are most likely suffering from an obsessive-compulsive disorder…. This is not a diagnosis, or a recommendation for treatment. However, it would be advisable and likely beneficial for you to seek a professional diagnosis from a trained mental health professional in your community immediately.

We talked a bit more, and Shane felt comfortable moving forward to find a therapist. I started looking and found someone within a couple of hours, so we were able to set an appointment pretty quickly.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d always thought Shane’s obsessive thoughts were – well, normal. I’d been just like him growing up, and what he did was an awful lot like what I did. In fact, sometimes my obsessions were a bit more extreme.

So before I went to bed, I took the OCD quiz for myself. I got a 17.

One Day, You’re Going to Be Big!

When Dylan was young – 11 or 12 years old – we visited our local high school. When we pulled into the parking lot, I had an idea.

“Hey,” I said, thinking that someday I would want this, “let me take a picture.”

I propped Dylan in front of the school, next to the minivan. With great glee and anticipation I said, “One day, you’re going to be big! And you’re going to GO to this school!”

Today, that photo popped up as a featured memory on my Facebook page.

I posted it two years ago – seemingly a lifetime – when I realized that Dylan only had two years left in high school.

But the photo popping up on Facebook today, of all days, couldn’t have been more timely.

Dylan’s high school career is now officially over. On Friday, Dylan got up, drove to school with Shane, and went to one class. After first period, he and the other seniors all just … left.

And that was Dylan’s last day of school.

It was his last time, ever, waking up to do the thing he hated most in the entire world.

He talked today about “senior-itis,” the very real feeling that there was no purpose in his attending school anymore, let alone doing any work. Dylan had senior-itis starting sometime in sixth grade, but he could only claim it for the past few months.

But Dylan made it – he didn’t quit. He didn’t skip school, do drugs, get caught up with the wrong crowd, deface school property or assault any teachers. He just bided his time – the equivalent of his prison sentence – and came out with a B average and acceptances to seven different colleges.

In other words, Dylan did okay. In fact, he did great.

Dylan got big. He went to that school. And now he’s done.

I remember that Dylan didn’t want to get his picture taken that day. “It’s not my school yet,” he whined. “And I don’t even like school.”

To Dylan, school was 260 days a year of agony. It was day after day after day of sheer pain. Day after day, year after year, he plodded on – and through – just trying to hang in there until graduation.

And to me, it happened in the blink of an eye.