No one believes me when I tell them something is up with Shane.
But something is up with Shane.
Since no one has come up with any kind of new “disorder” or “learning ailment,” I have been on my own, trying to figure it out. I have taken the Asperger’s quizzes online about two dozen times, because Shane’s “issue” so closely mimics Asperger’s – in some ways.
Asperger’s is high-functioning autism, and ADHD is on the autism spectrum. And I know the “spectrum” runs in the family. So when I hear Shane talking or thinking in such a literal manner, I think, it MUST be Asperger’s.
And he’s a synaesthete – he experiences letters as colors. This is a trait that is much more prevalent in people with autism-spectrum disorders.
In other ways, it seems impossible for Shane to have any “disorder.” He’s functioning beautifully – except when he’s utterly baffled by something that is so obvious to other people.
Did I just not teach him well enough when he was younger?
I thought I’d nailed it with “Nonverbal Learning Disorder.” But there are symptoms of NVL that he doesn’t have – just enough to make me wonder.
Meanwhile, I’ve noticed that he’s got very serious challenges understanding subtext, or body language, or reading between the lines. For years, he identified people by the color of their hair – and didn’t realize they had different faces. More than anywhere else, this is going to hurt him socially.
So since no one believes me, and no one else (except his kindergarten teacher who helped to diagnose him with a vision processing disorder) seems to notice the issue, I am always on my own.
Then I got an email from Shane’s English teacher. Shane had gotten a C – which is a very low grade for Shane – on his quarterly assessment. When I asked why, this is what his English teacher had to say:
I went back and analyzed Shane’s test response and identified two areas of weakness:
1.) Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different context, to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when reading.
2.) Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
Simply put, Shane needs to first and foremost understand figurative language. From both his test and my classroom observations, Shane gets the overall picture of what the text is about, but can’t quite explain clearly how he came to the conclusion. … Inferencing is also an important skill to work on and he can accomplish this with the more he reads and THINKS about the reading.
Inferences, figurative language – this all relates back to Shane’s overwhelming ability to be literal. Whatever it is, he needs to work on it.
So I’m trying to “train” him through – of all things – YouTube. I’m finding videos related to each little piece of what might ail him.
But it’s incredibly frustrating. For the first time in my life, I find myself without any ideas on how to help my child. Maybe this is why I spent so much time concentrating on how to help Dylan – because ADHD is so well-studied and documented.
I ran into an old friend one day who said that she’d just found out that her son has Asperger’s – at the age of 32. Asperger’s wasn’t a “thing” when her son was younger, but now that he’s 32, he’s finally able to be diagnosed and properly treated.
I sure hope I don’t have to wait until Shane is 32 to figure out how to help.
I am not a huge fan of tradition, so Mother’s Day is not bright on my radar. It’s nice having a day, but we don’t spend the whole day buying purses or eating at some high-priced, lavender-infused bistro.
As a result, my sons can almost forget about it beforehand. They don’t fret over cards or gifts – although this year Shane spontaneously presented me with a hidden word puzzle book, which I love.
Mostly, I just enjoy spending time with the boys. We played several games of Racko this year, after playing Apples to Apples and Big Boggle. We watched “Ferb TV,” my favorite Phineas and Ferb episode, and I got to pick anything I wanted to eat for lunch and dinner. (Bill cooked, thank goodness.)
For health reasons, I am on a very restricted diet. NO gluten, dairy, soy, rice, potatoes, corn or sugar. My blood sugar skyrocketed, probably because I consumed a ton of fruit.
So I am now fighting extra hard to avoid even trace amounts of sugar. For lunch, I asked for hot dogs and baked beans, a treasured staple from my childhood.
We had one, soup-sized can of baked beans in the cupboard: 16 grams of sugar in 1/2 cup. The entire can was 42 grams of sugar. Previously, I would have eaten it anyway. But my health is in danger, so even on Mother’s Day, I knew better.
Since it was my special day, Dylan and Shane went to the grocery store to find me some sugar-free or reduced-sugar baked beans.
They were gone mere minutes when Shane sent the first photo: Dylan crouched in front of a wall of baked beans, scouring labels. Then the texting began.
No sugar free beans sorry
This is the only can that doesn’t say “made with brown sugar” or “made with extra brown sugar” on it
We can’t find reduced sugar either
I’m looking at all the beans they have mom
They all have sugar
I called Dylan to tell him to forget it. He answered without saying hello: “After reading the labels absolutely every can of baked beans, I am now certain that there are no baked beans without sugar.”
“Don’t worry about … ” I started to say.
“Oh wait! This one has 10 grams of sugar. Ten is the lowest I can find.”
That’s more than 30 grams per can. “Forget it, Dylan, really. I just won’t have baked beans.”
“It’s Mother’s Day,” Dylan said. “Let me get one can. You can have ten grams of sugar on Mother’s Day.”
I was about to agree – or maybe I wasn’t – when Dylan found a can with only seven grams of sugar per serving. “It’s pork and beans, though,” he said. “It doesn’t say ‘baked beans.'”
“That would be great; thank you,” I said, then hung up the phone, ecstatic that I’d limited my sugar intake to something almost reasonable.
I’d told the kids they could get some ice cream while they were at the store, even though it is 99% made from ingredients I can’t eat. Before they checked out, Shane sent me a photo of the ice cream they’d selected. Three half-gallons of Breyer’s and Turkey Hill, and two additional pints of Ben & Jerry’s. It seemed a bit much, so I texted back.
Is anything on sale?
I don’t think so.
Put the Ben & Jerry’s back if it’s not on sale.
Somehow, my struggle with sugar hasn’t affected them in the slightest.
Still, it was a glorious gift, having my well-educated children reading labels, scouring details, and successfully finding me a can of beans. My Mother’s Day could not have been any better.
When I was pregnant with Dylan, things didn’t always go well.
First, very early in my pregnancy, I passed a blood clot – a horrible glob of something fell into the toilet. Bill and I cried for two hours, thinking I’d miscarried, until we finally saw the doctor.
I got an ultrasound. “I don’t know what you passed,” said the doctor, staring at the black and white screen. “But your baby is just fine.”
Then we really cried. The baby was fine!
A few months later, after we’d finally decided on Dylan’s name, the doctor saw something on baby Dylan’s brain – “a spot” – whatever that meant.
“It’s a marker for Down’s Syndrome,” the doctor told me. “It doesn’t guarantee that your baby has it, but it is a marker. Because of your advanced age (35), I would recommend getting an amniocentesis, just so you can be prepared.”
During the amnio, baby Dylan seemed to be reaching for the needle – even then always active, wanting to touch whatever was nearby.
We had to wait several days for the results. Those were hard, hard days.
Finally, we got the results. “We can’t guarantee that your baby is fine,” they said, “but the amnio showed no signs of Down’s, spina bifida or cystic fibrosis.”
Again, we cried. This time, they were tears of relief.
My water broke a full 24 hours before Dylan was born. He was eight days late, but never fully dropped. Someone guessed that his foot might be stuck in the umbilical cord.
My “all natural” childbirth became the “try anything” approach. Eventually, an emergency C-section gave us our a surprisingly perfect baby boy.
I had no idea that Dylan wasn’t “typical.” I didn’t know that zipping around like a Tasmanian Devil was unusual for a toddler. I thought all babies did that.
And I didn’t know that by the age of 2, most kids could say “white” and “yellow” instead of “ye” and “yo.”
I also didn’t know that most toddlers can’t spell their own names or count past a hundred. And I didn’t know that empathy was reserved for ages 8 and up; Dylan had true empathy before he ever got into preschool – at two.
During preschool, I blamed Dylan’s little friend, Nicholas, when Dylan got into trouble. By kindergarten, I knew I’d blamed the wrong child.
By first grade, Dylan was so bored, he could have slept through school and still been passed along to the next grade. Truthfully, he could have started school in 3rd grade.
The gifted program was Dylan’s first truly wonderful school year. For the first time, he was interested in learning.
There were some suspicions that Dylan had ADHD – but no one ever really “diagnoses” ADHD. Instead, everyone weighs in – teachers, parents, friends. Then the doctor writes a note to the school to “help” with “problem areas.”
Dylan carries that rather haphazard diagnosis with him to this day. In a way, it was helpful. But being gifted – and bored – caused him far more difficulty than ADHD ever could.
And now, finally, Dylan is graduating. He survived everything, and is leaving school with a real sense of himself and who he is – which is way more than I can say for myself at that age.
I wonder sometimes, still, about that spot on his brain – that “marker.” Did it make him gifted? Is it also a marker for autism-spectrum disorders? Maybe that spot is a “marker” for something that no one will discover for a hundred years.
However it happened, I am just proud of the man Dylan has become.
Dylan is nearing the end of school – forever. He’s legally an adult, he knows how to drive, and he doesn’t need me to sign any of his forms. Prom and the last day of school are around the corner, and graduation day is going to be promptly followed by college orientation.
So I am starting to focus on Shane.
I don’t mean that I’m paying more attention to Shane – because really, I am not. In fact, I might be paying less attention to Shane than ever before. Instead, my worries are focused on Shane. I’m starting to notice that he’s not as concerned as he should be about things – like grades, cleanliness, and chores around the house.
I’m starting to worry about his sugar intake, his overindulgence in dairy items, his dry skin. I’m overly concerned that his room looks like a pig sty. I’m wondering if I can still trust him, the way I always have – not because he’s done anything wrong, but because I’ve just noticed that Shane is 15.
Shane is an amazing young man, and I could count his flaws – when he has them – on one hand. But I am getting a little sick with worry about him.
Because Dylan is stepping out of the spotlight. He’s very carefully and deliberately allowing me to let him go.
Even if I don’t want to. And I really, really, really don’t want to.
Over the weekend, Shane went on a church retreat. In an idyllic setting with just enough rain to make it cool, and 30 people peacefully exploring nature, he had a wonderful time.
When he came home, Shane answered all of my questions. He told me about the group activities, the Bible verses they discussed, the team trust exercises, sitting on rocks in the water, his fun roommates, the woods in darkness, and s’mores by the campfire.
I absorbed every word. I love listening to Shane.
“It sounds like you made some new friends, too,” I said, referring to his roommates and hoping to encourage more discussion.
“Yeah,” he said. “But mostly I talked to the group leaders. They kept coming over to me like, ‘hey, I’d better go talk to the shy kid.'”
This peaked my interest. I was always the shy kid, so Shane appearing shy intrigued me. I remember feeling completely left out all the time – school, church, Girl Scouts, dance class, team sports – all the time.
I didn’t want Shane to feel that. Listening to him talk, it didn’t seem like he felt left out. He is always quiet, never disruptive, but I haven’t considered him “shy” since the great dollhouse debacle back in ’08.
“Did you tell the group leaders that you just don’t talk much, and you don’t smile much, but that you are usually perfectly content?”
“No, I didn’t mind,” Shane said. “They were cool. I even found out that one of them is ranked higher than me in the ping pong league!”
Ah, a fellow pong player. Maybe he was 20 years old, but at least he plays ping pong.
So Shane made friends, and he became friends with the college-aged group leaders, too. I’d say it was a good weekend.
Dylan’s summer plans have been in flux since last summer. Now, not surprisingly, he wants a summer job.
For a year, Dylan has been considering a gap year. He’s gone to gap year fairs, job fairs, and been accepted into AmeriCorps. He turned it down, in favor of … well, nothing. He thought he’d be going to the beach for the summer, living there rent-free and making a ton of money, while having his girlfriend visit him frequently.
None of that happened. So, with summer on the immediate horizon, Dylan wants to work.
Dylan loves to work. I would be thrilled with him working. But he should have secured a summer job back in January, when I told him to start looking. Instead, he’s filling out applications just as fast as he can fill them.
Today, one company – a place he’d adore working – emailed him and asked him to send them his summer schedule. “This will help us to determine,” said the company, “whether or not it will be a good fit.”
I texted Dylan his schedule. He’s got high school, then the prom, a night at the theater, and graduation. This is followed by a week-long trip for a two-day college orientation, which is followed by a week-long mission trip. After that, he’s taking a week of vacation – and then heading to college less than two weeks after that.
Dylan sent all of that information to the company.
The email response was almost immediate, but not automated. “Thank you!” it said. “We would like to have you join us for an in-park interview!”
I couldn’t believe it. Who looks at the schedule he provided and interviews him anyway?
But they did – and how wonderful it would be if he could get that job and enjoy his summer, too. It might just be the perfect thing for him.
While Dylan was finalizing his college decision, Shane and I got started on our college search.
Yes, it’s too soon. No, I don’t care.
For Shane, since he doesn’t require the amount of “inspiration” that Dylan required, we started at the end of 9th grade – and we invited Shane’s friend along, to make it more of a vacation and less of a hard-core search.
Still, we started with Princeton. We (briefly) saw Rutgers, then drove up through Connecticut and Rhode Island, stopping at a bunch of schools – including Brown and Yale. Shane’s favorite was Fairfield University.
Shane is not headed for the Ivy League. He could, certainly, go that direction, if he so desired. But he has no interest in those schools. After one quick trip, I know that what Shane seeks is a small, quiet school – preferably with therapy dogs roaming around campus.
I think the dogs put him right over the edge at Fairfield.
We’re going to keep looking, of course, since I love to travel with Shane. It will be a different kind of search, and one that will be every bit as enjoyable as my trips with Dylan.
Shane has been saying that he wants to work on film – which means he’ll need to do something other than the “film program” that doesn’t actually exist at his school. We’ve already got some options on that end.
Unfortunately, there are only a handful of colleges with good film programs on this side of the country – a couple in Connecticut and Rhode Island, and a handful in upstate New York.
The good news: I already had a trip planned for upstate New York, but Dylan and I never took that trip. So it’s ready for Shane!
And the other good news is, Shane isn’t 100% married to the idea of working only in film. During this first excursion, he latched onto another major that he thinks he might enjoy: business and economics.
And that opens up a whole new world for Shane.
I’ve been making Dylan’s breakfast for 18 years. Since he started eating solid foods, I’ve done a lot of research on healthy breakfasts for babies – and then for toddlers, preschoolers, young children, and finally for kids with ADHD.
What I learned would make any parent’s head spin, but I figured it out to the best of my ability. He needs L-Tyrosine, Focus Factor and animal protein – either eggs or meat – to assist the way the amino acids function in his body. Omega 3 can also assist his brain.
So the logical breakfast: organic, cage-free eggs with Omega 3. I started feeding eggs to Dylan in eggnog, but the eggs were raw and the sugar content was high. He said he could eat scrambled eggs with lots of cheese – so I started making mini-omelets. And then, when he couldn’t quite get downstairs in time to eat a leisurely breakfast, I started putting those scrambled eggs with cheese onto buns so he could eat them on his way to school. For a few years, he’s been eating egg sandwiches two or three times a week.
With only a month left of high school, Dylan said – for possibly the tenth time – “I really don’t want to eat egg sandwiches anymore. They actually make me sick when I eat them in the morning.”
He said this very calmly and rationally. But I blew up.
For two days, I blew up. I raged and sputtered and screeched and hissed. “What else do you want me to do?!?” I squealed in my agony. “You won’t eat anything else!”
While he read me a list of things he would eat – pancakes, waffles, hash browns, croissants, fried potatoes – I screamed over him that none of those things have animal protein! I was driving them to school – for Dylan’s very last month of school – and I still thought he didn’t understand how his vitamins worked: “You need animal protein!”
But in the back of mind, something was stirring – something deep under the surface of my angst.
The kids got out of the car and I couldn’t even say, “Have a nice day.” I didn’t even put the front window down so the kids could pet Loki. In fact, I couldn’t say or do anything at all.
And then, halfway home, I suddenly could do only one thing: I could cry. A dam of tears burst from my eyes and deep, choking sobs erupted from my gut. Sitting at a red light, I was crying so hard, I couldn’t even breathe.
Loki looked up and instantly pulled toward me, nearly breaking his little seatbelt. He climbed into my lap at the red light and stuck his head under my chin, desperately trying to comfort me.
It was the sweetest, most touching thing my new dog has ever done for me.
I don’t know how Loki even knew that those sounds required comforting. But I think I know now how I’m going to survive Dylan’s move to college.
Last August, Dylan applied to ten colleges. He chose a few at random, but he’d visited nine of them and really liked six of them.
One college, however, stood out.
The first time Dylan visited Belmont University, he loved it. He wandered around it like he was in slow motion – staring at the gorgeous campus, climbing on things to get a better look, moving as though he had purpose.
Of the 87 campuses we visited in our initial run, Belmont’s 8,000-student campus was one of only two with a population between 3,000 and 20,000+. There was plenty of acreage to wander, but it wasn’t overwhelming. We could walk from one end to the other – but we weren’t done walking in ten minutes, either.
While we were there, an atypical fraternity met in the center of campus to get a photo taken, presumably for the yearbook. Belmont is a dry campus, which is why I say “atypical,” but they looked like a happy crew. They were all dressed in matching yellow shirts on a bright Saturday morning.
The frat photo was taken right outside of the bookstore, which I ducked into quickly. I was cold, so I bought a Belmont sweatshirt. Of the 87 colleges we visited, it’s the only time I bought something from the book store.
Nearly a year later, when Dylan was deciding which colleges he wanted to revisit during his junior year – which ones were worth officially touring and meeting with admissions – he only asked specifically about revisiting one.
“Which college was the one with the guys with the yellow shirts?”
“That was Belmont,” I said.
“That’s really the only one I care about,” he said.
Dylan wants a career in music. Belmont is the only college in the country that specializes in music degrees – but isn’t highly urban. Julliard, Curtis and Berkley, for example, are all in the gray hearts of huge cities. Belmont has a dozen or more degrees in music, and it’s located in the heart of Nashville. It’s got its own sprawling campus outside of the downtown area, and its notable alumni list is equally sprawling.
So we went back for an Open House day, where we were greeted by super-enthusiastic students all over campus. It was festive and fun, never phony, and the kids were bright-eyed and excited to be there.
The president’s welcome speech literally made me cry. The president described the atmosphere at Belmont, the students at Belmont, the mission at Belmont – and it was like he knew Dylan. Like he was speaking directly to Dylan, and not to a room of several hundred people. Dylan toured the School of Music and loved it.
We went back again, a year later. Dylan auditioned with the School of Music. Then we took a tour of the School of Music Business and Dylan loved that, too.
Dylan got his acceptance from Belmont last fall.
We celebrated, but we didn’t announce it. After all, there were nine other schools to consider. We didn’t want to jeopardize acceptance at his second-choice school, or any financial aid, by jumping in too fast.
Eventually, though, after months of consideration and plenty of wonderful options, Dylan decided to do what he’d hoped he could do all along.
Dylan accepted his offer of admission from Belmont University.
Dear Reputable Admissions Officer,
You called me last week regarding our son’s request to spend the night and sit in on a class or two at your college. I am emailing you now because I don’t have the confidence in the manager of our territory that I should. You seem responsive and trustworthy. I am sorry to add to your workload. But I’d like to give you the details of what happened, please.
Dylan realized that spending a little more time at your college might help him make his decision on which college to attend. So Dylan called his admissions representative and said he’d like to arrange an overnight. The rep said he could make that happen, and that he would email Dylan the details.
Then we waited a week. And another week. Dylan called again, and did not get a response. There was no message left for Dylan, as was later claimed. So I emailed the admissions office.
That’s when I got your call, and your email, assuring me that your campus DOES have a professional admissions office. And after you called us, we got a phone call from the admissions rep. He assured us that he had made arrangements for the overnight. He said he would email us the details ‘next week.’
It is now late on Wednesday of ‘next week.’ We believe there ARE details to be had – but no one has sent them to us. We know no more now than we did after our initial phone call.
Is it possible that our rep just doesn’t have Dylan’s email address? If it were me, upon realizing my initial error, I would have gotten Dylan’s email address as fast as was humanly possible and sent out those details the minute I got them. Instead, we’ve heard nothing.
Again.
Dylan’s grandfather worked in higher education public relations for 50 years, so we all know that this is the kind of thing that embarrasses a perfectly good college. We KNOW yours is a good school. We really like it. We’ve had nothing but perfect dealings with absolutely everyone we’ve met thus far.
But I am hesitant to ask our representative for anything.
Maybe we are just an anomaly, an oversight, the one thorn in the territory that our rep can’t reach for whatever reason. But it seems ridiculous to work so hard on our end to make a simple overnight happen.
So please, if you could, just forward me know the details of Dylan’s overnight. We give up on waiting for our rep. And maybe forward my email to someone who can find out where the real issue lies, so that when my future Maryland children look at your college, they have a representative who helps them.
Ten minutes later, after a phone call from Dylan’s admissions rep:
I would now like to send my sincerest apologies to both of you. Having just talked to our admissions rep, it seems as though the error is on Dylan’s end. He DID, indeed, get at least one phone call from our rep with a voice message. Dylan thought it was spam and deleted the number.
When I asked Dylan if anyone had ‘messaged’ him, he didn’t think to check his voicemail. He was looking for a ‘message’ – i.e., a text. Upon looking into the dates and the number I had, Dylan found the voice message that he had earlier ignored. Our rep was right when he said that there are too many miscommunications with all of today’s technology!
Please know that I am 100% satisfied and excited (again) for Dylan to be coming to your campus – and I am sorry for taking so much of your time.
