We started the summer with a list of things for which Dylan would be responsible. On the list were things like feeding his hermit crabs, wearing his retainer, studying for the SATs, and telling me when he was ready to go to work or voice lessons or whatever – things he should have been doing for the past several years.
Dylan was supposed to make his own appointment for the learner’s permit test – which, technically, he did. Unfortunately, Dylan only made the appointment after his father showed Dylan exactly what website to visit, and pointed him directly to the correct form to fill out. (To say that I am still angry about Bill “helping” would be an understatement.)
On the day before the learner’s permit test, I realized that Dylan wasn’t quite as prepared as he needed to be.
For one thing, he took the Driver’s Ed class a full year ago. Dylan hadn’t looked at his book or studied his notes since July of 2016. I mentioned this to him.
“All of my friends said the test is really, really easy,” Dylan told me. “And most of them took it before they even took the class, so I know I don’t need to study.”
After chiding him for a few minutes, Dylan finally said, “Well, I was planning to study a little bit.”
Just before he went to bed, he took a sample test online.
At the end of the sample test, the website suggested that he print out a list of the things he would need to take to the appointment: a U.S. passport, a pay stub bearing the applicant’s name and full social security number, and a checking or savings account statement signed by a parent. Additionally, he was supposed to provide a document to prove that he is a dependent of said parent. The Department of Motor Vehicles requires these documents for proof of identity.
Dylan ignored that.
Dylan also had an email sitting in his email inbox for two weeks, which outlined those essential items. Dylan didn’t compile any of the required documents. In fact, he didn’t seem to know that he needed them.
He chose the documents that he wanted to submit. He filled out the form. And the email generated by the form went directly to his email address.
But he didn’t even consider getting those documents ready.
I could have helped him. I could have said, “Gee Dylan, don’t you think you should get your paperwork together?” That’s what I’ve been doing for 16 years. Instead I said, “Will you be 100% ready to go by 9:30 in the morning?”
Dylan assured me that he would be ready. And I knew perfectly well that he would not be ready.
I also knew we’d be driving to the DMV for no real reason.
But this is my point about responsibility: you must be responsible for yourself or you are not being responsible at all.
So, knowing that Dylan hadn’t done what he needed to do, I agonized. I tossed and turned all night, and had nightmares that they didn’t ask for his proof of residence, but they let him drive anyway. My alarm blasted on the morning of the appointment, with me drenched in sweat.
Dylan slept straight through his appointment.
We didn’t even go to the DMV, so he doesn’t even know he wasn’t prepared to take the test.
Nearly a month after mentioning it to Shane, I finally approached the subject of electronics restriction with Dylan.
First, I came up with ideas for things to do in the “down” times: camping, the zoo, swimming holes, waterfalls – you know, summer stuff. I even picked things we could do for shorter time periods: miniature golf, picnics, bike rides, movie matinees.
With nearly 50 choices, all visually laid out, labeled and sortable, Shane had a blast. He created a countdown from the various choices, finally coming up with about 20 nearby fun activities, and more than a dozen day-trip activities.
Dylan took the same choices, looked through them, and said, “What do I do if I hate half of these and I don’t want to do them at all?”
Teenagers are so fun.
After they finally – mostly thanks to Shane – came up with their favorite things to do this summer, I printed out their decisions, in order, and magnetized them on the fridge. Shane came up with an additional idea and added it to the page. Dylan ignored everything.
The next day Shane asked, “Now that we have it all organized, when are we going to do all this fun stuff?”
“Not this week,” I said. “But we’ll get started when Dylan comes home from his trip.” (Dylan is going away for a week with the church.)
Later I was in the car with Dylan – the only time I see him – when I finally had to tell him about the plan.
“We’re going to have four-hour blocks without electronics,” I said. “We’re going to use that time to enjoy things away from all the little screens.”
“WHAT?!” Dylan shrieked. “We’re going to spend four whole hours doing absolutely NOTHING?! What am I supposed to do during that time? How am I supposed to talk to my friends? How am I supposed to do anything?!”
“You will have plenty of time to talk to your friends,” I assured him. “And you will also have some time to enjoy the summer.”
“I am enjoying the summer!” he wailed. “I’m HAPPY! For the first time in my life I am finally happy and you’re going to take that away from me!”
“No Dylan,” I said. “I am not going to take that away from you. You will have plenty of ….”
“Yes you are!” he screamed. “And I suppose we have to do this every day?!”
“Four times a week,” I said, deciding on the spot. “And remember, I will be off of electronics, too. This is something that we’re all going to do together.”
“Together, right. But you decided it. So for four days, just because you want no electronics, I don’t get to talk to my friends! I don’t ever get to do what I want to do!”
“You will still get to do what you want to do,” I said, though it fell on deaf ears. “And we’ll get to do some things as a family, too.”
“Right, like we’re going to do anything that’s good. I need my friends! I can’t live without them!”
“You can,” I said. “And you will.”
And he will. For a whopping sixteen hours a week, he will survive.
I have a plan for summer.
My plan is to limit electronics time every day – which includes limiting my own electronic time. Four days a week, we will take a substantial chunk out of the day and use it for non-electronics-related fun.
First and foremost, this means we will spend some quality time together. Hopefully I will get to spend some time with my boys, but (also hopefully) they will spend some time together. I doubt that they will use these electronics-free chunks of time to read books.
But they could.
Second, this means that I will not be checking emails, writing blogs, looking up trivial details on the internet, or doing any online work. In spite of the fact that I sincerely do not want to spend my entire summer sitting at my computer, I am a bit nervous about unplugging – even for a few hours.
I know, however, that I will get over this feeling and we will find some things to do with ourselves.
I have already started listing things to do: the zoo, pedal-boating, kayaking, walks in the woods, museums, swimming pools, etc. After all, it is summer.
And I have already started making excuses about why I won’t do those things: it’s too hot; it’s raining; I have to work; the dog is tired.
But I am committed. I am giving this thing a try.
I had a rough night sleeping. Since Bill got home from the hospital, I’ve had many, many rough nights sleeping. This is not terribly uncommon for me – and it is uncommon for Bill who, I’m sure, is having rougher nights than I am.
I am now sleeping down the hall, behind a makeshift curtain of aluminum foil, using a battery-operated alarm clock that I bought for Dylan (who, of course, never uses it).
Last night, I had a recurring nightmare. It kept coming and going, as if I were having it all night. I woke up several times.
Then, during what was finally a deep, sound sleep, the alarm went off.
The sun was up behind the aluminum foil, so I leapt up and out of bed. I went downstairs to brush my teeth in the powder room. I turned off all the porch lights and let the dog out. Then I went into the kitchen to start making lunches.
And that’s when I saw it: the clock said I was up a full hour early.
I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know why it happened. But when I went back to look at the alarm, it was set for an hour early. I didn’t set it that way purposefully. In fact, it was set for the same time all week – but somehow, today, it wasn’t.
I tried to take a nap, but it was too late. I was awake for the day.
Today is the last day of school. I am serving breakfast at the 8th grade graduation ceremony (just for fun) and tonight I will be out late at a ball game, watching Shane’s mascot antics. Between times, I have lots of errands to run – plus, I’ll be taking care of Bill (who needs virtually nothing, but it’s an exhausting thought).
It’s going to be a long day.
In band class, Shane and his friends are working on a project. They choose a song, and then each writes his own music for an “original” rendition of that song. It’s a smart idea that teaches teamwork, composition and performance.
It took them several days to agree on a song. When they finally did, they chose the Star Wars Cantina.
Shane worked for an hour, at home, to create his percussion part. Then he went back in to share his part with the other members of his team.
He came home sad. “That whole hour making my drum part was just a waste,” he said. “Apparently everybody else has music that’s from a remix of the song, and it’s not the original song at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the music they printed out isn’t like my music at all.” Shane launched into a detailed explanation of the way the music was written. I don’t understand written music, and certainly not percussion, so I didn’t understand anything he was saying. The gist of it was, Shane’s music took substantially less time to play than the music of the trumpets and trombone.
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “What can you do about it?”
“I guess I just have to rewrite the whole thing, but I don’t know how to do that if I have the wrong music.” He eventually just wandered off, frustrated. He didn’t work on it much, because he had no idea how to fix the problem.
But the next day, Shane came home from school nearly elated. “Apparently I really do have the right music,” he said, pulling out his music and showing me. “See that note right there?”
There was a tiny half-note at the top of the page, in the upper left corner, above the song title. “Yes,” I said. “I see it.”
“Well I read that note like it was colored in,” Shane said, excited. “That’s why my music was too fast!” He started spouting numbers – sixes and twelves and fours – that made no sense to me.
“So that’s why you thought it was a different song?”
“Yeah,” he said. “So now all I have to do is make it fit. I don’t have to rewrite anything!” He bounced upstairs.
The issue he had, I guess, is that he didn’t read the instructions right. In this case, it was in music lingo, or I could have helped.
But this has been a problem that’s plagued both of my kids since they started school. Rather than read the instructions at the top of the page, they look at the first problem and guess what needs to be done.
Then, quite often, they have to go back and figure out what they did wrong.
Brilliance does have its problems.
It is the last week of school.
If memory serves, the following two or three months will be glorious. Dylan and Shane will do things together. As a family, we will go places. We will spend quality time just being.
And there will be substantially fewer arguments, less yelling, and more peace – because there will be no school.
There will be no arguments about when to get homework done. There will be no screaming matches about how teachers have said that Dylan’s work isn’t done, while Dylan insists that it is.
There will be no online grades to check, so there will be no E’s for me to mention – only to hear about how Dylan already knows about that, and then blames his teacher for not changing the grade fast enough. There will be no more E’s.
No one will be grading Dylan on his work, except at his summer job – where he is spectacular.
I can remember saying to Dylan once – long, long ago – that Albert Einstein had an awful time in school. “Some people just don’t learn the way the schools teach,” I said.
This is still true, and if we had had the money to put Dylan into a Montessori school, maybe his entire life would have been different. He could have done everything with a hands-on approach, learned at his pace – FAST – and succeeded in school beyond his wildest dreams.
Or maybe we didn’t need the money. When I got my teaching certificate, I told my college counselor, “I want to get a Montessori teaching certificate!”
And she said, “Sorry, we don’t offer that here.” I was crushed, because it was the only kind of degree that made sense to me – even then. If my college had offered it, maybe I would have gotten a Montessori degree and been able to homeschool Dylan instead.
But we didn’t have the money, and I didn’t get that degree, and this is his lot in life.
So we count the days. For 260 days a year, we count the days until it’s over.
There are 524 days left before his high school diploma – or slightly less, because seniors get a break at the end of the year.
All I can think is: I did this to him. It’s my fault. I forced him to go to school.
And for the 957,000th time, I consider homeschooling him.
Dylan is going to get two more C’s on his report card this semester.
He doesn’t care. In fact, he seems to think it is dandy.
One of the classes in which he will get a C is called Foundations of Technology. It is the easiest of three options that fulfill the technology requirement for high school graduation. The other choices are Introduction to Engineering and Computer Science Principles.
We’ve only just realized – now that Dylan has dropped out of the IBCP program – that he didn’t even need to take Foundations of Technology. He took Computer Science Principles last year, which would have sufficed as a technology credit – but I thought it would be an IBCP credit, so he had to sign up for Foundations of Technology.
Dylan claims the class is “too easy” and “so dumb” and he thinks it’s beneath him to do well in a class that’s so “ridiculous.” As a result, instead of putting in a little effort and getting solid A’s, Dylan is lucky that he’s not failing the class.
One nifty option, though, is that Dylan can take the class online – which means that, if he gets a C, he could retake the class fairly easily. If he got an A online, it would bring up his GPA.
Since Dylan doesn’t care about his C, I approached his case manager and counselor with the question about retaking the class online.
“If he takes it in the summer, even just the second half, would the new grade replace the C he’s getting now?”
After much ado, the counselor responded with this:
“He has already passed Foundation of tech A with a grade of B. It also seems like he will finish Foundations of tech with a grade of C. Therefore, after this year he will complete his tech credit. Also know that the colleges are mainly interested in the academic grades while the elective grades get smaller attention. Some elite college will even recalculate a student’s GPA using only the academic classes. I believe he should finish this semester out and be done with it.”
I have read a number of college admissions books. I have studied online. I have watched videos by admissions counselors with “tips” for parents and students facing the college years. I grew up on college campuses. I know more about colleges than I do about the public schools in which I teach. So there isn’t much a person can tell me that I have not already heard.
But this was news. Colleges don’t care that Dylan is getting a C in an absurdly easy class?
This seems highly unlikely.
And that’s how I learned that I should not pay attention to the advice of our school guidance counselor. He’s a nice guy, and he probably doesn’t expect much from Dylan, given Dylan’s attitude about school. And I really like everything that the counselor has done for us thus far, with regard to making sure that Dylan has classes that are suitable and scheduled properly around his issues.
But I am not going to follow Dylan’s counselor’s “sage” advice about college any longer – regardless of whether Dylan retakes this class online.
OK, so there’s a chance I overestimated my need to “be a single mom” while Bill was recovering from surgery.
In fact, quite the opposite has happened! I have spent nearly every waking moment in the hospital with my husband, making sure he can get up and around. It has been more like being retired than single motherhood.
Meanwhile, my children have been cared for in the best of ways – by grandparents. This means that they’ve gone off to school in the morning, come home and played video games and watched YouTube until dinnertime, then had people who love them like crazy take them out to dinner! It’s been more like a vacation than anything else.
So when I came home every night, the kids weren’t pleased to see me. They didn’t bother to look up from their computers or their TV screens to say hello. Two days in a row, I’ve been ignored. And even though I’ve pointed out that they’re ignoring me, the kids don’t seem to care.
Of course, I punctuate each evening with a lecture that sends Dylan storming upstairs to do whatever work his teachers have told me he hasn’t completed – as he screams that he DID THAT ALREADY! and that it’s ALREADY DONE! But his teachers send these emails while I’m at the hospital, and they say that Dylan has not completed his work, so… who am I to believe?
Shane barely even says goodnight, but I am here to make sure I can hear him if he wants to say it.
Interestingly, I am exhausted like I’ve been running a marathon, when all I’ve done, really, is sit in a hospital room and read a book.
Thank you, God, for grandparents.
This week, I am pretending to be a single mom. Well, except that I will also be caring for my husband at our house.
Bill is having an elective surgery, which will effectively put him out of commission for important things like mowing the lawn, cooking dinner and fixing the toilet. He will be rendered utterly helpless.
For a guy like Bill, this is a terrifying prospect. He lives to do things and help people. (I prefer to do nothing.)
When I was younger, I volunteered for the Red Cross. My job was to take a nearly blind woman to the grocery store, and help her put away the groceries when we got back to her apartment. I learned a lot during that very short volunteer job, but one thing stands out in my memory above all else:
She was always alone.
I asked her once about her husband, a man she’d lived with for several decades. “Do you miss him?” I asked. “I bet you think about him all the time.”
“Oh, I suppose,” she said. “He just did so much around here!”
This seemed like a sad response to me. Didn’t she like her husband? Didn’t she miss his laugh and all the stupid stuff he said?
Like my husband, hers was always on the move. He fixed things – small things, big things, all things. He cleaned things, shopped, made meals for the two of them. He just “did so much!”
But honestly, if my husband were actually gone – not just having surgery – I would miss his silly grin more than anything. I would miss the way he gets on my nerves, even though he really gets on my nerves. I would miss hearing his voice and having him sitting next to me in the evenings. He’s a good husband, and he does a lot. But he’s also my friend.
I know some single moms, and it is an incredibly difficult thing. Doing things alone is very hard. But I think what would be most difficult is not having someone to talk to, when you just want to talk.
Bill is a good man, a good provider, and a good role model for his kids. And it is going to be difficult to watch him rendered helpless – because I love him, and I don’t want him to feel helpless. I want him to feel strong and capable and able.
But for now, we have no choice. And living with that is even harder than having so much to do around here.
After posting my last blog entry, I realized that I may have titled it incorrectly, or maybe just put too much emphasis on the word, “proud.”
Even though my kids are the absolute light of my life – and I wouldn’t change one single, thing about them – it isn’t often that they hear me say the words, “I’m proud of you, Son.”
Am I proud? Yes! I am so proud, I could scream it from the rooftops! My kids are brilliant, beautiful, kind-hearted and funny. They are deep-down really, really decent human beings. I am incredibly proud of them, every single day of my life!
I AM PROUD OF MY BOYS!
But I don’t say that – and I am now going to address it with them (thanks to my previous blog post) – and also address it here.
When Dylan was two, and I was a fledgling parent, I read every book on parenting that I could read. I took parenting classes, mommy and me classes, and went to PEP seminars.
At some point during Dylan’s first year of preschool, a speaker came in and talked to us about increasing our child’s self-esteem. Included in this class were tips like, “Always point out specific things that you like about their work. Don’t just say, ‘That’s good.'” These were good tips.
Another thing the speaker said was, “Never tell your child that you’re proud of them. Point out, instead, that they should be proud of themselves. This will reinforce that feeling of pride in their accomplishments, and not make them dependent on you for reassurance.”
Dylan was two.
So I did these things, to the best of my ability. And I’ve done them to the best of my ability for 14 years now. Sometimes I stumbled and said, “I’m so proud of you!” And then followed it up quickly with, “You should be proud of yourself, too!” And I worried about that.
But after my previous blog post titled, “I’m Proud of You, Son,” I have had to rethink the past 14 years. I wonder, truly, if my children know that I am proud of them. I think I overlooked that part of the equation.
Instead of reinforcing how proud they should be of themselves, I may have eliminated a crucial part of successful parenting: letting my children know that I am proud of them.
So starting today, I am going to talk to them about what I learned – and what I apparently didn’t learn – and I’m going to make a concerted effort not to edit my words for the sake of their self-esteem.
When I’m proud, doggone it, I’m just going to be proud.
