End of the Mother Road

With Enzo off to college, my ADHD mind struggled for structure.

Life in the Fast Brain | posted by Kristen Caven

When I became a mom, I loved being the one who would make the world come alive with my morning routines. Opening windows, making food, and getting the kid where he needed to go were powerful actions. But, on the other hand, I struggled with the routines. The early years were the hardest and the sweetest; the hours sucked, but I was well paid, with baby smiles and toddler phrases. The last few were a different kind of grind.

But without the tight schedule of day-to-day parenting, I had to come face to face with my own ADHD, which I had treated with the stabilizing structure of motherhood.

— Kristen Caven

When Enzo drove off to college (in his own car, which he had been saving up for since he was eight!), I had mixed feelings, as every parent does. Alongside the “Oh, my God, how will I ever live without seeing that face every day” was this thought: “Thank God—it was either him or me.”

When he was a baby, little E was the cutest, perkiest little bright-eyed thing. Especially at six. Fricking. O’Clock. Mornings had been a different kind of hard since he forgot how to wake up. Since he started sleeping through the nice-mommy morning wake-up back-rubs.

I had to invent the mean mommy, the passive-aggressive mommy, and the annoying mommy who would pick up his cell phone and start checking his text messages, because nothing wakes you up like that particular flavor of adrenaline when a parent is snooping. I mean nothing: not loud noises, not alarms, not light, not music, not having the covers torn off. (Except maybe squirt bottles. And I felt too guilty to do that more than once.)

The constant roller coaster of success and failure wore me out. When Enzo finally left, to a place he had chosen, to an idyllic college life that was made possible by 18 years of pushing and pulling by his parents, my own life as supermom and über parent volunteer (because kids of parents who volunteer do better in school), also ended. I worried like crazy, knowing how much extra attention he had needed from me. It was time. But was it really? Some moms never stop nagging. I didn’t want to be one of them.

Enzo loved being on his own! He loved being surrounded by friends, calling his own shots, and the challenge of having to rise to the occasion and learn to wake himself up or else. I loved being on my own, too. I could start work at 10 a.m., or at 5:30 if I felt like it.

But without the tight schedule of day-to-day parenting, I had to come face to face with my own ADHD, which I had treated with the stabilizing structure of motherhood. I watched some days slip away in busy-ness and distractions. On others, I rocked my life and blew my own mind. On the one hand, I finally found time to excavate notes from the past few years and research from ADD School, and to organize my desk files. On the other, I managed to completely overwhelm myself with new problems, new projects, and throw myself into work with the professional intensity that I had craved for years. (And now I’m tired.)

It’s been a challenging year for us both. Of course, we all expected success, and we still do, and there are many scales with which we measure that. But out there is the reality that he may fail; a lot of kids don’t graduate. And there is the reality, every day, that I may fail, too. If I do, I’ll try to be a good example.

Kristen Caven is a mother and a writer, a mover and a shaker, and a creative force in her community. To her, ADHD stands for “Awesomeness Development & Happiness Directive.” Learn more at www.kristencaven.com.

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The Future's So Bright...

When your kid gets into a college that's right for them, you know you did something right!

Somehow, we did it.

This is what it feels like to WIN parenthood.

— Kristen Caven

On the nail-biting roller-coaster-ride of high school report cards, my husband "Dave" and I had stopped taking for granted the fact that Enzo would go to college, even though that had been his goal, and our assumption, all his life.

I had learned, in the struggle, that students with ADHD have the highest rates of dropping out of high school. We had learned to cheer when he managed to bring home a ‘C’ in a class he had struggled with.

We were prepared for the rejection letter from his top college choice, his fancy “reach” school. The counselor we’d hired to help point us in the right direction had impressed on him that there was only a 4% chance of someone with his grades getting into a program that only accepted 11% of applicants anyway… but a .0044% chance was, to him, a positive thing, still a chance, and he did some good writing on the application process.

But we weren’t prepared for the other rejection letters from his “target” and “safety” schools. But rejections come to every student these days, even the ones with 4.2 grade averages who apply to state schools.

And we certainly weren’t prepared when he told us he had been accepted to a college that he had applied to on a lark, the one where all his brilliant friends were going—one we were sure he could never get into! The day we visited campus and he enrolled, I was so impressed, every time we turned around, at what a good fit it was for him. My heart just kept soaring, and I laughed at myself for thinking, “This is what it feels like to WIN parenthood.”

Now, of course, the true test is whether he will be happy there (we think he will) and be able to stay on task (we think he will) and complete his transition into adulthood. But the lesson I learned was profound.

I learned to trust him. For all the effort and worry we had put into matching him up with the perfect school, into helping him because he misses details, he got what he wanted by following his heart. We had given him the support he needed, but mostly we had supported him in figuring out what he wanted. And when you are living with an interest-driven mind, you need to be able to listen to yourself.

I just couldn’t be more proud.

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The Fast Lane Towards the Future

I've gotten us lost, I've made us late, and I can't stop tearing up. We're visiting colleges with our son, and it's bringing up big feelings.

Life in the Fast Brain | posted by Kristen Caven

Enzo’s in the driver’s seat. I’m next to him and his dad, “Dave,” is in the back, relaxing, reading a book. We are weaving in and out of the fast lane on our way to visit a college in L.A.

Tears are leaking out my eyes, and I want to hide them — except I lost my sunglasses two weeks ago.

— Kristen Caven

I planned ahead for this trip. I put in hours of researching, building a Google Map and printing out parking passes, scheduling several school visits per day and a trip to Disneyland in the middle to celebrate his last high school summer vacation. This morning, however, we were late to the first tour, since I had everything packed but my glasses…and we had to turn around and go back.

Without wifi, I can’t access the Google Map I made. We’re trying to use Waze to avoid heavy traffic. Leaving the first school, I program the name of the second into the car’s GPS, and between one road map and another, I soon manage to navigate us onto side streets where we go more than 7 miles per hour…but stop at every light. Now we’re late for the second school tour, too.

When we pull up in front of the building the car’s GPS brought us to, twenty minutes late for the tour, we are confused by our surroundings. Turns out the car found us a satellite campus. I look at the college map I printed out, which has no relation to this place we are in, and notice the address under the logo. I program that into the car instead, and we turn around and go back the way we came.

The breezy chatter we’d been enjoying all morning has stopped. My mind is now going in loops, bargaining with the executive misjudgments I’ve made in the last few hours. I'm wondering if it’s ADD or anxiety or just this… this feeling that is welling up inside of me, subconsciously sabotaging my well-laid plans, this feeling that we are driving to what might be Enzo’s new home a year from now, far away from our family.

Tears are leaking out of my eyes, and I want to hide them — except I lost my sunglasses two weeks ago.

I hold back my sobs, because I don’t want to distract Enzo from the amazing job he’s doing driving on this trip. He’s got his license now. He’s getting his life together. He’s less afraid of being on his own than he should be, knowing what I know about what he doesn’t know aboutthe demanding world he’s growing into. He hasn’t noticed I’m taking notes at all these talks because he isn’t — because neither of us will remember all the details and dates of this crucial information. But I don’t want to shake his beautiful faith in himself.

We pull up to the right campus and see a group of students gathered around a fountain in the distance. I make Enzo pull over and jump out with his dad. Shaky, I get in the driver’s seat and go find a parking spot to have a little cry and pull myself together. Because somehow — and I don’t know how but it always does — this is all going to work out just right.