Muddling Through the Action Shots

You never know when to push and when to let them take the lead.

Life in the Fast Brain | posted by Kristen Caven

As a parent, there is a transition one begins to make when your child hits middle school, no matter what kind of child you have. At one point we manage our kids; in adulthood, they manage themselves. In that in-between time of the ’tween and teen years, there is an awkward dance in which one does not know the rhythm.

It’s like they ask for the car keys and get in the front seat, but never start the motor up.

— Kristen Caven

The best parents make the effort at this time to take the transitional role of a coach. But navigating that line can be extra maddening if your kid is attention-challenged. It’s like they ask for the car keys and get in the front seat, but never start the motor up.

In my son’s senior year of high school, there were many scary moments when it seemed the transition from Mom in the driver’s seat to Enzo in the driver’s seat would not be a calm one. This is true, I’ve discovered, for many parents of ADHD teens. Instead of giving Enzo the keys and letting him take over his life when the time was right, it often felt more like a stunt scene in a movie where the passenger crawls into the driver’s seat at high speed on the highway.

It’s mostly because of one thing: that form the school district sends out, saying you, the parent, are responsible for your child’s attendance.

If it had really been up to him, he’d miss a lot of classes. There is some chemical in his brain that makes waking up harder for him than for other kids. It runs in the family. When we were college-age, I was the only person in the world who could wake up my brother. (To be fair, I could do it only with the antics of one certain teddy bear.) I can’t do that anymore. Stuffed animals are powerless against the Morning Sleep of Enzo.

It’s not just sleep, either. It’s getting to appointments. It’s keeping commitments. It’s sticking to a schedule and remembering what his goals are. Sometimes Enzo was great at these things, an example to us all, but you know what they say, the hallmark of ADHD is inconsistency. The possibility of him missing something crucial (like which school to show up to for the untimed ACT you fought so hard for him to be able to take) might actualize just when we thought everything was under control. (Yeah, that.)

When Enzo was a year away from college, we still didn’t know if he would go. All of the parents were baffled by the efforts we, and our kids, had to undertake. It wasn’t this complicated when we were kids; we got ourselves into school and didn’t come out a hundred grand in debt. There are so many marks to hit: tests, applications, interviews, plus all the schoolwork. We struggled to find the fine line between helicopter mode and missing deadlines.

I had a funny conversation at that time with the father of Enzo’s gal pal, Bizy. We laughed at how both of our ADHD kids did fine when you put the work in front of them, but they couldn’t get themselves started. He and I both have ADHD, and joked about "taking meth," I mean, about the sort of pressure we had to put on ourselves to get started. He laughed and misquoted Flannery O’Connor: “She would of been a good woman if someone had held a gun to her head every minute of her life.” We both realized that, as parents, that gun was a GPA. That gun was a test score.

This is how we muddle through the action shots.

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 Mid-Year Check-in

An interview with Dr. Adelaide Robb gives great guidelines for parents dealing with teachers…but takes an awkward turn, thanks to ADHD.

Life in the Fast Brain | posted by Kristen Caven

This fall, I was granted an interview with Dr. Adelaide Robb, a big-time psychopharmacologist with ongoing research studies in mood disorders, schizophrenia, and post traumatic stress disorder, and Chief of the Division of Psychology and Behavioral Health of the Children's National Health System, which aims to combine psychological and psychiatric services to treat the medically ill child.

I felt let down by the school I work so hard for as a parent volunteer.

— Kristen Caven

It was during that busy time of my son's senior year when I was frantically trying to get ACT accommodations, and being denied because extra time on tests, though it is something all of Enzo's teachers provided, was not explicitly stated in his 504 plan, so I was crying some days, feeling let down by the school I work so hard for as a parent volunteer, and hugging people on other days who stepped up to help with this problem. I was also falling behind with work deadlines, watching my creative goals fall by the sidelines, and pursuing treatment for my own issues of distractibility.

I managed to miscommunicate with Dr. Robb's publicist, so the day I was prepared for an interview she didn't call, and the day we rescheduled I was rushing around between appointments. In other words, I was in high ADHD multitasking mode and my first attempt at medication was making me feel—well, different. And then she called. TEN MINUTES EARLY. And I was flustered.

Here's the interview, which is packed full of super helpful advice for parents who can use some guidance on what steps to take to help their kids.

And here's the awkward behind-the-scenes intro that I had to find time, find software, and learn software to edit out…

And now this information has missed the time frame for which it was intended…but it will to be useful at any time to parents who need it!

Let Them Fail?

The hardest part in getting help is letting your kid's problems show.

A 9th grade single mom called me, distraught. “I know my son has attention problems,” she said, “and I don’t know what to do.” She went on to describe a history of rat-nest backpacks, forgotten homework, impulsive decisions and other familiar-sounding struggles.

The sooner you can let him fail, the sooner you’ll get the help you need.

— Kristen Caven

My mind went back to those desperate ninth grade nights, when the red marks would start showing up on the online grading system. Until then, we’d believe our son was doing just fine. All the teachers would just tell us what a pleasure he was to have in class, and for the most part, he liked school and understood what he was learning. But in spite of his good attitude and a good work ethic, his world was crumbling around him and he couldn’t see it. He wanted to take care of things himself, but when we’d open his binders, it was like peering into the abyss. We’d help by sorting papers and trying to triage the problems. There were plenty of pep talks, but the feelings of overwhelm drained and distracted our whole family.

Enzo passed ninth grade only because he had two parents involved on his side in The Big Struggle—pushing through feelings of blame, shame, and resentment. I tried a few times to wake him up at 4am to finish his homework like Obama’s mom did for her son, but I couldn’t wake myself up—we all needed our sleep to prepare for the marathon of constant do-overs. Every single marking period was a white-knuckle ride, made worse when overworked teachers didn’t sound the alert until a few days before the end of the term. Every single report card caused a family blowup as our high expectations of our GATE-identified child were challenged again and again. We began to whisper, then say out loud, maybe he’s just a C student. By tenth grade we were much less hopeful...and completely exhausted.

“The reason that our son got a 504 plan,” I explained to this parent, “is that his grades were spiraling downwards, and we couldn’t keep him on track by ourselves anymore.” Other parents we knew had brought paperwork from specialists showing a learning disability, but their students were stonewalled from getting help—because in a public school, B students do not appear, mathematically, to need accommodations. This mom’s bright young quarterback had been to a private middle school on a scholarship, where differences were not seen as disorders. The teachers there had bent over backwards to help her charming son succeed—and not because they had a legal obligation to do so.

I gave her the best advice I could. A letter from the private school would help, but the sooner she could get her son a referral, the sooner the school would be on her side. “Tighten your seatbelts,” I said—hating what next came out of my mouth, but wanting to save her the pain we’d felt—“the sooner you can let him fail, the sooner you’ll get the help you need.”

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Life Is Derpful

There's so much going on in my son's teenage brain! Is it ADHD, or just high school?

After spending a weekend catching Enzo lost in one screen or another, calling him over and over to come to dinner, reminding him four times to pick up his towels, and nudging and poking him to complete the tasks on his whiteboard, I get a text Monday morning. “Blindsided by binder check in Chem.”

Blindsided? How so? It was right there on the whiteboard: Go over Chem homework calendar. It says Binder Check right on the date in question. I flip through his planner to see that he wrote the same thing months ago (with me supervising)...but the pages have not been turned since.

I sigh and stop and think. His teacher has explained it’s better to get an F than a zero, and busy, busy Enzo needs every point he can get to pass this class. I turn away from my work and look at my schedule, wondering whether or not to rescue. I try not to do that, and I usually don’t have to, but lately he’s been more distractible. Some might call it...puberty. There is so much more going on in that brain. And so much more that is expected of tenth-graders than there was of ninth-graders...or fifth-graders. But the problems have always been the same.

“You should be able to keep track of your things,” his father says on days like this, a teacher who knows his developmental benchmarks, plus has high expectations of his verbal, clever son.

“You know better than that,” I never say — I bite my tongue instead — but he does, and I know that because he rocks it once in a while.

“We’ve already covered that material,” says every single teacher.

It’s hard for adults — or anyone on the "outside" of his brain — to remember he’s got that switch that shuts on and off randomly. “I’m sorry,” says Enzo, over and over again.

I changed my plans for the day so I could swing by the school with his binder. On my way there, I got a text from him that read, “Brown changed binder check to Wednesday.” I sighed and wondered, is it ADHD? Or just having a teenager?

Later that day, Enzo explained it this way to his ADHD Teen class: “Sometimes life feels like a series of cluster-derps.” At least he got a laugh!

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

The last week of the marking period is always when we wish we had more traction to avoid an ADHD spinout.

This will sound like a familiar scene to those of you with teenagers. It's the last week in the marking period, and we check the online gradebook, and then our heads explode. Suddenly, the teachers who haven’t used the system for a month have gotten caught up, and lo and behold, there are some terrible surprises.

It's the last week in the marking period, and we check the online gradebook, and then our heads explode.

This is the week when I start kicking myself for having a life, a career of my own, distractions that keep me from hovering over the homework and pawing through the backpack on a regular basis. I should really mark these weeks on the calendar, cancel all my appointments, and just plan to be stressed.

The “Big Struggle,” as Hallowell puts it, is the family crisis that ADD brings forth. Ours goes like this: Enzo’s school troubles show up. Tension rises. Voices rise. His dad feels the need to jump in and take control. I feel the need to jump in and smooth things over with the optimism that ADD affords, but it just sounds like happymouth. Now I’m on the hot seat, too; after all, these inattentive traits are from my genes. When Dad leaves for work and there are only the two of us, Enzo and I try to re-balance and start moving forwardthrough the anxiety, guilt, and frustration. Hugs help. And then I say, “But seriously, this is the week when the rubber meets the road.”

Enzo is silent for a moment, his head hanging...and then he says, “Are you saying I'm a car? Well, that's good at least.” The mood lightens for a second while we consider whether that’s the right phrase or not... After all, hasn't the rubber been on the road this whole year? This past marking period, with the semi-consistent Bs and the few perfect scores, when it seemed Enzo was finally getting some traction? I guess he slipped off onto the shoulder without us noticing in the last few weeks, spinning his wheels in the dirt on the side with all those extracurricular obsessions, somehow not getting those TEN English assignments into the right basket... And now, just before the finish line, he's climbing back on the pavement again.

"I guess I'm a Ford MT now," he says with a sigh. "It's an awesome car, and super-reliable.” I raise an eyebrow at him, wondering where that came from. “Except—” he continues, raising a finger, “when it doesn't start.” 

Hah! He got me. I can't stay mad at him. This metaphor may be a non-starter, but somehow he’ll get through this.