Tuning In To Make Tough Choices

Making choices (not an ADHD strong suit) means figuring out what you need.

Life in the Fast Brain | posted by Kristen Caven

I haven’t sent a blog for a while. I got a little distracted!

Prioritizing and making choices is not my strong suit, since I like to say 'yes' to everything.

— Kristen Caven

It boggles my mind how neurotypicals can just plan things and do them. For me, life always tends to take some interesting detour. I’m not sure if this is due to ADHD, but I know the universe responds to your thoughts… and like my father before me and my son after me, and so many curious and creative people I know…my thoughts go in a lot of directions.

I have been traveling abroad. I can’t believe I actually made it happen! But I set a goal, five years ago, to go to Europe for my next milestone birthday. I had no idea how to achieve this dream, but I just kept thinking about how happy it would make me. And somehow, it all came together.

Except that on the night before we left, my traveling companion, upon whom I was relying to help keep me focused and on track, went into the hospital! Of course I took it personally, had crying fits and shook my fists at the sky going “Why? WHY?” Then I just had to figure out what to do, which was agonizing. Prioritizing and making choices is not my strong suit since I like to say yes to everything. I wanted someone to tell me to stay home, since the thought of going alone kind of terrified me. But my friend, beatific in her hospital gown and paper brain surgery hat, held my hand and gazed lovingly into my eyes and said, “Kristen, I'll be fine. Do what you need to do."

What is it about ADHD that makes it so hard for us, sometimes, to know what we need? Is it that we are so easily distracted and drawn to whatever person or idea is in front of us? Or is it that every emotion, every desire, feels equally important? When the pressure is on, it is even harder to make a decision. Fortunately, after the crying fits, I remembered I DO have some self-sorting skills in my repertoire.

When I’m out of touch with my inner guidance system, here are the top four things in my toolkit: talking to friends, talking to my mom, writing, and taking a walk in nature. My friends were great listeners, but I found myself tallying up their opinions and not hearing my own. When I talked to my mom, I realized I didn’t have enough information yet—and was at least able to decide to postpone my ticket for a day or two rather than canceling it. The next day, I tried to write it through. While writing, I could hear how jumbled my thoughts were; only a walk outside could clear my head.

Putting one foot in front of the other, as humans have done for millions of years (12 miles per day, on average, according to Brain Rules by John Medina), I was able to tune in to my interest-driven mind, and to hear the smallest voices inside, the ones that hadn’t been clear. I could finally hear what I needed.

Ultimately, what it came down to were two things, the first being Enzo. I needed to set an example for him of how to move through a hard time, even when it’s super scary and you have to go on faith. I also needed to let him have the experience of time without mom—waking himself up in the morning, feeding himself, taking a few more steps towards being a grown-up.

And the second one was the tiniest whisper of happiness that called. Even though my heart was broken about visiting art museums, I realized there was a mountain I wanted to climb. I needed to stick by my dream and celebrate my Nth year of being me!

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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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Blue Highways

So your child has ADHD. Welcome to a different country...now throw your road map away!

At a school where I was teaching about my book, The Bullying Antidote, the principal told me their special ed parents' club called themselves the “Holland Group.” I asked her what the name meant. She handed me a many-times-copied story that she had found on the Internet.

In 9th grade, the highway to success seemed clear. But when my son's organizational difficulties kept steering him off onto side roads, we had to find a new map.

“Welcome to Holland” is a 1987 essay by Emily Perl Kingsley that describes what it feels like when you learn that your kid has a disability of any sort. “When you're going to have a baby,” the essay says, “it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip — to Italy.” She describes in detail the iconic things one looks forward to in Italy — “The Colosseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice,” and how one learns the language. But when you get off the plane, you find you are in Holland instead.

It’s not that Holland isn’t a wonderful place — it is. There are windmills and tulips and wonderful people. But it just isn’t what you planned. And when everyone else is talking about Italy, well, you are sorry you missed it, but you wish they were interested in hearing about your trip to Holland as well!

Watching my son Enzo evolve in high school has been like getting off the plane in Holland. We chose a school with an engineering academy (which he loved), and a Paideia program (which I loved)...and started making plans (akin to driving a Lamborghini around in the Colosseum).

In 9th grade, the highway to success seemed clear. But when his organizational difficulties kept steering him off onto side roads, we had to find a new map. As it turned out, the new paths took him to some wonderful places, as Blue Highways (a term coined by author William Least Heat Moon to describe the back roads through America) tend to do.

For me, the strangest parts about being in Holland, or on the Blue Highways, are:

1. Seeing so many of his friends on the road to Rome they originally chose.
2. Managing the (ridiculous and unnecessary) resentment at their achievements.
3. Identifying with a “disorder” or “disability” in the name of self-acceptance when it’s just life, really.

Becoming an advocate and spokesperson for the "Blue Highway lifestyle" was an unexpected turn for me. But that’s the thing about getting tickets to Holland. Our new reality calls us as parents to step up to a new level, welcome the dazed new arrivals, and share our road maps.