In the Driver’s Seat with Enzo!

Now that my ADHD teen has the keys to the car, he's borrowing the keys to my blog.

Life in the Fast Brain | by Donald Caven | posted by Kristen Caven

I’ve been driving in one way or another for about ten years now. When I was seven, I got my first Mario Kart game on my hand-me-down GameCube. I played that endlessly, not aware that there was anything more to cars and driving, until one day, at around age ten, I borrowed Need for Speed from my neighbor, and everything changed. I started with my first car, a bright red Mazda, and went nuts. I beat all the races, I bought all the cars, and my knowledge of automobiles grew.

When I drive by myself, there’s no self-esteem ding when I make a mistake. Which I do — I'm new at this.

Fast forward seven years to today, and I’m now in my second month as a licensed driver. Yes, a licensed driver on real roads, the kind that that require driving with an actual car. Actual roads are strikingly different from the world I speed around in on my Xbox. I can’t “press Y to rewind,” I can’t participate in underground street races down at the shipyards without my parents disowning me (or going to actual real-life jail), and I can’t win races or buy my dream Lamborghini. Driving in real life is slower and easier, and a lot more fun in some ways. But still, it’s got its share of new challenges.

In my eyes, driving in video games has a few key advantages over driving in real life. Fancy cars like Bentleys and Porsches and Ferraris are commonplace, and everyone is driving one. In real life, though, I’m constantly distracted by these luxury sports cars that appear every once in a while going the other way down the highway. Every time I see one of these, I point it out to share the marvels of automotive technology to my passengers, but...“ENZO! KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD!”

I admit I can be a distracted driver when I’m surrounded by exotic cars. But what is harder is when my parents criticize something about my driving, be it nit-picking or an actual, legitimate concern. Fortunately, one of the ways around both problems is to drive by myself. When I drive by myself not only is there no audience to excitedly point out cars for; there’s no self-esteem ding when I make a mistake. Which I do — I'm new at this.

Possibly the most stressful part of driving with ADD is having back seat (and front seat) drivers. My wonderful mother and father are great to drive with—one at a time. However, on occasions where the three of us are all in the car, things can get hectic. Sometimes one of them starts to give directions, and the other chimes in to correct them. Often, the opposing set of directions will result in us getting to the same place in the same amount of time, but no matter which set of directions I follow, I end up in the middle of the tension. Then I have to do my best to tune out the arguing and try to listen for directions from my choice of parents. It makes me miss driving in a virtual world, where the only people yelling in my ear are my friends, who I can more easily ignore than my parents.

Here are a few suggestions — okay, Mom, requests — for helping a young ADD driver:

• Be kind. We get it, even if we still seem a little bit distracted.

• If we mess up, we understand that we’re messing up. We have ADD and we’re rebellious teenagers and we're learning; we’re not doing it to bother you!

• One set of directions is enough. We finally made a rule in our family that only the person in the passenger seat is allowed to direct the driver. (Certain people — I’m not mentioning names here — sometimes have trouble following this rule...)

• Be a good role model. If we do something, and get snapped at for it, it’s hard to keep our eyes from rolling when we see you doing it when you’re driving!

Mastering the One-Track Mind

My son's obsessions run deep and fast. I can't wait to see how he harnesses his pedal-to-the-metal enthusiasms.

Since Enzo was barely out of babyhood, he’s had long-term obsessions. First it was construction machines. He could tell the difference between a street sweeper, a paving machine, and a combine harvester. We had to read Byron Barton’s Machines At Work and say “Goodnight Guys” every single night. At three he built his first collection: all of the Bob the Builder toys. He would go to sleep sometimes snuggling a front-loader.

The love goes deep. And the detail is fascinating.

After Useful Vehicles, he loved TRUCKS of all kinds — dump, fire, and monster — and he liked the song "Hello, I’m a Truck" so much that a friend made a tape of nothing but this song. Over and over and over…and the cassette was played over and over and over...

Then came the big love of his life: Trains. This was no surprise, since his first complete sentence had been, “I...hear...dat...train!” Between ages four and eight, he learned everything about trains and collected no less than seven sets. He could tell us the route of the Santa Fe and the B&O lines, and identified each type of engine that passed by with its model numbers. We were able to recycle an old family joke: “When God was giving out brains, you thought he said trains, and asked for one track.”

Does every child obsess on things? It seemed normal to me. I had my cats phase, my owl’s phase, and my horse phase in junior high, during which I only read books in which the main character was of the equine persuasion. With Enzo, trains gave way to Legos, Legos to Bionicles, and sooner or later, Road and Track magazine arrived, and the vehicle obsession turned to cars. Fast cars. Cool cars. Maybe you know someone like this. The love goes deep. And the detail is fascinating. When I drive down the street with him, I can point to any car and he can tell you its make, model, year, and some interesting fact about the company that made it. It’s a specialized talent that could certainly translate to a paycheck if we could ever figure out how to harness it...

This kid is built for learning. He has an intense ability to focus and absorb, and can stay on track with an astonishing and admirable focus...but only if it is a track he chooses. With a kid like that, you have to find ways to help him keep choosing a track that goes somewhere, be it school or a personal interest. Parenting is all about watching when our kids fall off of their track, wander away from it, veer off course precipitously every time a distraction goes by. Our job as parents are to constantly put our kids back on the track. Day after day, week after week.

Squeedle!!!

How I discovered my son’s distraction reflex is part of a hunter’s nature. Or a golden retriever’s.

A few summers ago we were on a road trip down south. The highway stretched out before us, cruise-control was on, and my husband and I were three-deep into our game of “top five Bruce Springsteen songs.” Suddenly there was a shout from the back seat, where we thought our tween son had dozed off with his nose in a Foxtrot collection.