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!

Navigating the Ability Gap

When motor skills don’t match up with intellectual ability, what path do you take?

When Enzo was pushing five, he was excited about going to kindergarten. He wanted to learn to read, and was so ready to become “a big kid.” But when he took his kindergarten readiness test, I was shocked that his teacher, GG, recommended another year in preschool. She showed me his abstract skills test, consisting of some squares drawn stacked upon top of each other. “He’s way ahead,” she said. “He’s thinking conceptually like a six or seven-year-old.”

I was tremendously confused, weighing the mis-match between his intellect and his weak hands.

“So,” I offered, puzzled, “we should start him in second grade?”

Then she showed me Enzo’s “Half a Man” test, where the teacher draws one side of a stick figure and the child is asked to draw the other. He had completed the head, and the body, and the smile, but there were some missing face and body parts. “Look here,” she said, pointing to some scrawly marks where the pencil had barely touched the paper in some places. “His fine motor skills are those of a three-year-old.”

I was tremendously confused, weighing the mis-match between his intellect and his weak hands. “Can’t he just do more drawing over the summer?” I asked. “Motor skills build from the outside-in,” she said. “He’ll always be behind the other kids a little, it’s just who he is,” she said.

Now get this: I loved this woman. GG was the best teacher ever. She let the kids go flying down hills on big wheels. She would make poop jokes and let the kids run the CD player. She taught us how to see problems simply: “I want what you have. What should we do?” What should we do? Enzo was revving his engines; he wanted to go. “It’s a judgment call,” she said sensing my struggle. “He’ll be okay, but his handwriting will probably be terrible. Kids like this also tend to fall behind in about eighth grade.” I got angry. How dare she lay such a heavy prediction on our bright boy?

I had faith. I knew we’d figure it out. I knew we’d SHOW HER!

And we did, for the most part. We will forever be in debt to his second-grade teacher, who recognized that his hands could not keep up with his mind, and urged us to teach him to type. (Note: small and frequent squares of a chocolate-flavored energy bar can help a kid stick to the most difficult learning tasks.) After fifth grade (and more sweet rewards for trying cursive), his handwriting got much better. But when he hit eighth grade, GG’s prediction did come true.

Falling behind in 8th grade, however, is also a red flag for ADHD. We didn’t learn this until half way through 10th grade, of course. And even now, on the hard days, I find myself arguing with history: “If motor delays go hand-in-hand with ADD, why didn’t GG think to tell us that?” And, “What if we had taken her advice? Would things be easier now, or harder in different ways? Would he be bored instead of challenged, and acting out instead of stressed?” In hindsight, another year of preschool would have been heaven.

If I actually could rewrite history, I’d have myself and my husband get over the shock and the stigma and hire a learning specialist to give Enzo the occupational therapy he needed. (Oh, and to do that, I’d also rewrite the economy so my teacher-husband got raises in that decade rather than pay cuts.) But we were keeping most, if not all of the balls in the air, and chose to move forward. Enzo was mostly fine, and the truth is: Kindergarten was free. And in our public school, he didn’t stand out as a problem learner. On the contrary, his teachers all loved him. Maybe GG just wanted to keep him for herself...?

The World's Most Precious Resource

A wonderful thing happened last year. I got a contract to write a book: a payment up front, a year to write it, an editor, a marketing team — the works. I write with my mother, a community psychologist and positive parenting guru — so I hit the ground running when I started my mothering career fifteen years ago.