ADD in our lives

It's been quite awhile since I said anything about ADD. Would you all believe me if I told you that's because it's not something that we deal with anymore? I didn't think so.

Grey at Second Verse has posted some entries lately that have hit so close to my heart. Her son has ADHD and they are struggling with finding a medication that will help him deal with the behavioral symptoms of the disorder. What's really hitting me about her writing is the raw emotions, the frustration and the helplessness, that she expresses as a mother. Like me, she writes that she feels as if educators don't understand that the behavior problems her son is having in school are a direct result of his ADHD and something he cannot just will into changing. The links to two of her most poignant posts are here and here.

As I have read Grey's words these last couple weeks, I felt as if I was reading my own words.

My journey as the parent of a child with ADD has been a difficult one. Not especially difficult, just difficult. In other words, being the parent of a child with AD(H)D is difficult. The disorder is not physically visible for all to see so that the child's challenges are understood. Rather, the symptoms of AD(H)D look like a typical bad kid. In my deepest moments of despair, I have wished that my daughter had a different disability, one that evoked more compassion and understanding from her educators, teachers, girl scout troop leaders, ballet instructors, babysitters, music teachers, family and friends, and on and on the list goes. With AD(H)D, I as a parent have heard a lifetime's worth of pejorative adjectives describing my daughter and more patronizing pep talks from others than I can count. If this is how I as the parent feels, imagine what the child hears and how she feels.

Serial Mommy published an essay by Emily Pearl Kingsley this past June, an essay about what it feels like to parent a child with a disability. When I read it, I felt like my feelings had been captured perfectly. Check out the link when you have time.

This school year is going well. Yes, Grace still deals with ADD. It's with her every day. Her friends comment all the time that she is the energetic and hyper one. But she's doing much better with her studies (all As and Bs since last March) and she's much better at coping with symptoms and advocating for herself now. By conversing with her teachers and guidance counselors, her pediatrician and other professionals, she has become much more aware of who she is and how she can accomplish everything she wants to -- with ADD. In the last six months, I discovered that two of Grace's closest childhood friends also have been diagnosed and that their respective mothers have gone through the same roller coaster ride I have. By no coincidence, the mothers are two of my closest friends. One of the things I wanted to accomplish by starting this blog was to find people who could support me and advise me on the struggle I had in parenting Grace. Thank goodness I found some.

More unexpected news. Well, at least coming from me, it is.

I started this calendar year by throwing you all for a loop and announcing I was pregnant. That was such unexpected news, given my previous constant rantings about having only one child, a teenager, and you all have been great with that change in tone of my blog.

And then shortly thereafter I started in on my two month or so rant about Grace's diagnosis with ADD and what all that meant for her medically and at school and beyond. Again, you all were great. You gave me so much encouragement and advice.

So it seems I have come to another completely unexpected turn in my life. Most likely, for Grace's sophomore year of high school next year, we'll be doing homeschooling.

No, really. I'm not kidding.

I've never even considered doing this before, much less actually plan to do it and go through with it.

Just call me Dr. Homeschooling Mom.

It's a long explanation, and one that's worth dishing out. If this actually goes through, I'll fill you in when the details are settled. If it doesn't work out, I'll still give you the abbreviated explanation.

As you can imagine, any thoughtful advice is welcome and sought out by me at this juncture.

Some advice needed regarding semantics

All appears to be doing well in the land of ADD and medication. For those of you who have been through it either yourself or with a child, you know it can be a bumpy road. For now, things are stable and as I wrote a few days ago, Grace seems to be benefiting both academically as well as socially from using medication for ADD. That's good.

Grace has even changed a lot of the way she views herself with respect to having ADD. She wants to find out more about the disorder. She has read a couple books about the ways it can affect her and the ways in which she can overcome the symptoms she has. She's also looked up some websites and read some of the information available on them. And as a surprise to me, she told me that she doesn't mind her peers having knowledge of this information now. All of this is good too.

A few weeks ago, she said something casually that concerned me. She referred to the medicine she was taking as her "meds," and going on, said they were her "crazy pills." I don't have to think hard to imagine where the reference came from. For well over 15 years now, Grace's father has worked with people who have serious mental illness and he uses both of these terms to refer to the medicine that his clients take for their various disorders. I also have a professional background in dealing with people who have mental disorders. Though I think it's good for a person to be aware of a disorder they suffer from and have as much information about that condition as is helpful to them, I'm very sensitive to terms like "crazy." And "crazy pills," though I know it's a term that people use during staffing meetings, is not exactly a term I would feel comfortable using around the person taking a psychotropic medication.

When Grace called the medication her "crazy pills," I said that wasn't a term she should use. I explained that we both knew the medicine was to help alleviate some of the less desirable symptoms of ADD, not to prevent her from becoming crazy. And I left it at that.

The issue didn't really worry me again until last Friday. Since Grace has started taking her medicine for ADD, we've had to change the way she gets picked up and dropped off when she has an overnight stay with her father. She can't just take the medicine with her, throw it in a duffel bag with other overnight stuff and then meet her father. No, I have to give the medicine to her father personally, and he gives it back to me when she returns home. Though it seems simple enough, it actually caused quite a change in our habits. Grace's father doesn't plan ahead and in the past, often times we didn't know when or how he would pick her up. So a lot of times I wasn't at the house when he showed up. Consequently, communication broke down because there was no requirement for us to be in the same place at the same time. But all that has had to change. A good change, I think. Last Friday was when she was scheduled to be picked up by her father and spend the weekend with him. We waited for him and eventually he showed up at the house to take her to his house.

Earlier in the afternoon I had put Grace's medicine for the weekend in an overnight pill container in the kitchen. When her father arrived, she scurried to gather her things about her. I and her father were standing by the front door and she called to me to ask where her medicine was. Since she was close to the kitchen, I told her where the container was and told her to grab it and bring it to her father. Then he called out, "Yeah, make sure you gimme your meds." So, I get the idea that this medicine is always referred to using some kind of a slang term from the field of those dealing with the mentally ill.

There is no point in me addressing this with Grace's father. In the few months that she's been taking the medicine, I'm sure she's heard these terms over a hundred times. And if he's not aware of why it would be best not to use these slang terms with the actual person taking the medicine, I'm sure not the one to start educating him. He's the one with the degree in social work, not me. But still, I don't want Grace to incorporate into her identity of herself the notion that she takes medicine to keep her from going berserk. I just have a bad feeling about it.

So I ask those out there who either (1) have dealt with AD(H)D personally, (2) have had a child with AD(H)D, (3) work in a field that deals with mental illness, (4) have some other experience with taking psychotropic medication or another controlled substance, or (5) have had a similar situation with a family member or friend...what is your take on this? What would you do if you were me? Given the drastic contrast in Grace's behavior and school performance with and without medication, it may be the case that some kind of medicine would help her in the long term. I want to make sure that if that is the case, there aren't unnecessary social influences that would cloud her reasoning on whether she makes that choice in the future. Also, I'd like to detract from the emphasis on this medicine being a controlled substance. She's a teen, after all. I don't want her to have any unnecessary negative issues of thinking she's taking a drug every day. Yeah, she knows what a controlled substance is now, but I was careful to explain that this was only important insomuch as she be careful with letting other teens know about it. Every kind of medication can be beneficial or abused in certain doses, and she just needed to know that this medicine was one that teens often obtained for the wrong reasons and abused. She's a good kid with respect to substance abuse, both in her actions and in her words, so I don't worry too much about the likelihood of her abusing the medicine. But I wanted to make sure she was aware of the situation so as not to get in trouble over her naiveity.

I just want to be wise in my words on this one.

How the grades go

Grace, my husband and I met with her vice principal and another teacher at school a week ago. This was the follow-up meeting to our first meeting in January to address Grace's troubles in school. Originally the meeting was scheduled for mid-February, but at that time it was clear that she still had not figured out a way to keep up with her work and keep track of missing assignments. By the end of the term, she had managed to complete all her missing assignments and her grades for term were actually not bad at all.

However, there was a lingering problem that no one seemed to be able to solve. Tests. Quizzes. Examinations. We couldn't figure out what to do about it. Her Algebra teacher, very dedicated and helpful, was throwing up her hands in befuddled confusion. The basic idea is that no one could seem to figure out how Grace seemed to know something at one time and then completely forget it a very short time later. So our meeting a week ago was focused on figuring out this answer to this unsolved mystery.

Though it may seem obvious, the strategy we settled on was to have Grace take control of the situation. When she found out a closed-book exam would be given in any class, she has to find out from the teacher what specific concepts will be tested, what the format of the test will be, and how long the test will be. Her task at that point is to prepare a review sheet and have her teacher look at it, adding things she may have left off. The final step is for Grace to find or create a practice test that is as close to resembling the actual test as possible. The afternoon/evening before the test she takes the practice test just like it was the real test. Whatever she doesn't know, she then finds the answer to and commits it to memory.

It assumes that nothing will keep her from learning, that there is no learning disability that would hinder this process (aside from ADD which is being treated medically).

I'll admit it, I was nervous leaving that meeting. We arranged to let 4-5 weeks pass and then meet to review what the results were. At that point if it was still clear that the tests were a problem, then we'd have something concrete to go on. I guess I didn't realize that getting assessments done at the high school level takes a lot more work than it does at lower grades. My biggest fear walking out of that meeting was that Grace wasn't capable of doing what she was being charged with. My husband said I shouldn't worry, that he felt she was quite able to do it and that if she valued the results that would come (good grades), she would do it. Still.

One week later. Grace has taken a test or quiz in four of her five classes this week. The results?

Science: quiz, 93%
English: quiz, 90%
World History: quiz, 100%

and...


AND.....

.....

Algebra: test, 95%

That's right, friends and neighbors, for the first time in FOUR YEARS, Grace passed a math test. And not only did she pass it, SHE GOT AN A.

I know that it's not like everything is fixed and we'll never have troubles with her schoolwork again. I'm sure we are on a peak now and the valley will come. But GOD ALMIGHTY, I cannot BEGIN to tell you how awesome of a feeling it is to realize she took four exams in a row and got an A on every single one.

The next time I start complaining about her here, someone remember to slap me upside the head comment-style, ok? I think everyone else had confidence in her, including herself, except me. And for once, I didn't voice my skepticism to her. She is a victor, my friends. She knew it, she just made a point of letting everyone else know it too.

****Of course, maybe this was all a result of her getting her hair cut. What do you think?****

Poor parenting choices

Every so often I have a realization and something that's been eating at me for a long while makes sense. I have an insight about myself that makes it possible for me to stop visiting some vexing episode from my past. When it happens, I try to share it here. Let's hope that by doing so it not only helps me square things away, but maybe others can comment on the situation too and I'll learn more. And someone else might learn something too.

For this a-ha moment, I will revisit my relationship (or lack thereof) with Grace's father and stepmother. Though I have written about the topic here before, I'll recap the essential points. They met and began a relationship while Grace's father was still living with Grace and me, while he was pretending all was well with our home life. When I found out about that affair from him and he didn't show signs of remorse or intention to end the relationship, we separated right away. He moved in with Grace's eventual stepmother immediately and they've been together even since. About a year later, once our divorce was settled and everyone seemed to have the feeling that all was forgiven, the eventual stepmother introduced herself to me in a typed letter. In the letter she suggested that it was the time for us to meet, given that this would be the best thing for Grace. She also included some complaints she had about my parenting. It wasn't the first time I had heard from Grace's father or his girlfriend that they believed my parenting skills were lacking. I was, to say the least, insulted.

That was many years ago. Half of Grace's lifetime ago. The once-upon-a-time girl-on-the-side/mistress/girlfriend stuck through all the ups and downs, married Grace's father, and they have been together for the last seven years. I must say, I'm surprised; they definitely have defied all statistics I have heard regarding what factors can make or break a relationship. I assume they are a match made in heaven. They have two children together now, both toddlers. And so it is that Grace's stepmother has now achieved a new status -- mother. If there was any question about whether her parenting skills were adequate when she entered Grace's life, those questions are now answered by her birthing her own two children. I hear some anecdote about these munchkins almost daily. Grace loves to talk about her stepmother and those babies. The stories usually don't involve her father at all, just her stepmother and the babies.

How do I respond to these stories? It varies. Sometimes I react neutrally. I let Grace talk and then I just say something dismissive like, 'that sounds interesting' and try to change the topic as quickly as possible. Sometimes I intentionally lend a deaf ear. I don't respond in any way negatively. The next comment out of my mouth is something completely unrelated. Or if the story seems to be going on and on with no end in sight, I either ask an unrelated question or I say I need to excuse myself from the room. And then there's the worst response: when I actually listen to the content of what's going on with the woman and her children. Most of the time I have very little good to say about it. And during the whole interaction, I'm thinking in my mind of how much I wish this person and her children had never had the good fortune of having the small minute details of their lives take up my precious time.

Why? Why do I dislike hearing about Grace's stepmother and her children?

It would be easy to think that I was mad at her because, well, she ruined my marriage and stole my husband. Sometimes when I write about these situations here or talk about them in person, people say this must be the reason I'm so mad at her and not Grace's father. If it were otherwise, I would rant on and on about him, not her; the fact that I don't go off about him must mean that I'm still liking him. However, such a conclusion would be erroneous. Though the explanation seems to be logical, it leaves out an important detail. She was not, by far, the first affair my ex-husband had while he was involved with me (thus my surprise at the fact that the relationship actually lasted). No, the affair my ex-husband had with her just happened to coincide with him telling me many other details of his sordid dealings during our marriage and my choice to end it then and there. Many times in my retrospection I've realized that I could have saved our marriage, if by "saved" we mean something like, "keep it legally binding while extending sexual relationships far beyond the confines of monogamy." Instead I soundly chose to end the marriage. I told him I wanted him to move out, I told him I wanted physical custody of Grace, and I told him I wanted a divorce. And he never protested any of these points.

Still, the question remains, why do I so strongly dislike any mention of Grace's stepmother and her children? I believe this is the reason: it's because she, along with her now-husband, created a situation that was difficult for my child. I think it's fair to say that up until the point in her life when her parents separated, Grace hadn't faced anything quite as difficult as that. During that time, her father and eventual stepmother didn't exactly give her room to breathe. From the first visit Grace had with her father after the separation, his girlfriend was there. Grace and her father never spent a moment together without his girlfriend being physically present. And it wasn't just that she was physically present and with Grace; it was that she was physically involved with Grace's father openly in front of Grace. Essentially, I got the impression that Grace's visitation times with her father boiled down to her being included in her father's dates. I wasn't the only person who suggested to Grace's father that this might not be the best thing for Grace at that time given the goal of building a relationship with him now that she was seeing him a small fraction of the amount of time she used to. Teachers, counselors, Grace's godparents all questioned the wisdom of this choice. Yet he and his girlfriend stood fast -- they were there for Grace and there was no need for anyone to be concerned about their choices or their parenting styles.

As you may well imagine, I considered their choices at that point to be poor. They should have realized that this all was going a little too quickly for Grace. I addressed this a couple times to the court through legal process and through mediation and was basically told that I had no legal or moral grounds to make the argument. Grace's father was her father, and his choice to include his girlfriend in everything was not abusive or negligent, therefore there was nothing more to be said. So I swallowed that bitter pill. But as if that wasn't enough, Grace's father and his girlfriend went one step further and actively questioned my choices in parenting. They said I was too strict with Grace and didn't let her be enough of a free spirit. They said I punished her too much, scolded her too much. (Mind you, my use of "they" here really refers to Grace's father's criticisms given in the form of "Amy and I feel that you...") I suppose what "they" meant in their criticisms of my parenting was that I should parent a little more like they did. Like maybe I should take Grace out with my friends to bars and let her sing karaoke while I got a bit soused. That's what her father did, anyways. In the back of my mind I thought of Grace's father, 'you leave your kid so you can be free and wild, you don't give so much as a protest with respect to custody, and for you the most logical next step in addressing our responsibilities as parents of this kid is to question my parenting?' And where did the girlfriend fit into that whole picture, exactly? She hooks up with a married guy who's still living with his wife and kid, has him move in with her once his wife asks him to leave, and then suddenly she's an expert on parenting?

Within a few short months of our separation, Grace's father told me that his girlfriend loved Grace as much as he or I did. I almost choked on my words trying to protest that. A woman who doesn't see value in a man spending even one moment alone with his daughter immediately after the dismantling of her nuclear family, even when many other adults in the child's life are strongly suggesting that, and this is a demonstration of love as strong as the child's own mother and father? That in only a few short months of her seeing Grace once a week for a few hours while she was making out with her boyfriend, she had reached a level of intimacy and affection for this child as strong as the feelings the child's mother and father, the ones who had sacrificed day after day and year after year for her well-being? This woman loved this child as much as her mother, who twice put her education and career on hold for years because her child needed to come first? This woman, who had never so much as seen the child's school, loved Grace as much as the two parents who had spent night after precious night, year after year, watching their child struggle through classwork and homework and a possible diagnosis of ADD?

The response I did give to his suggestion that his girlfriend's love for Grace was equal to ours as her parents was to ask him whether he agreed also that his girlfriend's love for Grace exceeded that of her grandparents and godparents. The logic behind this argument was that, though we knew these other people loved Grace a great deal, certainly we both agreed that our love for Grace was greater than these other people in her life. He didn't respond.

The details I've given above all took place in the year immediately following my separation from Grace's father. If I continued through the next 6-7 years, citing other instances that were poor choices in parenting on this couple's part, perhaps even negligent, we'd all just be bored very quickly. Though the couple seems to have settled down a bit in recent years with the addition of more children to their life, those critical months of Grace's life were not treated with care.

But here's the point: this is why the constant cutesy stories about this couple and their new children ire me so much. I don't want to hear about this man (Grace's father, my ex-husband) and this woman (Grace's stepmother) and their children. They questioned my parenting, and worse, they questioned it at a time when they themselves were guilty of putting their own needs before my child's. Their parenting was lacking. And now I am faced with hearing Grace talk about them in a glowing way as parents to their two new children. My very child, the one who I fought hard for the well-being of, she is glorifying the role as parents of these two people who I believe didn't practice what they preached at a critical time in Grace's life.

Practically speaking, I've told Grace all this. In calm tones, in implicit messages, in yelling, in anger, in tears. I've explained it all to her many times. When all that didn't seem to make a dent in her enthusiasm for relating every single event in her father's family life, my husband, Grace's stepfather, took a stab at it. He tried to explain my feelings to her from the perspective of being the child of divorced parents. Yet still, she didn't stop. Sometimes when she brings up these stories, I just turn to my husband and start a different conversation, hoping that Grace will remember that the topic of conversation is one we don't want to have in our home. But she doesn't understand that. She just keeps talking, even telling us to pay attention to her because she was telling her story first. It's as if she can't accept that this is painful to me. It's as if she needs me to forgive her father and stepmother and be excited to hear about their kids. Why? Why can't she accept that they hurt me once and that hearing about their life day after day after day, when I've asked not to be told about it, is like reopening a wound and pouring salt into it, a wound that I would just as soon would never be reopened?

There is a bit of this that I understand from Grace's perspective. Grace really likes these two kids. I imagine that in her mind she believes that I will like them someday as much as she does. They are, after all, her siblings. But it's a little wacky for me in my mind. I can't seem to find a way of explaining to Grace that, though she thinks these kids are terrific and that they are really cool to her because they are babies and her siblings and lots of fun, I do not desire to know these kids or to be affectionate with them. Sure, I've been around them. Grace and her father and her stepmother seem to have no qualms about me interacting with these kids. I'm not cruel. I don't give them dirty looks or spit hateful words or all the rest. I think the last time I even saw or spoke to Grace's stepmother was shortly after the second one was born; we had come by to pick Grace up and they were eager to invite us in so we could see the new baby. I really would have rather not come in, but what are you going to do, refuse and say you're going to wait outside in the cold because you don't want to be in their home or see their infants? And there this mother was, beaming, showing me her new baby. I smiled and asked her how she was recovering. Whatever. Thank you southern upbringing that allows me to feign congeniality in the midst of my discomfort.

I guess it still comes down to me feeling like my perspective is missed. More than missed, it's entirely ignored. These tiny children are being used as objects of affection in the hopes that I will get over my feelings of the past and believe that these two were always good parents. I don't want to see the kids. I don't want to find out how they do as parents to their own biological children. I just want my daughter to be ok and I want to move on. I don't want to constantly be reminded of people from my past and their attempts to reconcile their past wrongs towards me. Wrongs that they don't even accept ever existed.

Now I ask, is there any chance that Grace will be able to understand my perspective? Ever? Or will she continue striving to find some way to get her two families to actually reconcile and enjoy one another? Doesn't everyone have a situation in their family, intact or not, where they figure out that two people don't get along? And you learn to work around it and not mention them to each other? Is this situation so very different than that?

Doodles

As evidence that I may indeed had AD(H)D myself, here's something that has been rolling around in my head the last few days that I can't seem to figure out or stop thinking about.

Grace doodles a lot. When she was in elementary and middle school, her assignments were littered with drawings in every single spare white space. One of the special ed specialists in elementary school complained about this A LOT. She considered it a serious problem. She thought Grace was unable to complete her work because she couldn't stop doodling. But then yesterday I came across this news story about doodling and why people actually benefit from doodling instead of daydreaming when they lose interest. Now I can't help wondering, maybe the doodling was actually helping Grace pay attention to what was being said in the classroom, rather than hindering her. And scolding her for doing it and imposing all sorts of punishments for doodling exacerbated the problem rather than help it. Sure, she wasn't completing her work, but not allowing her to doodle didn't solve that problem.

I never liked that specialist anyway. She was a complete idiot. She told me I should check Grace's backpack every single morning before school for anything that might distract her at school and take it away. She said Grace needed to only have a black pen and a single pencil with eraser as writing implements. She said that would solve a lot of Grace's problems. I think she realized I didn't agree with her when I said in a meeting, "shall I take away her mind, as well? Because that seems to be distracting her." This was the same specialist who 12 months earlier felt Grace should be completely discharged from receiving any special attention at school because there was nothing really wrong with her anyway. Like I said, an idiot.

One. Last. Assignment.

It is the last week of the term. This is pressure time, folks. My girl, the freshman who lives in my house, has to make sure every single assignment is turned in and graded and that she got correct credit for it. And she needs to study for finals and take them this week too. It is not an overstatement to say that she has never succeeded at doing this before. But with a little help from her family, her teachers and administrators, her doctor, and a significant amount of effort and determination on her part, she's actually pulling it together. We may actually get to see a grade report that is (mostly) clean.

Do you believe me? Do you really think that this is going off smoothly and without a hitch? I didn't think so.

Last night Grace and I took one last look together at her online grades. Her score on every single assignment she does all year long in on that website. Every single comment from a teacher. Every absence or tardy. All looks good except for three assignments. One she had a good explanation for, but was dragging her feet on working through. Another one she said she just forgot about. And there was the third. An assignment in Algebra. Grace's favorite subject, the one she loves, the one she anticipates with glee every day, the one she wishes she could just learn more and more every single day. (Not.)

This one assignment in Algebra is the last one that's not done. The score has been online as a "0" for a month. Every time I ask her about it, she swears she's done it and that she turned it in and that it must just be in her teacher's inbox. I don't think she's lying. I sincerely believe she believes that she did the assignment the night it was assigned, turned it in, and her teacher just never graded it. In fact, I believe her so much that I believe she may be accurate in her recollection of the facts. Still, a zero is a zero, and when your grades aren't hot, you can't just stick it to the system.

My husband and I have explained to her many times, just do the assignment again and make sure your teacher gets it this time. It can't hurt. It will give you more practice at something you struggle to understand. You will get credit for the work. And you won't have to worry about it anymore. But she was steadfast in her determination to demonstrate that she already did the assignment and that her teacher just must not have graded it.

Last night at 8:30p, after we had identified this assignment and the other two that were missing, I told her to go upstairs to her room and complete all three assignments. She said she had all the materials and information she needed in order to complete them all. And off she went. Three hours passed. I was going to bed and I decided to check and find out whether the assignments were actually completed. Nasty one that she was dragging her feet through? Done. One she just forgot about? Done. And that one last Algebra assignment? Not Done. Not Even Started.

"I'm going to check in my teacher's box tomorrow and find it!" she protested.

And then it dawned on me. I told her that it was irrelevant whether she had done the assignment once before. I told her this had absolutely no bearing on whether she should do it now and turn it in. The interchange lasted about 60 seconds. At the end of it, she crashed onto her bed, tore open her algebra book, and furiously started going through her papers to get a piece of paper and start the assignment. 45 minutes later, done.

God Almighty.

An unplanned ending to my sequence on fatherhood. Grr.

Grace has finals next week. A little important, could we say? Why yes, they are.

Grace is taking medication every day for ADD. It is important, as per her doctor's orders, that she get regular and adequate sleep, and eat regular and adequate meals.

Grace has a chronic disorder that gets exacerbated when she gets sleep-deprived and goes a few days without healthy food. It lands her in the ER and she needs about 4-5 days to recover fully.

A few weeks ago, many of you witnessed my ire as it was evident that Grace had gone away to her father's house for the weekend and neglected to do several school assignments. Actually, it was the third weekend that she had spent at her father's house in a row that I had told her to make sure she did the missing assignments and she failed to complete them.

Since that time, you can imagine that I have had some attempts at communication with Grace's father regarding the importance of regularity in Grace's life. Let's not get into the details and just leave it at this: he has unequivocally assured me that her time with him is organized, balanced, and normal in every single way I would hope for her time to be. Lots of words have passed. No hint that there was any disagreement with what I had laid out.

Additionally, there was scolding of Grace (by her father in front of me) that she was sneaking behind her dad's back, doing things she wasn't supposed to. Like staying up surfing the web, watching late night tv until wee hours of the night, and concealing homework she might need to do.

Did I tell Grace's dad going into this weekend that it was an especially important weekend, given finals next week? Hell, yes. Once over the phone, once in person, and twice in email. In the last three days. Did I explain it clearly? Oh, yes sirree. Was there any possible miscommunication? No, none. Absolutely none. Grace's dad and her stepmother are not only able to help her be disciplined in her daily schedule and in doing her school work, they were committed to making sure nothing interfered with what Grace needed. This weekend or ever in the future.

Here goes.

I just got a message from Grace via facebook as part of an ongoing thread she and I have had going today. It was date stamped 11:14p. She explained that she had studied a bit this afternoon, then went to the mall to go shopping. But most importantly, she wanted me to know that she was staying up to watch Saturday Night Live. Until 1a. On the weekend of daylight savings time spring forward, which means she's really watching tv until 2a. I replied and asked her PLEASE GO TO BED and DON'T STAY UP WATCHING TV.

I'm just now realizing that it was her father's snowjobbing me so well that kept me married to him for so many years despite all warning signs that he was a functionally-absent husband and father.

As a last note, I throw this one thought out there. I'm realizing that Grace, while visiting with her father, will never choose to do the "right" thing rather than the fun thing. Because her father is a fun times guy who's enjoying life despite his lack of taking care of his responsibilities. And for Grace to choose to do something different while she is with him could mean risking the close relationship that she strives to acheive.

This week in preview

This week is going to be a doozie. I'm a little overwhelmed by the schedule.

This morning I have an appointment with the obstetrician. Regularly scheduled monthly appointment. Maybe I'll get some information about weight loss/gain. More than likely I'll get information I already have that doesn't seem to be helpful (i.e., eat in small quantities regularly, make sure you when you eat you are getting the right kinds of food, and get plenty of rest and don't be stressed out).

Then Grace's birthday is Wednesday. As usual, I waited until the last minute to go shopping for any gift for her. So last Saturday (yes, on Valentine's Day) I finally went out and bought her a new case for her viola and some tall brown boots. I also bought her a birthday card. I should probably try and come up with some kind of a cake and a special dinner that night that she will like. I don't want to make a big cake though, because there's still leftover Coca-Cola cake and because she's having a party for friends later this week (see below).

On Thursday night, there is a huge concert where all the city middle school and high school orchestras perform on one night. HUGE deal. Grace's orchestra is rehearsing after school at the high school on Wednesday, early Thursday morning at the auditorium, and then the concert begins Thursday night at 7p. I, of course, volunteered to help transport cellos from the high school to the auditorium on Thursday morning.

Friday is the big finale, with more going on than I can keep track of. At 8a, I have an appointment at perinatal assessment for counseling and for an ultrasound. This is for them to assess my risk of giving birth to a child with a genetic disorder (like Down's Syndrome) and then to counsel me after I get the results. This will take at least two hours. (Yes, I'm nervous about this, and in fact I'm putting off telling anyone in my family I am pregnant until after this appointment.) Then, I have a meeting at Grace's school with her, her assistant principal, her guidance counselor, and whoever else seems like a good person to have attend, to talk about her progress in the last four weeks. The meeting is scheduled at 10a, but clearly that will need to be pushed back. Hopefully they can accommodate my schedule. THEN, at 5:30p, three of Grace's girlfriends are coming over for a birthday sleepover. Grace agreed to a scaled down party where we have pizza and pop and cake at the house, then they get to watch movie or something on tv and do other good sleepover stuff. But that means I have to plan for it.

So sometime this week I need to get myself over to Sam's Club to buy some of those huge pizzas that are good tasting while also cheap. And I need to figure out when I have time to make a birthday cake for Grace's party. And for her birthday on Wednesday night for our family.

Did I mention that I work fulltime?

I am not looking forward to this week.

A long overdue thank you and gift to some bloggers out there

Several weeks ago, Margo at Life in the Short Lane sent me an award. I'm ashamed to say it has taken me this long to get around to writing about it and spreading the award a little further! But I guess I felt like this should be done with a bit of care and not too hastily. So here goes!

She gave me the "Worth Worth Watching" Blog Award, created by The Book Zombie. As Margo pointed out when she gave me the award, it's originally given to book bloggers. As must clearly be the case, the award has been passed to me and I am most definitely not a book blogger. I don't think I've ever blogged about a book, actually. Have I? If I have and you remember it, please remind me.

Margo is someone who found me on the web and I'm so glad she did. I love reading her blog and I love the emails we've shared back and forth. Her blog is so much fun to read. For those of you out there who read my blog because of the issues I talk about with my daughter dealing with ADD, you'll be interested to know that Margo has ADHD but wasn't diagnosed until adulthood. I love hearing about her perspective on things since she adds a light flavor to everything without taking it too seriously. A nice break for me!

Well now, on the the details of this award. It's intended to bestowed upon all those blogs that you cannot wait to read every day, that you look forward to seeing updates on and that have inspired you in your own blogging. Wow, that's quite a tall order, wouldn't you say? So I'm passing this award on to four bloggers that I really have come to enjoy and respect. Please visit them and take a taste of what I enjoy. With no further delay then, here are those bloggers:

** Amanda who writes tamarack's trails

** Amira who writes Memoirs of a Single Mom

** cardiogirl who writes Cardiogirl: 19% body fat 100% fun

and last but not least,

** The List Writer who writes her lists and other joys at The Philosophy of Lists

Thank you for giving me something to read that makes my life richer!

Auditions for the spring musical. And other things too.

I've reached a difficult point with parenting. At the start of Grace's 8th grade year, we made decision that Grace would not be able to audition for the school play or participate in any way if she was not on honor roll. She didn't make honor roll (big shock). As it turned out, on the promise that good grades would follow, we allowed her to audition and she was in the play. Her grades continued to be abysmal all year. She was supposed to get a good grade in US History to be able to go on the end of the 8th grade trip to Washington DC. But in the end, we let her go and she finished the year with less than a C average in US History. We had to start making payments for the trip in October and I couldn't see the point in losing the money for nothing. When we were talking the other night at dinner, Grace couldn't name a US president other than those she had been alive through the presidency of (only two), Lincoln and Washington. You can see she missed a lot in that class.

She also wasn't doing so well in orchestra, either. She wasn't practicing. But she really wanted to go to music camp. She auditioned and got a scholarship, and we prepaid her fees, so in the end she got to go. This was despite the fact that she had to take a remedial math course during the summer that conflicted with the camp. She got special permission from the teacher of the summer course that if she had an A average by the time she had to leave for camp, she could go. So she went.

All in all, it wasn't a banner year academically or behavior-wise, and she got to do everything she wanted to do anyway. I have to defend myself a little, though; it's not like we threw the whole year out the window. Since her grades weren't great, we told her that in addition to her school work she needed to do some volunteer activity at least 4 hours a month and participate in a sport for every term. She did that, even though she really didn't want to.

In the end, I don't think we as a family really worked together as a team to help Grace do the best she could at school.

We decided to take things a little more seriously this year. We began the year and told her she couldn't audition for a play until we saw two consecutive grade reports where she had all As and Bs. She can do that; it's not below her abilities. And we told her that if she had difficulty in school to come to us and ask for help.

Well.

She didn't get As and Bs, as we all know. But she didn't come for help either. She sort of just checked out of the subjects she was having trouble with, then she started just not doing schoolwork anymore, and by the time I checked on it, she was really in trouble academically.

The theatre department puts on 4 productions a year. Two have already passed. And next week are auditions for the annual school musical, a production that involves every arts program in the school. There were orchestra auditions for pit orchestra. There are theatre auditions for acting parts. There are singing auditions for chorus and other vocal parts. It goes on and on.

In truth, I found out the real truth of what was going on at school because Grace asked me if she could audition. I told her no, not unless I could see some proof that her grades were pulling up. 5 school days passed...and Grace kept making excuses for why she couldn't bring home the grades. It was then that I knew something really bad was going on.

So. Grace is not allowed to audition for the annual musical.

Moving on: summer camp. Grace really would like to go to the arts camp she went to last summer and do not only orchestra, but also audition to do an additional session of theatre. It's not a cheap camp. And logistically it would be difficult to do this summer (read: Mom will be in her last trimester of pregnancy God-willing).

But...she's not really doing what she's supposed to do in orchestra. She's not practicing. And she's sitting last chair in the combined orchestra (read: worst in her instrument in the whole school) because she's not done her coursework and performance tests on time.

The early registration for camp that would mean hundreds of dollars cheaper registration is due this Friday.

Here are my current thoughts on the decisions that are at hand immediately. I know that a lot of Grace's poor performance at school has to do with untreated ADD, a situation that is currently being worked on. So it's not like it's reasonable to have expected her to achieve the kind of academic success we asked. Still, she didn't tell me she was having trouble. We clearly communicated what the consequences would be if her grades weren't good, and instead of coming to us for help when she had trouble, she decided to hide it. She sort of checked out of school, hoping that if she ignored those bad and missing assignments that they would go away.

I begged her to go to the guidance counselor at her high school before the school year started and ask for help. But she refused. She said she didn't need any help. When the first progress report came home poorly, we made an agreement that if the grades and the comments didn't improve by the time report cards came out, she'd go talk to the guidance counselor. The grades and comments didn't improve, and she didn't go to the guidance office to ask for help. So I went to her school two days before Christmas break and I talked at length with the guidance counselor, all the while begging Grace to just work with me on the situation. In the meantime, her grades were flat-lining and she wasn't doing homework hardly at all. That I didn't find out until Grace asked me about auditions for the annual musical a month later.

So here's what my current thinking is. She won't be able to audition for the annual musical next week, and it's unlikely she will be able to bring her grades up in time to audition for the last play of the year. And there's no way I can justify spending the time and money on performing arts camp given what little effort she's putting into the arts (some of them) at this point. I know she would love to do these things. I know she would adore the whole experience. I believe that she would grow.

Ugh.

I also know that I have to stick to my word and make her realize that her academics matter. You cannot become a successful Broadway actress if you don't know about your country or don't know how to do high school math or have the discipline to practice an instrument you are good at or don't remember to turn in your assignments for theatre class. Or if all of the above are true about you. At this point I think I have to insist that the academics come first. She has gotten to participate in plays and camp and all sorts of trips throughout middle school, and I'm not sure any of it helped in the end. I hope what really will help at this point is to stick to the plan.

So, no play auditions. And no arts camp. Just a year of hard work and creativity at home. That's all.

An upper

Exactly two weeks ago today Grace and I visited with her pediatrician. The next morning she started taking a medicine for ADD to see if it would help reduce her tendency to be distracted at school and also help her focus in the classroom. Before this, I had spent a lot of time wondering, worrying, and pining away at whether it was a good thing to use medication to treat ADD.

When I was an undergraduate studying psychology, one of my professors was discussing in an upper-level seminar the ability of children to pay attention and how this skill develops. He explained that the ability to pay attention is not an on-off switch, where you either have it or not, but rather a gradient spectrum where everyone lies somewhere along a continuum. As most traits, this trait falls into a standard distribution and some people fall into the outer tails, either being hyper-attentive or having a distinct lacking in the ability to pay attention. He asked the rhetorical question, "does that make people in the tails disordered?" Then he answered his rhetorical question, "I don't think so, but if someone gave my child a medication and told me it would help them do better in school, I'd be tempted to let them take it even though I didn't think anything was wrong with them."

Wow. I remember thinking, I guess medicine for ADD is a drug then! Like steroids or something! Just performance enhancing drugs for the mind!

I thought, if this professor I trust doesn't think ADD/ADHD is a real disorder, then I wouldn't drug my kid just because a school said she wasn't quite like everyone else!

Oh, I really wish I had skipped class that day. Or been less of a thinker in classes. Or doubted the authority of that professor. Or something else.

So, back to Grace. Two weeks later. The side effects are minimal. She says she's not very hungry midday, and that's about it. Otherwise, she's fine. But the question is, is it doing her any good?

Grace knows what she's taking the medicine for. She knows what it's supposed to help with. And sure enough, she reports she feels more calm and that she's able to concentrate and focus in class better. I keep thinking, placebo effect. As far as school goes, Grace and I didn't make a big proclamation at her school of her beginning the medication. We just said in a meeting that there had been a diagnosis and that her pediatrician had prescribed a low dosage of a stimulant.

Two days ago I sent an email to Grace's teachers asking them about parent-teacher conferences the next night. I assumed that there was nothing more that we needed to meet about, but I wanted to make sure before I skipped the event altogether. (Afterall, I have been known to skip these things as the school year progresses because at some point the teachers' vexation with Grace boils over the top and oozes on to me, and I would just as soon not listen to that if I'm not required to.)

I didn't expect much back in terms of replies except for a couple, no-don't-worry-about-its or maybe one thank-you-for-your-concern-I-am-still-having-problems-with-Grace-but-you-already-know-about-that-and-I-doubt-it-will-improve. Instead, I got some interesting replies.

From Grace's orchestra conductor:

"I wanted to let you know that I have seen huge improvements with Grace and orchestra over the last few weeks. She seems more focused and has been playing a lot more. She has been aware of where we are starting and has improved on her testing as well. For instance this week she scored a 95 on her playing test and was able to play it at the appropriate speed. I just heard Grace try to redo her performance test and I have sent her back to the practice room to continue to improve. She gets better each time I hear her. I have also told her that if her stand partner is distracting her she may move her chair and her stand someplace else so that she can be successful. I just wanted to touch base with her and let you know that I have noticed more focus and concentration out of Grace this week and last."

From her theatre teacher/coach:

"I would love to share with you an observation I made yesterday in class. The students are working on 3 person scenes to receive extra credit (and to help students who have scored poorly on the written exams). Grace and her group asked me to look at what they were doing and I was amazed at how quickly Grace had memorized her lines! Not only her lines but the energy, commitment and emotion all of the girls used in the scene was evident."

This was volunteered to me in email. All I asked was whether they would like Grace and I to attend parent-teacher conferences tonight. I didn't ask about her progress or if they noticed any difference; I didn't ask any leading question. I didn't fish for this information. The teachers just volunteered it.

I forwarded the messages to Grace and both my husband and I congratulated her on doing such hard work and putting good effort in at school. I'm not sure if it was just that magic turning point in Grace's life or if the medicine helped. Or if the pill had a placebo effect on her and that helped her reach the magic turning point. Or if we're witnessing dramatic improvement that may wane. But wherever the truth lies, it is really good to hear positive news from Grace's teachers. I suppose she must feel the same way.

Follow-up to test taking

I said it yesterday, and I'll repeat it today: THANK YOU to all of you who commented and emailed me about my post regarding Grace and test taking. As many of you noted, I was feeling very scared and very confused and very frustrated. Sometimes the best remedy for that is time to think it through. Time has helped, but it has also helped to get all of the ideas y'all made.

So here's some more information about our situation. Sorry in advance for the very lengthy post, but I wanted to address each of these ideas carefully since I don't think Grace or I are the only people who could benefit from the discussion. Hopefully it will be beneficial to many out there.

Natalie and Amanda both ask about alternative schools, educational approaches, and teaching philosophies out there. Yes, I've thought about this. We do have an alternative high school here that is hugely successful. The philosophy is that students drive their own learning. For the most part, the students design their own curriculum around their interests and learn because they are self-motivated. The high school is uncontroversially ranked highest in the state in scores on state mandated standardized testing, SAT and ACT scores, graduate rate, and placement in colleges (both by numbers and by national ranks of the college/university). Grace was enormously interested in going there. Unfortunately, so is every other 8th grader in the district. They place about 120-125 students in the freshman class every year from about 350-400 applications. No special privileges, no preferential treatment, no consideration of what the student brings to the table. The lucky new freshmen are selected entirely on the basis of lottery. And Grace was number 290-something. So, it's unlikely her number will come up anytime soon.

The high school Grace does go to has its own neighborhood district, but it also includes a magnet program. Several, in fact. The high school curriculum is tailored to one of four broadly defined career fields and the students in the magnet programs are able to spend their 10th, 11th, and 12th grade years in specialized courses that meet state requirements for graduation. Because of this, the high school also has a lottery for incoming freshmen outside the school's prescribed district. We didn't live in the high school's neighborhood district last year, but Grace wanted to put in an application. And she got selected on lottery. Elated, she sent in her acceptance right away. She's hoping she gets into the communication and media magnet program. But again, 40 slots, 400 freshmen, all on random lottery. That's good for Grace, because if it were on merit there's probably no way she'd get in right now without some major strings being pulled.

Another perk of her high school is that they do mastery learning. This means that students don't get away with just checking out of a course, not doing work, and subsequently failing the class and taking it in a watered-down version in summer school. If they get below a C in a class, they have to sign a contract with the teacher and work through the content until it is mastered on their own time in the next term. This is NOT done in a testing format. So for the first term when Grace failed Algebra, she actually got an incomplete and has been working ever since to master the content of tests and quizzes she didn't pass.

So in a sense, Grace already goes to a high school with an alternative approach to education.

All in all, I think where she's at is a good place. Especially given that the only other alternatives would be Catholic school (arguably less flexible) and home schooling (yeah, right, with all my spare time). For those who are curious, if I could do everything all over again knowing everything then that I know now, I would have home-schooled from day one using an unschooling method.

Natalie also asked about whether there's a university close by. More than close by, it's where my husband and I teach and do our research. The school district benefits greatly from this in that they work hard to work with the researchers at the university, do collaborative work, and implement the findings of research directly into the curriculum and the classroom policies. This is especially true of the two high schools that have lotteries for new students (e.g., Grace's high school). For instance, in the two lottery high schools, science is taught as a three-year integrated curriculum. There is no designated biology or chemistry or geology course; the content of these courses is taught topic by topic, since so many scientific topics require learning two or more of the traditional content areas in order to master. It's a bummer to transfer in or out of the system, but if you're in it throughout the four years of high school, the results have proven to be overwhelmingly positive. In the next two school years, all the high schools in the district will have changed completely to this model. Since Natalie suggested seeking advice beyond the district itself, I've seriously thought about going over to the relevant faculty at the school of education once I have more information and asking, what is your best recommendation? We'll see.

Phd in yogurtry and Little Miss Sunshine State both address going through the school for a full evaluation in order to identify any kind of learning disorder and to develop an IEP (Individualized Education Plan) for Grace in order to implement a well-defined set of goals and strategies for meeting those goals in school. You know, if there's one thing I could tell people out there who are watching their child struggle in school, go straight to the guidance counselor or teacher and say you want your child to be evaluated. The school is required to furnish you with information about testing and schedule it in a reasonable amount of time, usually within 45-60 days. It is the law of the land, and your right to this has been fought for long and hard by thousands of parents and educators. Once testing is completed, the school district will assemble a team of relevant professionals, including the parents, in order to determine if the child has a need for special intervention and develop an IEP to address that need. Now that I've given that public service announcement...

I know all about IEPs. I used to write IEPs, actually. My first job out of college as a budding psychology BA was to work in early intervention, that is, assessing and delivering services to children ages birth-36 months with any kind of developmental delay. It's required by law to be funded by every state, free of charge, and it's the precursor to the special education system which is normally available to students from age 3 years+. I assessed the infants and toddlers and wrote IFSPs, Individualized Family Service Plans. Once the child turned 3 years old, our agency worked with the local school district to develop an IEP that would pick up where we left off. So fortunately I benefit from the knowledge of the laws surrounding kids with special needs, the obligations of the educational system, and the process by which kids are helped. More than once I have called the school on violations on the law. When this happened, my standard line was to find the appropriate supervisor and tell them, I could sue the district and win, but I'd really rather that you do your job so that my kid could get what she needs.

Grace has been evaluated three times, once in 3rd grade, once in 4th grade, and then a last time in 6th grade. 3rd was the initial eval for qualification for intervention, 4th was because she was in a new school district after we moved and they were going to end services because they doubted she really had a problem. 6th grade was in that same district and was the mandatory re-eval to determine continued eligibility for intervention. During the re-eval in 6th grade, Grace decided to conscientiously object. She told the psychologist that she didn't want to do the testing. The psychologist persisted through it, and when the results were reported, they were almost comical. When they were presented to the team, my husband and I asked the team why the psychologist even bothered to administer the tests when she knew the conditions would result in unreliable and invalid data. She didn't give a great defense. The special ed teacher was embarrassed and apologized to me afterward. The next academic year, I went through Grace's permanent file and removed all the testing records from the re-eval. Then we came back to district number one without an IEP or a current eval. That was the start of 8th grade.

In earlier evaluations, the main finding was that Grace tested positively for ADD/ADHD and that no other impairment was found. Much to her current chagrin, Grace scored the highest in mathematical reasoning and logic. She showed some delay in planning skills which evidenced itself mostly in written composition, but, as all her educators say today, she's completely overcome the evidence of this deficiency. Still, there's my lingering questions about planning skills -- wouldn't this have an effect on her ability to learn material, studying for a test, and spitting back that information in a testing environment?

Right now our goal (Grace's, mine, the team at the school) is to treat ADD with medicine, put a system in place that keeps Grace motivated to do her work when it's assigned even when she doesn't find it useful or interesting, and have her catch up on all her missing assignments. All this is in process now. Then we meet together in about 3 more weeks. At that point, she'll have no missing assignments, she'll have the benefit of 4 weeks using a medication to treat symptoms of ADD, and we can ask, are her problems solved? Maybe, maybe not. But if they aren't solved, we know we can try and identify what's causing symptoms that are independent of just lack of attention and interest in work (symptoms of ADD).

Joanna and Urban Panther and Little Miss Sunshine State all tell about family members or their own children who dealt with ADD or ADHD. This, I think, is one of the biggest things I am missing. I don't have a group of friends who have kids with the disorder. Or even one friend. I have two friends, each with one daughter, who have had a teacher suggest ADD or ADHD may be the cause of the problems their daughter is experiencing in school. Both rejected the suggestion of ADD/ADHD soundly. Both said that there was nothing wrong with their child, that the school system was deficient somehow. Now, I won't say I can't relate to this idea. The educational system in the US tends to find kids with ADD/ADHD at a much higher rate than in other countries, and these kids are treated as much more impaired than is generally thought elsewhere. For instance, Grace looks perfectly average in Brazil. The idea that a kid doesn't like school so much and talks a lot and likes to be outgoing and festive is pretty normal. However...

I realized recently in tears in a conversation with my husband that part of what makes it so difficult to help a child with ADD/ADHD is that the disorder is associated with trouble. If you're a kindergarten teacher, you'd just as soon not have in your classroom the student who's in the midst of being diagnosed. You want that over-active boy who sometimes can't help but hit other kids when he gets mad on the playground fixed. When I was working in early intervention and we heard a diagnosis of ADD/ADHD, we all groaned; in contrast, we didn't groan when we heard autism or cerebral palsy or speech delay. There's a stigma attached to ADD/ADHD. There's something wrong with the child, and professionals are excused for reacting in a negative way to the symptoms.

What I was crying about with my husband was that I longed for someone to say, "I've been there; it's rough, but it will be ok in the end." All this to say, it felt so good, even from you bloggers out there who I've never met, to hear you assure me of this.

I emailed Grace's assistant principal on Wednesday evening. I told him of my concerns and asked him to keep an eye on tests and quizzes, especially once Grace has completed all missing assignments and she is keeping up with what's going on in the classroom. Hopefully when we meet in three weeks, we won't have lost any time and we can look at this with less confusion and less convoluted circumstances.

Finally, I talked to Grace. I told her how important it was for her to just keep at it. I told her that she was important, that she was smart, and that I wanted all of us in our family to work together on this. I told her that we want to solve at least part of her struggles (keeping up with daily work, having difficulty paying attention), and then we could make sure that anything else causing problems for her could be addressed better. She was receptive to this. As I've said before, she's really the core of this whole thing, and she needs to be in the middle of it, both in terms of working on the problem and in having control over solving the problem.

I finally figured it out

Stepping back a second, I promise you I will follow up on yesterday's post about my frustration at watching my daughter's struggles. Thank you for all the comments, emails, suggestions, and encouragement. You are all appreciated very much.

I posted a video almost a couple months. Since it's so good, I'll post it here again.



I wrote in that post that when I watched it the first time, I started crying and I couldn't figure out why. I just realized why. Pay attention, it comes fast. The question starts at about 0:13 -- "what if there was an unexpected solution?" Then all the ideas pop up. Then, it hits me. Right there. At 0:32 into the video: "A Girl."

And then the tears start falling and I can't stop them.

Why?

Because I can't stop thinking about Grace after that point. When she was a small girl, just starting on school, I told her, 'you can change the world.' It sounds like hogwash and overdramatic motherese, but for me, I meant it. I told her that she could choose to live her life one of two ways: either you take away from the world and use it up, or you give back to the world and make it a better place than before you arrived.

When she got older and started having trouble in school, she said she didn't want to go to school anymore. I told her this again. 'You have to go to school and learn because you have something to give the world. If you don't give it, the world will do without it.' And I usually cried after she was out the door to school and out of sight.

At that point in the video, I think, Grace is the girl in this world that I can affect the most. What I give her, what I teach her, what I empower her to be and do, this is maybe the best way I can give back to the world. Yes, I could help girls all around the world, but everyone must start at home.

I think this is the crux of my deep emotion regarding her difficulties in school right now. It's that I know she has something to give the world. I want to make sure she has every opportunity to give it, because without her, the world will miss out on something.

Confounding variables

So ADD it is. Apparently things are ok for now in the treatment of that disorder. The main thing we are trying to focus on improving at school is completing every assignment and turning it in on time. Actually, turning it in at all, but if Grace can finish it and turn it in on time, all the better.

And then, an old reminder rears its ugly head. Tests and quizzes. Examinations.

I'm one of those moms who has had too much experience in education and psychology and teaching. I see the grades and the numbers and the performance and I can't help but start evaluating the whole situation. Then I start forming hypotheses. Then I get in the picture and start trying to problem solve. I've said it before -- I'm one of those parents who asks a lot of questions, and wants good answers. I'm not pretentious or rude or patronizing, I just figure if I know the jargon, then meet the educators where they are and talk to them in a way that I know how to. Also, I want to include my daughter in the process and have her understand the jargon, not just have things being said about her and have the words and ideas zoom right past her because they are not being said in a user-friendly kind of way.

Back to tests. Grace is really really bad at being tested. This has cost her a lot in classes with teachers who place a heavy weight on test and quiz scores. English in 7th grade -- F because she never passed her weekly vocabulary tests. Math in 6th grade -- complicated as to why she didn't do well, but mostly attributable to a teacher who ruled with an iron fist and placed a big weight on tests. F. Same in US History in 8th grade. I studied with her for three hours one night for a test. Next day? F on the test. Science in 8th grade. Saved by labs and the science fair. But tests? Straight Fs. Now she's meeting her match in Algebra. Her teacher says she's so frustrated because Grace will know a concept and roll through the problems one after another right in front of her. Then on the test? F. And I don't mean a subtle F. On the last round of tests in Algebra, she got 1 point of 30. That's right -- she scored a 3% on the test. Two performance tests in orchestra this term. Performance, which she ain't bad at. Score? F...and an F.

Then came theatre. The shining light in her day. The class she loves. The class she cannot stop talking about. First test - F. Second test, given yesterday -- F.

Am I frustrated? Yeah, you could say that. It means this is outside of ADD, for all intents and purposes. If she can't transfer the knowledge she has in her head into an examination setting, she's sunk. Really. She probably won't be able to graduate. I'm not sure what the solution is, but I am facing the possibility that something else is going on. Which means more evaluation and testing. And more changes. And things Grace may not like.

I talked to her honestly and openly last night at dinner. I told her I was frustrated and scared, scared because I didn't know how to help her. I told her I was nervous because I wasn't sure she was aware of the problem. I asked her, please, come to us for help! Go to your teachers! Ask them for help! Ask them for information. Ask them exactly what will be on tests, ask them how they will format the test, ask them precisely how you should study, ask us at home for help, get into it!

Then I sent her an email this morning. I told her ideas of how to study. I told her, make a blog. Don't publicize it, just make it. When you're studying for something, just put all the facts in there, make them come alive. Think of different ways to present the ideas.

Or memorize the facts and act them out like you're on stage.

Or draw a picture on drawing paper or on the computer. Use any media you like. Like think, how do I visually present a quadratic equation? How could I use the picture to learn what I need to remember?

Or...

or...

or...




I feel like I'm trying so hard, Grace is trying in her own way, and we are both failing. Quite literally. I told her last night, we do this every year, right? You start the year and try to do it on your own. Somewhere around Christmas time, it comes out that you're not pulling it together. Then we go into massive intervention mode. Somewhere in the spring we all get exhausted and give up. Then the end of the year is horrible, maybe there's summer school, and we start over again the next fall. Then I asked her, how can we stop doing this? How can we nip this in the bud and get everyone else out there to realize, you are a smart person who can learn and be competent?!!?

Suggestions are welcome. For the educational problem Grace is facing and for the emotional problem of mom.

On the bright side of this, my kid is damn talented. Everyone who's seen her blog agrees -- she's a damn good writer and very good at figuring out how to put together a layout and make it aesthetically pleasing. And all this with absolutely no adult intervention. No adult pushed her to do it or helped her with it in any way. She's making a PSA for her English class right now. And she's doing a really good job. Still photos, video, audio (speech, music, and sound effects), all put together into a 2-3 minute project. Really good. She's amazingly sensitive to putting together her outfits and being stylish. And as you all know, I am not the one who bestows gifts of designer trends. She shops secondhand shops and puts it together in her own way, her own creativity of combination and judgment. And it looks great. She creates visual art on her computer that is far beyond her years. She's got the goods, ladies and gentlemen, and that's why it kills me to see her held back by a system. HOW TO GET PAST THE SYSTEM, I ask. HOW?

Letting it all out

So, here's a moment in which I will bear my soul. I am so emotional over this stuff that Grace is going through at school, I can't hold the tears back. I've been trying all day to hold it in and think rationally and put it all off until later, but I can't do it anymore. I am so so so so so SO much hoping the best for Grace, and just so frustrated by the whole thing.

I was reading through my blog today and thinking, I wish the teacher that was there at the meeting yesterday could read this. No, I wouldn't send along the URL because I frankly don't think it's his business to really know the depth of my feelings towards Grace and about myself. But I just thought, can't he see that Grace is a person? Can't he see that she's struggling and that it isn't just a matter of will? If she's bored in class and puts her head down on the desk and complains that something is boring, it's part of what she struggles with. Yes, I know if she were an automaton she would be able to control these expressions, but she's not! That's the point! She has a disorder that makes it difficult for her to do otherwise. But instead what I heard from this teacher was disapproval and an annoyed tone.

If the student had a hearing problem, would you bring the same kind of attitude to the table in discussing the results of that impairment? What about if the child had mental retardation? Would you bring to the table irritation and anger in reaction to their difficulties in completing all the tasks put before them? Why is it that with a disorder that creates behavior problems, people cannot see past that? It's as if deep down they cannot believe that a disorder evidenced in behavior is something the individual has difficulty controlling. That somehow it's ok to bring an attitude to the table that accuses the individual. WHAT IS THE POINT?

Grace's math teacher is very worried about her. She is so encouraging to me. She goes out of her way to help her. But she very much wants Grace to succeed. When she sees me, she tells me likes Grace. When I email her, she always replies with the kindest, more helpful things. She's not a pansy, I think she just realizes that Grace needs HELP, not more JUDGEMENT!!!! She emailed me twice today and I was holding back. I realized that Grace didn't want to be singled out as 'special.' After telling the math teacher briefly what went on this week at the doctor and at the team meeting, I wrote this:

"There is one more thing I want to make I tell you because it is so important to Grace. She is very sensitive to having people see her or treat differently due to any disorder she has or any difficulty she is having. In all sincerity, she chose in middle school to be completely uncooperative in testing because the school psychologist and the co-teacher were so obvious about singling her out. It got so bad that the co-teacher just said there was no point in having her treated differently at all because the intervention was actually hurting her more than no intervention would. Obviously this was detrimental to her performance in school, but for her it was straight-forward choice: she would rather try on her own and fail than have adults drawing attention to her in what she perceived to be a negative way in the hopes that she might do better. For the last year to year and a half, my husband and I and Grace have spent countless hours as a family discussing how it would be best if Grace would go for help at school. My fear is that if she feels that she's being seen as 'special,' she will ditch the whole effort completely. In fact, given that she did it at a younger age, I can't imagine she wouldn't have this reaction. I assured her that everything regarding her having a label of ADD or anything different about the way she goes about her work and her school day would be entirely confidential. Obviously I know that you and everyone else at the school knows this, but in her case, this is especially important. Her ability to receive any extra help or intervention from the school without sacrificing her self-esteem is of utmost importance to her, and I have to respect that."

It was then that the tears began to fall. I couldn't hold back. I love this kid so much and I feel like her ability to do what she wants to do in life is hanging precariously by a thin thread. One wrong move by someone at the school and she's going to react. It's too much for me to just be cool about. Yeah, I cry a lot about her, I really do. She affects me so much, not in a negative way, though. It's not like she does things and I cry because they hurt my feelings. No, I cry because I just can't let go of wanting the best for her. Her struggles hit me straight to my core. It breaks my heart to see her not get it. Yeah, it's like a mama bear thing, but not in a stupid, 'don't mess with my kid' kind of way; it's in a way where I just long for her to be able to overcome her challenges and it kills me to see her meet hurdle after hurdle and not be able to make it over. And I just can't be objective.

So I'm crying and letting it all out right now. And that's that. It's not the first time, and it won't be the last. But right now that's where I am.

An update on school and ADD/ADHD

We have a diagnosis of ADD from Grace's pediatrician. And some controlled substances in our home to deal with the symptoms of that. The doctor said, 'this is not a magic pill. You have to come up with other strategies to deal with all the effects of this problem.'

Yesterday, Grace and I met with a few people at school to talk about what she could do to be consistent in completing her work. The group was her assistant principal, her guidance counselor, one of her teachers, Grace and me. The meeting went well, and I applaud her assistant principal. I realize I forced this group to do something different: to include the student they are talking about in the discussion and planning process. Her assistant principal was great. I'm a very very picky mom when it comes to these kinds of things because in a former life I was one of the professionals on these teams, trained in how the meetings should be conducted and the reports should be written. Anyways, the asst. principal didn't even blink. He rolled right through the meeting and addressed Grace directly throughout the whole hour and a half. (YES! AN HOUR AND A HALF!)

The resolution was to help Grace figure out ways to stay interested in the classroom and finish the work that she finds 'boring.' The bottom line is, she needs to always get some intrinsic and extrinsic motivation going on. We're meeting again in 4 weeks to check her progress on implementing the motivations.

I had some other thoughts after the whole meeting was over. We talked about delayed gratification and long term goals. Grace explained the way she sees her problem. She said that if she were in college studying theatre, she would feel like her work in other classes wouldn't be so bad to keep at. Being at college would mean that she was working towards her goal of being on Broadway. But while she's in high school, that goal is far away and she doesn't feel like the work she's doing in science or math is really getting her anywhere. In other words, the end goal is just too far removed from her day to day tasks to keep her motivated.

(Really, I'm not putting words in her mouth. That's what she told the committee.)

There was a small bit of a negative reaction to her saying that her goal was to be an actress on Broadway. Now, I know that most people (me included) hear things like this and think, 'what a dreamer. Get your head out of the clouds! Stop being so unrealistic and wake up to the world around you!' This is especially the case if the child is not performing well academically. I think that's exactly what the reaction yesterday conveyed. But I suddenly realized something yesterday. If Grace loved science and wanted to be a doctor, she would say her goal was to cure cancer. If Grace loved history and debate and wanted to go to law school, she'd say her goal was to be a Supreme Court justice. The point is, no matter what Grace found as her passion in life, she would dream big. But because her passion is arts and theatre, she is not taken as seriously as she would be if her passion were a field that is more practical, more respected, more mainstream. Indeed, if Grace wanted to be a Supreme Court justice and she was really good at debate and history, but she struggled with math and orchestra and she wasn't reliable at turning in her assignments in any class, I don't think her superiors would scoff at her quite so readily. They scoff because her ultimate goal is to do something they find frivolous, expendable, unnecessary.

I ask you, how should the educational system deal with students who have big dreams but are struggling with how to reach those high goals? No one doubts Grace has the ability to do well in school; her assistant principal told her yesterday he expects that her grades will be mostly A's if she keeps herself focused and turns all her assignments in reliably. Given this, should we continue to smirk at her pie in the sky ideas of moving to NYC and being an actress someday? Would we do the same if she wanted to cure cancer but couldn't stay focused in history class?

Another high point of the meeting was when her assistant principal asked her how she could stay motivated and focused every day in order to reach the big goals (like good grades at the end of a term). She explained that she had read Michael Phelps' book over her winter break and learned a lot about how anyone needs to make incremental goals in order to reach the big goals. In order to make sure he made it to the Olympics and performed the best her could at those games, Michael Phelps and his coach set regular goals for time trials, and smaller still for times in the practice pool, and smaller still for how many laps and sets every day. By doing this, they could see that every stroke in the pool mattered towards reaching the end goal. Grace told the committee that she wanted to figure out what her incremental goals should be in her school work, and that she needed help.

Was I impressed? Yes, I was. As was her assistant principal. He took the tidbit and ran with it. I didn't notice how the others reacted, but I was proud of her. What would have happened if someone had told Michael Phelps he was wasting his time in the pool when he was 10 and failing out of school? What if someone had told him he would never make it to the Olympics because he couldn't even keep himself together to bring everything he needed to practice or show up to his meets on time? Isn't he lucky that his mother believed in him and that he had a coach that was willing to work with him, despite his ADHD? Yeah, it was hard for him, but that didn't stop him. And he has a college degree now and quite a few other accolades to his name. Thank goodness people didn't stop at his lack of motivation in the classroom and convince him to give up on his big dreams.

You see where I'm going with this, right? It's not that I think Grace will be the next Broadway star or anything like that. It's that I think she has goals and she thinks big, and telling her she can't achieve those big goals because she has underlying problems with organization and attention won't help anything. Quite the opposite, this kind of reasoning and argumentation could really hurt her badly. So I think I'm changing my philosophy of parenting. Find your child's passion and run with it. Never tell them they can't achieve what they've set in front of themselves as a goal. Yes, deal with the shortcomings they have and the struggles they face. But don't ever suggest that they can't overcome those things or that they will interfere with their dreams. Maybe they will, but telling them so won't help anything. Life is hard enough of a teacher to us all; we don't need parents to add to our discouragement.

Here we go again on the ADHD cycle

I've been holding off on writing about this because we have had one hell of a roller coaster ride for the last couple months. Tomorrow Grace and I are officially having an appointment with her pediatrician for evaluation of ADHD. The pediatrician has all the paperwork from the school and me in order for this evaluation to go through. We may, indeed, get to the bottom of all this.

"Why now?" you may ask. Great question.

Since Grace was in preschool, she was not quite like the other kids. She was easily distracted and overly talkative. Often she didn't join in what the group was doing. And she had a very difficult time holding still. But she was bright. She was able to keep up with her peers. Sure, her teachers always said she could do more, but that would come in time as she matured.

About the time she was in second grade, she couldn't keep up with what was average in the classroom. It was clear, despite the fact that she seemed bright, that she was doing less than what she could. There was evaluation, intervention, concern, discussion, all sorts of lingo.

Her parents got divorced; maybe this contributed to her symptoms. She moved to a new state and school; maybe that was an interfering factor. She changed schools again where she was in a very different culture (arts magnet school, she was the only white student of 150 students in her grade); maybe that was something she'd have to adjust to. She moved again; she seemed not very disciplined, but she could keep up if her parents made her.

The bottom line is, she was never diagnosed with ADHD and as she grew older, I wasn't sure that a diagnosis would do any good even if she had it. She intentionally threw an evaluation with a school psychologist in 6th grade just because she was mad at being pulled out of class without her consent. And the intervention she got at school didn't seem to help anything since she was still failing math and barely passing science.

We're on year 11 of formal education now. At the end of every school year, she looks about like the typical kid of that grade. But at the start of the next year, she looks very immature and can't really adjust to the demands being put on her. New teachers, new classes, new schedule, new classrooms, new grading systems, it takes months to get used to. Just about the time she gets used to it, the school year is over and all that work of adjustment is lost.

And then came high school. We started the year with a bang. I thought. But slowly it came to light that Grace.....was Grace. Her algebra teacher is very worried. She didn't pass the first term of algebra. Now halfway through the second term, she is failing science and algebra. And all, I repeat all, of her teachers are concerned. Her guidance counselor said, you see all the kids coming down the hall and when you spot her you think, she's hyperactive.

Here's the catch: no amount of intervention, no amount of evaluation, no amount of concern, effort and care, no amount of any of it matters one iota unless the kid wants it and is bought into it. All these school faculty and administration, me and her stepdad, and the lord almighty himself could agree that she needs help, but it does no good if she doesn't want it. So the goal for me in communication with her at this point was, get Grace to realize that everyone is trying to help her. Get her to be involved. Get her to be in power in the situation. Make her understand that she can be completely informed and call all the shots if she wants.

By age 12, Grace had already decided she'd had enough of the system and didn't care if she failed, just as long as she would never have to be singled out as "special" and "needing help" again. How do you convince that kid that it doesn't have to be that way? How do you sell her on the idea of giving it one more chance?

First I promised her, and I made her teachers swear to holding this promise, that all information on her ADHD (or other diagnosis and intervention) would be completely confidential. And then I told her she could come to all the planning meetings and told her what to expect. And the bottom line is, somewhere in this whole situation, I am finding it essential to balance the wishes and will of an almost-adult against what I think is best for her.

In truth, she can choose to completely check out of school. Yeah, I wouldn't be happy about it, but there's really nothing I could do to stop it if that's absolutely what she chose to do. I don't think that's what's going on; I think she genuinely is facing difficulties and she really needs the help of the available specialists in the school and in the medical community. But nonetheless, if she decides that she doesn't want the help, that it's too risky and too high of a cost to be identified as having a disability, I really can't override her choice at this point. I could in practice, but in reality, my override would be impotent and useless.

I am hoping, wishing, dreaming, holding my breath, for the results of all this. Is it possible that she could start taking some medication and in a month she would look like herself sans all the behavior problems? Is it possible that by having all her teachers and administrators on the same page that she could be supported through her school day and be able to stay on track?

I can't believe that she's almost 15 and I haven't even gotten past this stage yet.

girls and cute boys

As the mother of a teen girl, I have to be sensitive to the fact that she is more naïve than she would like to admit. For instance, when she arrived home after seeing Twilight on opening night, she was swooning over Edward. It was Edward this, Edward that, Edward is so amazingly cute.

Really. I would have never guessed that a vampire flick would be about a vampire boy and a human girl and he just seems so, well, you know, appealing, you know?

(Yes, I know. It's because he's a vampire. In literature, the vampire's thirst for blood commonly shows up as an allegory for sex. So yes, I know you think he's, well, you know, so cool and hot, you know.)

But there's another one that's a little more in my face and authentic that my daughter and her peers noticed this fall: Michael Phelps. Yes, her swim coach's husband knows him. Would he come by swim practice? Highly doubtful. But could we think about it? Imagine it? Can we admire his athletic acumen, his skill, his determination, his....oh cripe. You all know where this is going. The girls on the swim team were all swooning over him because he's got possibly the most amazing body imaginable and since he's swimmer, that body gets splashed all over every photo spread in all it's glory. Actually, it's remarkable that the girls can see past his relatively awkward demeanor, mediocre interviewing skills, and rather plain every-man look...oh, what am I saying??!!?!??!? Of course they can look past that because the rest of his physique is robustly overpowering any shortcoming he might have!

The girls either don't realize or don't want to admit how much of their affection for him is based in raw sex appeal.

Given the bravado of this young man and Grace's perked interest in his every action, the only question I need to ask myself is, how can I work this to my advantage? Enter stage left his newly released book, No Limits: The Will To Succeed. 8 chapters for 8 gold medals (they couldn't resist). Just released yesterday and word has it that one of the chapters addresses his struggles with ADHD and how he made the disorder work for him. Christmas solved.

Don't worry; I bought her a copy of Twilight for Christmas too ;-)