In Which Squirrelboy is a College Student, And I'm Not Done Parenting, But Basically Done Blogging

Squirrelboy is now about halfway through his first semester of college. I won't give you details about how his experience has been because, well, he's an adult, and it just feels a little weird to post about his school experiences at this point.

When I started this blog my kids were in 3rd and 9th grade. Now Kittygirl is in 7th grade and Squirrelboy is a freshman in college. The blog was a great way to force myself to get back to writing regularly after a long hiatus. I was even able to help some people recognize dyslexia and/or ADHD in their kids. I helped some other people learn more about diabetes and get a taste of what it's like to live with diabetes.

But I think this blog has outlived its purpose. I may still post my Valentines Day reflections here because it's a nice way to share them with a wider range of people, but outside of that I don't plan to post anymore.

Here are my thoughts on signing off. Raising kids is hard. Raising kids with a disability of any kind is even harder. You know what's even harder, though? Actually having said disability. We can empathize with our kids. We can understand what they're going through in a way most outsiders can't. But in the end we still can't see into their hearts and minds. Even though I also have ADHD I still don't really know what it's like for Squirrelboy to have ADHD, let alone both ADHD and dyslexia. Even though I've done about a million site changes now and calculated about a billion carbs, I still don't actually know what it's like for Kittygirl to have diabetes. I, along with other parents of kids diagnosed at a young age, can relate better than any other nondiabetic but it's still not my body. 

As I said, parenting is hard. Life in general is hard if you get right down to it. But not every moment of every day. There's also a lot of joy if you look for it. Even the darkest night of the year eventually ends in dawn. Even the hardest time in your life eventually passes. It may leave you with scars, sort of akin to how you'll still have a bruise from running into the bed, post on said darkest night (ask me how I know), but it won't always be so dark.

And through all of it, God will still be good. I've been through my fair share of hard times, many (though not all) since becoming a parent. Sometimes I have seriously doubted that last sentence. I can see how you might. But I've held onto it and it's always proven true. It doesn't take away the hard stuff, but it's a tiny pinprick of light in what can sometimes be unbearably oppressive darkness.

So goodbye my five or six faithful readers. Maybe I'll see you next Valentines Day, maybe not. Take care, love your kids with all your might, and always remember the pinprick of light in the darkness. And just because I can't leave without a photo, here are Kittygirl and Squirrelboy on Parents Weekend at his college. Well, not actually at his college. We spent very little time on campus because we have no interest in football. We took a cave tour not far from campus, which is where this photo was taken.

In Which My Kids are Getting More and More Independent, and I Don't Love It

When I started this blog back in the fall of 2019, Kittygirl was 8 and in third grade and Squirrelboy was 14 and a freshman in high school. Now Kittygirl is 12 years old and 4 weeks from finishing 6th grade and Squirrelboy is 18 years old and 27 days from his high school graduation.

They've both grown a lot in independence this year. Kittygirl is handling more and more of her day to day diabetes tasks. When I sent her to a sleepover birthday party in March, Mr. Engineer just spent a few minutes chatting with the parents about food and diabetes tech. We didn't feel the need to give them a crash course in diabetes education or set them up on the Dexcom Follow app.

Squirrelboy has grown in maturity in leaps and bounds his senior year. He's gotten his drivers license and is a responsible driver for the most part. In fact, in some ways he's a better driver than I am. He's grown tremendously as a student as well. Up until this spring semester he always wanted me to go over papers he wrote and often help him get started with writing assignments. But this semester a) he had one class that required weekly papers and the constant practice really helped him up his writing game and b) he discovered the college writing center and now finishes his papers early and sends them there for suggestions on how to make them the best they can be.

Since he turned 18, we've given Squirrelboy a lot of control over his finances, and he's more mature about that than the average American adult. He did research on his own and chose a mutual fund in which to invest some of his money. Mr. Engineer set up a checking account and a savings account for him at our bank. Squirrelboy decided to set up a second savings account that he's using specifically to set aside money for big things, like his backpacking trip to Glacier National Park this July.

He's not perfect. He's only 18, and he's still going to make some mistakes and make some choices that an older adult might have the experience and knowledge to avoid. But overall I feel like he's set up better for life than many other kids I've heard about on the cusp of adulthood. Not that that means Mr. Engineer and I have done everything right. Squirrelboy would be happy to tell you about all the mistakes we've made over the years. But overall the evidence indicates that we've done well. Squirrelboy is a genuinely kind and caring person. He wants to make a difference in the world. He takes responsibility for his actions. He loves Jesus. Any or all of those things could have not happened, especially with all the challenges life has thrown at Squirrelboy.

I have to admit, though, while I'm proud that Squirrelboy is becoming more and more responsible, I'm  a bit sad (okay, sometimes even really sad) that he doesn't need me like he did even six months ago. He used to often want me to come into his room while he did his work for "moral support". At the time I found it kind of annoying. Now I regret having that perspective because he doesn't want that anymore and I really miss it. I'm thankful though that he still regularly gives me hugs and tells me he loves me.

Kittygirl is so social I'm not sure she'll ever not want someone in the room when she's doing her schoolwork, but she's also quite independent already about completing it and, as I said at the beginning, she's taken over a lot of the responsibility for diabetes management. I still play a role, but I'm more of a coach at this point. In the early years I was basically a player on Team Diabetes despite not being diabetic myself.

Parenting is both joyful and challenging at all stages. This past fall I started working three days a week as a teacher in the 2s/3s classroom at a Mother's Day Out program. I love the MDO kids, but I'm really glad I only have them for five hours at a time three days a week. I would not want to be parenting littles at this stage in my life. That said, I would not have been ready to parent young adolescents and young adults ten years ago.

I don't think there's one easiest or hardest stage of parenting. Especially not one easy stage. They're pretty much all hard. And it doesn't magically end when they turn 18, especially not if they turn 18 when they're still in high school, as most often happens. But in addition to being hard, all the stages are also wonderful in some way. It's such a gift watching my kids figure out who they are and embrace it. It's hard too. Some of the things they have to embrace are things I wish they could escape the challenge of, like diabetes for Kittygirl and ADHD and dyslexia for Squirrelboy. But at the same time the things they've learned from living with their disabilities are part of what makes them the wonderful people they're becoming, and I wouldn't trade those people for the world.

Because I always like to include a photo, I'm including a photo of Kittygirl and Mr. Engineer packed for a scout campout this weekend. Squirrelboy is also camping, in a different place. He's testing out his new boots and backpack in preparation for a big backpacking trip this summer. 

In Which I Almost Let ADHD and Dyslexia Awareness Month Pass Me By

I find it convenient that ADHD and Dyslexia Awareness month are exactly the same month. Since the two conditions are often comorbid, it gives people less to keep track of. How thoughtful of the awareness month planning people! Okay, so maybe it just happened since there are a lot more than 12 things to be aware of and only 12 months in the year, but anyway it's nice. I nearly let the month pass by without a post, but never fear, here I am writing at the 11th hour, as fitting for a blogger with ADHD.

Squirrelboy is well into his last year of high school now, which is completely crazy because my baby boy should not be allowed to be that old. But anyway, time has a crazy way of passing and he's now taking four dual credit classes at the community college, doing an internship at our church with the media person, and applying to colleges.

When Squirrelboy was diagnosed with dyslexia at the end of kindergarten I knew school would be a struggle for him, and that played out all the way through elementary school. After the dyslexia focused tutoring helped him learn to read it got better, but I still often had to drag him through his work. Looking back, I'm sure the undiagnosed ADHD played into that.

Things got better at the end of 6th grade when Squirrelboy was diagnosed with ADHD and we found a medication that was helpful for him, but middle school was still a struggle. Writing was especially hard. Just writing a paragraph could take him hours.

Before he started high school, I warned him that it would be an adjustment, would likely be hard, and he might get some bad grades while he got his feet under him. I assured him that that wasn't a big deal and that all we cared about was that he tried his best. To my great surprise, none of that happened. He thrived in high school right way.

Sophomore year he was inducted into the National Honor Society. Junior year he started taking dual credit classes and got A's. Senior year he's applying to colleges and his GPA qualifies him for generous scholarships.

He has designed his own system of writing the things he needs to accomplish on notecards, breaking them down step by step. Not just "take a shower" but "get a towel", "take a shower,"  "hang up the towel". It works brilliantly for everything from a smooth morning routine to finishing a long list of assignments.

I'm sure he still has challenges ahead of him, but I've seen Squirrelboy really come into his own this year and I'm so thankful. He's come a long way from the little boy who cried every Sunday night during first grade because school was so hard. 

For so many kids and adults, , ADHD and/or dyslexia are serious roadblocks that they never really overcome. I don't know exactly what needs to change or how to change it, but our schools need to do a better job of identifying these disorders early and giving these kids the intervention they need before they're bitter teenagers who hate everything about school. 

Squirrelboy is blessed to have had parents who have personal experience with ADHD and dyslexia, have access to private testing, and are in a position to advocate for him within the school system. Way too many kids don't have this, and this is a tragedy. This is what we really need to be aware of. Not that ADHD and dyslexia exist, but that we are failing so many kids with our current system.

I don't have a photo to express the theme of this post, so instead I'll leave you with a pile of black kittens that I saw at the pet store today and was really tempted to adopt. I refrained, because Mr. Engineer would never forgive me and also five more cats would be a big expense, but just look at the perfect Halloween cuteness.

In Which I Play Catch Up

Remember back when I started this blog and I posted five days a week? Those were the good old days. You know, when the kids actually went to school somewhere other than our house, I could blithely run errands to six places during the day without thinking about it, and I didn't own a collection of masks. Ah, 2019, how we miss you. Who would have thought that breaking my wrist at Kittygirl's birthday party on the last day of January this year would not be the most eventful part of our our family's year?

Anyway, the pandemic isn't the only reason I haven't blogged recently. Life just has a bad habit of getting away from me. I suppose I can partly blame it on ADHD, but that's not the only reason. There are just so many immediate things to be accomplished on a daily basis that things like finally sitting down and blogging fall by the wayside. Who am I kidding? It's not just blogging. It's also important but not every day task things that fall by the wayside, like scooping the little boxes and cleaning the guinea pig cage. You do not want to know how much poop was in the litter box when I cleaned it this weekend.

To update you on my last post, Squirrelboy was super excited to receive a letter of acceptance to the National Honor Society a couple weeks ago. Looking back on his early school experience I'm just blown away by how far he's come. I'm regularly amazed by how much he cares about school and how hard he works to submit his best effort. Many of his teachers allow retakes of tests and quizzes. This weekend he retook a geometry quiz twice to get a perfect score. Reader, he got 18/20 the first time so it's not as if he absolutely needed to retake it at all.

I completely missed posting during Diabetes Awareness Month in November, so here's an executive summary of what you should know about type 1 diabetes if you're unfamiliar with it: It's an autoimmune disease. It is not caused by diet. It is lifelong unless a cure is found. It can strike at any age. In fact, about half of new diagnoses are in adults. It's relentless, and something you have to deal with 24 hours a day every.single.day. The one bright spot to having diabetes or having a child with diabetes is the diabetes community, which is amazing. See last November's daily posts for details about these statements and much more.

With this year being totally out of whack, our big summer vacation plans being cancelled, and more recently Thanksgiving and Christmas travel to Grandma and Grandpa's house being cancelled, it's been nice to immerse ourselves in our familiar Advent traditions. In case you don't know, Advent is celebrated beginning four Sundays before Christmas. The name comes from the Latin word "coming", and it is a time to step back, reflect, and prepare to celebrate the coming of Jesus at Christmas as well as to reflect on Jesus' eventual second coming.

We established a tradition when Squirrelboy was quite young of lighting an Advent wreath every evening as a family and reading both a Bible passage and a fun Christmas story. After the reading the kids get to open the Advent calendar. Our Advent setup is below. My ADHD brain, while it struggles to make routines happen, at the same time functions much better when they're in place and established as habits, so Advent, as a many years long habit, is a particularly meaningful time to me and a pleasant break from the chaos that December often brings to a family with school age kids. There's a lot less chaos this year what with the pandemic cancelling so many activities, but at the same time the pandemic causes its own chaos, even if it's just internal, so the break is still welcome.

Another of our Advent traditions is the annual visits of Sam, our Elf on the Shelf, and Isaiah John, our shepherd. I'm presuming you know what an Elf on the Shelf looks like, reader, and if you don't, I'll spare you his slightly creepy visage. I will, however, introduce you to Isaiah John, who is quite cute.

Isaiah John's visit reminds us to focus on Jesus during Advent, as he spends every night while we sleep searching for Baby Jesus, whom he always, conveniently, finds just in time for Christmas morning.  Isaiah John also returns just before Easter, looking for a sheep he seems to lose every year at about the same time. Silly Isaiah John.

Surprisingly, the pandemic hasn't been as bad for our family as you might think it would have been. I think following routines has been part of the key to that. Our kids have consistent places to do their schoolwork, I'm able to give them consistent supervision, one of their favorite activities (scouting) has continued with a mix of digital and outdoor meetings and activities, and we've been able to have unrushed family dinners nearly every night.

I'll be happy when the U.S. is able to get the pandemic under control (not until a decent portion of the population has received a vaccine is looking like the likely timeframe) and we can return to normal activities and normal life, but for the moment I'm choosing to focus on the things that are going well. For whatever reason, that doesn't seem to leave much time for blogging :).

 

In Which ADHD Looks a Lot Like Irresponsibility

Mr. Engineer and I had a parenting disagreement last night, and the root of it lay in the fact that I have personal insight into the way that Squirrelboy's brain works and he doesn't. It can be difficult and frustrating to explain to your neurotypical spouse why you understand your kid's ADHD brain because yours works similarly. Especially when he seems to willfully not understand that it could possibly be the way the kid's brain works and must simply stem from a lack of discipline. I'm sure Mr. Engineer's position seems difficult to him too. I'm not trying to demonize him. However, the only perspective I can fully understand is my own.

So what happened last night? Squirrelboy likes to listen to books while he falls asleep (not calming books, just whatever he's listening to at the time, which can range from murder mysteries to nonfiction books about racial justice). His accesses these books via an app on his phone. Due to an incident earlier this year his phone charges in our room at night, but he has a bluetooth speaker that can play something from the phone even while it's across the hall in our room.

Last night at bedtime Mr. Engineer noticed Squirrelboy holding his bluetooth headphones instead of his speaker as he set up his book. He asked why Squirrelboy wasn't using the speaker. Squirrelboy explained that his speaker was dead and he wasn't going to wear the headphones but rather set them on the shelf above his head on their loudest setting. 

Mr. Engineer was not pleased. He told Squirrelboy that he shouldn't listen to a book if he wasn't responsible enough to charge his speaker. I intervened and told Squirrelboy that he could use the headphones.

Mr. Engineer then asked me something along the lines of, "So, you want to reward his irresponsibility?" He's gotten even more serious than ever lately at wanting to make sure Squirrelboy has the skills to survive as an adult now that he's less than three years away from legal adulthood. I saw the situation differently and replied, "No, what I want to do is not punish him for having a disorderly brain."

What Mr. Engineer saw as a clear indication of irresponsibility I saw as a clear indication of an ADHD brain. If I don't stick exactly to the scaffolding I've built for myself or I haven't built scaffolding for that particular task, I do exactly the same types of things that Squirrelboy does. This is despite the fact that I will soon turn 44 and I've managed to earn two college degrees, hold down a full time job for awhile, and (now) run a household. I like to think I'm a responsible adult, but that hasn't changed the fact that, without serious effort, I make exactly the same types of mistakes that Squirrelboy makes.

I had no idea at the time that this was an indication of ADHD, but an example of the scaffolding I set up for myself early on can be seen in my experience in summer school in high school (FTR, I was taking summer school because my three foreign languages didn't leave room in my schedule for American History and Communications, not because I failed something :)). Summer school started late enough in the morning that both of my parents had left for work before I left the house, in contrast to the school year. Because of this, I forgot to bring my lunch with me three days out of five for the first two weeks. I'd realize it when I was about halfway to the school, turn around to get it, and screech into the school parking lot about a minute before my class started. I knew this was untenable. It would result in me getting a speeding ticket, incurring some kind of penalty for tardiness, or both. So I set up scaffolding for myself. I taped a note to the steering wheel of my car that read REMEMBER TO BRING YOUR LUNCH. I never forgot my lunch for the rest of summer school.

I had to do the lunch note thing again in graduate school after my roommate got tired of driving to campus to bring my lunch at least twice a week (she had a job and worked second shift). It did not occur to me at the time that I was doing something people with ADHD often have to do. I just thought I was unusually forgetful.

I could give you other examples of scaffolding I've set up for myself. Every once in awhile I think to set it up before something goes wrong, but most often it's resulted from many incidents of failure - like establishing one and only one place to keep my keys after losing them nearly every day for years. I still haven't set up scaffolding for keeping track of my phone. I still have to call it using the home phone to find it at least three times a week, sometimes even more than once in a day. It really sucks when I realize I've left it on vibrate.

This probably should have occurred to me earlier, but recently I realized I need to start setting up scaffolding for Squirrelboy and teaching him to do it himself. Maybe if he learns this early on he can prevent himself from, for instance, losing his keys EVERY.SINGLE.DAY for the first two decades of adulthood. Not that I did that ;). Step one today was agreeing with Squirrelboy last night that he should plug in his speaker to charge this morning and every morning so that it would never be dead a bedtime again. I wrote a note on the board, and included taking his medicine, since we both forgot about that yesterday and school was harder for him than it should be. We'll see if this helps.

In Which Kittygirl Misses Dance Class Because Her Brother Has ADHD

As I've mentioned before, to my great surprise, Squirrelboy has been thriving in his first year back at public school. I pick him up most days (he can ride a bus, but it involves a transfer and a long wait and his school isn't far from Kittygirl's). Most days he bounds into the van with a smile and a story about something interesting that happened that day.

Today was the kind of day I feared might happen regularly during Squirrelboy's transition to public school. He was practically in tears as he slouched into the van and he declared angrily, "I have a ton of work to do and it's all due tomorrow!"

A ton of work translated as rewriting an essay he thought he had finished (he showed it to his teacher, who said it was week and recommended serious revision), finishing a presentation about Disney music that in theory should have been done in class (his partner didn't do any of the work), making some corrections to the digital poster for his science project, studying for a Civics test, and figuring out what to do about a group project for which one group member kept refusing to do his part and which was due, you guessed it, tomorrow. 

Squirrelboy spent the entire car ride home turning himself into a ball of stress over all the work he had to do. I assured him that, yes, it sounded like a lot of work, but that he had proven himself capable over the semester and that, after a short break to calm himself down, I was sure he could tackle the work. 

We arrived home about 3:15. I had to put dinner together so it could be put in the oven at 6pm and then Kittygirl and I were supposed to leave for her ballet class no later than 4pm. Squirrelboy took his afternoon ADHD meds and then decided he should set right to work (normally he takes a break of 20-30 minutes to let the medication take its full effect).

I sent Kittygirl to her room to do the 20 minutes of reading still needed to finish her reading log for the week, and set about to make cream cheese chicken pinwheels in the kitchen. Squirrelboy kept asking me if I could look at his work and I kept telling him that he'd have to bring the computer into the kitchen (at his school almost all work is done on a school-provided Chromebook). 

I was still working on the pinwheels when Kittygirl finished her reading. She came in to help me in the kitchen and Squirrelboy was struggling to even make a start on the project he was supposed to have finished in class. He practically begged me to come out and help him, but, by the time I finished putting dinner together, it was 3:50 and I wanted to leave for ballet in about 5 minutes.

This is when Kittygirl showed herself to be a good sister (either that or to be tired of having a commitment four afternoons a week). She offered to give up going to ballet class so that I could stay home and help Squirrelboy. I felt kind of bad, but she wasn't grudging about the offer and I knew that Squirrelboy might never finish his work if I weren't sitting by his side. I did consider bringing him to ballet, but the travel time would have cost him an hour of work time.

So I gave Kittygirl permission to watch a video in my room with the door closed and sat down next to Squirrelboy at the makeshift work station he has set up in the living room. It includes a larger monitor and a real keyboard he can attach to his Chromebook.

He was still a ball of stress, and I started by saying a prayer for him to have peace and to be able to look at his work in perspective and do his best. This isn't something I do regularly in my parenting, but I probably should. I then looked at his work with him and typed (which I do much faster than he does) while he worked his way through the assignment. He bounced ideas off of me, but ultimately the work was his.

The "in class" assignment took about an hour. Then Squirrelboy tackled the essay revision, which, in his words, was "easier than I thought it would be." Yet again, he bounced ideas off me and I typed, but the final product was his thoughts and words. That took him about half an hour. He corrected the few minor mistakes in his physics poster in about 15 minutes. He then had me look over an assignment for health which he had forgotten about in the initial stress induced panic (it's not actually due until the end of the day tomorrow). I pointed out some minor grammar and spelling errors, and he fixed them and submitted the assignment early. Finally, Squirrelboy looked at the group project that has been stressing him out. The teacher had extended the deadline out another five days, which means Squirrelboy can talk to him in class tomorrow about the dilemma that he has done his portion and the student who is supposed to do the final edit (the project is a podcast) has not even started and seems to be okay with getting a zero on the assignment.

Squirrelboy then took a break while dinner cooked and studied for Civics after dinner, which only took him about 20 minutes. He's been studying throughout the week for this test and just needed a final perusal of the unit concepts.

I'm really not sure whether I did the right thing by staying home to help Squirrelboy today. In the moment, it certainly seemed like the right thing. Squirrelboy absolutely has the ability to have done all the work by himself without me by his side. The typing would have taken him longer, but I think the work would have been of just as good quality.

What Squirrelboy cannot usually do at this point, however, is talk himself down when his emotions have escalated to the point they had reached today. Though in a very different context, his anger and stress was quite similar to what happened on fall break at the beginning of October (read the post from October 3rd if you haven't and you're curious). 

In terms of teaching my kids independence, as I talked about yesterday, I still haven't figured out the best way to walk the line of helping just enough versus too much when it comes to Squirrelboy and his stress induced near-breakdowns. At some point he needs to learn how to regulate his emotions, deescalate himself (or, better yet, not escalate in the first place), and sit down to accomplish whatever it is he needs to accomplish. 

I see that, but I'm not sure at this point how it is we're going to get there. In the meantime, I now know a lot more about what sets Disney songs apart from pop songs (Disney songs, for instance, normally have many more words and no repeating chorus), so at least I learned something interesting from today's experience :).

In Which I Don't Assign My Kids Chores Because I Do Them Better

Kittygirl has wanted her own cat practically since she started talking. Heck, she probably wanted one before that. She just couldn't tell us. When she was a baby we had four cats. One of mine even let Kittygirl pull her around by the tail. I think the poor thing was so attention starved at that point she was willing to put up with it so someone would pet her. Two of the cats had died by the time she was two (they were both 15 and one had cancer, she didn't love them to death or anything :)). Another died when she was three and a half. Our last cat lived until Kittygirl was six. Ever since then she has wanted her own cat even more. We intend to get her one someday, but we needed to get new carpet first because said last cat had a bad habit of peeing on the carpet and we didn't want a new kitty to follow in her footsteps.

When about six months had gone by since that cat's death and we were nowhere near getting new carpet (it's finally happening early next year) I advocated for getting some small caged pets. I found out that a friend from the homeschool coop we were a part of was looking to rehome some guinea pigs and we adopted Tesla and Sugar, pictured below.

In case you're curious, Tesla belongs to Squirrelboy and Sugar to Kittygirl. Tesla is named for the car company and Sugar for her large white patch. I find it amusing that a kid with diabetes chose to name her pet Sugar. When we got the guinea pigs, the idea was that they were the kids' pets and therefore the kids were going to help care for them. This was supposed to include cleaning out their cage, which, it turns out, is one of the most annoying chores of all time. 

We've had our little piggies for just over a year and a half now. I think Squirrelboy has cleaned the cage twice. Kittygirl helped me once. They do occasionally hold their pets while I clean out the cage. Why have I let his happen? For the simple reason that, if I'm the one who cleans the cage, it gets done both more quickly and much better. Mr. Engineer keeps pressing me to give them more responsibility for their pets, but I really don't want to. Cleaning the cage myself is annoying enough. Supervising a kid while it gets cleaned would be at least 10 times more annoying, and it wouldn't get done as well.

While I don't feel too bad about being the primary guinea pig cage cleaner, I do regret applying this philosophy to a lot of things in parenting. I'm way too quick to do something for one of my kids or to help them so much I might as well be doing it. 

I know this is partly because of their disabilities. I still sometimes type assignments for Squirrelboy because it's easier for him to speak his thoughts than to write them. When I was homeschooling him, I gave him a lot of leeway to do assignments differently or push them off if his ADHD was making it hard for him to manage the assignment at the time. I still talk through with Squirrelboy what work he has to do every afternoon to make sure he hasn't forgotten anything. At some point I need to help him transition to doing these things himself, but he's only a high school freshman so I don't yet feel the pressure to make him be fully responsible for such things.

Kittygirl has never had any problem with schoolwork. In fact, compared to her brother she'd almost be way too easy if her ridiculous pancreas hadn't stopped doing one of its jobs. Where I need to be careful with Kittygirl is in not taking on so much of her diabetes care that she never learns to be self sufficient. This is a fine line to walk, because I also don't want to give her so much responsibility at a young age that she burns out and decides she's done taking care of herself at 15 or 20. Thankfully, the day camp I've mentioned before has helped to push me in the right direction. Two summers ago, it was the first place she tested her own blood sugar. Last summer it was the first place she entered things into her pump.

The camp is held at a private school that grew out of the amazing cooperative preschool that Kittygirl attended. I've recently started working occasionally as a substitute aid at the preschool to a) make some extra cash and b) hang out with some fun kids. Seriously, it's so much fun I can't believe they pay me. Anyway, I was working in the art room today and I noticed this sign.

I loved this sign when Kittygirl was in preschool, and that's the kind of philosophy I want to embody in my parenting and often fail to do. Yes, there are times when you need to do things for your kids. There are other times when you need to give them significant help and guidance on the way to eventual independence. However, if you never let them try anything on their own, they'll never acquire the skills they need to be successful adults. They'll just expect you to step in for them all the time and accomplish all the big (and even many of the little) things in their lives for them. I think this is a concept that's important for all parents to keep in mind, but especially those whose kids have extra challenges and may need extra help. They may take a different, slower path to independence. In some case they may never be fully independent at all. However, it's still our job to help them get to whatever point they're capable of reaching. Letting them care for their pets, even if they don't do it as well as you do, might be a great place to start.

In Which My Kids Are Not Super Special Snowflakes

Today is Halloween. Until yesterday afternoon I was planning to take Kittygirl out trick or treating this evening. Then our city made the decision around 3pm yesterday to move trick or treating to Saturday November 2nd from 3-5pm. Why? Because it MIGHT rain tonight and the mayor wants "to err on the side of caution for the safety of the children".

This is a travesty for two reasons. First, while I do acknowledge there are rare times when trick or treating should be moved due to true severe weather, possible rain is not a good reason to move trick or treating. Secondly, who trick or treats from 3-5pm?!?1? To be fair, I should acknowledge that the area of Wisconsin in which Mr. Engineer grew up has done trick or treating from 3-5pm the Sunday closest to Halloween at least since his childhood in the 1980's. However, our city has ALWAYS done trick or treating from 6-8pm. Even on the few occasions when the date has been moved, the time has never changed.

Aside from my love of Halloween and my personal indignation at this change, I feel like it speaks to a  larger problem in our society of treating children as super special snowflakes who must be protected not only from every possible harm but from every possible inconvenience. As the mother of two children who have actual, certified special needs I feel the need to speak out against this trend.

My kids have special needs. One needed years of extra help to learn to read and write and will always struggle in that area. In order to concentrate in school, the same child needs to take medication daily. He has a harder time regulating his emotions and controlling his impulses than people without ADHD. My other child has a body that does not produce a hormone necessary for life. She will need to receive insulin through either injections or an infusion pump throughout the day and regularly check her blood sugar for the rest of her life (barring a cure). However, they still live in the real world and they're going to need to learn survive in it without it constantly being rearranged for them. They are not and should not be treated as super special snowflakes

When Squirrelboy grows up, if he works for a traditional company, he will need to get used to the fact that any written work he needs to do for his job will be due when it is due and his boss is not legally required to accommodate his dyslexia or his ADHD with a 504 plan. When Kittygirl grows up, she will need to manage her diabetes completely on her own, even in stressful situations. She can't put off picking up insulin if it runs out just because she doesn't feel like going out in the rain.

The prevailing mindset among today's parents seems to be that everything needs to be arranged to suit their kids. This doesn't just involve trick or treating.  Your kid got a bad grade? Time to call a conference at which you pressure the teacher to change the grade or provide extra credit to raise your child's grade. Clearly the bad grade is the teacher's fault. Your kid broke the rules at the trampoline park and got hurt? Time to sue. Clearly it's the corporation's fault that your kid took a swan dive into the foam pit, hit the wall, and chipped his tooth.

When these kids grow up (and some are already there or getting close) they'll go out into the world thinking that everyone is going to bend over backwards to serve their needs. They'll get  a nasty surprise. Their employers (and even their college professors) are not going to treat them the way their parents did. The parents of these children are doing them a serious disservice.

We need our children to know that we love them, and we need to provide them with the things they genuinely need. Sometimes these things include a modified educational environment or other changes to meet their needs.  However, an effort to protect our children from every single negative experience is not good for them. Let's start by letting them trick or treat in the rain

In Which Little Things Make a Big Difference

When you have more than one kid, it's always difficult to balance their needs and juggle their schedules. This fall, Squirrelboy has gotten the short shrift schedule-wise, as I mentioned in an earlier post. Because of Kittygirl having an after school activity four days a week and Squirrelboy having one her one free day, it has been rare for me to have a free afternoon to bring Squirrelboy to the other side of town to go mountain biking.

This week there are no regular ballet classes because there's a show, which Kittygirl elected not to be in. I quite suddenly remembered that yesterday when the kids were at school. I didn't have to pick up Kittygirl until Girls on the Run ended at 4pm, so I calculated that I had enough time to run Squirrelboy to the trails and get back in time to get Kittygirl at 4pm if I brought his bike with me at pickup.

He threw a wrench into the works when he called and asked me if he could stay 20 minutes late to help make a video for the school news show. However, I got the reaction I was aiming for when he came out and saw his bike. His face lit up, and he eagerly agreed to go out to the trail. I needlessly stressed myself out thinking that I might be late picking up Kittygirl, but it all worked out. Despite getting a flat near the end of his ride, that chance to do his favorite activity made his week.

Taking Squirrelboy to the mountain bike trails was a little thing, but it made a big difference for him. It served as a reminder to me that little things can make a big difference in a lot of realms, especially when you and/or your kids have some kind of special need or challenge in your lives.

The other day Squirrelboy asked me, "How do some people make it to high school and still be so immature?" For a few years he lagged behind many of his peers in maturity, so it was simultaneously surprising and heartwarming to hear his question. I realized that he has reached this point as the result of a million little things Mr. Engineer and I have done as parents.

One thing we've done is to insist that he always put forth his best effort. Sometimes, because of his dyslexia and ADHD, it takes 3 times longer (or more) for him to be his best work than it would take one of his typical peers to do their best work. It would be so easy for him to throw in the towel and just not do the work at all or rush through it and put very little effort into it. We never put an emphasis on grades or praised A's over B's. We made it clear that his best effort was what mattered, whether that best effort earned an A, a B, or an even lower grade.

We also worked for many years, and are still working, on teaching him to think before he acts and to think about what effect his words and actions could have on other people. He's usually pretty good at this in public at this point. With his sister, not so much.

Finally, we taught him to respect authority. Even when he didn't like his teachers, even when we didn't like his teachers, we taught him to respect their authority and listen to them unless they were clearly doing something wrong. We taught him to respect our authority as his parents and worked to earn his respect.

All of this has added up to a kid who looks at a segment of his peers and asks, "How did they get this far in life and still be so immature?" I'm not saying that the parents of every single immature kid has done everything wrong. I can't see into these kids' brains. Maybe there's something going on that makes it more challenging for them to control their impulses. Maybe their parents worked just as hard as we did but the kids are currently in a deep rebellion.

What I do know is that Squirrelboy would not be the happy, well adjusted, polite high school freshman he is if we had not done a million little things to guide him in that direction over the past 14+ years.

In Which I Spend a Day Alone With Squirrelboy and Also Learn Something New About ADHD

I love my husband. I love my kids. But sometimes I almost wish I were in a divorce situation so that there was someone else to whom I could send one kid at a time. Alone, each of my kids is absolutely amazing. Yes, sometimes Squirrelboy's ADHD intrudes briefly, and Kittygirl's T1D is always in the background. However, it's nearly always a pleasure to spend time with them individually. When they're together, it is often not a pleasure to spend time with them. They nag at each other in a way no one else can nag at either of them, and every single little thing one does can grate on the nerves of the other.

This is one of the many reasons I appreciate the Boy Scouts of America. Beginning in August and stretching through mid-November, Squirrelboy's troop has two weekend campouts a month on average, occasionally three. Mr. Engineer often comes along. On those occasions I get a weekend alone with Kittygirl, which is usually a delight. It's more rare for me to get a weekend alone with Squirrelboy, but it has started to happen thanks to girls being allowed into the Cub Scout program. Mr. Engineer and Kittygirl have gone on two Cub Scout campouts together this fall, which means I have had two solo weekends with Squirrelboy. This past weekend was one of them.

I was a bit nervous at the beginning of the weekend, because Squirrelboy had to spend time on Saturday reviewing the requirements for a merit badge in preparation for a meeting on Sunday and he also had two projects to work on for school. Such things have historically stressed him out and made spending time with him not very much fun. I was pleasantly surprised on Saturday by how things went.

I slept in until almost 10am, which is a rare treat for me. I discovered upon getting ready for the day that Squirrelboy was finishing breakfast, had remembered to take his ADHD medicine (which is notable since he doesn't usually take it on weekends), and was ready to get to work. I expected that I would be talking him through what to do step by step, but that's not what happened.

Yes, there were a handful of small freakout moments when he thought he had lost one of his papers for the merit badge work, but they were all quickly solved and he handled 95% of the review work himself. I was even more impressed when it was time for him to work on his school project, an imaginary conversation for English class in which Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King Jr. run into each other at a Starbucks and discuss contemporary voting trend.

The assignment involved looking up the words of both historical figures, paraphrasing them at appropriate points in the conversation, and citing them in APA format. I had no idea how much Squirrelboy had learned that would help him with this task. I thought I might have to drag him through it and look up every citation for him, but I was wrong. He needed just a little bit of guidance and encouragement.

Even though Squirrelboy grew a lot as a student while I was homeschooling him, I sometimes despaired that he would ever be able to do his schoolwork fully independently. He's still not 100% there in 100% of his subjects, but neither are most high school freshmen. He has really stepped up and matured a lot since starting high school. It makes me simultaneously proud and a little nostalgic for the kid who needed me so much.

He even finished in time for us to go to a 5pm showing of The Current War, which I highly recommend.

Incidentally, the same day I hung out with Squirrelboy and mostly just watched him work I ran across an article about ADHD while scrolling through Facebook. It detailed research that shows that the ADHD brain is constantly seeking stimulation. If it can't find stimulation anyway, it may create its own stimulation by provoking an argument. The person with ADHD isn't consciously trying to stir up trouble, it just sort of happens.

This explains so much, both in my life and in Squirrelboy's. Yes, sibling rivalry is a real thing even if neither sibling has ADHD, but, since Squirrelboy is the instigator about 70% of the time, I'm hypothesizing that a decent percentage of his arguments with his sister are just his brain seeking stimulation. It happens to me too. Just the other night I found myself getting really angry at Mr. Engineer and didn't even know exactly why. It just made me feel better to be angry at him.

This is something good to keep in mind if you or someone in your life has ADHD. It doesn't mean that the person with ADHD should be left totally off the hook when they provoke an argument. It's still an important skill to learn to redirect that impulse and seek stimulation elsewhere. Upon reflection, this tendency might be why Squirrelboy went through a brief phase of biting and hitting other kids in his early preschool years. We successfully redirected the impulse.

What knowledge of this does mean, though, is that family members and friends of those with ADHD should be extra thoughtful when responding to unprovoked conflict. It may not be that your child, spouse, sibling, or friend is trying to be a jerk. It may just be that their brain is jerking them around.

In Which I Ponder My Children's Futures

In addition to being dyslexia awareness month, ADHD awareness month, Down Syndrome Awareness month, and probably a bunch of other things I'm unaware of (somewhat ironically) awareness month, I recently learned that October is disability employment awareness month.

Most of us have seen the feel good stories about businesses that exist to employ people with autism, Down Syndrome, or other disabilities. There are also people with those disabilities working in "normal" jobs, though it's not highlighted on the news so often. Unfortunately, when you have a visible disability like Down Syndrome that everyone knows includes some level of intellectual impairment, it can be hard to get people to take you seriously as an adult and employ you, even if you're perfectly capable of doing the job competently.

When you have an invisible disability, the struggle is different. You need to decide whether you should even reveal your disability to your potential employer and what effect it might have if you do. Barring a cure or an amazing new treatment that allows her to ignore her diabetes, this question will be most applicable to Kittygirl when she enters the workforce. Diabetics struggle every day with this question. If they reveal their condition to a potential employer during the interview it might be a strike against them. Even though they can't legally be discriminated against due to diabetes, it does happen. However, if they don't reveal it in the interview process, they need to decide when or if to make the big reveal after starting on the job. If they reveal their diabetes they might face prejudice, but, if they don't, they might be in a dangerous or even deadly health situation if their blood sugar drops very low and their coworkers think their odd behavior indicates drunkenness or illegal drug use.

Those with an invisible disability like dyslexia or ADHD won't be at risk of dying if no one knows about their condition. The question they face is more along the lines of whether they want to risk facing prejudice if they reveal a condition that is part of what makes them who they are. This is particularly true for adults who take medication to treat ADHD. Most people are okay with kids being on medication for ADHD, but the presumption is that the kids will eventually outgrow the need. Since the stimulants used for ADHD are sold and used illegally, adults who take such medications for legitimate reasons can come under scrutiny.

Both of my kids, as I've mentioned before, will need to have good health insurance if they need to continue on the medications they're currently taking into adulthood. For Kittygirl, of course, insulin will remain a necessity unless there is a cure or an alternate medication that treats type 1 (in which case that medication would become a necessity). Squirrelboy, on the other hand, MIGHT outgrow his need for the help that his medication gives him as he matures and learns more strategies to deal with his chaotic brain. He also might not.

Unless the U.S. wises up and approves a program that provides free or cheap healthcare for all paid for by our taxes, my kids and many others will need to consider what kind of benefits are offered or how they will pay for them independently as they consider future careers.

Squirrelboy's current dream is to be a filmmaker or YouTuber. Since those aren't exactly careers that offer guaranteed steady work, it will be interesting to see how he tackles that issue as he moves into adulthood. Insurance wouldn't be the only issue. Running your own business also requires organizational skills that Squirrelboy doesn't have and that would be very difficult for him. In his defense, not many 14 year olds would be ready to run their own business and he has time to learn. As long as he's committed to learning the extra skills that he'll need to master because of the way his brain works, I think he has a bright future ahead of him.

In Which My Kids "Look Normal"

The thing about invisible disabilities is, they're invisible. Shocking, I know. Overall, it's not a bad thing. People with visible disabilities often encounter a lot of prejudice just because of the way they look or act. I have a friend who has visible mobility issues as well as speech struggles that are quickly apparent, and she is often treated as if she is intellectually impaired even though, in actuality, she has a PhD and works as a college professor.

When people interact with Squirrelboy what they see is a confident, kind, and curious teenager who does well in school and interacts easily with both peers and adults. If they look a little closer they might realize that he makes a greater than average number of spelling mistakes, but, after all, he IS still a teenager and they're not exactly known for their excellent spelling.

What people don't see is that it can take him an hour or more to write a seven sentence paragraph for school. They don't see him asking me to read over every email before he sends it to make sure he hasn't made any grammar or spelling mistakes. They don't see him coming out of his room at 10pm freaking out over the fact that he forgot he had a math test to study for until he was trying to go to sleep and the million other things in his brain had begun to calm down.

People with invisible disabilities have the privilege of "passing" as typical. This is advantageous most of the time, but it does require mental (and sometimes physical) effort that can be incredibly draining to the person with an invisible disability. A friend of mine who has a child on the autism spectrum who "looks normal" shared this meme on Facebook today, and I thought the message was applicable to more than just autism.

Thankfully, Squirrelboy's struggles (and my own) are significantly fewer than the struggles faced by many, including those with "high functioning" autism. That doesn't mean they don't exist, however. What identifying my own struggles and helping my kids live with theirs has taught me is not to assume that "looking normal" is easy for everyone,

In Which My Son Could Have Been Born Into a Different Family

A week ago I posted about how Squirrelboy lost the genetic lottery when it comes to the invisible disabilities he could have inherited. He not only got my ADHD and Mr. Engineer's dyslexia, he got a more severe version of both. However, he's blessed to have won the situational lottery, by having been born to well educated upper middle class white parents who knew how to advocate for him and had the resources to get him the intervention he needed.

I have often wondered what would have happened to Squirrelboy if he had been born into another family. Of course, he couldn't literally have been born into another family, but children with disabilities like his are born into other families every day. Unfortunately, not all of those families have the knowledge, the resources, or the will to get their children the services they need to be successful in life.

While I was homeschooling Squirrelboy I met many families who had pulled their children out of school because the school wasn't serving their learning disabilities well, or, worse yet, was ignoring those disabilities altogether. Many of these parents had made great sacrifices of their time and income in order to give their children an education that would allow them to thrive.

Unfortunately, the majority of children with learning and attention disabilities don't have parents who are able to provide them with an individualized education at home. Most children with learning and attention disabilities are educated in the public system, and a huge percentage of them do no receive the accommodations and services they need.

I'm not blaming the teachers who let these kids fall through the cracks. As I've discussed before, even most reading specialists are not well educated in dyslexia. There are always exceptions, but the large majority of teachers want to see all their students succeed and will everything they have in their toolboxes to make that happen. Unfortunately, their toolboxes may only include a hammer and a Phillips head screwdriver when the tool little Johnny needs is an 1/8 inch Allen wrench.

One of the greatest disservices done to students with disabilities that are not diagnosed before they enter kindergarten is the concept of "waiting to fail." The idea behind this seems good on the surface. Children develop at different rates, and the idea is to wait until the end of second grade to let children catch up before evaluating them for learning disabilities. I'm sure there are a few children for whom this policy works. If a child is bright and has no learning disabilities, but comes into kindergarten with minimal exposure to books and letters, that child will eventually catch up with a good standard education.

However, students with dyslexia will never learn to read well without targeted intervention, and the earlier that intervention begins, the greater the chance of success. Despite evidence of this fact, parents are often told that it's not possible to diagnose dyslexia until 3rd grade.  This is patently untrue, and even the National Institute of Health knows it, but all too many schools don't.
Children only get evaluated earlier if their parents know enough to suspect dyslexia early on and aren't afraid to speak truth to power when it comes to advocating for their children.

Since I'm proficient in Spanish, I was sometimes called upon by Squirrelboy's elementary teachers to work with students from Spanish speaking families who came into the school with little or no knowledge of English. Squirrelboy's school had a strong ESL program and those students got a lot of support and most of them were working at or above grade level in English within a couple of years. All the students I worked with who came into the school in the upper grades could read and write proficiently in Spanish and just needed to transfer those skills.

I wondered what would happen, though, to a student with dyslexia who entered school with limited English proficiency. Chances are that student's struggles would be attributed to lack of English proficiency and a learning disability would not even enter the discussion until late in elementary school, possibly even later than third grade, when evaluations are most often considered. If the student's parents are immigrants with limited English proficiency and no understanding of the public school system and their rights to advocate for their child, that child would experience significant failure before any attempt at intervention began. All too often these are the kids who develop serious behavior problems and drop out of school as soon as they can.

This is much less common, but kids with invisible disabilities can also be held back by their parents. Homeschooling parents can fool themselves into thinking that their children will read "when they're ready", and continue to pursue a standard education with accommodations because they have an idea that having a label will hurt their child in the future. I have a friend who taught for a time at at Christian high school that admitted quite a few students who had been homeschooled through 8th grade. She told me about a few students she had who showed every sign of dyslexia, but who had never received any intervention because their parents did not want them to be labeled. These students struggled greatly at this rigorous high school, but their parents continued to believe that a label would be more damaging to them than failure.

My dream is for dyslexia, ADHD, and other invisible disabilities to be destigmatized so that parents are not afraid to seek out labels for their kids if they show signs of these disabilities. The second part of the dream is for public school teachers and administrators to be thoroughly educated in these disabilities and others and to begin identification and intervention as early as possible, allowing all of their students to succeed instead of waiting for some to fail.

Squirrelboy is successful today because he was given the supports and interventions he needed. It breaks my heart that not only is this not true for every child, it is not true for a large percentage of children with the same challenges he has.

In Which My Brain Resembles the Top of My Husband's Dresser, But It's Not Really a Bad Thing

I was talking with Mr. Engineer today, and he made reference to me possibly being able to find something I was looking for on top of his dresser. I told him I'd looked, but, quite understandably, couldn't find it.Then I joked that it has about the same level or organization as my brain. This is what the dresser top looks like:

If he ever needs a receipt from the past decade, a small electronic item that has broken down, a birthday card that's been given to him since we got married, or a Dexcom transmitter that has expired, this is where he would find it. Anyone who's willing to sort through the mess could find one of those things as well. Some of them are easier to find than other. If you know what a Dexcom transmitter looks like, for instance, you can probably spot one over on the right.

I wasn't completely joking when I said that this is what my brain looks like. Contrary to popular belief, it's not usually true that people with ADHD can't pay attention to anything. The problem more often is that we're paying attention to too many things at the same time. Just like the top of this dresser, my brain and Squirrelboy's brain and constantly noticing and reflecting on so many things it can be chaotic. The problem is when we're forced to focus on a particular one.

Sometimes this ability to keep lots of things in our brains at once can be advantageous. People with ADHD who have acquired tools (through medication, through practice, or both) that allow them to sort out the mess a little bit and choose what the focus on are often exceptionally good at multitasking.

I spent my senior year of high school in Sweden. One of my host family's traditions was to watch TV together in the evening while eating evening fika. It's sort of a cross between a snack and the British concept of teatime, but with its own cultural heritage. I normally had homework to do in the evening, but that didn't stop me from enjoying fika in front of the TV. 

A lot of my host father's favorite shows were American shows with Swedish subtitles. I was placed in the humanities track in Swedish high school, which meant that, in addition to learning Swedish, I was studying Latin, French, and Spanish. My homework was often in one of these languages. My host mother frequently expressed amazement that I could listen to a TV show in English and hold a conversation in Swedish while doing homework in a third language. It didn't amaze me. It was just the way my brain worked.

When I shared this story with Squirrelboy last year, he asked, "Is that why I notice things that other people miss? Because I notice everything." That is absolutely true. His problem is that sometimes he is so busy noticing all the details going on around him he completely forgets to pay much attention to the one task he's supposed to be focusing on. Thanks to a combination of his medication making his brain a little quieter and a growing maturity that has allowed him to take criticism and start applying the advice we've been given for years, Squirrelboy is slowly learning to push aside the million things he notices in order to focus on the one thing he's supposed to do in the moment.

My favorite example of an ADHDer's natural ability to notice so many things going on around them comes from fiction. In the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan features modern American children of Greek demigods. Nearly all demigods, according to the book, have dyslexia and ADHD. The dyslexia happens because their brains are hardwired to read ancient Greek. The ADHD gives them a serious advantage in battle, as it allows them to notice everything happening around them and make the best decisions. Spoiler alert: the teenage demigods save the world. They're heroes. However, when they're expected in school to learn to read English well and to sit still and pay attention in class, they look like failures.

I wish every child with ADHD had the opportunity that Squirrelboy and I have had to see their different brains as advantageous in some situations and to acquire skills that allow them to function well even when their brains are disadvantageous. Unfortunately, all too often only the things they do poorly are pointed out to them, and they are neither given the skills they need in situations in which their brains work against them nor shown that their brains are amazing creations that are incredibly useful in other situations.

In Which My Son Does Not Have An Anxiety Disorder (But Sometimes It Feels Like He Does)

People unfamiliar with ADHD often think it's all about being hyperactive and/or not being able to pay attention well. While both of those things can absolutely be part of how ADHD manifests itself, a less well known aspect of ADHD is difficulty with emotional regulation.

While he was a pretty chill baby, since toddlerhood Squirrelboy has been a little more dramatic and moody than the average kid his age, particularly the average boy. In fact, when I was expecting Kittygirl and was told I should prepare myself for the drama of having a girl, I replied that only those who didn't know my son would think I was unfamiliar with drama. It turns out, in fact, that Kittygirl overall has been much less dramatic than her brother was at the same age.

The differences between him and his peers became more obvious as he got older. As most other tweens began to express their emotions more calmly, he was still more likely to have the type of meltdown usually reserved for younger children. Thankfully, these did usually only happen at home. As I've discussed before, his behavior at school was quite good and that normally carried over to any activity outside the home.

For years I felt like his intense reactions to stress and conditions he didn't like might be signs of an anxiety disorder. When we had him evaluated for ADHD, the testing included a full psychological panel. His personal survey did not indicate any signs of anxiety. The parental survey that Mr. Engineer filled out did not indicate any signs of anxiety. The testing did not indicate any signs of anxiety. The only thing that indicated anxiety was the teacher survey I filled out about him.

With those results, I had to reevaluate my instincts. It occurred to me that Squirrelboy's "anxiety" was most likely a difficulty with emotional regulation brought about by ADHD as opposed to a separate disorder. Upon reflection, I recognized that I too have a really difficult time regulating my emotions under extreme stress. This is something that surprised Mr. Engineer after we got married because before that he wasn't with me often enough to see me at my most stressed.

Squirrelboy has learned more emotional regulation skills as he has gotten older, and he's better at it when his brain is more clear due to his medication. He's also better at it, with or without medication, when he's well rested. This has led to some difficult moments near the end of a long vacation, when he's both off his medication and really tired and we're trying to learn the best way to deal with that.

At moments when he is extremely tired and stressed out, however, his brain seems to lose all ability to think logically and he is very likely to say something in anger that would seem ridiculous if he were thinking clearly  (we can all do this, of course, it's just more likely if you have ADHD). Just the other day he was incredibly fed up with the way a group project for English was going and announced that he would "never do a group project again." Sadly, as everyone who has pulled more than their share of the weight on a project for school or work knows, that is not an option.

Looking back at my teenage years, I think I can safely attribute all or most of the ridiculous rages I sometimes threw at home to a combination of teen hormones and ADHD. As I got older, I learned more skills to help me cope and not go crazy at the first sign of stress, but I still have a ways to go, as my family will gladly tell you.

Since, in Squirrelboy's case, we know that part of the reason he acts the way he does when he's tired and stressed is due to the way his brain is wired. Hopefully, armed with that knowledge, we will be able to help him learn to regulate his emotions earlier in adulthood than I did and set him up for success.

In Which Diabetes and ADHD Wage War Within My Brain

There's Mom Brain. There's ADHD Brain. There's Diabetes Brain. Then there's my experience: Mom with ADHD Managing Her Kid's Diabetes Brain. Trust me, this one is very bad. As much as I try not to let our challenges control our lives, sometimes the whirlwind of them interacting with each other does, in fact, overwhelm me.

As I've mentioned before, I don't have an official clinical diagnosis of ADHD. It's unlikely I'll ever pursue one, because I don't see a practical reason for me to have the documentation, but the more I've learned about ADHD the more I'm certain that it explains quite a few things in my life.

Over the years I developed quite a few strategies to help with the fact that I had a hard time remembering details and was always losing stuff. When I was in high school and old enough to drive myself, I forgot to bring my lunch with me a few times. I solved that problem by taping a note to my steering wheel that read, "Remember your lunch." I repeated the practice again in grad school when I again found myself frequently forgetting my lunch and my roommate (who was working a second shift job at the time) got tired of bringing it to me :).

As long as I stuck with my routines, I usually managed to do everything I had to do. I struggled for a bit to adjust after Squirrelboy was born and as he entered each new stage and new things were added to my plate, but I was always able to establish new routines that kept me on track most of the time.

Things did get more complicated when I added a second child. I started to forget irregular events on the calendar like doctor and dentist appointments. I made a habit of writing absolutely everything down on the calendar in the kitchen and looking at it every morning, which mostly solved this problem.

When I started forgetting where I put my keys even when I had an established spot for them, I started keeping them in my vehicle when it was inside the locked garage and in my purse when it wasn't. By the time Kittygirl was in kindergarten things were going really well. I'd added the complication of homeschooling Squirrelboy, but I had a schedule established and it was going well. Then, just over halfway through kindergarten, Kittygirl was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.

There are a lot of things to hate about T1D, but the thing that is hardest for me is the details. ALL.THE.LITTLE.DETAILS. There are carb ratios, there are correction factors, there are carb counts, there are low treatments, there are prescriptions to refill every single month. Sometimes I would bolus Kittygirl for a certain number of carbs and then forget to give her some or all of those carbs. The worst case was when I bolused her for a snack she was going to eat on the way to the park with Mr. Engineer and then completely forgot to send said snack to the park with them. Her blood sugar dropped to 25. Anything below 70 is considered low.

I'm incredibly thankful for Kittygirl's insulin pump and continuous glucose monitor, but that technology adds an additional layer of things to remember. First every seven and now every ten days we need to change the Dexcom sensor. Thankfully the Dexcom app reminds us so it's hard to forget, but it is still possible to dismiss the reminders and promptly forget about them during your busy day. The pump doesn't remind us that the site needs to be changed every three days, so I've forgotten until the morning after it should have been changed. The clue has usually been that her blood sugars were on the high side because the site was losing its effectiveness.

After managing Kittygirl's diabetes for 32 months now, we've reached a pretty good understanding of how different foods act in her body and how we need to bolus them. In the case of toast, which, at least for her, digests slowly, I need to do an extended bolus with the pump, giving 50% of the insulin shortly after she finishes the toast and 50% slowly over 2 hours. Sometimes I have to wait a little bit after she eats if her blood sugar is trending down on her CGM graph. Most mornings Kittygirl eats fruit, 2 pieces of toast, and 2 sausages. Our goal is to keep her blood sugar within the grey range on her Dexcom graph, which is between 80 and 160. If all goes well it looks like this:

On Sunday, all did not go well. We had friends staying with us for the weekend, who were making their own breakfast in the kitchen while Kittygirl was eating her breakfast. I had to help them find what they needed. I also wanted to make sure I said goodbye to them and that they didn't forget anything as they packed. I had to eat my  own breakfast and make sure Kittygirl was dressed in time to leave for church at 9:15. Then our children's pastor texted me to ask if I could step in to work at the preschool check in desk because someone was sick. That pushed our leaving time five minutes earlier. Amidst all these changes, the fact that I hadn't bolused Kittygirl's toast yet left my mind. When I was helping her get dressed, the high alarm on Dexcom went off, which means her blood sugar had reached 160. However, I didn't start a bolus right away because I was changing her her pump pouch and arguing with her over the fact that she had to wear one that held her phone as well. Then I looked at my watch and realized we should already have left for church and, yet again, the fact that I hadn't bolused for the toast went right out of my head. I finally remembered when I got to church and Kittygirl's blood sugar was already in the 200's. This was the result:

The gap, by the way, is from some time when the signal wasn't transmitting. The different timing made all the difference to keeping her blood sugar in range, or her blood sugar going way out of range.

After this experience, Mr. Engineer suggested that I set an alarm on my phone to remember to bolus the toast. That's what we've done this school year for Squirrelboy to remember to take his ADHD meds before leaving for school. When he was homeschooled, I could just have him take it when I realized within half an hour of starting work that he'd forgotten, but, if he forgets at school he just has a bad school day.

I may initiate something like this, but it still might not help in a situation like Sunday's because I would have to remember to set an alarm amidst all the chaos distracting my brain. I've forgotten on school days as well, though, so a regular weekday alarm could be helpful. I do tend to be resistant to ideas offered by someone like Mr. Engineer who doesn't often forget things, but I should probably get over that.

As the months managing my daughter's diabetes have stretched into years, I'm no longer normally overwhelmed by all the tiny details. However, they definitely add an extra layer of stress in holding things together and I still, 32 months in, haven't reached the balance I had before I introduced diabetes details to my brain and they started fighting with ADHD.

In Which My Son Wins (Or Maybe Loses) the Genetic Lottery

Squirrelboy has a lot going for him, statistically speaking. He is white. He is male. He is Christian. He is from an upper middle class family. He was breastfed not just for a year, but well into his preschool years. His parents read to him regularly in early childhood and still continue to do so. He has had the privilege of traveling abroad as well as to many parts to the U.S. In terms of being given a good start in life he is sitting in clover. That's not the way he sees it, however.

He does recognize that he has a lot of privilege and a lot of advantages, but he thinks that the hand our genetics dealt him was incredibly unjust. Neither of us knew this about the other at the time, but, when we married, Mr. Engineer and I were creating a potential family with a high genetic risk for dyslexia on one side and ADHD on the other. Heck, our poor kids got an extra helping of dyslexia risk since it seems to run in my family as well, though I'm not affected.

When one parent has dyslexia, every child born to that parent has a 50% risk of having dyslexia. In our case, it happened to work out that one of our two kids has dyslexia, thus 50% of our kids have dyslexia, but the math doesn't always work that way. The risk is 50% for each child.  Another couple I know that could have passed down dyslexia genetically has three biological children, none of whom have dyslexia. A third couple I know has four biological children, three of whom have dyslexia.

For ADHD, the story is more complicated. Having a parent with ADHD definitely increases the risk for a child to have ADHD, but I couldn't find any hard and fast numbers. ADHD is also affected by environment in ways that dyslexia is not, which complicates the picture. The one statistic I could find was that 1 in 3 fathers with ADHD have a child with ADHD. I couldn't find any statistics about mothers, so we'll just have to presume that having a mother with ADHD (officially diagnosed or not) also increases a child's risk.

So any child we had had an approximate 50% risk of having dyslexia and maybe as much as a 33% risk of having ADHD. I don't know of any studies that show that the risks compound each other, but I wouldn't surprised if they did, even if only anecdotally, since the two often coexist. Our genes combined to create one child with both challenges and one child with neither, and the child who got both is pretty annoyed about that.

It does no good to point out to him that his sister was apparently born with a susceptibility to develop an autoimmune disorder and she wound up with type 1 diabetes. He simply points out that a) Kittygirl wasn't born with T1D and b) there is no guarantee that he won't develop diabetes or some other autoimmune disease at some point in his life.

So what can we do as parents to assuage his anger at the genetic profile we unwittingly passed down to him? We can remind him that we also passed good things down to him and gave him the best start in life we could, which was pretty darn good because of all the privilege we enjoy. We can also remind him that he's made it this far in life with much more success than failure. We can remind him of all the people in the world who have similar challenges and have gone on to be successful.

Finally, we can remind him that he is a unique and beloved creation of God and that God can and will use him to impact the world. Sometimes this may happen in spite of his challenges, other times it will happen because of his challenges.

In Which I Realize Just How Useless My College Major Was

Today at breakfast Squirrelboy commented that some of his friends who go to other schools have been surprised that his favorite class in high school is English. Mr. Engineer and I reminded him that we, too, were surprised his favorite class was English until we got to know more about his teacher and how the class is run. What Squirrelboy loves the most is the fact that, because his school focuses on project based learning, they're learning to write things with a practical purpose and learning that writing will be useful in their adult lives. I told Squirrelboy that, while I loved English class because reading and writing are my favorite things in the world, most of the writing I did was writing papers about books that were simply for the purpose of my English teacher and read an assign a grade too. Then I paused and realized that, because I have both a B.A. and and M.A. in Spanish with a literature focus, that's pretty much what I spent the majority of my educational career doing. I read books that most people don't care about and wrote papers about them that were of no practical use to anyone. Well, good thing I wasted six years of my life......

No, seriously, my college and grad school experiences were great and helped make me the person I am today. It is, in fact, really useful in my daily life to be proficient in Spanish and to have a knowledge of other cultures. However, when it comes to actual marketable skills, my education netted me very little. Ultimately, that was not detrimental to me. I did manage to pick up some teaching skills by being pushed into the deep end as a teaching assistant in grad school. I continued teaching part time while working as a campus minister for a parachurch campus ministry and attempting to raise up enough financial partners to do ministry full time. The whole fund development thing never worked out well for me, and I eventually left and found a full time job teaching Spanish at a small Christian college near Chicago. I would have needed to continue my education and get a PhD to keep that job and get tenure, but then year Mr. Engineer and I got married and moved back to Kentucky after just one year teaching there. I continued to teach part time as an adjunct at two local schools and substitute teach in the public schools until Squirrelboy was born. Since then I've been a stay at home mom. I made a few (literally, just a few after expenses) bucks teaching coop classes when I was homeschooling Squirrelboy, but, for all intents and purposes, I have not been gainfully employed for the majority of my adult life.

This has worked out fine for me because a) I was born into privilege and could fall back on help from my parents when I was single and not making much money b) I had not chronic medical conditions that required regular doctor visits or medication so it was fine that I was without insurance for a couple years and c) I'm now married to a man with a stable job, a good income, and health insurance. If either a, b, or c were taken away I could have been in serious trouble at some point and I might have thought more about studying something that would more logically lead to a job. I had the freedom to study what interested me, and I never realized what an incredible gift that was. When I look at my kids today, I wonder if their challenges will allow them to have that same freedom.

Thankfully, the medication Squirrelboy takes for ADHD is not necessary for him to stay alive, but it makes the parts of his life that involve attention to detail and focus about 1,000 times easier. Right now this mostly applies to school, but it's likely to apply to whatever job he has as well. He's currently interested in photojournalism and/or filmmaking. Neither job, at least in today's marketplace, normally comes with a steady paycheck and insurance. Before we meet our deductible, his ADHD medication is $200 a month. I don't even want to know what it would be without insurance. I don't want his atypical brain to stop him from pursuing his dreams, but I do wonder if it will have to be figured in.

Kittygirl, on the other hand, does need synthetic insulin to live. In case you've been living under a rock, and haven't heard about this, there are many people in the U.S. who can't afford their insulin. There are multiple stories of young adults who died just months after leaving their parents' insurance or being laid off because they couldn't afford the substance that keeps them alive. In addition, managing Kittygirl's diabetes is a million times easier because of her insulin pump and continuous glucose monitor. People  with diabetes without insurance, or with pathetic insurance, struggle just to get enough insulin to stay alive. Using devices like Kittygirl's is completely out of reach. I don't want this to be Kittygirl's story in young adulthood. I want her to be able to pursue her dreams and not worry if they don't result in obvious marketable skills. However, already now I find myself nudging her toward careers that would be likely to provide a good insurance policy.

Here's where I turn political. It shouldn't have to be this way. In the majority of nations in the developed world, healthcare is a right and not a privilege. Yes, you can't always get the absolute top of the line services that the privileged elite in the U.S. can get, but you can still get what you need. Sometimes there are waiting lists for things like insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors. However, you can eventually get them if you're patient. You're not fearful of going bankrupt if you get cancer or you or your loved one are involved in a catastrophic accident that results in months of hospitalization. My hope and prayer is that, before my kids reach young adulthood, the U.S. will have caught up with the rest of the developed world and being able to afford to stay alive (in Kittygirl's case) or to live well (in Squirrelboy's case) will not be on their list of adult responsibilities.