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 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 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 It Is Fall Break, But ADHD Doesn't Take the Day Off

It's Fall break for my kids today and tomorrow. According to the weather forecast, we might actually get some weather tomorrow that hints of fall. Today it was 95 degrees. Anyway, this post will be short and sweet because the kids and I went on a fun day trip and it's late. There may or may not be a post tomorrow. We'll see. Even though I only, have, like, 4 regular readers right now, two of whom are my mom and my mother in law, I will feel oddly guilty if I don't keep up my regular habit of posting every weekday :).

As I mentioned in a previous post, Squirrelboy does not normally take his ADHD medication when it's not a school day. The main thing it helps him with is concentration, which he needs most for schoolwork, so it's usually okay. However, another symptom of ADHD is difficulty with emotional regulation, and that symptom was in high gear today for Squirrelboy. Fun things like that tend to crop up more when he's tired. He just finished two major projects for school and retook a big test on Wednesday, and he's been running on fumes trying to get those things finished after spending the past two weekends at Boy Scout events. Then he stayed up late Wednesday finishing up an assignment for Civics for which he'd been given an extra day (a perk of his 504 plan). Last night I though all three of us had agreed that we were going to spend the day at the Kentucky Science Center in Louisville. Quite suddenly today the very idea of driving anywhere was anathema to Squirrelboy. It didn't help that I told him he had to take a shower. He didn't want to go anywhere out of town, but he didn't want me and Kittygirl to go anywhere without him either. He spent about 45 minutes arguing with me before his shower. I tried to figure out a compromise but he wasn't having it. The fact is, I didn't regulate my emotions all that well either. While I don't have a diagnosis, the more I learned about ADHD while we were pursuing a diagnosis for Squirrelboy, the more I realized I have a lot of the symptoms as well. Difficulty with emotional regulation, especially when I'm tired, is absolutely one of them. I'm a little better, probably because I've had 30 more years of practice, but Squirrelboy can set me off. Finally I gave up and gave Mr. Engineer a call at work. Thankfully, I caught him just before he was leaving for a meeting. He was able to talk to Squirrelboy rationally and convince him that he really might have fun on a day trip with his mom and sister today.

Ultimately, the compromise was that we took a trip, not the science center, but to Entertrainment Junction, an entertainment center near Cincinnati which has both train and carnival themed areas. Squirrelboy had an enjoyable afternoon taking pictures and videos of the amazing train setups. Kittygirl had fun with everything. Funnily enough, this place is about 30 miles further than the science museum that was way too far :). By the time we headed out, Squirrelboy and I had both managed to regulate our emotions, and the rest of the day went well. Well, except for my hissy fit over Kittygirl's ridiculous blood sugar spike that I couldn't control, but I'll save that one for Diabetes Awareness Month in November.