“Does your child act as if he’s driven by a motor?”

I think about the Pre-K teacher who told me he sometimes “flies” across the room with no regard for who or what he might run into.

I think about COVID and blanket forts. Virtual school. Crying in the bathroom because WTAF?

I remember the headlines, Children Weren’t Meant to Learn This Way; Especially Boys.

I think about that kid who was actually acting like a motorcar on the playground. Did his mom have to fill one of these out?

“Rate on a scale of 1-5,” this neatly organized paper that wants to slap a label on my son continues.

I think about those 9 hours of labor, his little navy blue room, nonstop crying in the car. Baby-wearing while dipping my hand into a family sized bag of Lays Original.

I think about the pediatrician having no answers, the sitter who told me there is definitely something wrong. Soy formula. A handful of blogs I wrote for sanity.

I think about how much I love him. Can you ask me about how inventive and hard-working he is? Because 5!

5…

 My inbox goes off, BING!

“Done. Thank you Mrs. Ellis.”

The 3rd Grade teacher just completed her copy of this worksheet in less than 15 minutes.

That easy, huh?

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It was just over a year ago that a second educator in four years looked at me from across a small classroom table and suggested we talk to the pediatrician about a few things. That day, I reacted by texting cuss words about her to his two grandmothers and my husband from the school parking lot.

Today I understand she is one of the good ones. She didn’t have to disrupt my world (again), but if she did it might just get him what he needs before the 4th Grade. She thought this hard conversation was worth a try.

I guess I’m sorry about those texts. (Sorta.)

I was angry for most my oldest’s 3rd Grade year. Mainly because I have a full-time job, and what his teacher was bringing up required more than just extra worksheets on reading comprehension.

“He physically can’t pay attention,” she said. “This isn’t a question of his intelligence.”

I knew what she was getting at. My first sibling showed up right after my 3rd birthday. I don’t remember a thing from before he was here, bouncing on my head while I quietly watched Disney movies. I had 36 years of front-row experience to what the hell she was getting at.

In fact, when I was 7 a second brother showed up — 10x the first one. A 2nd grader by this time, I was more receptive to the adult conversations around me, so I even saw the effect of being diagnosed and medicated. It was a long journey, for him and my mother.

ADHD has not been a problem to measure with 1-5’s in my life, though. It was the water I swam in. It was my home. My mom, my kid brothers…they weren’t math problems. They were human beings, among the people I’ve loved the most during my 40 years on this planet. Their beautiful minds kept me guessing, laughing, thinking outside the box.

Knowing that, it should come as no surprise at all that the deepest romantic relationships I found in my 20’s would be with guys having ADHD. The last one I went ahead and married.

All that to explain, this worksheet is insulting and exhausting. 

I don’t assume my background with ADHD is universal, but part of me has to believe the emotional process I went through as a mom being put on the spot to uncover it must be. Why is no one talking about this, I wondered?

I have looked for a year for what I hope this post will be for someone else. Even one person.

For clarity, I’m aware that there is no shortage of educational podcasts and “what it’s like to live with ADHD” Instagram accounts. I followed them, I listened. The doctors, they have literature. I read that.

What I wanted to know about was the mom who is mourning the fact that this won’t be the kid who skates through elementary school.

Us out here wondering how it will change their psychology to be “that kid” in class.

What about the parent sitting in front of a teacher who isn’t allowed to say the acronym “ADHD,” but seems to be describing it as she passes the baton to us to figure it out?

How about all the moms and dads who look at the 9-year-old in question and only see that perfect baby who arrived four days late in August and stole everyone’s heart?

There is a narrative about this inside of me that I never knew about until I was filling out that very scientific paper reducing my kid to a list of 1-5’s. Maybe the psychological process I went through is simply for knowing exactly what this struggle was about to look like for him.

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I let Christmas be a full reset last year, following an obviously emotional first quarter of school. I let myself feel sad, I talked about this too much. I had a deep understanding about the fact that he was going to lose a piece of his innocence in the coming year.

I wondered, how much longer did we have with Santa? What kind of testing would he be put through in 2023, and how would we explain it to him without making him feel like a science experiment?

“I was toxic positivity personified this year,” I wrote on Instagram on Christmas Eve, “and I have no regrets.”

Indeed. We gave him and his sister the Best Christmas Ever™ just in case. Even as I struggle through this Christmas attempting to live upto it, I have no regrets.

Last year I desperately wanted to skip to the part where I knew what to do. The part where I could say, “here are 4 things I would tell myself in hindsight…”

I have that now, but I’m passionate about making clear this is only a conversation I can have with the person I was last Christmas.

A lot of people wanted to help me when I wasn’t ready. A lot of people have opinions about ADHD, and in most cases they aren’t helpful even if cathartic for the moment. The best question I was asked during that time was by a fellow mom, who responded when I finally cracked on the group chat: “I have some insight, but is that what you want or just to vent right now?”

This writing will be my version of that: Friendship. A place to feel seen. But also insight if you want it.

 

Here are the four things I can now tell myself after the year of diagnosing my child with ADHD…

1) Leaning on your community was the best thing you did, especially those teacher friends.

There was really no reason to be acting like this was offensive or embarrassing. Once I traversed that hump, I found immediate support within the 11 families on my son’s baseball team.

A reading specialist and an elementary teacher. The daughter of a child psychologist. Multiple older siblings with complete diagnoses, different medications, behavioral therapists, IEPs. They helped me understand that this worksheet I was treating like Everest was The Help. He was going to struggle in school until I could give the system measurements to base a different path on. This 3rd Grade teacher would be unable to obtain proper resources until I could help her help him.

There was also a judgment flying around about the fact that she was flagging a sizable number of kids in the class. The implication being that she must be annoyed, bad at her job. I actually said these things out loud while I was working it out inside myself, and that was wrong.

What I know in hindsight is it is that common, and not just a thing teachers bring up so they can sedate the ones who are “annoying.” To be sure, my son will not be medicated this year. But he did need the small group tutoring. He does need his science test read to him so he can continue to score well in science while he works out his reading issues.

I wished the school could just see and give him that, but also realize now, this “accommodating” wouldn’t be as useful without a system of participation from families.

Last night, his 4th Grade teacher called me to discuss a great idea she had to help his reading grade and self-confidence while he continues to bridge the gap. None of this happens without that godforsaken painful worksheet reducing him to a scale of 1-5.

We can do easy things.

To my year-younger self: great move talking to regular people while you were at it with the pediatrician. I’m proud of you for lowering your defenses.

 

2) Working on yourself at the same time you were working on him was a great idea.

Dry January was the right thing to do. Numbing had to stop before I could deal with my feelings and take the most proper action.

Following multiple recommendations by one of my favorite influencers, the next thing I did was listen on Audible to Melody Beatty’s Codependent No More.  Melody almost missed me with all her talk about addiction, but there was something very “me” in the stories that wouldn’t let me put her down…

I am codependent with ADHD, I eventually realized.

If it isn’t obvious, scroll back to the top and read again. I’m so codependent with ADHD that I married it for knowing exactly how to be useful in this relationship.

Much as I’ve been daunted from condensing my long winded tendencies into soundbites my ADHD partner could withstand, been thoroughly exhausted with keeping allll the lists, bank accounts and calendars…never did I connect the fact that I might love him precisely because he has ADHD.

Knowing what I know now, I’ll tell you exactly why content from the perspective of the support person doesn’t exist: It’s because we think this is not our story to tell.

But actually, as a mother this has been hard enough and surprising enough—for long enough—that I am willing to be the one to break it to us. As a now self-identified codependent I am 100% an active participant in this story with capital-I Issues and imperfect psychology.

I also now have a child learning how to survive in the world with ADHD. My emotional health and faith in myself as his advocate matters.

I promptly put myself in therapy with this discovery, and Dr. Sarah showed me how I’ve positioned myself as the family therapist from the time I was a kid. I was here to make it easier on everyone else; whether that meant staying out of the way, going with the flow, saying ‘yes’ when I really meant ‘no,’ or listening and helping someone in crisis until they felt ok.

She pointed to all the ways I perform this even today. Showed me how I keep my circle small due the emotional labor I give to the people I love.

Sarah and I did this for months while I learned to draw lines and trust my instincts. I needed to hear my own voice the loudest if I was going to be the mom my son needed this year.

Therapy was a smart thing to do. Good call on that, Last-Year Michelle.

 

3) Teaching him about his ADHD is helpful, actually.

The waitlists to pinpoint your kid’s neurodivergences are impossibly long and it doesn’t matter where you go. The attitude of the younger-me to just get on all of them and let the chips fall when they could was a good one.

Doing that actually required me to fill out that goddamn survey about six times though, so I’m glad I held onto the first one to copy/paste the all the arbitrary numbers of my kid’s spirit and lively personality. Children’s Hospital, Kennedy Krieger Institute, a couple of local psychotherapists (one I just hung up with when they said their super-special waitlist is 9 months long).

I did all of this in November of last year, and he was finally tested and diagnosed virtually on February 15th (only three months, Kennedy Krieger Institure wins!)

This was enough for the school to write a Catholic Accommodation Plan (CAP) for him – the Archdiocese of Washington’s version of an IEP – but would advance us to two more wait lists to obtain full neuropsychological testing and a behavioral therapist.

One full year after the first day of 3rd Grade, we would be placed with a behavioral therapist (we are still on the neuropsych waitlist, in month ten). A young 20-something named Todd, who also played baseball, and also was a catcher, and also went to Catholic School, and also likes the Washington Wizards and Baltimore Orioles…this would be our guy.

As we were getting started with Todd, I was still over-selling to my kid that I’m in therapy too because no one is perfect. That half his family has ADHD and look how much we love them, especially his Dad—his hero!

While I am satisfying my own codependency to make sure he feels like a normal kid who doesn’t have “special” needs, Todd is over here taking him through a course called Focus Fish which literally explains to him that he actually has trouble focusing. He is letting him be aware that sometimes he has explosive emotions, impulsive actions. Todd is telling my child these facts about himself so he can then teach him how to take care of himself.

Mind. Blown.

They made stress balls together with balloons and rice. Todd had him put one in his baseball bag, his backpack, his desk.

Todd reached out to me on a couple of occasions to suggest better responses we could give to Anthony’s performance in baseball. He actually said the words once, “since I was a baseball player, I just know how mental the game can be.” Todd gets him. Tear falls.

A couple of weeks ago, Anthony told me about a decision he made for himself with the supports he’s been given in class. He told his teacher he doesn’t need his vocabulary tests read to him anymore, and his grades are reflecting that is true.

Todd is the best. Todd makes me less alone in this, even though he is really here to make my kid less alone. He has helped my child help himself with not one single pill administered. Without even doing everything for him, the only non-solution I ever came up with.

None of this happens without me reducing my kid to a scale of 1-5 no less than 150 times on that annoying day last November. Good job pressing through that to end up here, Michelle.

 

4) The narrative is changing and you get to be a part of that.

My brothers send me TikToks and Instagram reels nowadays that explain the ADHD brain in such a way… We laugh. Sometimes they are sad. Some of them even make me feel like I have the non-hyperactive ADD (with full-on creative brain I am definitely ADD-adjacent, at the very least).

The point is there is a ton of awareness now. People talk so openly about this, the stigma really is changing. I regularly find out that some of my favorite internet personalities have ADHD. Gary Vaynerchuk is awesome for his speaking content on being a D and F student in school, but having a mom who encouraged all the parts that later made him a success story.

The struggles I remember for my brothers, the medications that gave my husband headaches he’ll never forget – these are our stories, but our son’s isn’t written yet. I have the opportunity with this fresh 10-year-old to make a new one – for him and for myself.

That is the conversation I am choosing for us with one year of hindsight. My only job is to understand his limitations and help him work with them, not against them. To trust Todd to show him what full honesty with himself looks like, so he can thrive like every other kid in his class.

This is where this hard year brought you, Michelle. Everything really is going to be okay.

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As extra credit and despite a hairy moment on the topic of Santa this past summer, we still have two believers for Christmas 2023.

Last night, Anthony asked our elf if she could bring him candy canes and Hershey kisses from the North Pole. The magic was alive as ever as he woke up, found she made it happen, and explained the whole remarkable thing to his Dad.

The gifts are getting smaller and a lot more expensive, but the innocence lives another year in this one. My perfect boy who arrived four days late in August—another beautiful mind I get to love with all my codependent heart. ♥

Related: Never Easy, Always Worth It 🖤 // My first spiral with the PreK teacher