Decade

Welcome back to the March Slice of Life Story Challenge. (I’m reasonably sure that is what SOLSC stands for. You’d think after 10 years, I’d have the acronym’s meaning nailed down, but I am not 100% sure. Working in education has taught me that sometimes I just fill in random words to make the acronym make sense.)

I checked last night, and realized that this is my 10th year participating in the March challenge! I should throw myself a party. Ten years of blogging, even if I only even manage it for one month a year, seems like a thing to celebrate. It needs cake, right? Everything is fancier and more fun if you add some cake!

Given that this is the first post of my 10th go around on this March challenge, I should have many profound observations and exciting life lessons to blog about. Unfortunately for all, this has not been a profound and slice-worthy sort of weekend. My 9th grader was home sick for a week. Finally recovering on Friday afternoon, he was informed (by me, the cruelest of cruel teacher moms) that he was darn well going to make up the work this weekend before going back to school on Monday.

Cue the hysterics and the panic attacks.

For both of us.

My son has severe ADHD and a lot of anxiety as well. He transitioned from a K-8 school that did not give homework and did not have grades. To say that the transition to high school has not been smooth is so far away from the truth that it does not even qualify as an understatement. But we made it through first semester. Then he promptly got sick and missed the first week of second semester.

For those three of you who do not have children of your own who suffer with ADHD and who have not met any in the classroom, here is a quick guide to assisting such a child with their education: everything will be too complicated always. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

I am a teacher, and I have a good mind and a very wide education, so my son is luckier than most. I can actually help him with his high school homework. Math is a bit iffy, because, as every parent with a school-aged child in the last twenty years knows, something happened to math and no one quite understands it any more. I studied math through AP Calculus and was pretty good at it. My husband was a physics major and is an architect and the only person I know who actually uses higher math in his day to day life. Even we cannot really deal with math after it was jumped in that alley by the Common Core. However, since my husband and I also have gainful employment, we have the means (just barely) to hire a math tutor for that. Phew. Bullet dodged.

My plan for the weekend was maybe to visit the Spring Home & Garden Show or take a walk around the Japanese Garden and admire all of goings-on for their Girl’s Day celebration. It is not spring, we don’t have any money to put into our home or our garden (math tutors are expensive!) and we are not Japanese and do not have a daughter, but I would get outside and have experiences. Fun, right?

This, however, was not the plan, because my son had homework. In order for him to remember and understand that he had homework, I had to look it all up on the computer. Then I had to dole it out in tiny doses so that he did not freak out unduly. Then, once I cajoled him into rounding up all of his supplies, I got him to tackle an assignment. Easy, right? Kid is now working, he is 15, I can leave him to it and do whatever I want.

Nope.

If homework needs to get done, it requires my presence. Sure, sometimes I do answer questions. This weekend, for example, I reminded him where his class folder for The Art of Fiction was and told him to use his class calendar to figure out the reading. I confirmed that he truly could not even attempt a week’s worth of math because there are no more lessons in his math book. Apparently, they were to get a new one this week. I explained the lab procedures for his Anatomy class’ unit studying the human eye. I even helped him find some answers about the structure of the human eye, because who even knows what a pigmented epithelium is anyway? (Other than the eye doctor, who is not on call for homework questions this – or any– weekend!) But essentially, my role is to sit there and remind him that he is working on homework, and he should stop doing…fill in whatever random thing popped into his head…and go back to doing the homework. If I do anything more absorbing than read a book or fiddle with my phone, his attention collapses.

Apparently, the only thing keeping my teenager’s brain running somewhat in the vicinity of the right track is my telekinetic focus powers and his fear of receiving The Look.

So, I have spent the weekend sitting on a corner of my bed, with his stuff strewn every which way in the only room in the house which is not full of a million distractions, watching someone else go through 9th grade.

S-L-O-W-L-Y! So, so slowly!

As a parent, and as an intelligent person who thinks very quickly, it is excruciating to watch a teenager with ADHD attempt to write up a lab report or draw a cross section of the human eye or, heaven help us all, write up an annotation and reflection on a short story. It is pulling teeth without anesthesia painful. I say supportive and encouraging things with my mouth, while my soul screams in frustrated anguish as it leaves my body. My teeth ache from clenching. I have crescents from my fingernails dug into my palms. But progress is happening. Slow, but yes, steady progress. Now though, his ridiculously long break time is over and I must hand over my laptop to him to finish that cross-section of the eye drawing.

Meanwhile, friends, welcome, and enjoy the March challenge. I will be here, doing what I do – teaching, momming, and praying for patience.

Somebody please bring me some cake.