I’ve taken a bit of a break from blogging here, simply given too much going on in the world – including our country’s ongoing (but waning, hopefully!) presidential election drama, rising COVID-19 case rates across the nation, and shorter days making it easy to feel like the earth is literally getting darker.
However, there is still so much to be mindful about and grateful for. In our family we are all healthy. We get to stay and work inside our home the majority of the time. We have jobs, shelter, food, and each other. We are privileged.
Which doesn’t mean that quarantine-life – going on 9 months now – isn’t continuing to cause disruptions and challenges for all of us. Like countless other individuals and families across the globe, we are to varying degrees fatigued, burnt out, and numb. Our “new normal” is still anything but “normal”.
My 12-year-old C., for instance, seems to have forgotten about the notion of showering or brushing her hair. We’re lucky if this happens once a week, with prompting.
My 10-year-old son D. still won’t turn on his video camera during Zoom classes, no matter how much his teachers (or I) beg and plead for him to turn the camera on quickly – even just a few seconds – so they can at least see what he looks like.
Meanwhile, my 7 year old “I” – turning 8 in two days – seems to be demonstrating just as many challenges with attention, organization, and overall executive functioning skills as her older siblings.
“I” is easily distractible. She’s not keeping track of the handful of materials she’s asked to have on hand for her daily work. Papers remain strewn across her bedroom floor (and under her bed) unless or until I ask her to please place them in their “home” (i.e., a folder or designated spot) – and she rarely remembers school appointments and class sessions without explicit and timely alarms and reminders, either from me or her personal electronic device.
Yesterday morning was a potent example of how much scaffolding “I” still really needs to be successful.
Her teacher, Ms. L., had scheduled a “lunch bunch” online time for “I” to celebrate her birthday with a couple of classmates. However, since “I” hadn’t told me about this special opportunity – and neither had Ms. L. – I didn’t know it was happening.
I didn’t find out until I checked my text messages and saw a note from Ms. L., written 26 minutes earlier, informing me that “I” hadn’t logged on yet to her lunch bunch.
I immediately called out to “I”‘s bedroom to tell her about this, and she said, “Oh, it’s okay… I have a full hour, and only half an hour has gone by.” However, when she opened her computer to log on, the meeting had been been ended: without the guest of honor present, her teacher and classmates had made the obvious and rational choice to bail early.
“I” started sobbing uncontrollably, to the point where I needed to impose on Ms. L. by giving her a quick call to let her talk with “I” one-on-one. Ms. L. kept insisting it was “no problem” and that “I” would get a redo in January. Eventually “I” calmed down enough to send Ms. L. a message reminding her who she wanted to invite to her rescheduled lunch bunch in January.
What this all brought up for me, however, was resignation and sadness that even something as exciting as a special birthday lunch time had slipped through the cracks of “I”‘s consciousness and mental schedule.
It was also a little startling that she hadn’t been able to anticipate how not showing up right away (or even within the first 20 minutes!) of her specially planned meeting would have such unpleasant ramifications.
Thankfully, the rest of “I”‘s school day yesterday turned around and was positive. Ms. L. has a calming and restorative presence, and “I” was able to let go of her disappointment and frustration at herself.
While I was busy decompressing from the emotional impact of this experience (“My kid missed her birthday lunch bunch during quarantine!”), I was reminded about a session I watched by Sarah Ward during SENG’s Fall Mini-Conference, on executive functioning challenges, in which Ward noted that “kids with ADHD tend to experience asynchrony of about 3-3.5 years in their developmental timeline with regard to how far into the future they can anticipate and plan for.”
This is exactly “I”‘s challenge. “I” is a twice-exceptional child with a formal diagnosis of giftedness and anxiety, but/and I’m fairly certain she would also qualify for a diagnosis of ADHD-inattentive at this point, just like her older siblings. All evidence is pointing in that direction, now that she’s older and expected to “do school” in a more formal fashion.
So, with this newly in mind, I decided to very consciously build a successfully scaffolded event for “I” into the next few hours of the afternoon, both to counteract the morning’s disappointment and to feel a renewed sense of personal agency as a parent.
After school, “I” was scheduled to participate in a remote Brownies (Girl Scouts) badge meeting in which she and the other girls in her troop were going to make pinch pots out of clay. Rather than simply sending her to her meeting at 4:00, I talked with “I” in advance about what the session would involve, and showed her what was inside the bag of supplies that had been dropped off at our house by the parent volunteer running the session. We talked about what other supplies she might also need on hand (i.e., a flat board to work on), and made sure she had that near by.
Five minutes before the session was set to begin, I gave “I” a heads up to be ready to log onto her Zoom account, and then I went in and sat next to her while giving her the meeting number and password, staying right there until she was connected. I remained by her side until she was seen by the parent volunteer, and told her specifically, “I’ll be right in the room next door – will you be sure to come ask for help if you need it?” “I” agreed to this, and I left her happily at work, poking my head in her door briefly just a couple of times to check in.
When the meeting was over, “I” was so excited to show me her sparkly silver-and-white pinch pot – and later that evening, she proudly offered to teach both me and her brother how to make one, which we did.
I believe the pot-making event was a successful experience for “I” because her executive functioning needs had been anticipated and addressed. Simply telling “I” that she had a Brownie meeting at 4:00 and asking her to look into the bag of supplies she’d been given may have been sufficient for many kids her age – but not for “I”. She needed a little bit more preparation, prompting, boosting, and confirmation before launching on her own with her group.
Those of us parenting kids with executive functioning challenges know that they can most definitely be successful – but scaffolding is so critical in order to manage that slippery slope between accomplishment and frustrated tears.
While I can’t (and shouldn’t) be there all the time by my 2E kids, hovering or monitoring constantly, I can (and should, it seems) try to be available on the sidelines, as much as possible. Balancing this time-sucking reality with my own very-real need for plenty of personal time and space has been one of the biggest challenges of life during pandemic parenting.
Meanwhile, as usual, we’re just taking things one day at a time – and, as some friends wrote on their Pandemic Christmas card, “It’s fine. We’re fine. Everything is fine.”
It is.
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