From the Heart

Last Thursday, I went to a 7th grade school conference for my 13 year old son.

He is a thoughtful, compassionate, sensitive, capable, mature, kind, attentive young man. He also has an ADHD diagnosis.

The conference was intended to be a 10 minute conference with one teacher. It ended up being (what felt like) a 30 minute intervention with 5 of his teachers.

"We just want to know how best to support you."

"We're not sure what else to do."

"We're giving a lot, and you're not giving much in return."

"I've tried the things you suggested at fall conferences. They haven't made any difference."

"You need to get out of your own way."

"Education is a 2 way street, and we're doing all the work."

"You're intelligent. We have the test scores that show this."

"We want to help you be successful."

"I'm concerned about you're inability to set aside things that have happened in your day and focus on the work in class."

"You're capable of all the work, but most days, you're already decided before you even get to class that you're not even going to try."

I truly believe (some of) his teachers care about him and want him to be successful and will keep looking for ways to do this. It would be wrong of me to leave out of this story the handful of positive comments and genuine concern of some of his teachers.

I didn't say anything. I couldn't. I was too busy constructing an internal dam to hold back the flood of tears and emotion that I knew was coming. It was just a matter of how long I could hold it in.

 The kid took it well. I'm proud of him. He listened, nodded, and said to me afterwards, "Mom, I'm going to try harder, I promise."

My friend told me I should wait a few days and then send his teachers an email that goes something like this...

 "Hello, thank you for meeting with _____ and I on Thursday. After giving much thought and consideration to all the things you said in the conference, I'd like to suggest that you might benefit from some training on how to work with kids that have executive function vulnerabilities. Sincerely, Misty May" 

It turns out, it wasn't long enough. By the end of the conference, they could all see I was about to lose it. With other parents and teachers and students waiting at the door for the next conference, and 20 minutes over the allotted time, I was asked if I had any questions or had anything I wanted to say. All I could say was, "I have more to say than we can cover in the next 2 minutes. And also, I can't say any of it right now." And then the flood happened. Through my tears, I could see smiles of compassion and sympathy on their faces. Because they're probably decent humans. 

And for a little while, I thought that what I wanted to do was scream at all of them in that moment,

 "you're not SEEING him! Don't you know that if he COULD do all the things, he would?!"

But when I thought about it a little more, what I want even more than that is to sit down with all of them, for longer than 2 minutes or even 10 minutes, and talk to them about my son...his heart for justice, his compassion for strangers and friends, his love for God, his faithful service to others, his selfless choices.  Maybe if I could do that, if I could help them SEE him, then things like that conference would break my heart just a little bit less.

Is this, or any part of this your story too? If so, I'm sorry. You're not alone.