Parenting as social science.
I'm finally getting my writing done with detailed work plans and daily chore lists, but the plans keep going awry. Life intervenes. Steve needed emergency dental work. Birthday parties. And several school meetings, which involve big decisions from us.
I met with Jonah's teacher last week to discuss his 5th grade math placement. She said that Jonah had a complete understanding of the material, but that he was sloppy and made many careless errors. If he was doing long division problem, he would misread his own handwriting and calculate the numbers incorrectly. He would think that he had written a six, but it was a zero and then that would throw off the rest of his calculations. His tests would range from hundreds to seventies. She thought that he should be placed in the high-average class, and we would use the carrot of being moved up to the high class as an incentive to get him to be more accurate.
Steve and I went back and forth on that one. Would Jonah respond well to that carrot? Would being thrown into the higher class force him to work harder?
Then I just came back from a meeting with Ian's school about his behavior. Ian has been giving his teachers a hard time about doing his work. He wants to read ahead in his reader and not keep with the group. He crumples up his handwriting worksheets. He wants to daydream instead of making a picture of a life cycle of the frog. He's not nearly as bad as his classmates, so the school has worked around these issues for a while, and he's never had a behavior plan. But now that he's getting ready for second grade, he has to go along with the program.
They showed me a chart where they monitor his "behaviors" and they told me that it was scientific. Everything was neatly graphed. But the graphs didn't tell you why get acted out. Was it lack of sleep? Was the work too tough? Was it about control? It grouped together all the behaviors from simple refusals to outright temper tantrums. Not at all scientific. Then they're going to try various incentives to keep him on the right road. And then continue graphing it.
They also want us to consider Ritalin to keep him focused. He doesn't want to do his work because his mind is going a hundred miles an hour thinking about 12 other things. At home, we have to watch him like he's a three year old. Turn your back on him for a minute and he could end up standing on the bathroom vanity cutting his hair or he could end up in the neighbor's shed checking out their power tools or he could find a screw driver and take stuff apart. Constant vigilance.
Parenting is a social science. If we do Action A, what will happen? Will it lead to Result A or Result B? Will there be unexpected consequences? If Ian gets Ritalin, will he concentrate more in class or will nothing happen? Will he concentrate in class, but stop eating (a common side effect)? If we put Jonah in the high math class, will he rise to the occasion or will he get frustrated?
If the stakes weren't so high, this would all be very interesting.
Apt. 11d 
Laura, I have a couple of friends who routinely tell me (basically) to calm down, that kids are resilient and as long as you’re doing good enough they’ll be fine. I’m not sure what to think of that — my opinion varies by day. What do you think of the “they’re tougher than you think” school of thought?
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It’s an experiment, sure, but as long as N always equals 1 (and it does, even when you have more than one kid, then you just have two experiments, each with an N of 1), I’m not sure it counts as science.
You try something and if it doesn’t work, you try something else. And if it does work, you do it until it stops working, because just because it worked last week doesn’t mean it will work today.
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I’m a parent of a kid with special needs. Everything that I’ve been socialized to believe is that if you aren’t involved, your kid is screwed. All the studies show that early, intensive therapy makes a difference, so the parents are very worried about missing an opportunity to learn. You have to use every single minute to reinforce some skill with your kid. When I’m driving with the kids around town, I use the time to practice speech skills. I’m actually much more relaxed than most of the other special ed moms who have their kids in therapy after school and on weekends. But they have an exhausted, shell shock look about them. Steve and I have made a concerted effort to have as normal a life as possible. We’re trying for a middle road between “kids are resilient” and the “mama-tiger” schools of thought.
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“I’m a parent of a kid with special needs.”
I try hard not to give you advice (or even tell you what works for us), Laura, ’cause I know you’re balancing different equations.
“All the studies show that early, intensive therapy makes a difference, so the parents are very worried about missing an opportunity to learn. ”
We worry about this, too, those of us with neurotypical children. But, for us, the reminder to slow down, calm down are right. Not because we won’t miss some significant learning opportunity, but ’cause our kids will do OK even if they miss a lot of them. I don’t know how this equation balances for children with special needs. Missing out on Harvard and missing out on an opportunity to live independently aren’t the same.
But, writing about it, about all the balancing really does teach the rest of something.
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I’ve been meaning to write about how Jonah’s helped me to be a better parent to Ian and how Ian’s helped me be a parent to Jonah.
I know from Ian that parenting and good schools make a difference. So, that means I really think about what we do with Jonah. I don’t really care whether or not he goes to Harvard, but I just want him to have the widest possible array of choices when he finishes high school. If he wants to be a mailman, fine. If he wants to be an engineer, fine. I want to give him all the tools and then let him decide what he wants.
And I’ve also learned from Ian that a good life consists of being able to hold down a job, pay the rent, and have a partner in life. If my kids can have those things, I’ll be really happy. That’s why I don’t care if Jonah is a mailman or an engineer.
From Jonah, I learned that kids really need to relax and chill. They need to be around a lot of other kids and get away from annoying adults. That’s why we don’t have Ian in 24 hours of speech therapy. He goes everywhere that Jonah goes.
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Social Science and Psychology, I’d say. Increasingly, I feel like I have to play the psychologist–to my kids, to myself–to figure out underlying patterns and problems. Almost always, I believe a behavior is a symptom of something. Trying to figure out what that is is part art, part science.
Of course, I’ve been writing a bit myself about figuring out how much to intervene. I’ve seen quite positive effects on our whole family when *both* Doug and I are involved. The way our lives are, though, means that it’s a rare occasion where that’s true. Example: I leave tomorrow for a conference, meaning that things will be different. During the day, when Doug’s not home, things are different. But, we do try to be in sync and we usually are. And I have a pretty strict schedule ready to go for the summer for both myself and the kids. There’s plenty of relaxing time in there, but like you, I want the widest array of choices possible. I don’t want those choices to be limited because we just let our kids be slackers or didn’t intervene when we needed to.
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See, I’ll take the contrarian position. I’m not sure what being a slacker means for a kid, especially one in elementary school. But, I kind of think that kids in elementary school should be allowed to be slackers, if they want to (i.e. meet, but not exceed goals).
My assessment is purely theoretical, though, since I have an anti-slacker kid. I worry about her being happy, not about whether she’s keeping all her options open (with, the caveat, that if the option to going to Harvard/Yale Law/Supreme court justice means that she has to do something specific when she’s 8, I’m willing to close off that option). I think we have to be careful when we talk about keeping all our options open, unless we really mean to include things like winning an Olympic gold medal. I’m pretty sure we’ve closed off that option in gymnastics & ice skating. Not sure about tennis.
My trying to practice slacker-allowance was to ask my daughter if she wanted to quit piano lessons now (after 2 years). She said no. But, I’ve told her that she can quit if she gives me a six month warning. I’m trying to pick other activities to put in that category — things that I want her to learn to do, but not necessarily excel in, unless she wants to. I do not want her to define herself by her successes.
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PS: And, she’s prone to doing so (i.e. defining herself by her successes). BTW, if you know a kid like mine, what I want to hear is that she had a good time, or was having fun, or seemed happy, not that she performed well. Well, and I want those things to have been true.
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“But, I’ve told her that she can quit if she gives me a six month warning.”
Ooo, I like that. I will file that phrase away for future use.
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bj – But no kid comes out of the womb fully cooked. You have to teach your kid how to have fun. My advice – fart jokes. We’re very fond of them around here.
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I wouldn’t put a child on Ritalin without seeing a cardiac specialist. A friend’s son should never have been on Ritalin, as he had an undiagnosed serious heart condition. Luckily, they noticed he was having physical problems, and were able to pinpoint the problem, but for some children, it doesn’t end well.
“The agency’s own data suggested a link between the drugs and an increased risk of sudden death and serious cardiovascular problems, including heart attacks.” (http://counsellingresource.com/features/2006/02/10/adhd-drug-warnings/)
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“She thought that he should be placed in the high-average class, and we would use the carrot of being moved up to the high class as an incentive to get him to be more accurate.
Steve and I went back and forth on that one. Would Jonah respond well to that carrot? ”
Are there really kids who would respond well to that carrot: i.e. “if you work really hard, you’ll get to be in the higher math class, and work even harder!” Isn’t the teacher really offering you a carrot: i.e. you get Jonah to shape up on his handwriting and effort, and he can join the higher math class?
I say this as someone who makes the same kinds of sloppy mistakes. And, when you’re “z’s” turn into “2’s”, sloppiness can be a real asset (not really, of course, but it can make the problem your solving easier, and, occasionally, impossible.
I’m kind of joking, but I’m also confused by the logic. I don’t know what the right answer is for dealing with output issues (you know that a student can do the work, but they won’t perform to their best standard all the time). But, I’d probably be annoyed if a teacher suggested that to me.
(And, I can’t believe that Jonah is going to be in middle school! my youngest is entering kindergarten next year, and I can’t believe that, either).
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“Are there really kids who would respond well to that carrot: i.e. “if you work really hard, you’ll get to be in the higher math class, and work even harder!””
I was thinking the same thing. But yeah, there probably are: chiefly eager-to-please girls with neat handwriting.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2007/nov/12/uknews.health
This is old, and I’m sure everybody’s seen it.
“A team of American scientists conducting the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA) has found that while drugs such as Ritalin and Concerta can work well in the short term, over a three-year period they brought about no demonstrable improvement in children’s behaviour.”
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I think there are kids who respond well to the carrot, “if you work really hard, you can go into the higher class where you’ll learn more interesting things, and not have to spend as much time repeating the same boring problems”.
I don’t think its just about handwriting and eagerness to please (which is your girl stereotype, I assume). I have one who would react to that incentive, and one who wouldn’t (both boys) and the one with the neat handwriting is the one that is impossible to motivate that way.
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Time-release Ritalin (Concerta) made an enormous difference for my #2. He is still a handful, but the month before he got diagnosed he got sent to the principal three times for fighting, and after he started using Concerta he stayed out of trouble for a year and a half.
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dave s.,
How many years has your kid been on?
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Before I give my opinion–you’re the parent. You know your child, and I am certain that all your joint parenting decisions are better than anything a bunch of commenters can suggest.
Having stated that… Do you think Ian has ADHD? Or, does schoolwork not progress rapidly enough for him? I have read, that if a child really has ADHD, the attention drugs will calm him down. I know families who have tried the drugs on their children, though, for whom it was not the answer. Many times, they only tried the drugs after the initial suggestion from a teacher–teacher behavior which is legally forbidden in some states, I believe.
I have a very bright son in a private boys’ school. He was never a disciplinary problem in his old school, but changing schools improved his life so much, I would try that before trying medication. My son had a habit, before the change, of falling out of chairs when things got too boring in class. His new school has tailored its curriculum and the structure of the day to boys’ needs–the school is much more tolerant of boy energy than his public school. The curriculum is more challenging, and more interesting.
I don’t think the problem for many gifted kids is concentration, so much as boredom. If your mind works quickly, it works quickly. My older children have spent months waiting for classmates to catch up to them. Some people don’t take well to continual holding patterns.
And, the math course/handwriting thing. Again, I’d worry about boredom. If your older son understands the math, then putting him in a lower course is asking for trouble–it isn’t going to transform him into a student obsessed with accuracy. To put it another way, a child’s inner nature isn’t going to change significantly from the punishment of a slower math class. Also, after a few weeks, he’d fall behind the students allowed into the faster math class. Fairly soon, it would be difficult for him to catch up–so he would face moving into a (presumably) more difficult class, moving at a faster pace, with a backlog of missed work.
I’d suggest that you try to work on his math handwriting over the summer. For example, I started using a European stroke across my handwritted 7s, so that i wouldn’t mistake them for 1s.
There are college students who suffer from bad handwriting. This is a great page: http://www.math.vanderbilt.edu/~schectex/commerrs/.
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ahem. handwritten.
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I thought the ADHD/stimulant study was interesting. But the lack of a long term benefit doesn’t argue against use of the drug on a short term. I think one of the key goals during short term use would be to try to teach compensatory skills during the time that the drug actually produces an effect.
And, as with any intervention, I think there’s a lot of variability, making it impossible to predict. You just have to keep the data, and change paths as needed.
I follow “Squid’s” description of her son, who has autism: http://www.squidalicious.com/, and I find the model of her data keeping/decision making/support network fascinating, a good example of trying to use the scientific data to help an individual child. Her most recent posts talk about the spreadsheet she keeps to track her sons behavior, and the effect of different interventions, events on that behavior.
Squid has made the decision that the benefits of offering her information to others balances the loss of privacy to her family; everyone’s decision on that subject will be different, but I do indeed find her blog very informative and helpful.
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Fart jokes haven’t been popular around our house, but I realized that we have an equivalent, which is “funny accents.” We’ve been suppressing them, ’cause they feel vaguely offensive (because we’re sanctimonious stick-in-the-muds like that), but your comment has revised my plan. I’m going to try to embrace the child-like (but embarrassing) joy. 🙂
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After 8 phone calls, I finally got someone to answer the phone at the neurologist. 2 months until the first appointment. So, no drugs for Ian for a while.
I probably won’t blog about our adventures with pharmaceuticals.
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My guy used Concerta for 2 years, we (his psychiatrist) have recently switched him to Adderall because he was not gaining adequate weight (these are, after all, diet pills). If he doesn’t have them, he’s nearly unbearable at dinner and doesn’t do his homework, if he does, things are much better.
Will we run out of string with these things? Will he outgrow needing them? Jeez, I don’t know.
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There’s an old Slate article on Adderall here:
http://www.slate.com/id/2118315/
I know a young woman in her 20s who has been on Adderall for ADD after trying other medications. I don’t know exactly how she’s doing now, but at some point, she was definitely addicted to Adderall and she was very creative at getting access to it in the quantities she wanted.
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Laura, I’ve forgotten if Ian is a reader or not. If so, can he read one thing under his desk while still mostly following whatever it is the teacher is doing? God, that was a lifesaver of a skill in school.
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Somehow my comment didn’t post yesterday, but. . .
Is Ian happy with himself right now and learning stuff in school? I, like you, want to balance the need to be involved and respond to problems with the importance of not wearing the family and the kid out with interventions–so “is the kid happy?” is one of the questions I have been asking myself. “Is the teacher happy?” isn’t as important, although of course there is a point where the school isn’t willing to work with your kid (or your kid can’t work with other kids) and you have to consider that. It doesn’t sound like you’re there yet though.
My older daughter, 6, is on the spectrum. We’re not medicating now but I haven’t ruled it out.
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I brought up the point about being a parent of a special needs kid, not because I think we’re dealing with different equations. I actually think that we’re dealing with the same equations. If the studies show that involved parenting and good teachers make a different the lives of special needs kids, it follows that those those factors will help regular kids, too.
All things considered, Ian’s issues are very minor. There’s no urgency on our part or on the school’s part to give him medication. He may turn into the book-under-the-desk student in the future. Right now, there are too many eyes on him to allow to happen.
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Doug, in many schools, it’s not possible to discreetly read on the side, due to group work. My youngest also reads above grade level. He brought in a book he’s reading at home, but was told that he must read from his assigned “book box.” This child is reading middle-school level books with ease, but his reading in school is restricted. It’s not due to concerns about his reading–it’s because it’s policy not to make any other child “feel bad” about relative levels of reading ability. By the way, the “book box” has a mixture of reading books, so that adults can pretend that children can’t tell who’s reading well.
Marya, my eldest child is in middle school. I would say that “Is the teacher happy” is very important. Teachers are human, too. They cannot pay attention to every child. A teacher who doesn’t understand your child has input on her next year’s placement. A teacher’s opinion about your child will influence the school’s view of that child.
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