I wrote parts of this essay a few years ago, and left it on my computer. After reading Susan Cain’s Quiet: The Power of Introverts In A World That Can’t Stop Talking, I revised it in light of her findings.
When my son was nine, I had to give him lots of warning. At about four o’clock on a mid-July day, I give Simon one four hours early.
“Remember, you have to do some work today.”
He sighs, says he knows, and continues scooting back and forth our driveway, alone save for seven or eight superheroes in his head, with whom he is developing plans to battle foes. Some he has invented himself—Electro has powers of infrared vision and telekinesis—and some he borrows him from the Fantastic Four encyclopedia he was reading earlier.
After dinner, he asks if he can play outside.
“For twenty minutes. Then, remember, you have to do work.”
He hurumphs, half-mocking, half-serious, and pushes his plate to the side. “I hate working! Why do I have to work even when it is summer vacation!”
Simon has a naturally happy disposition: “it takes a lot to get me sad,” he tells me. He loves nothing more than endless free time: he reads a bit, goes outside and acts out what he has read, plays with his yu-gi-oh cards, helps me bake cookies. He has an overinflated vocabularly acquired from his superhero encyclopedias and a tendency towards abstraction that leads him to say things like and “Did you know that The Human Torch can psionically propel objects in the air to inflect fear in his enemies?” and “Location. I really like that word. Location,” while brushing his teeth. In fourth grade he told me he wanted to “invent something that the whole world needs. I need real science equipment. All my science equipment is fake. Once I invent it, how can we get the whole world to have it? Can we make it electric? I want it to be a technology!” This Yom Kippur, he atoned “for not worrying enough about human suffering.” He has a best friend, and a step-sister whom sometimes delights him and sometimes annoys him. He always tests at grade level.
Simon also, for many years, struggled in school.
I realized Simon and school were going to be a troublesome couple when he was two and I enrolled him in a Montesorri pre-school. When I arrived for the parent-teacher conference, his teacher had laid piece of paper on the table. As I squished into the tiny chair by the sandbox table, I saw the paper was titled “Autism Diagnosis Checklist.” I sat down, pit in my stomach. “I think you might consider having Simon tested for autism,” she said. “He fits all the criteria on this list.”
The Montessori preschool was the first in a parade of well-meaning educators who have told me they suspect something wrong with my son. I, in turn, suspect the problem is that he is a boy– a quiet, dreamy boy–and our educational systems are ill-equipped to meet the needs of such kids.. American boys, regardless of class, age or region, are doing more poorly in school than girls. Boys are far more likely to be diagnosed with learning disabilities. They do worse on tests and claim they do not like school. They are less likely to be admitted to college. If you are a boy who is not into sports and quiet in school, you are a prime suspect for “intervention.”
The next preschool I sent him to was concerned that his scrawls were unrecognizable, and suggested I have him tested. Kindergarten brought a handwriting intervention and more suggestions I have him tested. In second grade the art teacher called me to discuss the possibility Simon had a spatial perception problem and… suggested I have him tested.
I did not get him tested, because no one could convince me the murky “problems” they suspected were quantifiable. The answers to the test these teachers predicted kept changing, from autism to ADD, to spatial deficiencies to slow processing speeds to dysgraphia. I am suspicious of our current craze to label, diagnose and medicate children, particularly since those children are so often boys. I wonder if we are not simply stretching the definitions of disabilities so we can explain away what seems harder to teach.
Instead, I nurtured Simon’s natural proclivities—his interest in history, his creativity, and his desire for unstructured play time. After school and during the summer he is engaged, easily absorbed by his activities and content. During school, though, he was often miserable. He put it this way: “learning, good; work, bad.” Or just “I hate school.”
Finally, after another terrible year–he had to stay in for recess every single day of second grade to finish handwriting homework that was hard for him– I broke down and did have a battery of testing done. The tests gave me a bit of helpful information—Simon is naturally ambidextrous, and thus will never be a traditional learner or neat writer. He makes lots of careless mistakes. But nothing to warrant the money or stress spent.
At the beginning of third grade, I brought the results Simon’s teacher, and asked if he might be accommodate Simon’s needs.. He said he would try, but by January he was so frustrated with Simon’s daydreaming that he started forcing Simon to stay in during recess to finish assignments.
By then, Simon had internalized years of being told he is bad at handwriting to mean he was “stupid.” Any kind of writing– including putting on paper the things he makes up while playing–produced anxiety. We spend hours, many tear-filled, doing homework. And thus I started to give him warnings in the afternoon to prepare him for after-dinner summer work.
For fourth grade I switched him to a private school, one small enough to offer him attention, since he so often slips under the radar, and flexible enough to get to know what works for him, and what does not.
Simon is now in seventh grade, in the same private school, and his last report card was across the board positive, socially and academically. He still prefers to be by himself to being with other kids his age–sometimes he makes jokey comments about “kids these days, always on Facebook and twitter,”–and my old anxieties flare up. But I just have to tell myself that he has always been this way–a dreamy, creative kid who likes and needs lots of time to himself.
Why has educating this amiable, bright and creative boy been so difficult? I have a phalanx of theories. He has never been a brilliant academic student (though he’s got brilliance, that’s for sure). He always tests at grade level. Why could not his teachers in those early grades simply have considered him a B or C student, and encourage to do improve, instead of seeking a diagnosis? Our educational system seems to be smushing children, particularly boys, into a smaller and smaller range of achievement levels, due in part to the incessant assessments required by No Child Left Behind.
Another reason may be temperamental. Simon is introspective, and we are quicker to pathologize introspection than we are extroversion (again, particularly in boys). Sitting by oneself daydreaming about battles between heroes and foes seems to be problem rather than a character trait, albeit perhaps a quixotic one. Teachers add his shyness to his laggardly academics and solve for diagnosis, as if he were a story problem with a right answer.
Even worse, Simon never gets into trouble. His third-grade teacher—Simon’s first male teacher, whom Simon requested because of his gender– told me during our conference that he wished Simon would cause more behavioral problems, because he found it odd he never needed to be disciplined. Simon is also not the least bit competitive, so traditional carrot/stick methods of getting him to achieve fail. This further flummoxes teachers.
Any of these reasons may explain Simon’s early dysfunctional relationship with school. And if I turn the tables on the educators and ask what their behavior has in common, what “their” problem is with my son, I come up with one answer: they are troubled by Simon because of his gender and temperament. Our educational system has narrowed and finds it difficult to recognize diversity in the young males of our species.
I certainly still lie awake some nights worrying that I am in denial, that Simon has some gross deficiency not yet identified, and I am did him great a disservice. I worry constantly that I should limit his reading and solitary time and push him into sports and classes and social activities. But just when I am about to write that check for ice hockey classes I touch base with my instinctive sense of my son, this imaginative, overly verbose happy creature, and decide not to risk ironing out his uniqueness. Until we can figure out more creative ways to educate and encourage introspective boys who are neither high achievers nor troublemakers—boys “in the middle,” like Simon–I will keep holding my ground, my breath and my tongue, and shoo away the well-intentioned label makers who cross our path.