Parenting is my usual topic but just as we are constantly being reminded to put on our oxygen mask first (are there like 200 plane crashes every day that I don’t hear about?) it has often been said that if you want to work on your kids, focus on your marriage. Kids notice–what else have they got to do–how you treat your spouse and that is the kind of experience they come to expect in their own connections with their significant other down the road.
So I was careful to communicate to my beloved bride when I got an invitation from one of my running buddies. Patti doesn’t know Juan so I wanted to be sensitive to informing her about the date and time before accepting the gracious overture. Admittedly I had occasionally gotten in trouble over the years for saying “yes, we’ll be there” when Patti’s feeling was that an un-anestetized colonoscopy would be preferable to spending any part of her Saturday with those Running Buddy friends of mine. Even if no one in the running group was currently sweating and cursing, there was every likelihood that someone would avail themselves of a captive audience to spend half an hour describing a race that took 20 minutes to run. So, confident that I was doing the right thing and that I would score some much-needed husband points, I asked, “want to go to a pool party on the 24th?”
“Up to you” she responded promptly. “We could do that.” Excellent, I thought to myself. My running Buddy Juan has a lovely home and the food is always great. “We could do that” my wife went on. “Or we could attend our son’s wedding that is the same day.”
Right. That. We could do that. Now that you mention it, I’m pretty sure that we have already committed to attending the wedding of our son. Fair point. But the essay this week is not about my wife’s calendar-savvy snarkiness. Everyone in our family speaks fluent snark. Language acquisition is easy when children are exposed to native speakers from an early age. (Google Translate doesn’t have “Snark” listed as one of its languages so let me help. Someone in your family might say “Please pass the salt.” Whereas in my house we would communicate the same request, “what’s the matter? All the f***ing salt pickers on strike?”
An English/Snarkish dictionary is a subject for a subsequent column. Today, I want to address executive functioning–specifically the lack thereof–and how to accept your kids for who they are rather than who you might prefer them to be before you put a fork in your eye because if you’ve told them once you’ve told them a thousand times and how hard could it be to remember to take the trash buckets out to the street on Monday what with the trash getting picked up every Monday since Grover Cleveland’s first presidential term, I’m not asking for a kidney.
Brains, as it turns out, are different. Which is good. Because if all brains were the same, a lot of the mystery would be gone. Surprise parties for example would no longer be a thing because if everyone thought alike and behaved alike then your response to all those people jumping up from behind the couch to shout at your surprise birthday party would be “ho hum” because everyone thinks the same so you would know the plan because you would have done the same thing..
Okay so the point is my executive functioning issues have executive functioning issues. I can get lost in my own house. I wouldn’t be late to my own funeral because I would forget to show up at all. I would have remembered to write, “funeral” on my day planner; then I would forget where I put my calendar.
I have worked hard to overcome this annoying imperfection in my character. To help me remember to bring the sandwiches to an early morning commitment, for example, I put my car keys in the refrigerator on top of the sandwiches. Then spent 10 minutes the next morning looking for my keys.
Sometimes when I stand in front of the cabinets with a spatula in my hand wondering where to put the vaguely familiar cooking utensil, Patti will walk by and remark “top shelf, left.” Depending on her mood she might add, “you know we’ve lived here since 2009” but has realized, speaking of kitchen implements, that she might as well put down the spoon with which she is trying to turn back the tide.
On a recent slog, I asked a new Running Buddy for his phone number. When he asked if I would remember the ten digits, it occurred to me that my mnemonic–doing a prime factorization of the last four digits–would not work for everyone. But just I don’t claim credit for being able to perform some simple mathemagical tricks, I don’t want to be excoriated for not having the faintest idea of where the spatula lives.
Helping your kids overcome their imperfect memories, acting as their frontal lobes, can be a full-time job–an employment from which parents would like to retire. As always the answer to how to help junior remember to do his laundry never mind keep track of his assignments is, it depends.
It depends on whether 1) you’re likely going to be successful; 2) there are any workarounds; 3) this is the hill on which you are willing to die.
I’m never going to remember where the spatula lives. Lock me in a dark room, tell me I can come out when I learn in which cabinet the spatula resides and I’m still going to be ensconced in that same room next Tuesday instead of sending out an essay. Promise me, threaten me. That’s just not how my brain works. And even if I could remember the preferred location for the spatula, what about the salad tongs? Do the salad tongs belong in the same drawer with the spatula? How could anyone know that?
A sticky note on the cabinet would solve everything now wouldn’t it? Problem solved. Similarly, one of the smartest most capable kids I know–an oncologist as it happens–loses the keys to his home on average twice a month. So every January, he makes 24 copies of his key. Again, problem solved.
Yelling at your kids or spouse is all very well and good. If you think it’ll make any difference. Like the patient who wanted to administer their own anesthetic, go ahead and knock yourself out.
For those of us who have executive functioning issues, or learning differences or attentional issues for that matter, a little understanding goes a long way. If we can acknowledge, accept, and articulate where we need some extra help, we are half way home to resolving our problems.
I would share more of my insights into how to help your kids with their EF issues but the dishwasher just finished, I have to put the dishes away and, as it turns out, I have a wedding to attend.
