I had a great day with my family today--the sun is finally shining again, so we headed out to the zoo and surrounding park. Part of the reason for this trip was to take pictures my son needs for his next science project, and part of the reason was to spend some time together as a family, which we don't get to do often enough these days.
My daughter is fifteen. She has a pretty terrific boyfriend, and he's easily become part of the family. We even added him to our zoo membership, so he could come with us whenever we head across town. Today, though, he couldn't go. I was a little pleased with this, since it meant my daughter would actually be interacting with us for a change, but I knew we were also running the risk of dealing with Surly Girl all day.
I adore my daughter. She's smart and beautiful and friendly and practical, all the things you'd want your daughter to be. From the time she was a tiny girl, with a head full of Shirley Temple curls and a 100-watt smile, she just drew people to her. Complete strangers would stop us on the street or in an airport and strike up a conversation with a two-year-old. Once, when we were in Memphis--Jordan was not quite three at the time--an elderly woman walking slowly past us on the sidewalk stopped and openly stared at my daughter. "My gracious," she said. "You really are a little angel." Then she asked if it would be all right to touch my daughter's hair. Jordan was used to the attention, so she didn't mind. I said it was fine. The woman fingered Jordan's curls, then smiled and thanked us both before she went on her way.
I'm pretty shameless in my admiration of Jordan. And while I know I'm supposed to feel this way--she's my kid, after all--I know many people who feel the same way about her without being compelled to. It's hard not to like her, honestly. (Well, except for the few girls at school who seem to hate her precisely because of best qualities. Those people, I tell her, aren't worth being concerned about, and most of the time she believes this.)
I know my daughter is aware of how much I like her, in addition to loving her. But I think that's what makes it really difficult for her not to boss her little brother around--all the things I've always praised in her are qualities her brother doesn't possess. In addition to the age difference between them--which always seems to make the older kid feel entitled to direct the younger one--Andrew is different from his sister in just about every way. He's shy and introverted around people other than his family, not at all social. His teachers are always alarmed by the fact that he doesn't talk to other people in class, or not unless they speak to him first, and I have to reassure them that he talks all the time at home. He has ADHD, the inattentive variety, which makes it hard for him to focus at school. He takes medication that makes this a little easier, and now that we have an IEP in place, guaranteeing some extra follow-up from his teachers, his grades have improved to the point that he isn't failing any of his classes--but A's are rare for him. B's are an accomplishment, and C's are the goal. Still, he's in Advanced Placement classes and his teachers often say that he's obviously very bright. He just can't express that in the ways they would like.
Although he doesn't have an official diagnosis, I've done enough research to understand that my son also has Asperger Syndrome (which was recently placed under the autism spectrum.) He doesn't seek out friendships, doesn't understand body language or social cues, and takes figurative language very literally--when he was little, I learned to be very careful about saying things like "My head is going to explode if you keep making that noise," because he really believed that would happen. He develops an intense interest in odd subjects (when he was little, he was obsessed with decoding circle/slash signs; these days, he can tell you anything you might want to know about hurricanes) and really needs to stick with a routine. He gets very upset when his life is off schedule, when he can't watch his favorite TV programs at the appointed time.
I adore my son, too. He has a well-developed sense of humor, which he expresses in the comic strip he's been drawing for several years now, and he's very smart--he just isn't able to demonstrate that at school. He's much more like his dad and I than his sister is. We're shy and introverted too; neither of us has a large friend network, and that doesn't bother us. For the most part, it doesn't seem to bother Andrew either. Once in awhile he talks about wishing he had some friends, and that's when my heart breaks for him, but more often he talks about being glad he doesn't have to deal with the kind of drama Jordan deals with on a regular basis.
Today the two of them were getting along pretty well, as they often do. But I couldn't help notice that Jordan spends a lot of time telling Andrew what to do, and he rarely ever questions what she says--he just does it. I might have just written this off to sibling behavior if not for the fact that, earlier this week, Andrew showed me a paper he'd written about Jordan for his English class. The assignment was to write about an important person in your life, and Andrew wrote about how he looks up to Jordan because she's so good at everything. A general theme of the essay was "She's better than me at everything." (Except at video games, where he acknowledged an ability to beat her occasionally.)
I know Andrew hears us telling Jordan "Good job" pretty often. I know he hears her telling us that she earned a First Division rating in band, or an A on the Spanish test that everyone else failed. It wouldn't be fair to her if we acted like these things don't matter, because they do. She deserves to be proud of her accomplishments. She works hard for what she gets--she practices her flute for competitions, studies for exams. I point this out to Andrew whenever he complains that she gets everything she wants.
So today I started wondering how I can let Andrew know that we love him because he's different from Jordan, not in spite of that fact. I've learned so much from being his mother. I've learned enormous patience; I've learned to swallow my pride and ask for help when I can't solve a problem myself, which is really hard for me; I've learned that, sometimes, problems can be addressed but not solved. I've also learned that, sometimes, a C is reason enough to celebrate. That's not an easy lesson to learn when you're a person who always did well in school--a person who earned a Ph.D. because school was the only place you ever felt you really fit in.
Watching Andrew struggle has made me a better professor, too, because I've learned there are many reasons why students don't do well in class, and some of those reasons aren't entirely under the student's control. I've learned that giving those students a break often makes them feel worse, not better. It makes them feel like you don't have faith in their ability to do what you've asked everyone else to do.
Earlier today I was reading a friend's blog. Her son was recently diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, but she's encouraged that he might improve in the long run because he wasn't a "weird" kid--he didn't, for instance, talk to himself or obsess over odd hobbies and subjects. Reading that stopped me cold, because Andrew is that "weird" kid. He always has been. I know schizophrenia affects young men more often than women, and mental illness runs in our family, on both sides. So, once again, the odds are against him.
But I'm determined to love that boy in every way I know how--supporting him, giving him a push now and then, expecting nothing less from him than I do from his sister. I expect him to do his very best, no matter where that leads him. And I'm determined to teach my daughter how to love her brother this way, too--for who he is, not who she thinks he should be.
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