ADHD Parenting Be Like...Masking Normalcy, Like, Tenfold

I’ll never know if my son Jack is inherently clever, or if his upbringing triggered it. I think children level up when it’s necessary for their survival. Have you ever seen those videos of toddlers in other countries with insanely well-developed fine motor skills? Like the three-year-old Tony Hawk mini-me skateboarders, or the kids who can rapid-fire vegetable chop with sharp knives, as if they’re sushi maestro Jiro Ono’s understudy. In tennis, my teammates and I would noticeably level up when we competed against better players.

Jack didn’t have those fine-tuned motor skills, but he was scary smart. You know those mazes you find on the back of a cereal box? Jack would barely glance at it, pick up a marker, and draw the correct pathway, never once lifting his marker from the surface. And he’d do it lightning fast. It was spooky. I’d ask Dave, “What does this mean when he does that?” Dave would shrug his shoulders. “He has good spatial skills?”

From the moment Jack could speak, he spoke clearly. I think it was his survival skill, because my deaf mom was his frequent babysitter. Jack’s access to cheddar Goldfish and popsicles lived or died by him clearly communicating his snack needs to “Grammaw.” My mom received her cochlear implant after age 70, but she never did the therapy required to retrain her brain to truly hear with it. Mom was a lip reader (which led to many comedic misfires).

Jack wasn’t perfect. He mispronounced a few words. Jack-isms. Motorcycle became “murder cycle.” A pirate’s peg leg was a “pig leg.” Parmesan cheese was “snow cheese.” Sushi from Walmart (hey, I’m not proud of it) was “store-shi.”

YouTube launched when Jack was young, and I would play my favorite comedy videos ad nauseum, like the Cunningham’s Muffins bit. Jack, my best friend “Aunt Chris” and I would take turns reciting the various types of muffins, which was how we discovered the new Jack-ism, “Israeli-Palestinian Cornflake Muffins.”

In 2006, Jim Gaffigan’s “Beyond the Pale” standup routine came out. My cameraman Ken Heinemann was on that tour and filmed it for, I believe, Comedy Central. He confided how hard it was to keep his eye on the lens because he had to keep wiping his tears from laughing so hard. I rushed out to buy that CD and played it non-stop in my Jeep. I’d hear Toddler Jack’s tiny voice reciting the lines along with Jim Gaffigan from behind me as we drove along.

In 2006, my PR business partner Terri Hartman called one day while I was out with Jack. I picked up my flip phone to chat, driving one-handed. I begged Jack to perform some Jim Gaffigan lines for her. He shied away from performing for people he didn’t know, but I could usually get at least one sing-song, Gaffigan-style “Hot Pockets” out of him.

But not this day.

This was the day I understood he was the one parenting me. From his wee, little car seat throne, my three-year-old El Jefe’ wagged his index finger at me, pontificating:

“TWO hands on the WHEEL, Mama!”

I am still trying to figure out where that came from. He never heard Dave reproach me while driving. It wasn’t like we parked him in front of driver safety videos that he was parroting. His screen time was filled with Thomas the Train and Sponge Bob. This was so weird.

When Jack was two, he’d try to make sense of something and ask Dave, “What’s the pattern, Daddy?” At three, when Dave would make a joke, Jack would remark, “Daddy’s being sarcastic.” And he’d say it in the right context. (I’m told it’s rare for toddlers to discern sarcasm.) Jack was four when he mused, “I wonder who owns the license for that character?” In what universe does a four-year-old say stuff like that?

Did he feel pressured to be that clever to keep pace with us? Was he leveling up?

Two years later, I picked Jack up from pre-school. I was nervous that day because Jack was allergic to animal hair, and I knew the school was having a petting zoo since I’d signed the permission slip. That morning before school — so pre-pre-school, if you will — I made a big point of warning Jack to wash his hands if he touched any animals. If he rubbed his eyes after touching animal hair, it was game over. His eyes would swell shut. When Jack clambered into the back seat at pick-up, my interrogations began. (Note: This story is much funnier when you hear me tell it.)

“Did you see the petting zoo?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you pet any animals?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you wash your hands?

“Yeah. And I rode a pony.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. And not only did I ride the pony, I did a handstand on the saddle.”

“You did?” I was already trying to rein in my giggles. I had no idea my five-year-old had somehow added rodeo clown to his formidable talent stack while I was down one of my ADHD rabbit holes, not paying close enough attention to what he was up to.

“Yeah…and then I balanced upside-down on one finger as the pony was trotting around the circle.”

I glanced in the rearview mirror. Jack was beaming, well pleased with himself. At this point, I was laughing so hard, I had to slow down because I was about to drive off the road. They say most accidents happen five miles from home, and we were within range. But my unharnessed verbal impulsivity reared its ugly head once again. I never shielded young Jack from my longshoreman speak, nor my sarcasm.

“So… what’d you do for an encore — blow firecrackers out of your ass?”

“No... but the PONY did!” Jack quipped, never skipping a beat.

He. Was. Five. FIVE!

Was he naturally funny, or was his quick humor some defense mechanism he had developed to survive my undiagnosed ADHD parenting?

For sixth grade, I enrolled Jack in the local Lutheran school. He came home from school after his Christmas party acting all dejected, complaining how lame it was. It took all we had to fund his private school, plus the tangential fees that go with it. My patience fuse was short. I promptly lost it.

“Jack! You are 11. You attend a CHRISTIAN school. Seriously?! What were you expecting? Hookers and blow?!”

He looked shocked. I was shocked the words had exited my mouth. Then Jack laughed. Hard. I laughed. Hard. But internally, truth be told, I was self-flagellating. This was not how normal moms spoke to their kids. Or raised them.

ADHDers are always masking to come off as normal. It’s next-level imposter syndrome and it’s bloody exhausting. Add parenting to the mix, and it’s one hundred-fold worse. Attempting to portray the Normal Rockwell-type mom I felt Jack deserved was like being an off-off-Broadway actor, dreadfully miscast in my role.

I struggled with navigating what I was supposed to do, or when. I’ve never ironed a single article of Jack’s clothing. Ever. His school uniform khakis were perpetually wrinkled. A mom friend had to inform me there was a cutoff age for buying Jack underwear peppered with superheroes. I didn’t know. (Our illustration friends did the artwork, so I thought it would be fun for him to wear it.) Every time something was brought to my attention that I was doing wrong, I wondered how many things I was unaware of that I was still doing wrong.

Correction: Am still doing wrong.

I am so grateful for my mom friends who were empathetic and took pity on my plight. They were the ones who told me about tests, term papers due, birthday parties, class trips, and report cards. (However, from ninth grade forward, I never did grasp how to use the report card app to monitor his grades, which explains the plummet from super honor roll at the Lutheran school to meh performance at the public school.)

My inconsistent household rules were my Achilles’ Heel, to Jack’s future wife’s detriment. I’d second-guess my decisions on everything and then abruptly reverse course on prior rulings. I asked Jack to get the mail one day and he posited, “But Mama, what if there’s a brown, recluse spider in the mailbox?” He knew if he could make me laugh, which he often did, he could get out of whatever I asked of him. And no, he did not get the mail that day, in case you were wondering. Brown recluse spiders are a thing, after all.

Most parents threw lavish birthday parties, inviting the entire class, renting out ice rinks or bouncy house facilities, and sending the kids home with loaded gift bags full of Dollar Store crap. I was hanging on by a fingernail, keeping up with the weekly, weekend birthday party schedules. I spent, no exaggeration, $30 a week in birthday gifts for kids who would never reciprocate those gifts for Jack, because I could never reciprocate throwing those lavish parties. It wasn’t until high school that a mom friend clued me in she only spent $20 per gift. I didn’t know what was appropriate because these were higher net worth parents, and I didn’t have the cajones to ask. I was embarrassed to reveal my cluelessness.

Friday Folders were my nemesis. I hated slogging through all of that paperwork to find that needle in the haystack — a potential permission slip I needed to sign. It was a constant stressor when Jack would inform me — as he was going to bed — that he needed to bring cookies for tomorrow’s bake sale. My colored-saran-wrap-over-a-white-paper-plate ploy did little to camouflage the grocery store origins of my too-perfect baked goods.

I was anxious about everything — remembering how to take tickets the right way for basketball games, not being so sweary in public at the Lutheran school, and making the correct change when I worked the concessions counter…my over-thinking brain plays out scenarios ahead of time like a Simpsons episode when they do those fast-paced daydream sequences — I could envision being accused of theft when the cash box didn’t balance (since counting back change is on my list of things I cannot do, along with ironing), Jack being kicked out of school, and then having to switch Lutheran church congregations out of sheer humiliation. I was forever afraid of being judged. It was so foolish, in retrospect. No one showed me more grace, patience, and kindness than the Northern Illinois Lutheran moms. They’re, like, Minnesota nice. But without the passive-aggressive part.

I would get anxious about not knowing WHAT to be anxious about. Jack took a class trip to Washington, D.C. in eighth grade shortly after that Covington kid ended up on the national news. I had PR horror visions of unfiltered Jack making some smart-assed comment (which he routinely did) at some high-tension D.C. abortion protest and earning the same infamous notoriety. I went with two friends to visit Washington, D.C. at the same time, just to be in Jack’s nearby proximity. My friend D.J. was a sniper instructor with the D.C. police, and in my anxiety-ridden, distorted thinking, he was my safety net for protecting Jack from unseen dangers. (I never saw and barely heard from Jack the entire time I was there.)

Ten years from now, I don’t know which one of us will log more therapist visits…me for my ADHD parent-masking recovery, or Jack, for having to level up to survive…just for being raised by a mostly undiagnosed, inconsistent ADHD mom.