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May and June are tricky months to be on social media if college graduation is up in the air for your child, as it is for mine. It seems like it was just yesterday that we posted photos of high school graduation, then the college drop-off, wherein I stood awkwardly in my kid’s dorm room trying to smile through tear-smudged mascara.
We didn’t know what to anticipate over the next four years. We expected some setbacks, but secretly imagined our kids soaring, hoping they would avoid some of our own college mistakes. We wanted them to take interesting classes, make new friends, have fun, and develop a work ethic that would carry into internships and jobs upon graduation.
But when you have a child with ADHD who struggles academically, and for whom college graduation within the traditional four years is an elusive goal that alternates between impossible and slightly in reach, these spring and early summer months are fraught with stress and anxiety.
Acing the ADHD Test
My oldest son came out of the womb with ADHD. From the time he was 3 months old, he was in constant motion unless he was asleep. He would wake up by repeatedly throwing down his legs onto the crib mattress, waking us up with a rhythmic thump-thump-thump on the baby monitor. He crawled, walked, and climbed out of his crib all before he was 16 months old. A thoroughly exhausting toddler, he rarely stopped jumping, climbing, or running.
Fast forward to First Grade. At a parent-teacher conference, his teacher told us to keep an extra eye on him for ADHD. She said it kindly, noting that he was an extremely “spirited” child: not necessarily bad in the classroom per se, but rather extremely busy. He was always moving his feet, looking around the classroom to see what he was missing, and tapping his pencil on the desk. We nodded, knowing all too well just how spirited he was.
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Daily homework started in the third grade, and we quickly learned that organization and study skills were going to be challenging areas for my son. I structured my workday to be home at 3 p.m. to sit with him while he did homework, the school “momitor.” I tried every which way to instill the importance of to-do lists and planners for organization. We experimented with different ways of learning, like making flash cards and drawing pictures.
He loved sports, and his reward for doing homework was beloved baseball practice. We always found it so ironic that he gravitated toward a sport that was boring for most kids. (So much standing around waiting for the ball to come their way!) But we learned early on that while our son could not focus on short stories and would forget math facts within a few weeks, he loved to pitch a baseball. When he was on the mound, you would have never known that he had ever taken a single medication for ADHD, or that getting through what should have been 90 minutes of homework took him at least two hours longer.
He worked quickly in games, throwing batters off with his fast pace. My son loved all of it — the more pressure the better. And it paid off: A smaller Division I college in New England offered him money to pitch there. Instantly, we had a solid college plan. Baseball was the tether that allowed him to continue his education while doing something that he loved.
ADHD in College, Pandemic Version
But going to college in 2020 was an arduous challenge for him as it was for most students. The focus required for statistics, biology, and other subjects that were difficult for my son under normal circumstances proved much more strenuous when classes happened over Zoom. He struggled even more when baseball season started, as it meant he had to balance sports and academics. I stood by with hands tied behind my back, 17 hours away, knowing full well that my days of emailing teachers and finding tutors ended the moment my son graduated from high school. My son would call and say he was on top of his schoolwork, but his grade report reflected a different story. Every semester was a struggle, no matter how much I tried to help him navigate things from 1100 miles away.
[Read: 13 College Survival Tips from Graduates with ADHD]
College graduation is now on the horizon, and my son’s academic status is still a day-to-day question. He is still a few credits shy of receiving his diploma, but close enough that he might be able to walk across the stage anyway and take the final classes over the summer. He has never been a straight-A student, and it does not help that he failed at least one college class almost every semester. He is the very definition of a procrastinator, and is not a student that stands out amongst his peers in the college classroom.
The Achievements That Also Matter
But when I think about the last four years, I think about this: My son has gifts that even a perfect SAT score would never reflect. He is infinitely kind and generous to a fault. There is no extra cord on a graduation gown for a student like him, someone who is terrible at managing money, but buys lunch for homeless people in fast food parking lots. My son will forget that he needs to undergo a physical exam for baseball until the day before it is due, but will sit with a friend he’s only known for a week in the emergency room until the friend’s father, who lives four hours away, shows up. He fought me when we found a therapist for him when he was on academic probation in his sophomore year, but I later learned from one of his roommate’s mothers that my son’s compassion and listening ear were one of the only things that kept her from driving to campus every weekend when her own son was struggling with a breakup that year.
There are no awards for the student who spends hours watching Hallmark movies with his grandmother over Christmas break. When he takes grandma sneaker shopping, he will forget everything I told him about the kind of supportive shoes she needs and will instead help her pick out the most colorful pair that they both love. My son will get defensive and argue relentlessly that he attends all of his classes, but he is always the first one to apologize when we argue. Even when we spend 15 minutes on the phone yelling at each other, he never, ever hangs up with telling me that he loves me.
I am not ashamed to say that I will absolutely be the mom who will post lots of pictures on my son’s graduation day, whenever it be in August or December. No one on social media knows what it took for us to get there. I will surely cry when I see him in a cap and gown, partially out of relief that he actually made it, but mostly because I know that many kids who struggled like he did would have given up. It is frustrating and sad to me that most of his professors will never know the real him. Procrastinator and time management disaster? Yes. But a kid with a heart so purely gold with gifts that mean nothing in academia? Absolutely.
Kids like him who struggle — whether it be from ADHD or a learning disability — know the reality of flying under the radar in the very worst of ways. And while I am so proud of my friends’ children who do have all the cords on their gowns, who are making their way into law schools and solid jobs with clear career paths after graduation, I have a secret place in my heart for people like my son, who might be unremarkable on paper, but are remarkable in one hundred other ways.
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