The ADHD Muse

It comes for her, as it came for her husband, so many years ago. It comes for her, as it came for her Headmaster, the price of his ambition. It comes for her, as it came for far too many of her friends and students, in one war then another.

Death comes for her.

Minerva McGonagall Looks at Death, and raises an eyebrow.

Death pauses, then nods and backs away. “We’ll call this number three then, shall we?”

My daughter, Kenzie, is a year-and-a-half now, and her spirit is showing. She likes to refuse even more than she likes to choose,  she says no when she means yes and expects us to puzzle out which her little sphynxian-self means this time, and she relishes in the thrill of deciding the fate of each piece of food to pass her way: shall she eat you, little morsel, or shall she mess around with the joys of gravity again? Perhaps she’ll chew on you a bit first, decide for herself in the moment. Her sweet blue eyes have wicked gleams. She’s an evil queen.

My husband has less patience for this than I do. Sometimes I feel her thrill as she explores the knowledge of her budding powers and displays her developing personality. She’s finding lines, seeing what happens when she crosses them, making up her own mind, and I’ve got to say, I am so proud of what I see every new day. I like it best when she knows the line is there, is fully aware, but watches my face as she defies it, just a bit. It feels like a meeting of the minds, two wild spirits eye-to-eye, the youth showing the elder they have something in common, a fluidity with rules that slurs them into guidelines at best. So sometimes I am grateful that her father will encourage some order, some borders amidst the chaos. I’m only just establishing these boundaries now, and 38 feels likes a late time to start. I don’t want Kenzie to have to face this particular challenge.

However, we’re really at a loss how to make Kenzie stop throwing her freaking food everwhere.  Our methods have no effect. I’m afraid we’re making too big a deal out of a natural impulse; I’m equally afraid I’m raising a wildebeest with the face of an angel.

I found an article by Sarah Remmer at Todaysparent.com that resonated with me, and if you need tips, I highly encourage reading the whole thing.  For me, I have a few key takeaways to try.

1) Eat with her, or at the least, sit with her while she eats.

This makes sense to me, though I am already missing the freedom to clean up and flit around (or check Facebook) while she’s safely hogtied to her highchair. I expect this change to be relatively easy. It fits into the mindfulness that society, in general, and my therapist, in particular, recommends so highly. I love the moments spent communing with my daughter. Her language skills are growing in leaps and bounds, but I still love trying to understand what she means by guessing at her thoughts, based on her context and expression, finding her point of view in her eyes. I am pretty good at this, it helps me recognize that she understands more than she could possibly convey. I hope the skill stays with me. I hear it may come in handy when she’s a teenager.

Plus, the article points out eating together is a great modeling opportunity. See Kenzie? We really DON’T throw our food on the floor.

2)   Smaller portions, more servings

She’s less likely to squander limited resources. Babies are clever and dumb. By the time she realizes she really does have all the food she’ll want and more, she should be less inclined to waste it anyway. As I type this, I can’t help but feel grateful that “all the food she’ll want and more” is a lesson she gets to learn.  Note to self: raise her to be grateful, too.

3) Don’t react, don’t return her food.

We can remind her we don’t throw our food, but if she asks for it, we’re not supposed to return it. I know me, I’m not going to follow this to the letter. Sometimes I’ll let her pretend she did it accidentally, but she knows I know the truth, or I pretend she knows I know the truth, and I’m okay with either.  Also, I’ll always return her water eventually. But! All the rest of the time, I can do this, and, fine, I’ll cut down on the “accident” exceptions, which in retrospect undermine all our other good work.  Perhaps this is one of those guidelines I should grow up and adhere to, rule-style. See: wildebeest concerns.

4) Believe her when she says she’s all done, even if she hasn’t eaten as much as I think she should have.

I actually excel at this one. What I struggle with is the guilt and fear that I will be sending my beloved child to bed with an empty stomach and vitamin deficiency. But this article reassures me. It pats me on the head and states calmly that she’ll intuitively eat enough, and that, given enough opportunities and variety, she’ll “meet her nutritional needs over the period of a week.” Between the schedule she follows at daycare and what we feed her at home, I know we’re doing what we should. I can stop beating myself up over this. That’s one of my favorite conclusions to draw.

I’ve been thinking about mindfulness a lot lately. In my writing, I’ve left the season of Heart (Jan-March) and am now in Mind. For the next three months, I will be reading up on the brain, on intelligence and creativity, on multiple kinds of intelligence, anything and everything mind based that catches my eye. (My filter is open, and I swear the Universe and/or algorithms get me and are practically dropping omens and resources on my head- but please feel free to provide suggestions and leads and observations for me to mine. I’m greedy for it.) So far, it seems that mindfulness is a kind of superpower we all possess that can slow down time and increase our joy. So why does it seem so hard? Cause it’s not.

I’m currently reading Search Inside Yourself by Chade-Meng Tan and it is fascinating. The author believes he can spread world peace through mindfulness and the giant platform of Google, and I hope he can do it, eternal optimist that I am. Anyway, if you can get over the brainwashing caused by the constant refrain of the word “Google,” (seriously, the book is all about how repetition can rewire your brain and he writes as though he is paid by the G-word. This is the most genius mix of marketing and enlightenment since the ever materialistic-but-on-to-something The Secret) Search Inside Yourself  contains an exceptional description of the need for emotional intelligence, geared to those with more technological minds. He writes: 

For example, where traditional contemplatives would talk about “deeper awareness of emotion,” I would say “perceiving the process of emotion at a higher resolution,” then further explaining it as the ability to perceive an emotion the moment it is arising, the moment it is ceasing, and all the subtle changes in between. (Page 21)

For me, EQ comes easy; I’m empathetic to a literal fault. Sometimes the word “empath” sounds just about right, other times I worry that sounds pretentious, other times I realize it doesn’t matter, it’s Pavlov’s magic, I don’t need to think about it too hard. What I need to do is recognize my feelings run deep and usually have the loudest voices at the round table. I need to try what the book recommends- practicing mindfulness to train my brain to look at my emotions dispassionately, to name them and lessen their grip, and to recognize the effects they have on my body, which provide signs I can use as triggers to remind myself to practice mindfulness, rinse, repeat.

My daughter is 22 months old and changing everyday. Everybody says that the time moves so quickly, blink and she’ll be eighteen and out. My husband even said that just last night, something along the lines of, “We have 16 years with her and then she’s just, poof, gone,” and I reminded him that 16 years is actually a very long time. And when I’m mindful, time stretches. It’s easy to be happy. I’m catching everything, and when I am present, my daughter shines with the attention. Until yesterday, I would beat myself up for all those times I miss, when I am in my own head and far away, when I am inattentive. 

Tan changed that for me. Mindfulness is like a muscle, he says, and the more you flex it, the stronger it gets. Each time you recognize you have drifted into daydreams, ruminations, or worries and have left your body behind on autopilot, you can just come back and start over, no big deal. In fact, good job for noticing. It will only get easier from here.

So far, Tan has used this compassionate approach in his description of awareness in meditation, but I’m extrapolating from the tone of the book and what I’ve seen from the table of contents, and slapping on my own ideas of radical-self-forgiveness. I’m only on page 65. But I think that’s the point. I am only on page 65 and I can already tell my worldview has shifted for the better. I have read a third of the book and I am changed. 

There’s a sample of the book here. I’m not getting paid to endorse it, or to provide opinions, or profit in any way. It’s simply that good so far. But fair warning: don’t let all humble-bragging get in the way of its message. Ignore your envy, because clearly working at Google is nirvana.  Shelve your preference for Bing, which is inferior anyway. Go forth with an open mind, and let’s see if we can help Tan’s crazy, beautiful goal of World Peace come a little closer to fruition.