An Open Letter To My Son With The Bugatti Brain
By Jennifer Wagner
To my sweet, kind, inquisitive son:
I love you so much.
I love how you tell us all about the latest Fortnite updates and perform all the dances — and how your passion for the game hooked us all into playing with you.
I love how you run on the beach without a care in the world.
I love when you trust us with your fears and ask us for help or to try new things.
You do not suffer fools, and your sense of fairness rivals your sense of humor.
Right now, though, what I love more than anything is your brain — and beginning to understand how it works.
Two years ago, your teachers began saying you were struggling with reading and writing. They noted how challenging it was for you to start a project, how you often seemed distracted in class. But you wanted to please, which made it even harder for you, and you kept that all inside — perhaps because it didn’t seem difficult for anyone else. On top of all that, you were dealing with a divorce and learning how to transition between two houses with two different parenting styles.
I know you’d rather have been playing video games than taking four hours of boring tests at the doctor’s office, but my goodness, thank you for going through all that — wearing a mask during a pandemic, no less!. Thanks, too, to your teachers for being part of the process. Their feedback was invaluable because they get to see you in the classroom every day.
A huge weight lifted when the doctor started walking through the results. She explained that you have the inattentive presentation of ADHD and mild dyslexia. And then she offered up boatloads of resources — books, blogs, YouTube videos and research centers devoted to studying both conditions.
If knowing is half the battle, I feel like I finally have the loadout I need to head into the next round.
But here’s the rub: No matter how much I read or talk with friends and family, I still don’t exactly know what I’m doing with this parenting thing. And it’s not the first time I’ve been through the wonder-worry-guilt-relief routine.
Like you, your older sister has always loved to sing. When she was in kindergarten, the lyrics started to shift. At first, I thought perhaps she was doing it intentionally to be funny. But the more I paid attention, the more I wondered if it was something more, especially given a family history of ear issues.
When I took her to the ENT specialist, he said he would do some tests to find out, as he put it, if she had a hearing problem or listening problem. Turns out, it was the former. She could only hear roughly 50 percent of what was going on around her.
My heart sank; I felt responsible for not taking her in sooner and for doubting there was something wrong.
When she woke up groggy after getting her first set of tubes, I whispered to her, and she replied, “Oh, Mommy, I can hear you!”
Tears streamed down my face. She got the help she needed.
Our journey will likely be more complicated than her surgery. There will be moments of joy and moments of frustration. But I want you to know that I will walk alongside you every step of the way — we all will.
Thank you for wanting to understand how your brain works, too, and for asking so many great questions as we read together.
I very much appreciate that you took an analogy I picked up online — someone with ADHD described it as having a “Ferrari engine for a brain, but with bicycle brakes” — and improved on it.
The analogy seemed to make sense to you, but you wanted to know, as an eight-year-old does, what’s the fastest car in the world. So we looked it up, and now you can tell people that you’re the proud owner of a Bugatti brain with bicycle brakes.
Over the coming months and years, we will work hard to improve that brake system, to give you the setting and tools you need to slow down and focus in. That likely includes additional tutoring, exploring schooling options and finding new activities to channel your energy.
Along the way, know this: We will never judge if you see the root of a word but not the rest of it.
We will patiently read things time and again until they make sense.
We will listen to you and ask lots of questions.
We will encourage you to dance and wiggle and move whenever we can.
We will make sure you have a strong support network in place.
We will offer heaploads of praise because we know some things are harder for you than they are for us.
The very first question you asked me after we read about ADHD was whether I have it, too. I told you I don’t (my brain does lots of other fun things that require my attention), but that I will bust my butt to understand as best I can.
I promise you here in this post today, written a little more than one week after receiving your diagnosis, that I will never give up, I will never stop learning, and you can always count on me to advocate for you and your needs.
Love, Mom
Jennifer Wagner is a mom, a recovering political hack and the Vice President of Communications for EdChoice, a national nonprofit that supports and promotes universal school choice.
