Your Child is Struggling. You’re Struggling. We Come With Hope.

Your Child is Struggling. You’re Struggling.
We Come With Hope.

By: Marie Force and Jake Force

Marie
My mother died the day before my son started kindergarten. She and Jake, the youngest of her four grandchildren, were close and spent a lot of time together. During the preschool years, she’d pick him up for me so I’d have a few more hours to work before my daughter got home from elementary school. Jake was three or four when my mom said something that would frame the next seventeen years of my life and his.

“He’s one of the smartest children I’ve ever met, so articulate and well-spoken,” she said. “But he has no interest in learning things, like letters or numbers. I can’t help but wonder how that will manifest itself in school.”

She called it.

I’ve said that so many times over the years. She. Called. It.

Jake was born in October of 1998 after a difficult birth that ended in an emergency C-section. He was a bright and sunny guy from the get-go, always smiling and happy, but he missed all the big milestones. While my parents spent a few winter weeks with us in Florida, my dad decided it was time for Jake to walk and chased him around the house every night, Jake screaming with laughter, and pushing his baby walker until he was finally walking on his own at fifteen months.

“Who taught you to walk?” my dad asked Jake for the rest of his life.

“You did, Da.”

His first words came way late and in the form of full sentences when he was two-and-a-half. No crib chatter, no baby babbling. No nothing until those full sentences. When he was about eighteen months old, I attended a seminar on speech delays that was offered to parents of preschoolers. I asked the facilitator about Jake, mentioning how he was almost completely silent, albeit with a sister three years older, who did the talking for both of them.

“What does he do when you give him instructions, like go get your shoes?” the facilitator asked.

“He brings back shoes,” I said, “even if they’re not a matched pair.”

“As long as it’s going in,” he said, “it’ll eventually come out.”

I was greatly comforted by that, and sure enough, the full sentences eventually started flowing. Later, when he was talking nonstop about everything, we would laugh at how we ever thought anything was wrong. Ironically, those same off-the-charts verbal skills would become a hindrance later when trying to convince educators that something wasn’t right with this seemingly gifted child.

In the summer of 2003, Jake was almost five and being screened for kindergarten. The kindergarten teacher who screened him, a thirty-five-year veteran who retired soon after, said it bluntly. “If he were my child, I wouldn’t send him.”

Her words hit me like a sucker punch, especially since it was July, and another year of preschool would be hard to come by with the school year starting in a month. That was one of those moments you just never forget. I was still able to talk to my mom about it then, and she said she had wondered what they’d say about him. The quirkiness she’d identified earlier had come through to the teachers and led to their decision to hold him.

So we waited another year, and off he went on September 1, 2004, the day after my mom died from complications related to pancreatic cancer. The highlight of that day for him was finally getting to ride on the yellow school bus he’d been eyeing with great envy as it took his sister to and from school every day for four years. He was thrilled to get on that bus. I remember my brother saying that day if only he knew how many years of school were ahead, he might not be so excited. Truth!

School went okay. At first. There were the usual adjustments that every child makes to the routine, the early mornings, the rules, etc. He did fine in kindergarten. The trouble began in first grade and in the oddest of places. Every eight weeks, his report card would come home with U’s for “Unsatisfactory” in four areas: library, physical education, art and music. All four of those teachers were unsatisfied with him? How could that be?

We asked for a meeting to better understand what was happening. “He doesn’t follow directions,” we were told. “He cuts up in class.” “He can’t get anything done.” When we consulted with his regular classroom teacher, she said the same sorts of things, but she’d found some workarounds, and they were muddling through.

After listening to this input, we decided to have him tested. The results that came back began to explain some things. He had a Nonverbal Learning Disorder. “As Scott Bezsylko, executive director of Winston Preparatory School, puts it, ‘Think of it as the opposite of dyslexia.’ The problems these kids have involve, he says, all the other kinds of learning. ‘All the stuff that involves understanding information—relationships, concepts, ideas, patterns.’” (Source: https://childmind.org/article/what-is-non-verbal-learning-disorder/)

Picture an art class, for example. “We’re going to make construction paper owls,” the teacher would say. “Take the body, add the wings and the feet, and then the eyes and beak.” She’d lost Jake at “add the wings.” He simply could not process that many verbal directions and end the fifty-minute period with something that resembled an owl. To the teachers, who had him once a week for fifty minutes, that outcome looked like willful disregard of basic directions. And who could blame them when everyone else had an owl, and Jake was sitting there with all the pieces and nothing put together?

His second-grade year was a nightmare, with an older teacher who punished him when he couldn’t get things done on time by taking his snack, the reward for getting work done, off his desk and throwing it away right in front of him. Almost every day that year, he came off the bus in the afternoon with his little shoulders rounded in, demoralized. That entire year was one disaster after another, to the point that we were meeting regularly with the principal and other professionals to help get him through the year.

In third grade, we were blessed with a teacher who was a family friend and went out of her way to help him.

Once, outside of school, she whispered to me, “Have you considered meds?”

“I’m not there yet,” I told her. “I want that to be the last resort.”

She totally understood but urged me not to discount medication as a viable option. She, like many others in Jake’s life, was struck by his ability to hold adult-level conversations. If your grandmother had a stroke, for instance, the next time he saw you, he’d ask how your grandmother was doing—as a six- or seven-year-old. His verbal skills were off the charts. He had friends of all ages, from two-year-old children to the eighty-year-old men who hung around the marina where his grandfather kept his boat. Those guys had wonderful, lively conversations with my little boy, who thought of them all as his friends. He was a verbal whiz kid. But he fell apart on paper, and his inability to complete assignments led to an Individual Education Plan (IEP) in fourth and fifth grades that focused on written instructions and visual aids that made a big difference for him.

We knew children who contended with much more complex challenges, but Jake was struggling with something, and we believed we still didn’t have the full picture of what it was. The Nonverbal Learning Disorder was a start, but it felt sort of like a catch-all diagnosis that could be widely applied in any number of situations. And while it gave us some information we hadn’t had before, it didn’t give us the full picture by any stretch.

It was very much something, and it continued to vex him, us and his devoted teachers throughout elementary school. And then came the behavior issues. Everything from disrupting the class by making the other kids laugh when they were supposed to be working to ignoring direct requests from teachers.

I vividly remember one meeting, maybe fourth grade, when I was called in to discuss his behavior. As they recited the various things he’d done, I remember sitting there feeling completely stunned because, at home, he was always a very well-behaved child. Of course, we had the usual kid stuff that everyone dealt with, but certainly nothing like the kinds of things they were describing to me. It took me a minute to collect my thoughts.

“I want you to know,” I said. “I’m not a head-in-the-sand parent. If you told me my child was giving other kids the middle finger, I’d say yep, that’s him. The minute he realized he could get a rise out of people by sticking up his middle finger, he started doing it all the time and getting into trouble for it. If you told me he did, X, Y, Z, I’d say, yep, that’s him. But this? What you’re describing here? It’s not the kid I live with. Something else is going on.”

I swore to them up one side and down the other that I was well aware of the failings of both my children and did not for one second think either of them was perfect. (They’re 25 and 22 now, and I’m still more than happy to tell them when I don’t like something they say or do. LOL!) The teachers appreciated my candor and suggested we have him tested. Again.

This time, he came back with an additional “kinda” diagnosis of ADHD, Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder. Except, we all agreed, without a scintilla of hyperactivity. If anything, Jake was the opposite of hyperactive. Our daughter, Emily, likes to say that the three most commonly spoken words she heard at home growing up, after “I love you,” were “Hurry up, Jake.” So now we have ADHD without the H, which isn’t really an official diagnosis. We learned that you can’t have one without the other. Awesome. So while he was classic ADD, there was no formal diagnosis.

At the end of fifth grade, Jake was “graduated” off his IEP because he’d made such “astonishing progress.” We were stunned. Progress? What progress? He was hanging by a thread in school, constantly behind, still getting those U marks on his report cards and, only through the active daily involvement of both parents, was he able to successfully finish each school year. We never once did his work for him as we believed that would only make everything worse. But we sat by his side on many a night as he struggled his way through assignments, sometimes for hours. The special education department in our town, which had been very supportive while he was on the IEP, was undergoing some major upheaval at that time, breaking apart from a collaboration with other towns. We can’t say for certain that upheaval led to this inexplicable decision, but despite our vociferous objections, their decision stood. There we were, heading into middle school without the safety net of the IEP.

The words of his third-grade teacher came back around to me. Have you considered medication? By then, I felt like we’d tried everything we could and the frustration on all fronts was taking over. With a new civilian pediatrician working at the Navy clinic where the kids received health care, I asked for an appointment. I brought Jake’s file, which was now three inches thick. I gave him the summary of Jake’s first six years in school. I said we’re ready to try meds. He said, “I agree. Let’s do it.”

Just like that. No referrals or other hoops to jump through. I wanted to cry with relief. Jake started the next day on Concerta, and his sixth grade English teacher called to say, “Night and day. He’s a totally different kid.” Interestingly, the behavior issues that had continued to plague him—only in school, mind you—also stopped. With hindsight, we realized the acting up was really a matter of acting out. He wasn’t able to complete the assignments and didn’t know what to do with himself while everyone else did their work. So he acted up and got into trouble.

The medication fixed that and helped his concentration. If I have one regret in all of this, it’s that I waited so long to try meds. We got lucky because the Concerta worked right away for him, and the side effects were minimal, which isn’t always the case. We’ve heard stories of families trying multiple medications before they find something that works. He took it only on school days, and it was mostly out of his system by the time he got home. He was on the meds until his junior year of high school, but I’ll let him tell you below about why he made the decision to stop taking them.

His academic performance began to improve—to a point. He was still unable to complete tests in the time that everyone else could, which made him feel stupid the way only middle schoolers can when their peers are capable of things they aren’t. In middle school, there were response to intervention (RTI) meetings with educators who continued to express concerns about how he learned and performed in school. Despite all the testing, I still felt we were missing something big. He muddled through middle school and started high school in the fall of 2013.

That same month, I heard about Curry College in Milton, MA, which had a nationally recognized program called PAL—the Program for the Advancement of Learning—specially designed for kids like Jake who struggled with learning challenges. I couldn’t believe something like PAL actually existed. My friend’s daughter, whose challenges in school were similar to Jake’s, had started at Curry/PAL that fall. I came home from that dinner and told Jake, “I know where you’re going to college.” He was excited to hear there might be an option that could help him succeed, but first, we had to get him through high school.

At the beginning of every high school year, I’d email Jake’s new group of teachers and give them the 411 on him. Since he was no longer on an IEP, it became essential that they knew of his challenges at the beginning of the year—before they could become annoyed with him. Every one of them was appreciative of the information and kept in close touch with me as the year progressed, asking for our involvement when needed. It took a village, but we ambled our way through high school.

Our only goal in those years was to keep him from saying screw it and wanting to quit school as the academic frustrations mounted. We were assisted in that goal by his favorite thing in the world: being on the varsity hockey team. Not only did the hockey team give him something to look forward to, but it also kept him focused on his grades in a whole new way. He had to maintain a certain average in order to stay on the team. Hockey was a godsend, in more ways than one. Sports and his passion for all things sports-related has been a central theme in Jake’s life, from the time he was a very young child attending baseball and football games at the high school he’d later attend, to going to Fenway Park and T.D. Garden to watch the Red Sox and the Bruins with his dad.

One of the things that kept him engaged in school with a tentative eye on college was his desire to work in sports media someday, preferably in the Boston market. Everyone who knows Jake could see that was his path. My late father used to say all the time, “That kid’s going places.” I’d reply laughing, “Only if I can get him out of sixth grade” or whatever grade he was in at the time.

He was eighteen years old and a senior in high school when we had him tested one more time—required for Curry’s PAL program. The day-long testing was intense and exhausting for him, but he took it in stride that made us proud of his tenacity. And from that testing came the final piece in the puzzle. They identified a severe Processing Speed Disorder that the facilitator said would’ve qualified him for disability-level intervention in K-12 had it been identified earlier.

There it was.

Finally.

After all those years of struggle and testing and diagnoses that came close but somehow missed the mark, now we knew what it was and it explained so much. Even his hockey coach, who was also the head of guidance at the high school, said the same thing: It explained so much. Jake was a SENIOR IN HIGH SCHOOL when we finally had a full understanding of what he was dealing with. With that information came relief for all of us. This battle we’d been fighting now made sense in a way it never had before.

We toured other colleges, bigger schools with huge Division 1 sports programs that would’ve been so much fun for him to attend and maybe even cover as a student reporter. But in the end, he applied to one school, knowing he needed extra support to successfully navigate college. In November of his senior year, the big envelope came from Curry, and we celebrated with tremendous glee—and relief. That early decision was both a blessing and a curse as we had to frequently remind him during his senior year that he still had to graduate from high school!

But he’d gotten into college, a goal that had once seemed so far out of reach as to be insurmountable had been achieved.

I remember one of the meetings with the PAL team, in which they said, “Jake, we can offer you all these resources to help you succeed in college, but if you don’t show up to take advantage of them, it will be for naught.” I’ll never forget his reply: “I need everything. I’ll be here.” He got it. He knew what he needed to do and was prepared to do whatever it took to reach the lofty goal he’d set for himself so many years ago. That self-awareness was KEY.

It wasn’t lost on me that the decision made by that veteran kindergarten teacher all those years ago had made a big difference when he first started school, and it was going to matter now, too. He would turn 19 in October of his freshman year, and that extra year of maturity was clutch.

He left for college in the fall of 2017 and had the good fortune to immediately bond with his roommate, Brandon, who would go on to be his roommate and close friend all four years at Curry. Jake made a smooth adjustment to college, and freshman year went better than expected. He reported immediately to the campus radio station and soon started a two-hour weekly radio show called “Jake’s Take,” covering his perspective on Boston’s four major sports teams. That too has lasted all four years.

We all exhaled a big sigh of relief when freshman year ended on a high note. The next year, however, something happened that signified the start of a whole new ballgame. At the end of the Fall semester, Jake called me and said in his typical low-key style, “I think I might’ve made the Dean’s List.” I pounced all over that. When will you know? How can we find out? I got the expected response from my son: “Chill, will you?”

Right.

Chill.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

I was breathless with anticipation until we got the official word from his wonderful PAL professor, Dr. Diane Webber, that he had, in fact, made the Dean’s List.

I cried.

I cried that day and every day for a week. He made the Dean’s List. It was one of the greatest moments of his life—and mine and his father’s. We’d traveled such a long and difficult road, and he’d made the Dean’s List in college. Holy moly. What a moment!

I thought nothing could top that.

Until he did it again and again and again. Twice during sophomore year. Twice in his junior year. Once so far in his senior year, and it’s looking good for the second semester, too. (Update: he graduated CUM LAUDE in May 2021!)

We joke that Jake’s GPA is higher than the rest of ours combined. Haha! But it’s kinda true… Who would’ve ever thought that he’d turn out to be the rock star student in our family of four?

And the best part? He loved college. He loved the classes, the professors, the radio station, the friends, the dorms, and everything about it. He kicked ass and took names academically. Brandon said to me once, “Yeah, Jake is killing it.” He couldn’t have known what it meant to me to hear one of his peers say that about him.

Late in 2020, after months of quarantine together, Jake and I started talking about his plan for after college. We agreed that with the pandemic touching every corner of our lives and crippling the job market, he might need to think outside the box. I asked him a question that at one time might’ve seemed preposterous: What do you think about grad school?

To my surprise, he didn’t say NO WAY, MOM. First, he asked what I thought he might study in grad school. I said, how about journalism? His eyes lit up. He’d developed a keen interest in writing and reporting in college and had done well in a number of journalism classes that were part of his communications program. He loved the idea of pursuing that field in grad school (and as a j-school graduate myself, I loved it for him!).

He wanted to stay in the Boston area, so we started researching journalism programs in the city and narrowed it to Northeastern, Emerson, and what we considered our “stretch” goal of Boston University, three schools that would’ve been out of reach to him four years earlier. I know people who graduated from BU’s journalism program and had always considered it elite. I couldn’t even let myself think of the possibility of him getting in there. He said the same thing: “Damn, that would be cool,” but we both tried to stay calm as he stretched out the application process to the last possible second while telling me to “chill.”

I laughed to myself. He’d turned himself into a Dean’s List student, but some things never change!

On March 11, 2021, he called me. “Mom, I got an email I want to read to you. ‘Dear Jake, Congratulations on your acceptance to the Boston University Master’s of Science in Journalism program.’”

I screamed.

Jake laughed and said to his suitemates, who were on speaker, “I told you she’d scream.”

I’m glad I didn’t disappoint him.

I cried.

I danced around the house like a fool.

His father, who doesn’t get excited about much, was beside himself with happiness.

I emailed his devoted PAL professor, Dr. Webber, who was ecstatic.

He also got into Northeastern and Emerson.

Three for three. All I could think of was the little boy who used to come home off the bus with his little shoulders rounded in, demoralized by another bad day at school.

LOOK AT HIM NOW!

I hope after reading the story that preceded the big news on March 11 you can appreciate the full magnitude of that moment for him, for us, for everyone who’d supported and loved him through the highs and lows. I thought of my mom and the statement she’d made to me so many years ago. I thought of my dad who used to tell me this kid was going places and how badly we wanted to believe that was true.

I wished I could call them both to say look at him now.

I wanted to share this story for all the parents of children who struggle, who don’t get the grades that everyone else does, whose names never appear on the honor roll, who don’t shine academically early and often, or who don’t learn the way other kids do. I wanted to share it with the parents who struggle right along with their children, trying to understand how best to support the unique needs of each child. And I wanted to share it with the children, to tell them not to give up. You just never know what’s coming, and you can’t let those early setbacks set the tone for your entire life.

I want you to have hope, to know that early performance in elementary, middle and even high school doesn’t determine whether your life will be successful. It doesn’t mean you can’t reach for the stars and actually touch them.

I fully acknowledge the extraordinary privilege within our story—the ability to have our son tested multiple times, the incredible teachers and educators who went above and beyond to support him, the wherewithal to send him to the right college with the perfect program to suit his needs. We were—and are—incredibly lucky to have had access to those amazing resources. We knew it then, and we know it now. We are blessed.

If you’re in need of additional resources for a struggling child, check with your local school district about what’s available. That’s a great place to start to look for answers as is your child’s pediatrician, who may have access to other resources. Most communities have advocates and organizations that can help, and your school department and pediatrician can help you find those resources, too.

Jake is the hero of this story, and we’re incredibly proud of how he’s worked so hard to rise above his early challenges. He has a goal, and he’s entirely focused on achieving it. That goal and his determination have been the most important factors to getting him this far. He’s got a fire in the belly for the career that’s now within his grasp, and we’re looking forward to seeing where that fire leads him.

You can see it in the essay he wrote for BU:

Jake
Attention Deficit Disorder, Nonverbal Learning Disorder, Processing Speed Disorder… All that disorder made for an uphill battle while chasing a lifelong goal of working in sports media. In order to achieve that goal, I always knew I had to stay in school no matter how difficult it might get—and school was extremely challenging for me from the beginning. IEPs, meetings, emails and responses to intervention, my parents and I had it all. After fifth grade, I was inexplicably “graduated” off the IEP that was keeping me afloat in school. With the challenges of middle school looming, my doctor prescribed Concerta, which instantly changed my life. Concerta made it possible for me to focus on my schoolwork and helped me control the impulse to act out in class. My classroom performance increased as did my self-confidence. As I grew, so did the dosage, but with the higher dosage came more noticeable side effects. The meds killed my appetite to the point where I was often hungry and tired at hockey practice every day after school. I wasn’t eating enough to produce the energy needed to perform at practice.

By junior year, I’d had enough of Concerta’s side effects. Five years on the meds had provided a blueprint of how I could do better in school. And while I made the decision to no longer take it, I still consider Concerta a critical part of how I made it to college. By acting, behaving and studying the same way I did when I was on it, I applied what worked without the pill doing it for me.

Senior year, my parents were concerned about whether I should play hockey, because my grades had slipped a bit since I’d been off the meds. I had to make it work, because giving up hockey simply wasn’t an option. I was determined to prove everyone wrong, to show them that yes, I can finish senior project and get an A on it. Yes, I can get into college. And yes, maybe I can even get better college grades than anyone in my immediate family ever did. Determination kicked in along with maturity.

With the goal of successfully completing college, I was tested by Curry College’s PAL Program to determine whether I qualified. PAL is designed to help students with conditions such as ADHD, Dyslexia and other learning challenges to navigate college. Their testing found I had a Processing Speed Disorder, something copious other tests had missed. They were shocked that I’d successfully completed high school without any significant support. Knowing I needed the kind of help PAL provided, I applied early-action to one school—Curry College. They sent a big envelope a few months later, and the rest is history. The PAL Program was exactly what I needed—someone in my corner. I didn’t need everyday homework help and usually didn’t request extended time on exams, which is one of PAL’s biggest selling points. However, I would go to my PAL Professor, Dr. Webber, for things like picking my classes, advice about communicating with professors and tips on time management, which was my greatest challenge. I’m perfectly capable of finishing assignments, but my ADD can make concentrating a major struggle. Meeting weekly with Dr. Webber helped remind me that school is the main reason I’m there. She taught me to advocate for myself, which might be the most important factor in getting through college. We often talked about how participating in classroom discussions goes miles further than the grade book indicates. Even if you aren’t caught up on material, “Try your best to participate,” she’d say. “It doesn’t go unnoticed.” Dr. Webber and PAL gave me tools and strategies that put graduate school within reach.

You asked me to write about a moment of truth in my life, and I can honestly say my proudest moment thus far was making the Dean’s List my sophomore year. What a thrill that was for me and my parents. Of course, I wondered if it was a one-off. Then it happened again and again. I’ve made the Dean’s List five times now, each time a victory more than seventeen years in the making. My greatest accomplishment will be finishing college in May with an excellent GPA, an expanded worldview and a passion for writing and reporting that I hope to perfect in graduate school. My second greatest accomplishment would be acceptance into your esteemed Master’s of Journalism program.

Jake:
I’d add to this, be careful with the meds. They can become addictive and should be used only as prescribed. While the meds worked for me, I still encourage people to find what works for them, which might be meds or other alternatives.

Marie
Hang in there, Mom and Dad. You never know where the struggles might be leading. We can’t wait to see what happens next.

Epilogue

In January 2023, Jake received his Master of Science in Journalism from Boston University and then walked the stage with his classmates in May. On July 17, 2023, he joined WJFW NBC 12 in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, as a reporter and anchor. Dreams do come true!

Marie Force is the New York Times bestselling author of more than 85 romance novels. She too was an academic underachiever, landing in the bottom twenty percent of her high school class, but hitting her stride in graduate school, where she achieved a “miraculous” 3.89 grade point average. She believes she too suffered from undiagnosed learning disabilities that affected her early academic performance. She found her calling after her tenth-grade English teacher told her she had a talent for writing. She took his advice to pursue journalism in college and is thankful for his words of encouragement every day.

Jake Force graduated cum laude from Curry College in May 2021 with a bachelor’s degree in Communications and will attend graduate school at Boston University in the fall of 2021, pursuing a master of science degree in journalism. He hopes to continue “Jake’s Take” in the future.