Success Stories

A Parent's Success Story
It's not about fame and fortune – it's a life well lived
Dr. Yvonne Pennington

Yvonne Pennington was a single mom with two young sons. Her older son, Wynn, was named after a jazz pianist, Wynnton Kelly. Younger son, Ty, was given a family name. A Pen­nington family joke is that if there’d been a third child, the name would have been a version of ‘lose,’ as in baseballs’ lingo “to win, tie or lose” a ball game. Dr. Pennington is grateful she had just two children and neither one is a loser.

She was also a cocktail waitress, and in what turned out to be a lucky coincidence, she was going to school for a degree in psychology. In these early parenting years, success for the family of three was simply getting through the day because inserted into every school day was the inevitable animated teacher phone call about Ty’s latest classroom high jinks.

Ty was beginning to sound like a psychology case study by second grade, so Dr. Pennington took him to a psychologist for an assessment. He was diagnosed with hyperactivity. This diagnosis is now more common­ly known as ADHD, but back then, in the ’60s it was called minimal brain dysfunction. “I never told him his di­agnosis because I didn’t want him to carry that around,” said Dr. Penning­ton. “I just told him we were going to see the doctor to find out why he was having so much trouble in school.”

Now a successful Atlanta-area psychologist and specialist in ADHD, Dr. Pennington recalls, “Just today I had a student of mine tell me, ‘How is it that the kid is famous, but the mother is not? That’s just not right!’” She may not be the most famous per­son in her family, but it is without a doubt due to her insightful parenting and early behavioral intervention that Ty Pennington, a carpenter lately of Sunday evening television remodeling fame, had the loving support neces­sary to become successful.

From an early age, Ty was a chal­lenging child to parent and Dr. Pen­nington used her wits to keep a loving, firm hand on his shoulder, his wrist, his arm, his waist...well, you get the picture; any part of his anatomy that she could grab onto to keep him safe.

KE: What were the toughest chal­lenges raising a son with a learning disability?
Dr. Pennington: It was parenting fairly to two very different children.Wynn was an excellent student, with a good attention span, but Ty got the lion’s share of my attention and earned privilege. It was not fair for Ty to profit as an outgrowth of my apply­ing a different set of behavioral rules in order to manage him. So, in creat­ing a behavioral reward system, both boys were rewarded for good behavior. Then Wynn finally received a good portion of the rewarding activities and the positive attention.

CHADD (Children and Adults with ADD www.chadd.org) didn’t exist then. There wasn’t LDAG (Learning Disabili­ties of Georgia www.ldag.org). There wasn’t a me. It was very isolating.

KE: Did your self-esteem suffer?
Dr. Pennington: I was always doing case studies in graduate school. One time, I asked the elementary school principal if I could do a case study on the worst kid in the school. She looked at me and said, ‘Yvonne, don’t you know who that is?’

KE: Is there any family history of ADHD?
Dr. Pennington: There is a history in the family for generations – my brother was wild, so was a nephew, cousin, uncle and many who haven’t been diagnosed. Ty’s father was, too.

KE: Just what were Ty’s diagnoses and at what age were they diagnosed?
Dr. Pennington: Before the early ’80s, Ty was diagnosed with hyperki­netic disorder of childhood. There was an update in the diagnostic language in the ’80s stating that he had ADHD with residual, around the time it was first being diagnostically noted by psy­chiatrists that ADHD persisted into adulthood. His attention problems became more prominent at that time, as the hyperactivity receded somewhat, and attention deficit became a part of the diagnosis, where it hadn’t been to that point for Ty.

KE: How was Ty tested?
   Dr. Pennington: Ty was given a broad neurological exam, you know, the type with the finger to nose to rule out more severe medical prob­lems? There was no psychological testing done. The doctor was holistic and didn’t want to try Ritalin, so he suggested I try Benadryl to calm him down during the day, but it simply put him to sleep and gave him a dry mouth. My former husband wondered if Ty should be hospitalized.

KE: What interventions did you de­velop and what did the teachers come up with on their own?
Dr. Pennington: At home and out, I used a leash to keep track of him when he was small. A friend of mine, Mary, who had a daughter the same age as Ty remembers my constant repetition, my telling him ‘Look at me’ while I held his chin to get his attention.

In his elementary school, I had someone observe his behavior – Ty was wild when I wasn’t present. I asked around at Georgia State Uni­versity and learned about using a new concept, a token economy system (see sidebar) for behavior management. I developed one for my college graduate class and for Ty. It was successful in the classroom and at home, but we ta­pered off using it when school wasn’t in session.

I would not use the token economy during the summer except for some chores, but even that wasn’t as formal as we used during the school year.

Later, when we moved to Cobb County after eighth grade, Ty was referred for the gifted program in high school. It was the first time that anyone recognized that he really was gifted. His non-verbal IQ is off the charts. But his verbal is not in the gifted range. He has never mentioned one particular high school teacher he ever connected with. His art school teacher connected with him after he bombed out of regular college. He went on medicine. He graduated at the top of his class – on meds.

KE: Did the teachers use your token economy conceptat the school?
Dr. Pennnington: The day before we started the token economy sys­tem was the last day he spent in the principal’s office for the rest of his school career. We lived across the street from the school. I would ask teachers, “How’s he doing? What’s he doing?” While their eyes glazed over they would say, “Everything.” He was in punish­ment all the time at that time and, of course, we reinforced the school punishment at home. The school was asking me what to do as they were stumped. I asked the teacher about his attention span: ten seconds. In my 35 year career as a psychologist – ten seconds is the shortest I’ve seen. So, I followed up with, “This is what I’m learning at school; would you be will­ing to work with me?”

I asked the special help teacher, a behavioral disorder teacher to sit near him and to take notes about what he was doing. It was an eye opener to get that report. He was wearing his desk, running around the room, taking off his shoes, throwing them at the board. I just couldn’t believe what he was doing. He wasn’t that bad at home because he knew I’d kill him and we’d learned to accommodate and adjust. We didn’t expect him to sit still either. I asked the teacher to work with me for about a month, thinking that’s what he would need for me to figure out what to do.
You see, the main reinforcer for his wild behavior was kids’ laughter. So, for every ten seconds he sits still, she would give him a paper coaster, pat him on the back, tell him what a good job he’s doing and then start the process all over again. The more coast­ers he acquired, the longer recess was for the whole class, so it really turned things around because the students became involved in keeping him on task so they’d get more recess, rather than on being entertained by him. By one month, we were rewarding him only once every thirty minutes.

No one ever thought of him as mean; he was cute and funny. His friends remember him as being class clown and doing something funny.

KE: Is this success possible for any child?
Dr. Pennington: People typically won’t or can’t think that they can go down to the level of attention span a child really needs, so it fails a lot, because it requires so much adult attention. If I hadn’t had the special help teacher for Ty, it never would have happened, but this way I kept him out of special education. He never got labeled; he never got earmarked. He thought of himself as a pretty decent kid. Before that he was in punishment a lot of the time. I’ve always believed that if your kid has punishment in the classroom, you don’t just blow it off at home. He was feeling pretty awful about himself, getting stomach aches almost every day. With the use of the token economy, the result was dramat­ic—night and day.

KE: Did it ever get easier to have the teachers call?
Dr. Pennington: (She laughs) Yes, it did because I heard from them so often. One teacher called in 8th grade – the teacher wouldn’t agree to the token system which would just involve signing a slip saying that he had been appropriate. He said he would not support the token economy, that Ty should be good just because and in­stead that he would let me know when he had messed up. A week later he called to say my child had just started a riot in the class, had turned over a filing cabinet and had danced on the table. ‘Are you ready to try the token economy now?’ The teacher said, ‘No, I’m not.’ So, we agreed to meet with the principal. A day before the meet­ing, he called to say he was ready to try the token economy. Apparently, he had talked with the other teachers who told him Ty was doing fine in their classes because they were signing the slip for me. We called off the meet­ing and Ty turned himself around. It wasn’t long before I received a call, ‘I gave Ty the student of the week award.’ It was something as simple as putting his initial on the slip of paper that made the difference.

Ty was a handful. They would usually call me after they had tried everything – most teachers were fine telling me when he was doing well, too. I cooked a lot of cookies and told the teachers how much I appreciated their extra effort.

KE: How have things changed in the last twenty years since your son was in school?
Dr. Pennington: Ty’s 20s were hard for him to get through. He had job changes, lost keys and his driving li­cense (not for driving, he just couldn’t find it). He was losing things even on medication and I had to decide how to let go.

Ty made impulsive decisions. Early in his 20s, he got into modeling and was traveling the world. I tried not to be involved in his self-care unless he asked. I made the decision not to rescue him money-wise, that he had to learn through hard knocks and paying for living expenses was up to him, but I would always pay for therapy and for his medications. I made many wild postal trips to get his medication to him half-way across the world, to Ger­many or Japan, when he didn’t keep track of the meds. Long after most parents, I was still involved in his life. I was willing to do anything to get the medicine to him. Like many with ADHD, as (Dr. Russell) Barkley says, he had a 30% maturational lag, keeping parents involved longer than normal. Their adolescence extends beyond 18 and 19, unlike Wynn who was off on his own at the same age.

KE: I’m struck by the hard deci­sions you had to make.
Dr. Pennington: Some of them are the hardest decisions you have to make. How much do you rescue? Fami­lies whose ADHD folks are in their 20s and are financially rescued, just continue to make ridiculous mistakes.

KE: How old was he when the situa­tion had been managed?
Dr. Pennington: Mid to late 20s. The research shows that the pre-fron­tal cortex matures around 27 or 28.

KE: What would you say to parents with similar struggles?
Dr. Pennington: I had been the supervisor of a special education pro­gram in a high school and the doctors pulled the teen-aged boys off their medication right and left thinking they had outgrown the disorder. They were dropping out of school or being thrown out of school because the boys didn’t know they were supposed to outgrow their diagnoses. These deci­sions were not based on research but on the idea that hyperactivity would drop away. A lot of lives were ruined because of those decisions.

Parents have more alternatives now. There is a better diagnostic process. There is a battery of testing available to identify the behavior rating scales. And now there’s me – I teach a pro­gram focusing on parent training, medicine, a token economy system, behavior therapy and social skills training. I get very good results. I teach a Parent’s Workshop – and six weeks later the parents and children get much better.

KE: Now that your sons are adults, how do you define success?
Dr. Pennington: It’s not fame and fortune. It’s a well lived life. Compas­sion. Contributing. Giving back. Wynn is a sommelier for an AIDS research consortium that has raised millions of dollars. It’s the American dream team – huge success is being able to be grateful for your life and to give back.

Dr. Yvonne Pennington is a licensed psychologist who practices in the Atlanta area. She can be contacted via email at yvp@psychology.am or by phone at 770-971-1085.

Kids Enabled would like to thank Dr. Pennington for her contribution to this article and for her dedication to the learning disability community.