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Good Words on Repeat
For a few weeks as the possibly of our son not being able to remain at Teen Challenge became more likely I’ve had a few phrases cycling through my mind. Good Words. True Words. This is the work He has given us to do. (from the final prayer of our Sunday liturgy) And it’s ours. We were made to do this work. The pain and endurance and figuring out how to do all of this.. it’s ours. (see Interior Freedom, a small but impactful book) From the perspective of heaven everything is going according to plan. (from Deeper by… a…
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Round and Round We Go
We got the call on Wednesday. Our son, now 17, is continuing to disrupt the Teen Challenge program and the staff and leadership of the program are throwing in the towel. Last week we told our son that if he didn’t pull his act together and get average or higher on his daily behavior scores there, they’d kick him out and this was his last chance. If he gets kicked out I’m going to just be there one day to get him and he won’t be coming back to Denver, I’ll take him to my high school home in Indiana.…
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Why did the Israelite wander?
Mom, when helping clean up a room with our 5 year old daughter who was complaining about the work : “do you know why the Isrealites had to wander for 40 years?” Daughter : “Because they never cleaned up.”
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Mortgage Refinanced!
Today we closed on our refinance to withdraw equity to help pay for Jackson’s* time at Teen Challenge. We applied for the refinance at the end of November, a month before we took him to the program. Earlier in 2020 I’d nearly refinanced to shorten the term of our loan. Instead, moving years backward to pay off our loan, we’re able to add 5 years and withdraw equity without increasing our monthly mortgage payment. This won’t pay for all of the program, but it will cover most of it. Unfortunately we used up our savings on our 15 week hotel…
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Giving Myself A Break, Part 4: Leaning into Rest
A continuation of Part 1: The Fall Part 2: The Doctors Part 3: Post Surgery I never give myself a break. I never get enough sleep. In college I regularly went on 2-4 hours of sleep all week long, cramming my days and nights full of extra classes, studying, starting a business, leading and volunteering in ministries. As a working dad of six kids, responsibilities are different, but my pattern has been the same. Work work work, and only rest enough to work more. I get up early, rotate laundry, go for a run, rotate laundry, get myself ready while…
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Giving Myself a Break, Part 3: Post Surgery
A continuation of Part 1: The Fall Part 2: The Doctors 7am : Hey, look, I can wriggle my toes a little! My nerve block began to wear off as I woke up on Thursday. Our babysitter was able to do school drop off. My wife and I ran some errands with me sitting lamely in the passenger seat. Everything I do is lame now! I’m so lame! Sigh. 11am: As the morning wore on my discomfort increased and I’m leaning toward more time off work. I think I’m mostly going to need to be on my back with my…
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Giving Myself a Break, Part 2: The Doctors
(continued from Part One: The Fall) After the Denver blizzard on Sunday, Monday was a pretend school day (remote learning) instead of a snow day. They decided to do the same Tuesday for no reason at all. The weather was warm, the roads had been safe and clear by the end of Monday. So after we got the kids ready, we swung by the grocery store for a scheduled pick up then over to an urgent care, me still in my running clothes… base layer (tights) and all . Though they said they were busier than normal, I didn’t have…
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Giving Myself a Break, Part 1: The Fall
As my ankle rapidly twisted back and forth I shouted in pain and fell on the snowy sidewalk one mile into my 5 mile run for the day. All I could do was lay there and shout out of the pain. I had twisted my ankle. Maybe more. I couldn’t move. This really really hurts. Not my right ankle again. Oh wow this hurts ow ow ow. My wife is asleep at home, if I call I’ll just be yelling in pain… Then she’ll have to get ready and the kids will wake up. I’ll just text. While I try…
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Six Kids and No Microwave
My wife and I have NEVER owned a microwave. The two most common questions in asked are : How do you eat? For time immemorial people survived without microwaves. I’m sure we eat more quality food making most things from scratch with our stove and oven. How do you reheat leftovers? It’s possible. But with 8 of us, there’s rarely leftovers.
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Laundry is Crazy: Daily Laundry Packs
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Or: I Have No Socks! My school aged daughter normally gets ready quickly : in school clothes, shoes on, backpack carried and ready to go.Her three older brothers are not in her league. Even with a school uniform (khakis or jeans with a red or black polo), getting dressed is a massive task. One brother wanders around the entire house, from room to room, picking up and putting down clothes at random. He says he only has 2 pairs of pants. Another brother fights getting out of bed until its about time to get into the car. Then once out…
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Parenting Advice: 3 Cautions and 3 Questions
Christensen, a new father and good friend of mine posted about Parenting Advice from Strangers. Strangers can say the strangest (and most offensive… and most condescending…. an most plain ol’ incorrect) things. I assume they’re well meaning, and I hope sometimes people have walked away thinking, “I can’t believe I just said that to a stranger!” Living in Korea, Christensen has a window into the myths and tales that can become assumed wisdom of good parenting, both there and from his origin culture in America: One difficult part of living overseas is that you quickly find out that there are…
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Aiming for Discipline Instead of Punishment | Edutopia
Discipline can only be done when both the educator and the student are calm and self-regulated. If they aren’t, behavioral difficulties will escalate. https://www.edutopia.org/article/aiming-discipline-instead-punishment
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[Link] Interrogative Suggestibility in People with FASD
https://online.csp.edu/blog/forensic-scholars-today/interrogative-suggestibility-in-people-with-fetal-alcohol-spectrum-disorder Failing to account for the unique needs of individuals with FASD in the criminal justice system may result in injustice not only to the individual but also to the criminal justice system and society as a whole.
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WALSH: The Four Terrible Things That Are Destroying Boys In Our Culture | Daily Wire
https://www.dailywire.com/news/29311/walsh-boys-matt-walsh?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_content=062316-news&utm_campaign=dwbrand
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[Link] Reading is fundamental — to the family’s happiness (CNN)
From David Allen over at CNN The value of reading to our kids — for them and us — is reinforced by the growing body of research on the topic. Just last week, a meta-analysis of 19 studies published in the journal Pediatrics found that reading aloud was significantly beneficial to children and their parents. In most of the studies — which involved more than 3,000 families — the parents were assessed as well as their kids, and reading aloud appeared to strengthen parents’ feelings of competence, improve the quality of their relationships with their children and even reduce parental…
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New Study Finds Fetal Alcohol Disorders Affect Children As Commonly As Autism
https://jezebel.com/new-study-finds-fetal-alcohol-disorders-affect-children-1822775865
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[link] Blame the Parent – ADOPTING FAITH: A Father’s Unconditional Love
When a child is struggling, one technique is quick. It’s easy. It cost no money. Yet it skirts any sense of personal responsibility – while undermining any spirit of cooperation. In other words, just blame the Parent. “ Read more at the link below : https://adoptingfaithafathersunconditionallove.org/2017/12/18/blame-the-parent/
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[link] Why It’s a Mistake to Prioritize Behavior Goals Over Social-Emotional Development
On executive functioning : Too often, adults react to problematic behaviors—whether in the form of language, physical actions, or emotional outbursts—by issuing consequences for this “choice.” But that approach assumes the child can choose to behave otherwise, that she has the capacity for “executive function.” Read more…
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[Edutopia] Quick Exercises to Combat Stress
The context of this article is the school classroom, but we may be trying these at home. There’s some great ideas here that make sense every what we’ve learned about brain development and trauma. Adversity and trauma reside in our biology, not our psychology and cognition, so we educators need to prime students’ brains for learning. This calls for a deeper understanding of how our brains develop and how they respond to adversity and trauma, and how building relationships and providing strategies that promote emotional regulation can positively affect students’ emotional, physiological, and cognitive health. An example : Bilateral scribbles: Have…
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[From Canada] What’s All the Fuss about Complex Trauma?
Is difficult to find helpful professionals who are “trauma informed.” This core idea, that a child’s brain and nervous system (and thus all development) is profoundly affected by trauma, is a game-changer. Read more…
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[link] What Kids with Trauma Need in School
I read this today and thought it was spot on. … You may also not understand why my child is absent so often. You may think I just need to do something a little more forceful to get him out of bed and on the bus. You may think that he is just being lazy or defiant and needs me to be firm, set stronger limits, or implement some consequences for his inability to be normal and just come to school. You think this will solve the problem. Just punish him, and he will learn to behave. Sometimes I privately laugh at…
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Link: Please don’t say “all kids do that” to adoptive and foster families…
I saw this being shared online and resisted reading it for a while. There’s so much information being written from so many different, conflicting, perspectives. This is from a site called Church4EveryChild, a blog I’m not familiar with, so don’t read this as an endorsement… unless you find that everything there is amazing. I’m so glad I read it today. I get the temptation to say “all kids do that.” Truly, I do. But when foster or adoptive parents like me hear that, it feels dismissive to the real grief, pain, and trauma our kids have experienced and how that…
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The Power of Yes
I’ve done several mindfulness exercises with our oldest son in pursuit of self awareness and emotional regulation.He’s got a background of early childhood trauma, and often finds regulating himself to be very difficult. They’ve been so beneficial, he’s even asked to do them on occasion One Saturday when he was 8 I discussed with him doing an experiment from Parenting from the Inside Out by Dan Siegel. First we sat and closed our eyes and breathed slowly and discussed how our bodies felt. Then I asked him to keep paying attention to how his body felt while I said a…
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It is Enough!
We’ve kicked our family prayer life up a notch this church year. Since Advent, we’ve been engaging more with the Book of Common Prayer. Tonight January 2’s Old Testament Reading from the Book of Common Prayer is from 1 Kings 19:1-8. Elijah just confronted evil king Ahab,had a dramatic and daring day-long confrontation with hundreds of false prophets of idols, and saw God send fire from heaven for the win. Then God answered his repeated prayers and send rain to end the drought. But that was last chapter. Now, instead of a revival; instead of commendation, he gets guarantees of…
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Something Smells Terrible
If this chapter of our lives had a title, it would be: Something Smells Terrible. I mentioned this to my wife who added a subtitle: And Why is This Wet? I’m a dad of 5 kids – the oldest is 8, the youngest will be born later this spring. I’m an adoptive dad. I’m a biological dad. I’m a dad of a multiracial family. I’m a dad of a kid who continues to experience the consequences of early childhood trauma. I’m a dad who doesn’t know what he’s doing. We dads need to be able to talk about this. There’s…
