The power of words…
I copied this directly from my friend Cindy Bodie’s blog (without her permission, sorry Cindy): Stress, neglect and abuse, for example, is thought to trigger a cascade of signals that cause chemical markers to attach to a gene. The DNA remains unchanged, but almost like a light switch, the markers can turn a gene on or off. In particular, scientists have studied what happens when markers attach to a gene that regulates stress hormones.
- I’m going to start using those words regularly.
Appreciating the season…
I can’t recall a late spring that I’ve appreciated more than this. I don’t know why – I thought when we moved from the acreage I would really miss the property. And, yes, I miss it, but I’m greatly enjoying the oasis that is my urban yard. It was designed with trees and shrubs placed so that I can’t see the houses on either side, and I can barely see the park behind us. I can only see my space on this earth and it’s lovely. I guess not having all that property to take care of gives me more time to enjoy what I do have.
I was also worried that the not so littles would turn into couch potatoes without the acreage but that certainly isn’t happening. They still play soccer and badminton and other things continuously outside. They also help in the yard, # 11 has proven himself to be a master at lawn mowing. He’s got an incredible work ethic.
I find I’m going through a weird grandma stage right now. I’m fortunate enough to see 4 on a regular basis – one stays with us almost every weekend. I desperately miss two little grandbabies who live in another town and I only get to see a few short visits a year. And I’m feeling distressed now about how I’m going to get to know the one due in December who lives way, way to far away for more than once a year visits. I’m starting to nag the soon to be daddy about moving back here – I’m sure he just loves to hear me whine away
about all my needs about his child – I can hear how self absorbed I sound, but I can’t help myself. The pleading and begging and crying (okay, a slight exaggeration, but only slight) for them to give up their lives and friends and her family just to move back to make me happy must be driving him nuts and making him very glad that he’s nowhere near me.
There is so much about having kids that I never thought of – like the fact that they wouldn’t all live within a block or two of me all their lives. There have been times when I would have been happy to see them move to the moon, but those are phases that pass.
There’s also the ease of grandparenting – all you have to do is love the children, the parents have to do the worrying about whether they steal or lie or rage or brush their teeth or their grades or their peers…….it’s so nice to have kids in my life who see me as the “good guy” instead of the meanie – and who are happy to be with me.
This whole process of missing my kids and grandkids, and realizing that the day will come when the last of them are grown and gone their own way (I’ll be about 90 by then), well, it makes me feel the same way as spring has been making me feel lately – greatly appreciative of each moment – even the screaming yelling moments because when they are done, they are truly done.
Okay, have your best day possible. And remember, you’re entitled to a better day!
A familiar path… a different walk..
As I said yesterday, nothing lasts, not the good and not the bad. And today, it’s been not so great as one of my not so littles has been in full scale obnoxious mode. She’s gone into early puberty and that has combined with all the other issues to de-stabilize and create a less than pleasant to live with version of herself.
So, this morning we had a conflict that resulted in me realizing that we are now headed down a path that I have trod with many before her. In fact, I know every wagon rut in this road even though it’s new to her. One of the things that I’ve realized from traversing this path so many times is that I’m no longer invested in what’s ahead or at the end, I’m now mainly invested in how she and I do this journey together. I sort of feel that how she turns out is up to her and God, and my part is only to hold her hand while I walk at her side
.
Of course, I still get the same old reactions with myself. I’m a person who triggers easily, so I have to sit back and recall that I’m the adult here, and that means that I have to be responsible for who I am and how I behave. I sort of hate that, but it’s reality so best that I behave accordingly. I also have to recall that I am the parent, which means that at some point, I agreed to act in her best interests at all times.
Truthfully, I have to admit, that I would prefer to just be awful and if she wreaks havoc on my life, I would just as soon wreak some back. Still, I know that punishment won’t change a thing, it will only make it all worse. I have to remember to problem solve, to negotiate, to compromise, to refrain, to reframe, to ignore, and to choose.
Okay, here I go again down this familiar path, with great hope that this time I can walk it in a more effective, more loving, more open, and less controlling manner. Wish me luck!
Have your best day possible.
I don’t go away much anymore – although that will once again change as I begin the Hazardous Parenting healing workshops. However, this last weekend I was doing some training in EFT Tapping and was gone for 4 days. The setting was lovely – Whidbey Island near Seattle - very bucolic (I mean really, how often do you ever get a chance to use that word?) and quiet and quaint. I live in a lovely ocean side town and this was much like home, but somehow I don’t get or make enough time to enjoy the ocean and the greenery here, it seems I have to go away to place that looks like home to say “…ahhh..”
Anyhoo, it was also nice to come back to relative calm. No one punished me for leaving, no one was arrested while I was gone (although one was kicked out of a Girl Guides weekend camp, still, it’s not an arrest so I will be grateful). There were some touch and go moments for my long suffering childcare person, but she handled it all beautifully as she always does.
One of my not so littles kneed herself on the tramp while I was unpacking and kicked out her already broken front tooth so there was that drama, but I truly think it was just an accident, not an attempt to punish either herself or me.
My point, and yes, I”m getting to it, while it was nice to be away, it was nice to come home, too. What a wonderful feeling!
I’ve also got some news that I’m going to be a grandmother again. The son of the newest grandbaby- to- be has been contacting me for parenting advice – this from a son who wouldn’t believe me if I told him the time of day a few short years ago. He’s also talking a lot about what he has to do to be a good daddy for his baby and what his baby will need from him – that’s right – he understands that he’s the one who has to give and to change, not the baby - so he’s already in the right frame of mind. He’s a hard worker too, and although I haven’t met the mommy to be, we’ve had some emails that lead me to believe she is a very capable young woman. I am so full of gratitude for where our family is right now. And, sad to say, fearful, because as I said in one of my books, “nothing last forever, not the good and not the bad.” Well, I’ll just stay in the moment and take the good for now.
Hey, have your best day possible.
if you only knew…
I hear it all the time, and I bet you do too – “how do you manage?”. 
I know that when people say that they mean well, or at least nearly well, but I do get tired of it. Do they really think I have an answer? Am I really going to say “Well, I manage by starting my day at 4:30…” and then go on from there? Nope, we all know it’s rhetorical and they’d die of boredom if I really started saying how I manage to do what I do.
But here’s the thing —– I often think not so nice thoughts when people ask that of me. Here’s a short list of what I think in response (not in any order) – “Actually, you only know a snippet of what I have to manage, here’s the rest……..”; or, “how on earth do you manage to do so little?”; or, “what do you do with your time that it takes all you’ve got to raise two neurotypical children?”
Oh, I wish I had a more generous nature, or that I was kinder, but really, after all these years I get tired of that question and I resent it being asked when truly, people don’t know all that I have to deal with. We all have only tiny little glimpses into each other’s days and each other’s lives. Sort of a tip of the iceberg understanding of what each to deal with. 
I’m not going to tell them about my mom with Alzheimer’s, I”m not going to tell them that one of my son’s has a severe depression and an adult child has some severe health problems and another has a struggling relationship and another has…..whatever and I have carpenter ants and two of dogs have started fighting daily and I need a new roof and, and, and, and, ……. .
I don’t know what goes on their lives either. I genuinely can’t figure out what people with fewer children and less work do with their time but I guess I should be more respectful and realize that just as they don’t know about my reality, I don’t know about theirs either. They may have more and far worse to deal with and just because I don’t know about it, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t assume there is lots more and I just need to get more respectful.
Well, now I’ve thought that through, I guess I have to change my attitude. Just like I’m always wishing my kids would do eh.
Have your best day possible.
healing workshop info
A lot of people have been asking for more direct info on how to register so here it is, I hope. I’ve copied and pasted the event brite page and linked it as well. Don’t forget about the Brad Yates tele call on May 3. Sorry for the big picture of me – it just attached with the rest of the info and I can’t seem to remove it without removing the whole thing. The link is http://itsyourturn.eventbrite.com/ Featured
Life Span Counselling
Events
How to Fix Yourself When You Can’t Fix Your Kid Workshop 6/1/12 9AM – 4PM
Victoria | View map
Who’s this workshop for? This workshop is for parents who have raised, or are raising, kids with severe behaviours or mental health problems and who want to learn how to let go of anger and sorrow and re-create their own lives.
Time to heal…
There are some advantages to being an older(er) professional. One of them is that I’ve been around long enough to see one trend after another come and go.
As as an adoption specialized therapist, the one trend I have’t seen is the one in which the well being and the mental health of the adoptive parents takes center stage. Well friends, that is about to change.
For years I’ve been told that “you chose this life”, or that if I just got my child to one exciting new therapy method (or if I got licensed to practice it myself), or if we attended the new star of the day’s workshop, then all would be well.
Okay – we all know now that for some of us things are not going to change fast enough, if at all. Truly, there are some children for whom any therapy will work, and there are some children for whom no therapy will work. Either way, there are parents who are living a day to day life of stress and chaos and it’s time the attention shifted to them. Maybe your child will get better, maybe she won’t, but in the meantime, what about you? I don’t think it’s enough to simply survive – if we only get one life – then it should be a life worth living, not a life that we have to stumble through, never knowing what kind of pain each day will bring.
I know our kids eventually grow up – but really, does anyone actually think the pain and stress ends then? Get real!
I will get a lot of criticism from my position on this. I know that other professionals, other parents, and the kids as well, don’t want to talk about what happens to the parents who raise severely traumatized children. Oh well, I’m going to do it anyway – popularity was never my goal.
So, one such parent (check out her April 19th post), an enterprising type who refuses to be a victim of a child’s trauma, has contacted EFT expert Brad Yates 
who in turn, has agreed to do a teleseminar for traumatized parents. The date is May 3rd and the details are in this link. I have great respect for Mr. Yates (I use the same method – EFT tapping, but that’s not the only reason I respect him) and I would encourage anyone to participate in this event.
I”m also doing the same type of thing now- workshops for traumatized parents, not just adoptive parents, but any parents who have raised children with serious mental illness or extremely challenging behaviors. I feel called to do these, and I won’t do any other kind of training anymore – it’s take care of parents time for me now.
My first is in Victoria BC on June 1st. You can email hazardousparenting2012@gmail.com to register or wait till I get the event brite thingy up on my blog. The fee is $100 plus tax and it will be at the Harbour Towers hotel, only a block for the city’s beautiful inner harbor. We’ll be bringing the workshop to the US in the fall. If you think there would be sufficient interest in your community, let me know, and we’ll see about planning one there. For sure places are Seattle and Atlanta, the rest have yet to be scheduled.
I feel so strongly about this. We’ve all been trying so hard to care for our kids and do our part to make this a better world, but many of us end up bruised and battered and almost destroyed emotionally, and it’s time we started healing ourselves. 
If you would like to attend the June 1st healing workshop – hit the eventbrite button on the sidebar and you can register there.
Hey, have your best day possible.
My life seems to roll along – up and down, in and out, over and under , zigging and zagging- much like Dora and her adventures with Backpack – except she always winds up where she intended – and I never do. 
It seems like my life paths, which always involve my children, take me to places that are totally unexpected. That’s okay though, I guess I have to accept that I like the challenges – not the Hazardous Parenting type of challenges, but the variety of things that come my way.
I have come to believe that adoptive parents are a bunch of secret risk takers, anyway. I mean really, we get approved in home studies because we come across as stable and capable and generally fairly ‘normal”. But then we open our lives to chaos and trauma and drama and public scrutiny and never ending stress. For some of us, it works out okay – for others, not so much, for still others, a bit of both.
Do you ever wonder what you might have done if you hadn’t taken this path? I do. My other life choice was to become a war journalist. Sometimes I think that would have the safer choice. I also thought of being a missionary in Africa – again, not so easy a life but a sign that I was never going to choose the easy road.
I bet you’re like that too. I bet that when you were a little girl or boy, most of your future plans had something adventurous in them
. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe you thought of things that had stability and order and repetition.
Oh well, that’s just where my thoughts took me today.
By the way, I’m doing a How To Fix Yourself When You Can’t Fix Your Kid workshop in Victoria BC on June 1st at the Harbour Towers Hotel. If you’re at all interested in attending, or finding out more, you can email hazardousparenting2012@gmail. com or call 1- 250-616-7991.
Have your best day possible.
Here I am…
I appreciate so many emails asking why I”m not posting. Well, no reason – just no time. I’m sure you all can relate to that problem.
A lot of my time now is going onto my new adventures with Hazardous Parenting Healing Workshops. We’re expanding those and looking at doing them across the US beginning this fall, and that takes a lot of time to organize.
My *not so littles* are also eating up my time. They are so busy, so active. I thought when hockey season ended I would have a breather, but then soccer season started so….
This past Easter weekend was very good. I no longer have the huge get togethers with 40 to 50 people as this house just can’t seat that many for a meal so I’m keeping the holiday dinners to only the family – that can still be 20 or more, but that’s pretty easy for me to manage. And, again, the not so littles help out so much that there just isn’t the work for me that there used to be. One of my granddaughters also helped with some of the food prep and that was fun.
I had planned to do some heavy duty gardening yesterday but was felled by a cold. I lay on my bed (first time in 30 years that I went to bed during the day) and listened to the kids playing outside. When we moved from the acreage last fall I was very worried they wouldn’t get the outdoor time that they had grown up with, but they stayed outside from 9:30 till 6:30 yesterday - they even had lunch on the sundeck – playing on the tramp and playing volleyball and chasing each other with squirt guns. Most of the kids in the neighborhood were there as well so the volume was high and the energy level was wonderful.
I know I”m in the last of the easy years - or at least my version of easy – there are two teens now in the not so little sib group – there will be one a year till the last hits her teens in 3 years. They seem to have the oddest ideas of life – my soon to be 12 year old was stunned to find out she had to do what I tell her when she’s in her teens. Despite having lived with us most of her life, she had never noticed that all of her older sibs had rules and expectations – I guess it’s because she never saw them being followed!! Then, my soon to be 11 year old told me she couldn’t wait till high school so she could slap people who made her mad. I mentioned that would be considered assault, and again, she was stunned – she thought once kids go to high school you can just hit whomever you want. Yup, that’s been some terrific role modelling from a couple of the older kids!
Okay – have your best day possible.
I had a moment…
Yes indeed, I had one of those moments that we all dream about. The littles aren’t so little anymore, and 3 of them have their babysitting certificates, so I realized it was about time for me to actually try to go out without paying a caregiver professional wages as I’ve been doing for the last 20 years. This was an especially good choice to venture out because my almost 10 year old was away at a friend’s house for a sleepover.
I decided to go to a local pub – for those of you who live in other areas – pubs where I live are about good food and fast service, they aren’t bars and they generally attract a neighbourhood crowd. So, I had a delightful meal, no calls from home, and I returned about 1.5 hours later. When I walked in the door (my heart beating rapidly and afraid to actually see anything at all) I saw that my 14 year old was watching a totally appropriate video in the family room, my 13 year old was sitting at the kitchen table doing his homework, my 12 year old was cleaning the kitchen, and my 11 year old was practicing her guitar.
As I said, I’ve waited 20 years for a moment like this …and I enjoyed the heck out of the 30 seconds I got of it – because, of course, once I was home they didn’t have to self regulate, and, they were pretty worn out from 1.5 hours of self regulation anyway, so then it all broke loose and they argued and yelled at each other and bickered and blamed and so forth. Still, I had that moment, and it will more than get me through the week!
Have your best day possible.