Tag: life

And Then There Were Six

I always imagined that I would have a bigger family. When my friends started having children, I saw the joy each baby brought into the world and wanted to fill our house with a family of our own.

The birth of our son was one of the greatest moments in my life, even though it was also one of the scariest. A doctor’s visit turned into an emergency C-section later that day, and my first moment as a father was standing in the operating room in scrubs, clutching my camera, watching as they lifted my son from behind a privacy screen.

That was during a SARS pandemic in the middle of a Colorado blizzard.

Even with the dramatic start to our family, I was ready to do it again once we found our footing as new parents. But then came postpartum depression. Then came the stress and pressure placed on a new couple that barely had time being married before they became parents. Then came the seizures. Then, it was taken out of our hands with a partial hysterectomy to remove a mass.

Everything about our plans for the future changed. Those were hard times, especially for my wife, both physically and emotionally. The idea of a big family was gone, but not having another child allowed us to focus on saving the one we did have. It also allowed us to work on healing ourselves and finding our way back to each other. The struggle and the journey led us to the amazing family we do have.

We added our son’s service dog to our family a few years ago and another poodle to the unit last year. These additions did wonders for our son’s expressions of empathy and compassion as he learned to connect with other living creatures. Although not quite a sibling, our son still formed a close relationship with them that continues to deepen.

This summer, we welcomed a new, if only temporary, member into our home. One of my wife’s former students, who has her own challenges, came to stay with us. While the change of environment, I think, has been beneficial for her, her presence has also had a noticeable difference for our son and our entire family.

Even before her arrival, my son was thinking of ways to make her feel at home. He helped get the house ready, created the “Welcome” sign we held when we picked her up from the airport and gave her space and attention as she adjusted to her new environment.

She is a few years older than our son, but she understands him. They’ve found ways to interact, whether it’s playing Minecraft or chess together or her watching him play basketball or hockey in the driveway. She’s patient as he tries to explain how to shoot the ball or swing a hockey stick, giving him someone to interact with rather than being isolated on his electronics.

Her presence was a catalyst for changes we struggled to make as a family stuck in our routines. We’re eating more meals together and having conversations at the dinner table. We’re experiencing the excitement of giving her a few firsts, or firsts in a while, going to baseball games and concerts, and including her in our family rituals.

With the challenges our son and our family faced years ago, we couldn’t have done this then, or it would have been a much different experience. There is a reason this is happening now, both for us and for her. I’m grateful for the changes I see in our son and our expanded family.

For however long it lasts.

Executive (Dys)function

We’re probably those parents who have relied too much on technology while raising our son. Between the hospital stays, appointments, and sick days, we have spent a lot of time waiting. There have also been days where our son was too mentally or physically tired to do anything else, so we’d hand him one of our phones. Eventually, my wife and I also got bored sitting around with nothing to do. We also struggled with the reality and stresses of our complicated life and equally needed a way to escape, so we bought our son an iPad so we could disappear into our phones.

In the beginning, leaning on technology served a purpose. It was a portable distraction that helped pass the time. By the time our son had fewer appointments and more good days, the habit of reaching for a device was automatic.

The pandemic didn’t help. We played a lot of UNO and other board games, drawing, and finding ways to interact, but it felt like a lot of hours to fill, so we fell into our default of electronics.

I’d often look up from my phone and see both my son and my wife firmly fixated on their devices. We were alone, together.

As he got older, we would occasionally review his device usage to ensure he wasn’t doing anything inappropriate, but we didn’t use the parental controls or other settings to limit his access or screen time. Any time we would try, largely driven a realization that he was addicted to his devices, he would get sick or we’d find a reason why he needed his device, so we would remove the limits.

When our son started puberty, we began to notice our son being more secretive about his device usage. When we investigated, we found that he was looking at inappropriate sites. As we looked into it, between his ADHD and issues with executive functioning, we also saw that he was having a hard time regulating and controlling his impulses.

On more than one occasion, after we turned on parental controls, we would see a receipt for purchases he had made after disabling the “Ask to Purchase” feature. He would also bypass the content restrictions to download inappropriate apps and visit adult websites.

Each time it happened, we’d sit down with him and have a conversation about rules and consequences. But, in many ways, it was like trying to rationalize with an addict. Worse, his struggles with attention and processing and our flexibility on the enforcement of the controls only set him up to fail. A few weeks ago, I saw another receipt for $200 worth of purchases in my inbox, including charges for apps that he knew were off-limits.

This time, the conversation was different. We could see the struggle he was having to resist the urge to bypass the parental controls. It’s like when enough time passes and any previous consequences from the last incident has faded, his brain can’t make the right choice. The league of screen addiction, ADHD, and executive processing and decision making issues are simply too much to overcome.

There are a number of studies detailing the impact of electronics on children, specifically as it relates to executive functioning and decision making, including “Less screen time, and more physical activity associated with executive function“, “Mobile Technology Use and Its Association With Executive Functioning in Healthy Young Adults” and “Addictive use of digital devices in young children: Associations with delay discounting, self-control and academic performance.” Many of the studies are on healthy children without the additional complexities that our son has, which can only exacerbate the impact on his developing brain.

We tried to explain the situation to him in a way without shame by taking our responsibility for not providing more structure on his screen usage. We also let him know that these struggles are normal for children his age and that it’s our job as his parents to help him navigate this time in his life.

Executive functioning, impulse control, and decision making are like muscles. A muscle doesn’t grow bigger unless you make it work hard, and you make this muscle work hard by having consequences, both good and bad. Historically, our negative consequences haven’t been very heavy, and that muscle hasn’t been strained. This time, we swapped in a heavy weight by taking away his devices completely for a few days. It was interesting to watch his attitude and awareness during that time, as both seemed to improve.

When we gave him back his devices, we include time limits to help wean him off his dependence on them for entertainment and to pass time. Spending more time in the real world is where he can flex those muscles to help him continue to learn how to successfully live in the real world.

Why I Don’t Drink Alcohol

A while ago, I wrote about getting therapy and how it allowed me to understand and change my patterns and behaviors so that I could have a healthier life and be more present with myself and my family. That awareness sparked another change that I made in my life a few years ago.

I stopped drinking alcohol.

For many people, alcohol is a “slippery slope” topic. I loved a glass of wine with dinner. The aroma, the taste, and how it is paired with a meal unlocked a different aspect of food. But as our life got harder, I found that I was turning to that glass of wine more as a way to dull the pain and fear and to escape. It fed into my tendencies to go inside myself or avoid dealing with issues. It also made it more difficult to continue and sustain the progress that I was making with my mental health. Many people can do both, but it was clear that I couldn’t. So I stopped.

It wasn’t easy at first. It meant I wasn’t trying to escape and forcing myself to be more present in our situation. However, the work that I was doing with my therapist and with my family made me stronger and more capable of doing that. Even though it was hard, the more present I was, the more progress I saw in rebuilding those relationships.

Eventually, the desire to escape with a drink went away, but there were still temptations outside the house that I needed to contend with, so I didn’t want to fall back into my old pattern. The culture of my industry is filled with happy hours and entertainment. When everyone else ordered an alcoholic beverage, and I ordered a club soda, there were questioning looks. But eventually, those looks disappeared, and it stopped being a thing. Mostly, it’s only weird if you make it weird. I didn’t have to go into the details with anyone on why. It just became a fact that I didn’t drink, and I avoided situations where I knew the drinking would make me uncomfortable.

That was more than four years ago. Of course, no one change fixes everything. My son still has seizures. Our life is still stressful. But the point of getting help and not drinking isn’t to force me to only live in the stress and to be fully present all the time. It’s to be capable of being more deeply present when I need to be, to break the habit of running away when things get too big, and to replace the unhealthy behaviors with healthier ways to wind down and disconnect from the stress, both with my family and friends and also by myself.

I am sometimes asked if this choice is permanent or if I’ll have a drink someday. I can honestly say that I don’t know. I am human, and life is unpredictable. But I know that, if and when I do, it will be on my terms.