Tag: parenting

Repeating History

In case you haven’t heard, we have a big election coming up in the United States. To be fair, many countries are seeing their politics follow the same loud, divisive, truth-adjacent bullying trend that was made popular by the success of one of our “candidates” in 2016.

It’s even worse this year.

It’s also terrifying to think this is the world my son will grow up in.

Candidates are being elected and staying in power by peddling fear and hate for the “other.” The easy group to target is immigrants. Falsehoods about their choice of protein and taking over small towns across the country continued to spread long after they were disproved. But it’s a slippery slope to go from immigrants to those who support immigrants to any group that is different or believes differently. History has not been kind to people like my son, for example. People with disabilities were lumped into the “other,” the inferior, and the unworthy of life.

Too many people believe and repeat the blatant lies coming from these candidates, either because they align with the way they want the world to be or because we have lost the ability to think critically, question what we are told, and discover the truth for ourselves. Even when all the data and science support a particular fact, if it goes against what they want to be true, they’ll lean into their doubt. They’ll claim the other side and media are biased for saying the same thing (e.g., facts), and they’ll listen to the pundits in their echo chamber because surfacing “alternative facts” makes them “unbiased.” They think their doubt makes them clever. They’re mistaking cleverness for ignorance.

They think their doubt makes them clever.
They’re mistaking cleverness for ignorance.

Single-issue voters are willing to look the other way and ignore the unpalatable aspects of a candidate as long as the candidate holds (or says they hold) the same position on a specific issue. “Sure, this candidate is a felon, racist, sexist, fascist dictator, but they’re pro-life, which is the only thing that matters.” Worse, they’ll combine their logic with the doubters above and try to justify their position by convincing themselves that the other labels are misunderstood, out of context, or “just politics.” They can’t believe someone who agrees with their position on a key issue could be a monster, even if the candidate only claims to agree to get enough votes to push a much more dystopian, self-serving agenda.

This includes people who believe that our political system is broken and that bringing in an outsider is the way to fix it. If one candidate represents the establishment, regardless of their policies or fitness to lead, they won’t get the vote. Even in a crisis where the country would benefit from someone who understands the system, and even if the non-establishment candidate is unqualified, a criminal, incompetent, and dangerous, they believe that voting for and electing an outsider will make the country better.

When I was in history class, we read about World War II and asked how a country could elect a party and a person who would ultimately commit such atrocities on the world. I couldn’t understand how millions of people could minimize or normalize the extreme rhetoric, the hate, and the violence. It seemed so unfathomable that anyone could look the other way or fully support their country’s direction.

But here we are, nearly a century later, repeating history. People are spreading the idea that our country has lost its way and that we need to go back, that outsiders are a threat to our national identity, and that the other side is what will cause our country’s collapse. Fear, hate, us versus them—it’s the same playbook. And the party and its people are going along with it because it’s more important to win and be in control than to be good and do good. When you’re willing to win at any cost, humanity loses.

It makes me wonder if, 100 years from now, students will sit in a history class wondering how we let this happen. They’ll have the benefits of time and hindsight to see the similarities between parties trying to make their countries great again at any cost because they were too focused on looking back at what they thought their country was instead of looking forward to what it could become.

October 29, 2024
Breaking the Cycle

When our son was seven years old, after he had mostly stabilized and we had left the hospital, we began teaching him how to ride a bike. Or, rather, we began to reteach him how to ride a bike. The motor skills he developed riding a balance bike when he was three and then a bicycle with training wheels were wiped away and replaced by imbalance and ataxia during the early years of his seizures.

We brought his bike to a city park and found a quiet corner near the grass. I got him on his bicycle and ran behind him, pushing from behind as he found his footing on the pedals towards my wife further down the path. After he found the motion, I would slow down, and he would continue under his own power until he reached his mom, who would help slow him down and repeat the sequence to send him back to me.

I learned to run a bike the same way. My mother and grandfather pushed me on the street in front of my grandparent’s house for hours until I could ride alone. My mother probably learned the same way from my grandfather, who probably learned the same way from his parents. In many ways, parenting is a hand-me-down exercise where we learn how to be a parent from our parents.

But what happens when the approach or behavior that was done to you is not what you want for your child? Whether it’s because new information invalidated an outdated approach or times have changed, the techniques may not apply today. Or, for many people, we’ve learned what was done to us is considered abuse and is not a legacy we want to pass down to our children.

In those situations, our references are tainted. What we know is unusable. The only option we have is to figure it out for ourselves.

Figuring it out is the scary part. I’m constantly afraid that I’m not doing the right thing as a parent and that I will end up doing it worse than my parents did.

But maybe the fear is a sign that we’re on the right path.

It shows that we’re not just blindly repeating the past but actively trying to do better. Learning to parent without a perfect roadmap is daunting, but we are making progress every time we break a harmful cycle or approach our children with more empathy and understanding than we were given.

We may not have all the answers, but we have the ability to grow, adapt, and create a new kind of legacy—one built on love, effort, and the determination to raise our children with more care than we received.

And in the end, that might be what matters.

October 22, 2024
What Matters is the Repair

Hello, Hindsight, my old friend.
You’ve come to talk to me again.
Because a mistake I made today
Left its mark and pushed someone away
And the shame that was planted in my brain
Still remains
With the sounds of silence

On more than one occasion, my response to an action that my son did was out of proportion to the action itself. Usually, it’s because he repeated the same action, and there is an escalation of consequences. But sometimes, it’s driven by my trauma, insecurities, and fear about my son’s future.

A few weeks ago, there was the Chocolate Bar Incident that I wrote about in a previous post that involved him lying about sneaking candy. The candy wasn’t the issue; the lying was, and it triggered a knee-jerk reaction to take away his electronics “for I don’t know how long.”

I was so frustrated with his lying, and I didn’t understand why he was doing it. I had a hard childhood, and I feared that he was lying the same way that I lied because he felt unsafe like I did. I was also afraid that it was because of his impulse control and executive functioning issues. I needed to shock him with extreme consequences to change his behavior and stop him from lying. Otherwise, how could he go out into the world?

Like I said…out of proportion.

After I had time to cool off, I felt terrible. Yes, he struggles with impulse control and executive functioning, but so do a lot of people. Also, teenagers lie. It’s normal and doesn’t necessarily reflect on his future possibilities.

I thought about how I responded and how I should have responded and felt like an asshole. Feelings of guilt and shame washed over me, and I feared that my response would be what stuck with him about this situation and that it would affect or define our relationship.

I went in to apologize. I shared why I had my reaction, explaining how I was afraid he was having the same childhood and experiences that I did. That fear and projection about his future triggered my response because I wanted to change his path so that he didn’t have to endure the same challenges that I did. But I understand that wasn’t what was happening; it just looked the same. I told him I was sorry, and he accepted my apology like the sweet, kind, empathetic boy that he is.

That, I am learning, is what will define our relationship. What matters isn’t the mistake. What matters is the repair.

We all make mistakes. As much as we wish we could be perfect in our relationships, we’re human, which means we’ll stumble, say the wrong thing, or make a bad choice occasionally. Whether it’s a moment of lost patience, a misunderstanding, or a decision we wish we could take back, mistakes are inevitable. But here’s the thing: what matters most isn’t the mistake itself—it’s what happens afterward. The repair is what truly defines the strength and depth of a relationship.

When we mess up, there’s often a sense of failure or shame that comes along with it. We worry we’ve damaged trust or created distance in the relationship. But the reality is that the most meaningful connections aren’t the ones that never face difficulty. They’re the ones that grow and evolve through those moments. It’s the repair process—the act of acknowledging the hurt, making amends, and working to rebuild trust—that ultimately makes relationships stronger.

At the end of the day, it’s not the mistakes that define us—it’s what we do after them. We all face moments where we wish we had done things differently, but those moments can lead to greater understanding and intimacy if we approach them with humility and care.

Our children don’t need perfect parents; they need parents who are real, who are trying, and who are willing to own their mistakes. Children learn more from our willingness to grow than from our attempts to be flawless. When they see us apologize, try again, and love them through the messy parts of life, they learn resilience, empathy, and the value of authentic connection.

October 15, 2024
Pants on Fire

“I am sure I put the chocolate bars on the shelf,” I insisted.

My wife and I stood in front of our pantry where, only hours before, I had placed two chocolate bars that I bought from the grocery store earlier that day.

“Maybe you just thought you did,” my wife quipped.

I called out to our son who was in the kitchen.

“Hey, pal, did you take the candy from this shelf?” I asked.

“No,” he replied, a little too quickly.

As we scanned the pantry, my son suddenly said, “I’ll be right back,” and headed into the basement.

I had seen that move before because I’ve done that move before. I headed down to the basement and saw him standing at the side of the couch.

As I stepped towards the couch, I offered him another opportunity to answer my question.

I could see the anguish on his face as he thought about his answer. “Yes, ” he said. “I did take them.”

“Where are they?” I asked.

“Behind the middle cushion,” he answered with his head down.

I moved the cushion to find a stash of wrappers. Not only were the remains of the two candy bars in question there, but wrappers from other candy I had bought weeks ago that I had convinced myself that I hadn’t purchased when I couldn’t find them.

On the positive side, I’m thankfully not losing my mind. On the negative side, we’re noticing a pattern of lying with our son, and my wife and I are both responding based on our childhood experiences with lying. Those experiences come from two different extremes.

My wife came from a world of never lying, so our son’s lying, especially after she defended him, felt like an ultimate betrayal. She feared that the lying was a sign of his condition and that he wouldn’t be able to survive in the real world.

I came from an unsafe childhood and lying was a survival tool. I would lie to avoid dangerous consequences and to hide my overwhelming feelings of guilt and anxiety. While I logically understand that my son has a very different childhood than I did, I feared that my son was feeling unsafe in some way and that he would find himself on a similar path as me, wearing guilt and shame and anxiety like a heavy coat.

For both of us, our trauma led to fear for our son’s future, which caused our extreme responses to the situation. That obscured the reality that, during adolescence, teens go through a range of developmental changes, including a growing desire for independence, privacy, and autonomy. These factors can sometimes lead to lying or bending the truth.

In other words, lying is normal and doesn’t mean he can never enter the real world or that he’s carrying the anxiety and shame the same way I did. It means he is developing and trying to figure out his world.

Of course, there should be consequences, but they should be based on the incident and not distorted by our history or fear of the future. He doesn’t have those fears, but using language that makes him feel unfit for independence or acceptance will give them to him. Instead, consequences, yes, but open communication, clear expectations, and being a trusted source of guidance are how we help him navigate this stage of his development and come through it much better than we did.

October 8, 2024
Perceptions of Time

A nurse led us into the recovery room, where the first thing that struck me was the stark change in my son’s appearance. His familiar Bryce Harper haircut had been replaced by a closely shaved head, but it wasn’t just the missing hair. As we rounded the bed, my wife and I froze. There, across our son’s skull, were the sutured incisions, and beneath the skin, the faint, raised outlines of the leads that connected deep into his brain, extending down to the generator implanted in his chest.

We both gasped, instinctively reaching out, trying to bridge the chasm between shock and reassurance.

I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe nothing could have prepared me for the reality of seeing those physical marks—a visceral reminder of just how serious his condition is. It was more than jarring. It was a harsh collision with the truth that no matter how much we try to normalize life, this—his reality—is never far away.

Seeing him reminded me of the last time he was in a recovery room after having his VNS implanted. The visible signs of that surgery were less intense. However, it was still our little boy sleeping on a bed in front of us who had, only hours earlier, been sedated and opened up on an operating room table, then carefully stitched back up after inserting a few extra parts.

The DBS and the VNS were only two of the many procedures that our son has had at this hospital, the same hospital that saved his life and the same hospital that continues to look for ways to improve it. He’s had almost every type of scan, given gallons of blood, taken piles of pills, received tons of therapy, and otherwise been poked, prodded, and tested in every way possible.

After he woke up, he was moved to the neurology floor, which had been our second home for a long time. Once we settled into his room, a wave of comfort washed away the shock and anxiety of the surgery. With that comfort also came the familiar change in the perception of time.

Time on this floor doesn’t pass the way it does in the outside world. Inside these walls, it feels suspended, each moment stretching out between visits from the doctors, nurses, and support staff. We’d sit on the blue couch that doubled as a bed, gazing through the windows at the city rushing by below. We’d try to fill our time with distractions—phones, TV, bingo—but no amount of distraction makes the intervals between visits any shorter.

Minutes stretched to hours stretched to days as they monitored our son, and we waited our turn for the final scans he needed before we could go home. To our real home, not this second home. To the real world, not this isolated, supportive, comfortable world. To the place where we would now wait, again, for our son to recover and to see if the procedure and the device make a difference.

Looking at the past, at everything that happened to get us to this point, time passed in a flash. In the hospital, in our bubble of comfort and support, time stood still. Looking at the future, waiting for another answer, time stretches out for eternity.

October 1, 2024