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Pediatric mental illness is screaming and crying; raging and breaking things; cursing and swearing; ER trips and suicide attempts… …and it is midnight visits from a 9-year-old who still knows how to fit into the curve I make in the bed just the way he did when he was a toddler. “Mommy, I’m so . . . → Read More: Pediatric Mental Illness? It’s Like This… It is a delusion to believe that you must be well to treat a person who is sick or suffering. –Dr. James Orbinski When my son Carter (whose diagnoses are of the emotional/cognitive/behavioral/social sort) was two years old and had been screaming and wakeful every day for approximately 98.6% of that two years, I embarked on . . . → Read More: A Cosmic Mistake  I put a condiment cup full of pills in front of Carter this morning, as I do every morning. As he does most mornings, Carter shouted at me, “I don’t have any water! You know I only take my pills with water!” And as always, I pointed to the water glass sitting next to . . . → Read More: Toothpick Wielding Demons  Here’s the thing: in the beginning, everyone is lost and alone. No matter how a person goes from being parent to parent of a child with disabilities, in the beginning the world turns itself ass-end-up. Whenever the news comes or the realization dawns—during pregnancy, immediately or shortly after birth or adoption, or later—there is . . . → Read More: In the Beginning There are a few things that virtually all parents who have a child (or children) with disabilities have in common, and one of them is this: we spend time in waiting rooms. A great deal of time. Ugly waiting rooms full of uncomfortable chairs covered with institutional mustard-colored vinyl. Beautiful waiting rooms, softly lit . . . → Read More: The Vast Potential of Every Waiting Room Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Some stories are like laundry. The longer you put off telling them, the bigger they grow. This story, the one about my earliest adulthood and my relationship with Jacob and Abbie’s dad, has reached the ceiling, toppled over, and begun to spread across the hall and into the . . . → Read More: The Transcendent Familiar 3.1: I Won’t Fade Away My eldest son, Jacob, played his first solo show last Friday. My husband and I took the rest of the kids to hear him and we had a nice time, or as nice a time as any 40-something adults can have in a large crowd of teenagers. There is deep joy in watching our . . . → Read More: Proud/Sad I planned to post The Transcendent Familiar Part 4 on Sunday. Really, I did. Why isn’t it up yet? Two reasons. First, I was struggling with how to tell the next part of the story because I didn’t understand it until yesterday. WHY did I date, marry, and have two children with a man . . . → Read More: A Flip of the Mood Switch Oh, hey, guess what? Varda let me visit her at her house today. Come join us for this week’s installment of her weekly series, Special Needs Sibling Saturdays, where we’re discussing…you guessed it: the siblings of kids with special needs. When I drop Carter, age 8, off at school, we enjoy a ritual of words and kisses. “Work hard!” I say, and he gives me a hug and one kiss. “Learn lots!” I say, and he gives me a hug and two kisses. “Have fun!” I say, and he gives me a hug and . . . → Read More: Surrender All  |
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