Posts for category ‘Relationships’

My son Max and I had just spent a wonderful day in Maine. We headed home at 6:30 p.m. We were tired and I was hungry. Max had had a hot dog and ice cream with the boys he had been playing with.

It was a beautiful evening and there were not too many cars on the highway.

Once, we had to swerve passed the rubber from a semi truck tire that was lying on the road. Max wanted to know why it was there and I told him the truck had probably gotten a flat and the rubber just blew off. We continued to discuss it a little more as we drove.

We stopped to pay the toll in New Hampshire and continued on our way down Route 95. But almost immediately after the toll booth the car started to vibrate. I didn’t like this; I had borrowed the car for the day since mine was in the shop. I now figured our first stop would be at the mechanic’s to find out what the problem was.

Max later told me that what happened next sounded like someone was shooting at us. The right front tire blew in a cloud of smoke. I had to use every ounce of strength to keep from losing control of the car. I was slowly able to guide the car into the breakdown lane on the right hand side. As we came to a stop I looked into the rear view mirror and saw a lot of the tire in pieces flying in between the cars coming down the road.

We got out of the car to inspect the damages. As I expected, the tire was blown out. But what surprised both of us was that part of the bumper had been ripped off as well. We were looking at a hole directly into the engine.

I didn’t waste any time calling AAA to get a tow truck. As I talked to the girl on the phone she sounded horrified at what had happened especially knowing that my 9 year old son had been in the back seat. She promised to get a truck out as quickly as possible.

A few minutes later a state trooper pulled over to see if we were okay. After I informed him that a tow truck was on the way he left after promising he would check back to make sure we were able to get away.

To stay out of danger Max and I moved over to a grassy bank that ran along the highway. We sat down, Max with his legs crossed and feet on his thighs and I with mine stretched out. We waited with his head on my arm and we watched the traffic flying by. Yes, once we were stopped the number of cars seemed to get a lot heavier.

And now we waited. It wasn’t so bad. It was a beautiful evening and the sun was still shining. There was a country smell in the air and it was so relaxing sitting on the grass. Eventually however the spell was broken when the truck arrived.

The driver pulled over in front of us and we went to meet him. He looked over the damages and then asked if we had a spare. I didn’t know since we had borrowed the car that morning. We pulled open the trunk and checked. Low and behold, underneath a lot of junk was one of those new tiny “donut” tires. He told me he could change the tire or tow the car.

I was still shaken from the blow out and there was no way I wanted to drive the car again that night with Max in the car so I requested that he tow it. My son was excited; this meant that he would be sitting in the cab. Once the car was loaded up in we got.

Max was in heaven. Here we were driving down the road in a truck! And if he looked behind us he could see the car sitting on the flat bed. For 45 minutes we laughed and joked with the driver before being dropped off at my mechanics’. This certainly wasn’t the way I had planned on getting the car in but it least it was there.

Max has been calling our road trip an unexpected adventure. Yes, the “gunshots” frightened him but he was comforted knowing that Dad, the tow truck driver, and AAA were keeping him safe.

And, despite what could have happened, this was a great day. Max and I just did some father and son stuff. We ended up being away from home for almost 12 hours. Not once did either one of us have to worry about ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, Asperger’s Syndrome, ODD, or even the sensory issues.

This was our day. The car problems didn’t ruin it. Nothing did. Give me more days like this!

The young woman turned to me and said “Isn’t it nice that kids can meet other kids at a park and know within 5 minutes whether they get along. And then they can play all day together and at the end of the day leave and never see each other again…and not worry about it.”

I agreed with her but inwardly I was amazed; my son never meets other kids and plays like this. He will either just play with me or he’ll drag me by the hand to a group of kids and beg me to talk to them to see if they can play together. Today was different.

We are in the middle of vacation week. Max and I had decided to spend the day at one of our favorite spots. It is a fort dating from World War II in Kittery Maine. Called Fort Foster it consists of several old buildings, a playground, hiking trails, beach, and plenty of barbeque pits.

We followed our standard procedure. The two of us drove up to Maine and got off at Exit 2. At the Kittery rotary is a great hot dog place. We always stop for an early lunch. From there we drive up to the fort. During the summer we can park on the grounds but until then we have to leave the car at the gate and then walk a quarter of a mile.

Generally he gets hyper focused on one spot. For example, he might want to just collect shells on the shore for hours. Or he may concentrate on exploring the buildings. We have done a lot of hiking there. And sometimes he will just play in the playground.

Today, even though it was a cold April morning he already had his bathing suit on. Our first stop was the beach. He threw off his sandals and ran into the water. Next thing I knew, he was dancing on top of the waves it was so icy. He decided that it was a playground day.

When he got there he noticed 3 boys his age playing on the merry-go-round. One boy was doing the spinning while the other two sat on it and held on. Max asked me if he could join them. I shrugged my shoulders and told him it was up to them. He ran and began to help them spin.

This led to nonstop fun for the day. I followed at a distance to make sure Max didn’t have one of his explosions. In the process I met the other boys’ Mom. When she made the comment about the kids and parks I agreed but not only was I amazed that he was playing with them I was a little jealous.

This has always been our trip. We would run through the water, hike the trails, climb the buildings. Don’t get me wrong, I know that he must grow up and learn to make friends and I am glad this is working out for him. But I am still missing “our trip”.

But to get back to Max. He played with the boys until about 4 pm when we all decided to move on to Dairy Queen for hot dogs and ice cream. We then finished off the day at a school playground before heading home. He hasn’t mentioned the boys at all since. It has been a week since we were there.

And this wasn’t a fluke. The next afternoon Max and I spent 4 hours at a skateboard park where he met another skater. This also is new. He may ask older boys for skating advice but he never talks to kids his age. The two spent the whole time together; even moving on to the playground next door when they got bored. When the day was over they said good bye and moved on. I’m not sure if Max even knows his friend’s name.

That was Wednesday. Thursday we went to the skateboard park again where Max met another boy. Within minutes he decided he wasn’t interested and proceeded to play by himself.

The mom in Maine was right. Not only had Max been able to “size up” other boys he was interested in playing with but he has been able to move on without wondering whether he would ever see these kids again.

However, late Friday evening he was over his grandparents’ house when he met their friend’s grandson. Max became obsessed with playing with him. He had already had two meltdowns Saturday morning when he found the other boy wasn’t available to get together with him at different times. And he was very hyper and had to be spoken to more than once when he did finally get to play with him.

So even though he is expanding his horizons I still have to keep watch to make sure that something doesn’t happen to ruin the day. I initially wrote this post on Saturday; he was scheduled to sleep over his new friend’s house that night. I waiting with bated breath to see how it turned out.

I can see that as he learns to make new temporary and permanent friends there are going to be set backs. As a parent I am going to have to learn to go with the flow and help him adjust.

I went to see my therapist this morning.  First thing he said was, “what do you mean you have a problem with communication?”  Not communication in general; conversation with my wife.  I do much better with my son who is 8.

For example, Tuesday this week was horrendous.  I went swimming with Max and his buddy; after that we went to dinner.  I’ve mentioned in previous posts how both of these boys are opposites.  In this case, Max and I were finished dinner in a half an hour. His buddy, on the other hand, took over an hour to eat the same amount; but was then ready for dessert.  Max doesn’t do well in situations that take so much time like this.  He started to escalate.

When the other boy went to get his dessert I leaned over to him and said, “I find it much nicer when it is just the two of us coming to dinner.”

“Me too!!” he responded.

It still took another 20 minutes to get out of there and get his friend home.  Unfortunately Max had escalated too far by then.  When we got home his mom was out at a class.  It should have been a relaxing evening before bed, watching a little television but he was bouncing off the walls, ignoring direction, and getting into things.  He had also shut off his listening skills.

I was built up too and I finally exploded.  I yelled at him, sending him into the living room onto the couch.  I followed him and spoke to him about the situation.  He said he understood but he continued.  I screamed again.  This time he ran to his bedroom and jumped into bed.  He was going to sleep; he didn’t want to be read to tonight. He just wanted to be alone.

I went downstairs to cool off.  As I thought about what happened I realized that everything that had gone on that day had escalated me, not just Max.  I went upstairs to apologize.  I told him I wasn’t angry with him; just frustrated about everything that day.  He said it was okay but he still wanted to go to sleep.  I then left him alone and went downstairs again.

My therapist smiled.  He told me I had resolved the situation very well with Max.  But that isn’t the problem.  There were a lot of other issues that came up for me about this but right now I wanted to talk about communication.  As I said to him, if Max and I have an issue we are able to sit down almost immediately afterwards and sort it out.

The problem comes in if I have an argument with my wife.  I am not able to break away, calm down, and think about the situation.  As a result I cannot go back to her later, like I do with Max, and make amends.  If we try to discuss what happened we both escalate again.  Our standard practice is to ignore the situation and let it go away.  I would love to do it the way Max and I do: get it resolved as quickly as possible.

Why can’t I do the same thing with my wife?  If you had asked me this question several years ago my answer would be, “I don’t know how, it’s her fault!”  But really, I do know that I am at least 50 percent at fault here.  I just don’t want to deal with all the stuff she is going to throw at me before it is over.

I have finally realized that because it hasn’t gotten resolved my wife has been storing it in the back of her mind.  And considering how quick to anger I am I must do the same thing.

The simplistic answer is just to sit down, talk about it, and get over it.  This has never worked for us.  One doctor told us to “just stop it”.  How?

I have no answers to this question.  I am going to continue working on this until I do.  If you have some answers I would love to hear them.

I read a wonderful post on respect over the weekend. How do we treat our children? Yes, I know we are the parents; we “know” what’s best for them and they must listen to us. Okay, maybe we do but how do we get it across to them?

Do we treat them with respect both at home and in public as we try to discipline them? Or do we yell and scream at them, humiliate them, maybe even swat their butts…especially when people are around watching us. Too many parents feel those eyes as their child is misbehaving and consciously or subconsciously feel the need to get the upper hand quickly; perhaps to show that they are “good” parents.

As a result our children can end up feeling like a nobody. They can not only lose respect for themselves but also for their parents. Have you noticed how they can stop listening to us? Sometimes it is almost like we aren’t in the room even though we are standing over them.

“How crude can we be at times in our conduct with our children. We’ll scold them in the middle of everyone in the party. We’ll drag them in the mall. Worse, we’ll nonchalantly criticize them in a group using words like ‘fussy’, ‘irritable’, and ‘stubborn’ in their presence.”

I don’t know how you were raised but can you remember back what it was like as a young child looking up at your parents towering over you? And being angry with you? Perhaps yelling at you? And what about those other parents watching everything that is happening? How did it make you feel?

Respect has been in my mind a lot lately. I’ve been wondering if we are treating our son well. Max is 8 years old; he has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, adhd, odd, pdd/nos, and ocd. Both in public and private he can become very explosive if things aren’t going his way. Our rule is that if this happens publically we cannot go back to that location for awhile. But we tend to do more than that, especially if we are exhausted by all of the daily drama.

Just before I read the post above Max and I had gone to the movies. We saw the “Night At The Museum” sequel. He had already seen it once and couldn’t wait to go again. After I bought the tickets he suddenly realized he had wanted to see the new movie “Up in Disney Digital 3D“. He had a meltdown. My response was to tell him if he didn’t want to see the museum movie he could go sit in the corner and wait until I was done watching it. And I said this in front of a lot of other people.

He did go to the movie and he did enjoy it but it set the tone for the rest of the day. Everything he did was wrong…mostly by his standards not ours. If he spilled something he would get upset with himself. If we tried to comfort him he would turn his anger on us.

Most people treat others respectfully. Even if you are angry with a friend or coworker would you scream at them? Or would you find a better way to get your message across so there won’t be a lot of upset? But as mentioned in the article we don’t treat our children the same way as we do other people. Not only that we expect them to be “adult” about it, that is, “take it like a man”. We also expect them to learn from us. And they do; they learn to treat their children the same way. In some cases their spirits may even get broken.

My eyes were really opened after reading this article. I love my son and I don’t want him feeling any worse about himself. He already feels badly considering the way his disabilities make him feel.

I hope other people can recognize a little of themselves too and perhaps make some changes in how they react to their kids.

I’m ticked off right now!  I had planned on a different post for today but one event has pushed that off until next week.

I stopped at my Mother’s house this morning only to find her crying.  Apparently one of my siblings got it into their head to tell her all the bad things she had done to raise us.  Now they were terribly screwed up because of her!

Let’s stop here for a moment.  Think about your parents.  Were they good parents?  Were they perfect?  I bet each one of you can point out one or two flaws they might have.  Would you turn on them because of these issues?

Is my mom perfect?  Not by a long shot.  Has she done some unforgivable things?  Well, there were a couple of things that it took a few years for me to get over.  But here’s the thing, my siblings and I are between 44 and 55 years old.  We are adults.  If something she did made us turn out badly, guess what, we have the power to fix it ourselves.  Sitting her down and yelling at her for what she did is not going to change who we are!

I said that there were things that she had done to me that I found unforgivable.  After reading tons of self help books and being angry inside for what she had done I had a breakthrough.  Basically what it come down to is this: We have a choice!  We can decide whether we want our keep parents or do it alone or even find someone else to parent us.

But you’ll say they birthed me or they adopted me.  That’s right but you can still walk away from them if you want.  You have the power to choose!  Not only that, you have the power to change yourself if you don’t want to be the person they made you.  Cut the belly aching!

My mother is in her 80s.  She has always believed she was a good mom and my dad worked hard at being a good dad and good provider.  He worked 3 and 4 jobs while we were growing and was home for us as often as he could.  My mom stayed home to raise their 5 children and 2 that belonged to relatives.  When the oldest went off to college she went back to work to help support us.

They weren’t screamers.  They didn’t beat us.  They taught us right from wrong and how to survive in the world.  My mom is a grandparent and a great grandparent.  All the kids turned out great.  What more could my parents have done?  Sure they made mistakes, who doesn’t?  Sure we got hurt sometimes by something they did but we should be able to get passed it.

I choose my parents.  They are not yours, they are no one else’s.  I won’t trade them.  I struggle every day to be as good a parent as they were.

Before I posted this a friend of mine read it.  She shook her head as she told me some people go into therapy for years as a result of what their parents did to them.  Sometimes the only way they can get passed it is to confront them.  We agreed, however, that there is a right way and a wrong way to do it.  Will beating them down really make you feel better?

I haven’t forgotten that some people were abused or even sexually abused by their parents.  I once took part in a self help weekend with a lot of men.  I went in angry about what my parents had done to me.  Frankly, as I listened to the things some of them had gone through growing up it made me realize that my parents were not as bad as I thought.  When I left that weekend I visited my dad’s gravesite for the first time since he died nine years before.  I sat down with my mom and told her that whatever the biological connection I had with her, I was choosing her to be my mother.

Where are you at with your parents?

Some of my siblings don’t seem to be at the same place I am right now.  Somehow I have to show them that hurting mom is not going to improve their lives!  I think they need to make amends with her and themselves and do it soon, she is in her 80s after all.

I’m continuing my journey on completing the 40 tasks to fireproof my family. Am I close to finishing? Hardly, while some of the tasks are easy, I have found others to be very difficult. In my post on Fireproofing the Family I explained why I wanted to take this path and in the second installment I talked about how hard the first task had been for me.

Why did I want to do this in the first place? Parents who have at least one child with a disability have a divorce rate that is much higher than the national average. My son has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, adhd, ocd, odd, pdd/nos, and sensory issues. It has put a large strain on our marriage and I can see where it may go.

Starting this project came about from seeing the movie Fireproof. A man on the brink of divorce is given the book “The Love Dare“. He uses it in an attempt to save his marriage. The book’s purpose is to improve marital relationships and it has tasks to be completed for each of 40 days. In the movie it took the main character more than that to complete them all.

Even though the first task was difficult, the one I am working on now has stopped me cold. Different people may find other ones that they struggle with. This one has gotten my stomach in knots. I am supposed to sit down with my wife and ask her a question:

“What 3 things bother you the most about me?”

And then I am supposed to shut up and listen. It is all about her now. If I have comments I must keep them to myself. If I get angry, or frustrated, or have any other emotion I am supposed to stifle them. My only goal is to listen to her carefully and really hear what she is saying.

But this really bothers me. There are several reasons, among them:

1. This involves communicating. I don’t like to “communicate”. It’s true that I will just be listening and not saying anything. But listening is communication too. And starting the conversation is also communication. It is true that being in any marriage involves conversation; being in a marriage that contains disabilities requires much more talking and listening. I didn’t get married until I was in my midforties. I had lived all of my adult life alone until then. I didn’t mind talking to people but I wasn’t much for talking with people. And yes, it is something I have to learn if I want my marriage to succeed. This task is a step forward in that direction but it still bothers me.

2. I already know a lot of things she may tell me which I’m not sure how to address. For one thing I am currently unemployed as are a lot of people right now. In the beginning I looked hard for another job but then I started a couple of things on my own and I’m pushing to get those off the ground. In the interim I’ve picked up odd jobs here and there to bring some money in. I know she is bothered that there isn’t a steady income. There are things that also need to be done around the house that I haven’t been addressing because I’ve been concentrating on my businesses. Our relationship may be another one she would mention. And of course there is the unknown, that is, what else could be bothering her about me.

3. I don’t know if I can sit still and keep my mouth shut. I know I’ll want to address and maybe even contradict everything she says. That certainly would be detrimental to our conversation.

So I’ve been holding off on this task. I know I have to get through it not only for our sakes but our son’s as well. It is a very tense atmosphere around here sometimes and he reacts to it. The meltdowns are worse, the disobedience becomes rampant, and in these situations he wants new parents!

I finally opened up to my therapist about this issue. After I explained both the book and movie to him he saw a major benefit in me doing the steps. I talked about my problems with this task and he said something that I found very interesting.

“You can learn a lot from things that you don’t want to hear.”

I may hear the things I expect her to say but I’ll get her point of view and her feelings. I may hear something totally new, something that may shock me, or something that will give me one of those “aha” moments. But in any case I can learn from the things she tells me.

What happens when she finishes talking? Again, I don’t make excuses or contradict her. My job now is to think about what she has said. If I have really listened to her, not just daydreamed while she was talking, I can put a plan together to resolve her issues to her satisfaction.

What would be the benefits to doing this? Probably better communication and a better relationship. At the same time it will improve our relationship with our son. And if we can get this down, we can teach him how to communicate better himself without all of his explosions and destructive behavior.

The bottom line is am I going to do this task? Yes I am even though it still really bothers me but “I can learn a lot from things that I don’t want to hear”.

Since I wrote my post on “Fireproofing the Family” I hadn’t planned on writing an update for awhile. Things are always changing. The movie, Fireproof, that prompted the post is about a man who uses the book “The Love Dare” in an attempt to save his marriage. Its purpose is to improve marital relationships. My wife and I are parents of a special needs child. Since divorce rates for parents like us is much higher than the 50 percent average statistic my purpose is to strengthen not only our relationship with each other but also with our son. The book has tasks to be completed for each of 40 days. In the movie it took the main character more than 40 days to complete them all. It now appears that it is going to take me quite awhile too.

I started task 1 on Monday. This appeared to be a good one since the book suggested it was an easy one to start with but it has proved to be difficult for me. What is a big problem in arguments? Anger and the things said because of it. The first day is spent working on letting go of it.

Um, okay but I have always found it difficult to control my anger when I’ve been “done wrong”. I’ve been trying to figure out how to stop it but I was convinced that it was just an inherent part of my makeup. Let it go? It comes on so quickly that I don’t have a chance and then I want to wallow in my anger once it has me in its control. I’ve been looking for years for a way out. I’ve been to therapy, tried meditation, considered medication but nothing helped. I’ve searched for road maps in books and on the web to resolve it. Something like: do step 1, then move on to step 2, etc; but I haven’t found anything.

The book, however, showed me a different way of doing it. Look at it as a choice. I can choose to be angry or I can choose to be patient. It reminds me of a course I took at Landmark Education. It suggested that humans tend to react to situations or choices that we have.

For example, you have a vacation coming up and you are trying to decide whether to spend it camping in the mountains or tanning at the beach. You don’t like the beach so you have to go to the mountains. Was this a choice? Not really, you are reacting to the fact that you don’t want to go to the beach.

Now look at it a different way. List the positives and negatives of going to the mountains. Do the same for beach. Based on your results what do you choose? In this case you are taking control of the choices and you are making a decision, you aren’t reacting. “I choose the mountains because this is what I want to do”

I remember going through all this “choice” stuff during the course but I didn’t think I could use it for my anger. Choose to be patient? I at least figured I would give it a try. So far it seems to have worked pretty well. “I choose to be patient” has become my mantra this week. I have been saying it over and over again when I get into a situation with my wife or son and have had mixed results so far.

I think it has confused my wife a bit. I haven’t told her I’m doing this. Like the main character in the movie I’m working on it on my own. In several instances she has reacted as if I am angry even when I am smiling and talking calmly. When I have not responded to her anger she has left the room and settled down. Only once have I almost lost it but I started repeating my mantra again and the anger eventually went away. It took awhile but as long as I concentrated on the mantra and not the things she was doing that were making me angry it didn’t escalate in my mind.

I’ve seen better results with my 8 year old son, he has had fewer explosions with me this week since I haven’t responded in anger to the things he has been doing. And last night he snuggled up against me and fell asleep watching television. This doesn’t happen too often.

I said that I think this program is going to take longer than 40 days. Today is the fifth day I have been working on task 1. I’m going to be ready to go to task 2 tomorrow. This doesn’t mean that task 1 is complete. I will probably be practicing it during the whole project if not for the rest of my life.

But you know what? I have no complaints.

39 book days left to go!!

My wife and I watched the movie Fireproof the other night.  I expected it to be a movie about firefighters and their stories.  I have liked firehouses and fire engines ever since my Grandfather took me for a ride on the hook and ladder truck.  In those days it had a seat and steering wheel on the back and I got to steer whenever we went around corners.  I was 3 at the time.  Today my son and I spend alot of time exploring firehouses and it helps that my cousin is a fireman.

But back to the movie.  Yes, it did have a few stories about firemen battling blazes but it actually centered on the fire captain and his marital problems.  In fact his wife served him with divorce papers towards the beginning and the rest of the movie showed the captain going through his personal fire to save his marriage.

His dad gave him a book called “The Love Dare“.  It contains 40 days of projects designed to improve a marriage, even ones that are at the breaking point.  The captain had to commit to following the program if he hoped to succeed.

While watching the movie I saw a lot of the captain in me.  Like me he was frustrated with the way he saw his wife treating him.  Like me he was getting angry more and more and was actually thinking about ways out of the marriage.  Fed up with the situation his wife wanted out too.

My wife may feel that way too.

The movie scared me.

We all know the statistics.  In the United States 1 out of 2 marriages end in divorce.  The number one problem is money.

But what most people don’t know is that the divorce rate among parents of special needs children is much higher.  In this case the problems center on the care and raising of these kids.

So here I was identifying with this captain who doesn’t have children and I have one with issues such as bipolar disorder, pdd/nos, and odd.  It has been a struggle raising him and my wife and I are always short tempered.

The day after I saw the movie I searched the internet and discovered that “The Love Dare“  actually exists.  My son and I went to Borders but I couldn’t find the book.  The girl at the information booth went to several different locations and was also unable to find it.  She informed me it is a very popular book and has been flying off the shelves.  She suggested I come back in a few days. Not what I wanted to hear, I wanted to start immediately!

As I was walking out of the store she caught up to me.  She had found a copy in the return section.  I bought it and after reading the introduction I knew it is going to be hard and is going to take a lot of commitment.

I would like to suggested to other parents of special needs kids who may be feeling the strain of raising them (or not) to consider getting this book or finding some other way to strengthen their marriage (even if it is a good one).

But I called this blog “Fireproofing the Family” not “Fireproofing Your Marriage”.  Think about it, kids get escalated when their parents are escalated and that is when all the junk will hit the fan.  These kids don’t need more issues than they have already.  Parental problems don’t help them learn how to deal with their own problems because the parents aren’t dealing with them.

Strengthening the marriage is the first step in helping these kids strengthen themselves!

As I work on the book I will write blogs about my discoveries.  Please don’t hesitate in commenting about my progress.