Everything in Ryan’s room is disorganized. Months-old school worksheets mix with notes from some hockey box score in piles across the desk and bookshelves. Every so often we make him go through the exercise of “keep it/trash it” to prevent the piles from growing too large or for some key homework assignment from going missing. […]
Read more "Work Product"I have a few half-finished posts that I’m working on, but nothing that was exactly flowing off my keyboard this morning. Then my iPod provided some inspiration. I was listening to Pandora when it served up my all-time favorite song, Bad, by U2. I’m not huge on interpreting the meanings of all the music I […]
Read more "If I Could, I Would, Let It Go"Dear Anxiety, It’s me — Neil. You may remember me from such conversations as “€<%# off,” “leave my kid the %^?< alone,” and “are you $@&?ing kidding me?” I’m sorry about those. Can we start over? We can? Good. Go $@¥% yourself. Oops, I guess I did it again. We were enjoying enduring another typically […]
Read more "Dear Anxiety"My son has issues with frustration. When a situation is beyond his control, he is sometimes unable to process the outcome that is not to his liking. The result, more often than not, is a meltdown. These moments are frustrating for all of us. Yesterday afternoon, I found myself on one of end of a […]
Read more "When You Can’t Fix It"Wednesday night, Ryan had a meltdown. Like most of them, the cause was something inconsequential — except to him. But there was something different in this meltdown, both in the way we reacted to it and in how he ultimately found a way to calm himself. We were watching television as a family in the […]
Read more "Finding the Good in a Meltdown"
Pucks and Puzzle Pieces 