Blog Archives

The Open Door Policy

4/30/2015

Children amaze me. I am always surprised about how much more there is to know about our children, and how often I am still challenged to have the right answer. I mean, by the time you get to your 5th kid, wouldn’t you think you’d have all the answers?

But what would you do if your child told you they were struggling with gender dysmorphia, when they look in the mirror they feel they should see the opposite gender looking back? As I read Linda Thompson’s blog this past weekend, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-thompson/bruce-jenner-linda-thompson_b_7080918.html, I was struck with the magnitude of Jenner’s journey and the complexities he and his loved ones faced and will continue to face, brave seems like such an understatement…no?

I’m not sure how my older children learned their sensitivity to and understanding about gender and sexuality differences, but they have, almost seamlessly. Jake, my youngest, has recently begun trying to understand gender identity following a trip to the ice cream store where he met a person who is transitioning. I am not ashamed to say that while I have taught them basic tolerance of all people they have taught me as much if not more. He came home with his babysitter, needless to say, rather inquisitive. I simply said that it was different than being gay, (he has known and loved many two Mom families), it was feeling you are not the gender you were assigned at birth and wanting to change that. (Okay, I also passed the buck and told him to ask his Dad…and rightly so, as the Doctor I sleep with specializes in women’s health, which, of course, provides him with the specialized parenting duties having to do with sexuality…phew… a good deal for me as I basically deal with everything else.) And just like that, he was done with his questions...at least momentarily. Later that weekend he was watching T.V. and asked me if I thought someone on the show was “transitioning”, I told him maybe, but maybe not…as I felt a stereotype might be developing in his 8 year old brain. He’s working his thoughts around some pretty complicated ideas and my job now is to take the mystery out of it, and help him understand that gender and sexuality are what they are for people, nothing more.

As he enters this new moment of understanding and inquiry about people, I find myself, more than anything else, incredibly happy about his willingness to talk to me, and this circles me back to an idea, or image really, which has played a vital role in my parenting since the moment it was introduced...

“Leave the door open, even if you can only leave it open a crack…just do it.”

This idea was shared with me by Eileen Ross, a clinician supporting LGBT and questioning youth on the San Francisco Peninsula. To me, Ross was the only one willing to talk straight to the parents gathered that 2010 weekday evening at the old High School auditorium in Palo Alto during the first cluster of teenage suicides. She was the only one I listened to that night… the rest were well meaning, experienced, and concerned, but with “ leave the door open”, Ross was the only one who had my full attention. She knew her stuff. I immediately imagined youth in this world behind a shut door with no one to talk to, and shuddered at the thought. Ross didn’t just spout statistics, pat herself on the back for the number of kids she supported, or make blanket judgments about “the problem” of teen age depression, she said it like it was. And although she didn’t provide an instruction manual, (wouldn’t that have been sweet?) she told us loud and clear...

“Leave the door open. Whatever you do, whatever the situation, if your child knows the door is open, even just that little crack… they’ll come to you…or at least know they could come to you.”

What further inspired me about what she said was that she didn’t say ‘hearing things you don’t want to hear is easy’, instead she said ‘no one is totally comfortable with everything.’ Even more specifically, she said no one is totally comfortable with transgender issues. For those of us who pride ourselves on being progressive thinking parents, I hope this is as much a relief to you as it is to me. I consider myself as cool as they come, and yet, I still have my stuck moments… I wish I didn’t, but I do, and I will… moments of ‘shit! I wasn’t ready for this yet!’

I want to say the right thing every time, I want my face and my words to always match up, but sometimes I am having a mini panic attack on the inside…’could you just momentarily hold that thought while I take a pill and pull myself together?’...deep breath and remember love conquers all, we have made it thus far… (and yes, I once did that...and it worked). It isn’t easy to predict our reactions (reactions are exactly that, unpredictable). Perhaps we can actually try to find comfort in this… our reactions can be short lived if we allow the reflection to unfold…our children can find comfort in this knowledge too, because once we can get over initial shock, we can move into acceptance and understanding and discussion.

“Leave the door open, even if you can only leave it open a crack…leave the door open.”

What I took away from this idea is that the mere idea of the door ajar is healing, just picture it in your mind, the imagery alone provides a crack of light. For a questioning child; a child questioning anything from gender identity or sexuality, to giving up on a long practiced sport or hobby, to taking off a year of college, to knowing they will fail their math exam tomorrow; that crack of light might be all a child needs to feel comforted, to feel that ‘deep in your soul’ knowledge that this too shall pass...the knowing that ‘I have someone open to talking when I am ready, whatever, whenever, if I really need it. I am not alone.’ Having that door ajar does not mean that we, as parents, won’t feel disappointment or have issues of misplaced shame or guilt to work through (which is, of course, our own burden to work on), but it does mean that we are there for the long haul… we are available to join our kids where they are, to support figuring out the hard stuff and to support their journey to their real selves, whatever that means for them.

I have had a few tricky parenting moments, but the trickiest moments by far are following through on my open door policy. I had to keep my shit together one night, when after multiple passed curfew phone calls, my daughter finally admitted there wasn’t a safe ride home. I was pissed to say the least… 2 hours of calls, late at night, being put off, coming soon… not my way of doing business with my kids. But I still picked her up, no questions asked, because that was our deal. I stuffed the dragon mom deep inside (for once) because her safety was really my priority in the end, wasn’t it?

I have also had to remind my adult kids, that while I might be a “pretty cool” Mom, I certainly am not a peer and do not want to hear about their escapades, and if I do get momentary TMI, my almost immediate cue to them is to cover my ears and say “lalalalalala”. Same rules as preschool, if you aren’t hurting yourself, someone else, or property… this is a need to know basis only, kiddos!

Why do my kids’ escapades sound so much more outrageous than my own? Is it my imagination? I promise that my children aren’t more wild than I was… and yet, some things I just don’t want to hear about if I don’t need to, right? Even though I know my kids use uber, walk or take private transportation if drinking, and even though they have steady heads on their shoulders (well, most of the time), the “what ifs” are crazy making. And when it just so happens that the “what ifs” become reality, we confuse our children’s story with our own… we wonder what we did wrong… we allow shame and blame to creep in and replace love and pride.

I know shame… shame has played a big role in my life, as has blame. I’m not sure one can raise children and not feel intense responsibility for who they become, and I long ago became friends with these deep seated core issues. I couldn’t stop the habit of blaming myself, try as I might… shoulda, coulda, woulda BS is second nature for me.

If only we could “un-friend” or “un-follow” shame and blame, like we can annoying posts, you might ask? Actually, I am not sure I would totally want to do away with these core issues, as they are a catalyst to my reflective parenting, and reflective parenting is what has made me a better parent. It was too much work to get entirely rid of shame and blame, so I have learned to sit with discomfort, learned to notice when it arises, and do my best to separate my issues from my kids issues. I let blame and shame join me on my big couch of life...

“No one is totally comfortable with everything.”

...and even in our uncomfortable and ‘stuck’ moments, I believe we can hold our issues in a different place and still move forward. I think we must learn to hold it and move forward if we are to truly leave the door open...

So, let’s leave the door open, cracked, unlocked, ajar… because if the door is open… there is always a crack of light. And when there is light at the end of the tunnel there is always at least one direction our children can go to get out of the dark.

To understand more about gender spectrum and our children, I recommend starting with this article.

http://www.tolerance.org/gender-spectrum

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Ice Cream and Mindset... Make the Shift

4/23/2015

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It is standardized testing week and Jake ate toast and ice cream for breakfast today. He’ll milk the week for all he can get, and most likely, I will let him. I have decided that standardized testing week will now be a fun week in our house.

I don’t opt my kids out of testing , never have and never will. Every State is different and every State is in a different place in terms of their movement towards more appropriate "smarter" assessment. And although I consider myself a progressive in the area of education, opting out has never seemed the most effective means of shifting educational policy… especially now, when there is finally movement towards a different paradigm. (Albeit a slow shift, it is a shift, nonetheless.) You read this right, I said a different paradigm is coming...a deeper, more ‘whole child’ way of learning. Like all paradigm shifts, this shift is awkward and somewhat uncomfortable. Parents, educators, and leaders don’t know where to hang their support. A part of this shift will require parents, teachers, districts, and eventually institutions of higher education, to view standardized testing as just one of many tools in getting to know our children. This shift also hopes to create more inclusive tests, allowing for children to show their knowledge in a multitude of ways. Part of my own paradigm shift through this process is realizing my antagonism has been misplaced, and that the testing itself, is not as much the issue as is the policy and behavior around testing. These policies and attitudes have helped create the monster achievement culture that is now so entrenched in our communities...and when we are stressed about standardized testing at all levels, what effect do our attitudes have on our students; our children?

I am not a standardized testing proponent by any means. If teachers spend their year teaching to the test they are bowing to pressure. Well meaning colleagues lose their way, forgetting to trust what they know about how children learn. I know this pressure well. As a preschool teacher in a high achievement community I had the pressure of Kindergarten readiness pushing my buttons every step of the way. Sometimes, despite my good intentions, I bowed to pressure; but more often than not, I stayed my course and proved to myself, parents, and colleagues that play based child directed learning prepared my students for kindergarten more fully than other schools of thought. (pun totally intended).

The upshot of testing is just like anything else we do in life...while some kids aren’t very good at it, some kids are really great at it. Some kids will show poorly on tests, and some kids find standardized tests to be an opportunity for them to show their skills. Year after year, the AP teachers at my kids’ high schools would spout off about… ‘if your kids get an A in this class, they’ll most likely get a 5 on the AP, a B they’ll get a 4’, and so it went...but not really, because my kid got a D+ in the class, and lo and behold, scored a 4 on the AP exam, because of course, every child is different. Every child learns differently, tests differently, participates differently, and achieves differently. Despite all the ‘anti this’ and ‘anti that’ campaigning out there, there is room for all of these different ways, and they can all help parents and teachers look more closely at who our children really are. With just a little bit of creativity and thought, we can transform assessment to include all type of intelligences. Testing and grades are such limited pieces of the pie and we can and need to demand more... but we need to do so in ways that make sense both in our schools and in our homes.

So last Friday, the dreaded email arrived, “Reminder: AZ merit testing next week”. Included was the schedule of testing and a plea to eat well, sleep well, and be on time (and no, we haven’t been on time… sigh). I immediately felt my ‘progressive educator Mom-pissiness’ take over my thinking...why stop there? How about we spend the week toileting and bathing extra well, too? (yes, while I never have my kids miss testing, and I don’t believe in throwing the baby out with the bath water, I am still irked about the amount of time and emphasis testing takes up).

...So, yes, ice cream and buttered toast is my answer to testing week this year.

As I mulled over the email a bit further, I noticed the teacher mentioned a few things that made me less and less perturbed as the weekend went on. She asked parents to remind their kids that testing is; hard work, another way to show what you know, and she asked us to remind our children about the strategies they have learned throughout the year. She did not say that it was going ‘to be easy’, not one mention of being ‘smart’, or of the idea that if they had gotten good grades they would do fine. Her use of the phrases ‘working hard’, ‘show what you know’, and ‘use strategies’ made me stop and ponder what these words really mean. As parents and teachers, there are so many ways we can approach all kinds of testing. There are ways we can either raise the stakes or alternatively reduce the stress; ways we can talk to our kids about the information that tests (and for that matter, grades) provide, because like it or not, (standardized or not), life is a series of tests, a series of successes and failures. No, not all tests are standardized of course, but tests all the same.

I am the first to admit I battle the achievement culture and have made mistakes talking in front of my children. Last year my daughter’s test score saw a rather a sharp decline, and unfortunately she heard me discuss it with her Dad. What she didn’t hear is that I later realized she was still being tested in a more traditional format called “AIMS testing”, while her curriculum had shifted to be entirely common core. These shifts make a big difference and I missed a major parenting moment not realizing she needed to be a part of this whole discussion. I had unintentionally, as well as unknowingly, set me daughter up for feeling apprehensive about testing. Stupid numeric scores had briefly derailed me. Since realizing there was angst around testing, (um yeah… when I told her not to worry, the tests don’t matter to me, and she threw it back in my face that they mattered last summer…deep breath). I have since regrouped with her to talk about how many factors can affect testing; our move to a different State, the fact her teachers don’t teach to the test, the change in curriculum that testing was still catching up to...just to name a few. This experience made me realize our kids need to be more regularly introduced to thinking about their own learning, the factors that affect how they learn, and for that matter, thinking about how they test too… nothing is the end all or be all in life, and most certainly not tests.

Most of you are probably somewhat familiar with the idea of Mindset courtesy of Carol Dweck at Stanford University. Of particular interest to me, is her growth mindset research;

In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort. They’re wrong.

In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. Virtually all great people had these qualities.

It is probably abundantly clear to you, I love to think about learning. From children and parents to teachers and leaders, reflecting on my own and others’ learning has been a mainstay in both my personal and professional life. Learning is, in fact, working hard no matter how someone does it; the biological processes and complexities of the brain alone prove it. Different learning styles make that even clearer, and depending on our learning styles and our own unique processing, we can teach our children to understand their own processes and develop their own strategies. Learning is in the struggle, the combination of challenge and repetition. Smart is a myth. Easy is a myth. Our kids need to know that. Teaching our kids about the different types of ‘smarts’ and talking about ‘gifts and abilities’ can provide a different attitude to fend off the achievement culture and reduce competition. It takes effort to learn. Emphasizing hard work is essential to helping children feel more confident in approaching more difficult problems… deep breath… challenge is good… and in order for our children to show what they know, they might just have to learn some new strategies.

With that in mind, may I innocently suggest, that as parents, we help change the paradigm. Instead of participating in the shrouded cloud of doom during testing week, whether that includes opting out or reluctantly opting in, lets create a new reality for our children, by emphasizing a new kind of mindset. Let’s view testing as another learning moment and for some of us that might mean making it a memorable type week… eat ice cream, skip baths, increase heavy work and physical play to promote focus, watch movies for down time, prolong night time cuddles… let your kids milk it. Let’s collectively view it as another tool for learning about how your child shows what they know… and maybe, just maybe, the stress of testing might just become another hump in our kids’ journey to adulthood.

...

You may also want to read;

http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/07/new-research-students-benefit-from-learning-that-intelligence-is-not-fixed/

http://edsource.org/2015/new-standards-and-tests-are-worth-the-effort/75380#.VPSfTMYfku0?utm_source=Erin%27s+email%2C+March+2%2C+2015&utm_campaign=Daily_1-26-15&utm_medium=email

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Taking a Closer Look; Magical Moments and Mindfulness

4/15/2015

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If you are a parenting junkie like me, perusing the ‘hip’ parenting sites, or are just ‘hip’ in general, you are probably inundated with the idea of emphasizing mindfulness for your children.

Yeah, yeah… mommy and daddy zen, deep breaths, downward dog that isn’t a pull toy as much as it is a ‘position’…it’s all just one more thing to incorporate into our our busy lives and our conscious parenting. After 6 months of blogging, I have become mindful of too many things I need to be mindful of… not to mention the ongoing blog popping out of my mouth. Sometimes it is intentional, (as my daughter said recently, “you just sounded like a Disney Channel Mom”), but more often unintentional, as I suddenly realize ‘that’s the lead paragraph I have been waiting for’ which kicks off the 3 hour blog writing session before the universe swallows the moment again.

This particular morning last week, -I kid you not- out of my mouth popped, “Hurry up Ayli, if you get out of the door quickly enough, you can stop to smell the roses on the way to the car”… (I know that the ‘hurry’ part was counter to the idea of mindfulness, but if you knew how slow our morning activation is, you’d understand).... anyhow, when we moved into our new (but kinda old) house 6 weeks ago, I pruned the old dead rose bush along with all the other clean up. I really didn’t think it was still alive as it was so brittle, but low and behold, a beautiful red rose bush has bloomed. The new blooms are the closest thing to long stem red roses I have ever seen growing on a garden rose bush, and they are, oh, so fragrant. So fragrant, in fact, that I stop to smell the roses at least once per day…so, Mom if you are listening…I am both figuratively and literally stopping to smell the roses these days. I am also listening to the sounds of the birds, and watching butterflies… no joke, sometimes to stay out of the athlete parent frenzy… I watch butterflies at softball games.

But there was more to this particular morning’s scene, -I still kid you not- Jake suddenly says “shhhhh, it is so beautiful, don’t scare them” as he shifts our focus up to the swallows building their mud nests in our front yard foyer. For one teensy, tiny moment of the busy morning rush, we all sat there staring up at them. When our moment of awe was up, my 13 yr old took out her iphone 6 and captured a photo of a swallow in mid flight, and yes, I also proudly told Jake to tell the attendance lady that the swallows building the nest made us late. (I haven’t had a better excuse for our daily tardies all year long). I also marked the date of April 4 in my calendar as perhaps the swallows return the same day each year like the swallows of Capistrano. And now, a week later… one swallow nest is complete and 3 more are on the way…

My husband laughs at me, I can find the smallest things in the sand at the beach, and I can identify types of birds, recognize crops, and randomly remember names of wildflowers out the window of the car on our long road trips. At my schools, I always encouraged casual treasure hunts, creating cubby collections with doodads, and when the world was seasonally not in the mood for natural goodies, I even spent curriculum funds on treasures to sprinkle here and there through the tanbark and sand box. Many a child had their regulatory need met on their self-directed treasure hunts, brown lunch bags from the art cupboard and their eyeballs were all that was needed for ‘separating from the fray.’

I rarely didn’t take the opportunity to “look” when a little hand tugged at my shirt and pulled me to see the garden spider web, sprouting bean plant, or gross rotting apple dropped from the tree and was now covered with ants… this was my favorite time with my preschoolers… our quiet moments of joint attention and thought. In fact, I will profess that these were my most powerful teaching moments, when I didn’t teach at all. These were the moments I built relationships with kiddos, the moments which made them listen to my voice and follow directions during the rest of the day… and this, I believe, was how I taught mindfulness. It wasn’t a book, or a circle time game (although these things can also support the development of mindfulness) and it definitely wasn’t flashcards, incessant questioning, or worksheets (those were forbidden at my schools). The first examples of mindfulness we show our children are the shared moments of sensory intake and observation… the moments when we rarely say it, but simultaneously think it… “that is soooo cool”. And those were the moments I knew who my preschoolers were on the inside… whether it was the sparkles, the plastic mini animals, the gold pirate bootie left over from St. Patrick’s Day hunts 6 months later, or the silly green lady bug who wasn’t red. Observation begets mindfulness, mindfulness grows our thoughtfulness and thinking, real thinking leads to discovery, and discovery leads to knowledge. It may sound revolutionary, but do you really know how something works if you haven’t seen it, heard it, or felt it? Isn’t that the real magic of mindfulness--- taking the time to really know something? To recalibrate?

I always thought it was just “one of my things”, this ‘random identification’ of the world around me… I am not a savant by any measure, I don’t memorize lists, and it isn’t because I went to an Ag school. Infact, I failed miserably at categorization and classification, (ask my physical anthro and Zoology professors if you don’t believe me). But when I want to, I can recognize dog and cat breeds, flowers and plants, types of birds, reef animals, types of penguins and monkeys, Madame Alexander dolls, types of fine china, Hummel collectibles, and I even know my fair share of art history.

The funny thing is, I usually know exactly when and where and why I know these things. My random knowledge is based on life’s little experiences. When I point most things out to my kids I have little stories; ‘Grandma used to do this’, ‘my friend taught me this’, ‘Uncle “whatchamadoogie” had an old truck like that’. And because bloggers start to look for sense in all types of occurrences, (what original spin do I have on this topic???) I started thinking about this phenomenon and realized most of my stories come from my parents or are stories associated with profoundly important relationships in my lives...the clinking of coins in my Dad’s pocket when he was nervous… the marine bio boyfriend who my nephews and I spent a significant portion of 2 summers tide-pooling with… facts about bugs from my entomologist brother… and my mother… mostly my mother…

My mother was my person.

I haven’t written much about my mother in my blogging yet. She died 18 months ago at 92 years old. For me, being the youngest of nine and born when she was 46 years old, she was older and for much of my childhood she was not the “cool” mom. She was stricter, seemed crankier than other moms, and spent most of her time on housework and meal preparation. But my mother, she was my person. She is who taught me mindfulness to shut other things out when I really wanted to think, feel and observe. Mom was a child of the depression who raised 9 kids through 4 distinctly different decades she was NOT a Zen Buddhist, in fact, her idea of meditation was telling me to “be quiet and contemplate my navel”. As I grew older, she’d say “Slow down, you’re doing too much” and warn “you’ll make yourself sick at this rate.”

But Mom was a secret poet...a keeper of scrapbooks and memories…a collector of doodads and dolls… of stray pets and sometimes stray people… of African violets and pussy willow… she taught me about nap taking and walks… (she never learned to drive, so there was quite a bit of walking). There were years she got a little obsessed, like when we found myriads of tiny sand dollars at the beach and she bought us all gold sand dollar necklaces, and the same thing goes for the year she overdid California poppies...but she took note of the simple things… and for most of my childhood we didn’t do things like travel the world… the simple things were right there in front of us...the simple things were how she taught me to slow down.

I learned about aphids, roses, and fruit trees (she had all different types of roses and fruit trees in our non coiffed back yard). We called hummingbird hummers and had a house full of pets. We took springtime walks to see the purple tulip trees throughout our neighborhood… she pointed out robin red breasts and red wing black birds...she’d say ‘a baby’s skin is velvet’, and the smell of babies she’d describe as ‘ashes of roses’. She introduced me to fragrances… lavender for your underwear drawer, wet sidewalk on our walks… we’d check how full the nearby creek was getting on rainy days meanwhile smelling the wet eucalyptus trees. And even though there was rarely a quiet moment in our busy big family house, and even though she was a screamer, she somehow stopped during moments that mattered to enable meaningful joint attention. Introducing me to descriptors and imagery, to smells and textures, perhaps leading me to want to stop and smell my newborn baby as many times as I could before it was gone and my time as a young mother was too… feel the velvet skin on my cheek...listen to the ocean...greet the sun with my upturned face. I am quite certain her way of being, enjoying the simple things, is why I point the simple things out to children, and why I stop to look when they want to point something out to me, to take the moment to remember that the things around us are amazing.

When I grew up and I studied mindfulness in a class based on the teachings of Jon Kabat Zinn, I realized that mindfulness for me was the ability to stop and sense the world. To look, listen, and touch without having to do anything more... to really see, really hear and really feel in totality… a whole bunch more isn’t necessary. But the truth is; I lose that ability sometimes… I forget the truth of ‘less is more’ and ‘the simple things are right there around us’ ...like the taste of your favorite food, the luxury of a warm shower, how it feels to hold hands with someone you love.

So, the swallow nests will stay, even if I have to clean up the droppings, and my kids and I will continue to mark the construction progress. Perhaps they, too, will develop some random knowledge, but most of all, I hope they continue to have moments of pure “oh, that is sooooo cool” thoughts… all in the name of mindfulness…that hip new idea for children that has actually been around for generations!

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18 is our Family’s Magic Number

4/10/2015

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Not because we are Jewish, not because of any birth, marriage, or divorce date (although we like to use those dates for secret codes as well), and although we once won big at craps and roulette, it’s not even because of a good gambling number.

...18 is our family’s magic number because 18 therapists have been a part of our family’s journey...

18 therapists in almost as many years…for blending, for educational testing, for meds, for keeping us together, for battling type A, for saying goodbye to old feelings, for organization, for communication, for putting out fires, for grief, for keeping us united, for another set of eyes and ears… and though we couldn’t always understand what one another was going through…we supported the need to talk and be heard…

7 is the number of members in our family. Using my handy dandy calculator app, that means about 2.5 therapists per family member, which is more mental health clinicians than dentists, pediatricians and internists combined! Yessirreee, a whole lot of good old fashion crazy around here...and a whole bunch of normal in this day and age.

Yes, 18 is our magic number...there was Carol, Nan, Ken, Barbara, Dr. B (whose name was sung in operatic voice when it was time to go to sessions), John, there was the one who was highly recommended then kind really didn’t work for our kid; there was Mary, Miss. Piggy, Patty, Dr. Bland, Dr. R, Emily, Dr. C, another John, the special master and the guy whose office was one town over. Phew. And at the time each one of these practitioners was part of our lives, they were common household names and our appointments were never hush hush (for that matter nothing much was ever hush, hush, why should it be?). One of these practitioners, had such a way with my son, that my son told me this past year he thinks the guy changed his life. They’d scooter to ice cream and play at the park. This particular therapist tried to teach us “green” (vs. red) language, which was an incredible way of talking to each other about hard things, and though we failed miserably at this particular language immersion; when we moved away, we gave him a Kermit the Frog with a sign that says “it’s not easy being green.”

Because 18 is our magic number… we spent money we didn’t have; we needed support figuring it out and not a dollar do we regret. Every once in awhile we heard things we didn’t want to hear like an insistence we not hold hands in front of our kids for the first year of blending (um yeah, that did not go over well, nor was it a directive we followed). We have no regrets because knowledge is power and we sought out the people to help us discover the shit we needed to know. Every once in awhile I still read the psycho educational test reports we had done for 4 out of the 5 kids and it never ceases to amaze me how accurately Dr. B could figure out how each of my kids would learn best…and life has proven him on the mark time and time again.

Because 18 is our magic number...I carried an imaginary note card in my back pocket which gave me the voice to say “no”…

Because 18 is our magic number...When things get crazy, I envision myself as the roots of a big tree, stabilizing the branches in the wind…

Because 18 is our magic number...We learned that even when we try to put the fire out, someone still plays with fire until they are sure the fire will really stay out…

Because 18 is our magic number...We learned that time heals many wounds but we also don’t ever forget…

Because 18 is our magic number...We know that medication for our brains is no different than insulin for diabetics…

Because 18 is our magic number...We know sunlight lamps, essential oils, body work, meditation, and mindfulness are not to be poo poo’d…

Because 18 is our magic number...We learned to think before we speak (most of the time that is)…

Because 18 is our magic number...We learned that asking for help is a smart and strong move…

Because 18 is our magic number...We learned that tears can be full of joy, anger, pain, grief, and most of all, that tears are cleansing.

Because 18 is our magic number...we learned to laugh at ourselves and to take some things less seriously…

Because 18 is our magic number...We learned that taking a stand can make a difference and that each one of us needs a family member to take a stand sometimes…

Because 18 is our magic number...We learned we are all “beautiful people”, and that grades, degrees, weight and achievements don’t define us. Our gifts are all different and we are all favorites…

Because 18 is our magic number...We learned that one of our kids might not be ready for college and that informed us for the journey we took…

Because 18 is our magic number...We learned there is no immediate cure for all that ails us, and that things really do get better…

Because 18 is our magic number...We learned that families with Medical and Early Childhood Degrees from prestigious universities need as much support to thrive as any other family…

Because 18 is our magic number…We know our magic number will eventually increase… and that is okay because we also know we are all a work in progress...

...So, Why this blog? Why now?

Because I was born and raised in Palo Alto, California… the heart of Silicon Valley and the home of Stanford University. I raised my first 3 children there...and I was a part of the bubble of greatness, of achievement, of hometown pride, and of cluster suicides. I spent 8 years dropping one or two teens off at Palo Alto High School...on the days of sleepless nights, morning fights, scary tests, or something else not quite right...I feared the worst... I had confidence in my parenting skills... yet I was never complacent...I was scared…God, I hate trains…

And now, I feel bad for having moved away before the real work to transform the ideas of achievement has even started...So, let’s break the stigma...Our family’s magic number is 18… a glorious, wonderful, crazy 18…

What’s yours?

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