For Those of You Who are Wondering

J helping with the Christmas tree this year. Historically Christmas has been hard for him–“countdowns” give him extreme anxiety, Christmas is full of “surprises”–also not one of J’s favorite things. But while trimming the tree he said, “I’m so excited for Christmas. I’m ready for it!” It’s amazing what years and years of “positive conditioning” can do 😉

 

While reorganizing our home office over the last week or two, I found dozens of J’s IEPs and progress reports starting from preschool. I’ve been hoarding them like tax returns, not sure if I’m supposed to hold onto them, not sure if I’ll ever need to pull out an IEP from, say, 2008 or if any of that information is still useful. I’ve decided to keep those files for now, and maybe read through all of those reports again in preparation for J’s annual IEP in the next few weeks. J has made significant progress thanks to early intervention, but who knows—maybe there are some underlying trends that are still there in J, hidden away and morphed into something that looks different but still hasn’t been addressed or even resolved.

Among these stacks of papers, I did find something that belonged to W. On October 16, 2007, 37-month-old W was screened using the Denver II at J’s preschool where she was attending as a peer model. That’s right, back in 2007 I had a few concerns about W’s development and I had her screened right away, just like I did with J.

I didn’t want to take that chance. I didn’t want to “wait and see.” “Wait and see” is what friends and doctors told me when J was 18 months and couldn’t put two word sentences together and I’m sure glad I didn’t listen then. I don’t want to think of all the years of growth J would have missed without early intervention—if we had entered kindergarten from scratch, if it had taken a few years after that to realize that he had autism. I had a gut feeling at 18 months that something was up—even if I couldn’t explain or articulate to people what that was.

I didn’t have that gut feeling with W. Not in any way whatsoever, but with the hours and hours I spent researching autism one thing did pop up again and again—that siblings of autistic children are more likely to be autistic than those who do not have an autistic sibling. That was back in the early 2000s. Research now suggests that trend is even stronger (see here and here)

I’d get that question a lot. Once people found out J had autism, the questions started about W. One time we were at the wading pool in Lawrence—at an autism playgroup—and almost every parent came up to me asking, “Does your daughter have autism too?” When I answered, “No,” they’d continue with either, “Wow! That’s amazing” or “Wow, you’re so lucky. Look at her—she’s such a good playmate for your son with autism.” That’s when I realized that almost everyone at that little playgroup had more than one son/daughter on the spectrum.

Of course that little playgroup is a poor sample group. The frequency isn’t THAT high for multiple children with autism in a family, but between experiences like that and the research I decided that I wasn’t going to chance it with W. Right around 3 ½ I noticed when I asked her a question like, “W, do you want milk or juice to drink?” W would answer something like, “The dolphins and unicorns like swimming together.” Answers that had had nothing to do with the questions I asked. I talked to her preschool teachers and the speech therapist in the classroom, and while they noticed random answers like that too, and while they didn’t think anything was wrong they told me, “We are totally up for a screening if that’s what you want.”

Deep down I was pretty sure that she didn’t have autism. But I wanted to rule it out—after all, there was some funky speech going on, so on October 16, 2007, W was screened by the early intervention preschool using the Denver II (the Denver II has fallen out of favor as a screening test for many early intervention programs—many use different testing now, but this is what was used on her in 2007).

Here’s the summary of the report:

Results: Suspect

Denver was Suspect due to one delay, brush teeth with help and one caution, put on a t-shirt without help. Keep working with W on “self-help” activities like getting dressed, brushing teeth, washing hands, etc. For fine motor development, you can start showing W how to draw faces and shapes. For large motor development, you can show her how to hop and continue working on balancing on one foot. W was advanced in this area! For language, ask W open-ended question frequently and try to engage her in short conversations. Ask her to define words and show her what the different prepositions mean (over, under, on top of, beside, etc). No concerns at this time! Keep up the good work!

Brushing teeth? Self-dressing? These things weren’t even on my radar. And for good reason—she was only slightly behind in these areas. W had no speech or cognitive delays, but W’s dressing delays came because I was always struggling with J, trying to get the door with an autistic toddler can be quite the challenge, and when the baby sister is only 22 months younger is lagging behind, you sometimes just do things for her. At that point in my life, it felt like I had twins and one especially needy twin at that.

The screening was a good reminder—that even though W had no significant delays, I did need to make sure she wasn’t neglected because of J. On top of being enrolled as a peer model in J’s early intervention preschool, we enrolled in the Parents as Teachers program (a program where a developmental specialist comes to your house and shows you really fun games, books, and activities to do with your child and helps you understand how to support development as a parent). I needed those things. I struggled a lot as a mom of little kids. I needed a village to help me raise not only J, but W too. Other people can see things you don’t. Other people come up with ideas you’ve never thought of before. And it’s really helpful.

Every few months, without fail, someone comes up to me with concerns they have about their child’s development. Most of the time they’ll tell me the quirky things they see their child doing and then comes the question: “Do you think I should get my child tested? The doctor says it’s nothing, but I’m not sure.” They’re always hesitant—I’m not sure if they’re scared to find out something is wrong with their child, that their child will be labelled, if they’ll have to put their child on meds, that the results will forever change the way they look at their child…Mama and Papa bear brains go to worst case scenario modes quickly.

But for me, I feel very, VERY strongly about developmental screenings. SCREEN. If there’s a delay, then great! You know what’s going on and what to do next. If there’s no delay? Great! You know you don’t have to worry anymore. No harm, no foul, right?

It still upsets me that as a society we feel that it’s a no-brainer to take your kid to the ER in the middle of the night because your child has a fever—even if you’re not sure it qualifies for the “high fever” category, but as a society we are willing to sit for months, even years to make decisions on a child’s social/mental/emotional development. I get it, the word “development” implies growth and change, but at the same time there are baselines in development that every child should be making at different points in their life. I feel like this hesitation is very similar to our hesitation to talk about mental illness—it’s something we can’t get lab results on, and if we can’t get the lab results on it, then maybe, maybe it’s not “really” real.

When people ask me about screenings, I tell them the stories of both J and W. One time I was right, the other time I was wrong, but I never for a minute regret screening them at the age I did. We test our kids umpteen times a semester for academic purposes once they hit public school age. We take our babies for well-child visits every year to measure their skull sizes and weight gains and growth spurts until they’re teens and then some.

Why are we so scared of assessing the social-emotional-mental development of our children?

This Mid-Semester Slump

The curse of daylight savings means that the sun is down around 5 here…but it also means the pretty lights get turned on when you head downtown for an early dinner.

This past week was sort of a bummer week for my middle school kiddos.

After two months of working really hard, J started up with some disruptive behaviors at school again. We still aren’t sure why; we’re still trying to figure that out. His principal, teachers, paras, and Steve and I have tried to pool ideas of what it might be. Have there been any changes in routine? Could his mouth be bothering him? (he gnaws cankers into his cheeks and lip like nobody’s business) Could it be daylight savings? (I swear it’s dark by 5 here in Fargo) We’re coming up on the holidays (and once again a change in routine) could it be that? Or maybe he’s being a middle schooler trying to test the limits. Maybe he’s just being obstinate and defiant.

With J it’s never a controlled experiment. The variables are constantly changing. Which makes it so hard to find a cause.

By Thursday, W had problems of her own. When I picked her up, she plunked down in the back seat, sniffing snot and squeezing the tears back into her eyes.

“Mom, they took away 6-2’s personal devices [aka personal laptops],” she said between sobs. “I’ve held my tears in all day, but I’m just so mad!”

“What do you mean?” I asked, trying to be sympathetic. Honestly I could care less. Sometimes I wish my kids didn’t have technology accessible to them at all times.

“They caught some kids being on websites they shouldn’t be on.”

“Yeah?” Once again I said, trying to sound sympathetic, though taking kids’ devices away for doing inappopriate things sounds pretty legit to me.

“It’s just a few kids,” she said getting worked up again. “And now we all have to pay for it. It’s going to be so embarrassing when we show up to other classes and the other sixth grade teams have their devices and we don’t.”

“It’ll be a good opportunity to learn and do things without a computer. When I was your age I had to look up everything in the library.”

I knew as soon as I said it that W would think I’m an ancient dinosaur.

Friday W plopped in the car again, steaming mad, holding back sniffles again. “The principal came in to talk to the 6ths graders. You’re not supposed to share locker combinations with anyone, but people did and now things are getting stolen. He said that this is middle school and just because someone is your friend one week doesn’t mean they’ll be your friend the next week.”

“Okay,” I thought. That’s actually some pretty sage advice.

“And then our other teacher said we were slobs because we never cleaned up after ourselves!”

Like I said, it’s been a rough week for the Becks on the school front.

I realized that W–and possibly J, and probably the whole staff at my kids’ middle school have hit the mid-semester slump. This is the first semester in 5 years that I haven’t been an adjunct at one of the universities here, but every semester for the last 5 years, at about this time (those weeks leading up to Thanksgiving) I’ve experienced the mid-semester slump. Tough times for administration, tough times for the teachers, tough times for the students.

The mid-semester slump where the honeymoon with your students is over, and the feeling is mutual on their end. You’re counting down the weeks until the end of semester, and you’re trying to keep that vigor and passion for your subject even though they’re half awake and attendance is spotty because of pressures from other classes. Out of nowhere you have students showing up during your office hours—office hours you’re desperately trying to keep open so you can catch up on grading. These are the students that haven’t attended your class since the third week of the semester, and even though your grades aren’t up-to-date on Blackboard, you know that they’re failing your class now and they will fail your class by the end of the semester. You have to break the news to them—the news they already know. Sometimes they’ll even say, “If I don’t pass your class, Ms. Beck, I’ll be kicked out of school.” And even though it’s not your fault they’re failing your class, you feel like an awful person, and you hope they don’t show up during the last few days of the semester to fill out an SROI (a student evaluation of the instructor’s teaching abilities) because you don’t want them filling it out while they’re still mad at you for not passing them.

This week made me really appreciate what the teachers and staff do for my kids and their educational endeavors. Being a teacher is hard.  I really really appreciate what they have to put up with.

And because I’m frustrated with J right now, I appreciate them even more. I appreciate it when after we have an incident de-briefing, they tell me that they still love my kid and that we’ll figure this out.

Saturday night, decided to try to take a break from the slump. Steve was in Las Vegas for a work conference, so it was just me and the kids. We went out to eat. We came home and had ice cream.

Dinner at Sweeto Burrito. To ease the slump.

 

The kids have two days of school and then it’s a break for Thanksgiving and then a few more weeks until winter break. Like I tell J when we’re running and it’s getting tough: “We’ve got this. This won’t last forever.”

 

What we remember (and how we teach our children about the world)

Bringing J to an awareness of the world–especially grown up things always makes me a little nervous. J’s brain is a steel trap for memories–especially memories that carry any pain or anxiety. J remembers things like back when he was in grade two, where the lunch ladies burnt the school pizza and set off the fire alarm while he was at gym, causing a (minor) evacuation. That was the 89th day of school and he won’t let that go. And every year since we hold our breath, cross our fingers, and go through all sorts of rituals to make it through the day when the 89th day of school rolls through. There’s a myriad little things like this J collects and stores in his brain, always remembering, always filing and pulling out those files occasionally to revisit them. To J, that’s what it means to remember.

November gets me thinking of the things we do, the rituals we do to remember things. Wednesday (November 11) was Veteran’s Day (U.S.) or Remembrance Day (Canada). American Thanksgiving comes up at the end of the month too. One of the things I remember as a kid—rituals ingrained in my head—came with Remembrance Day. As soon as Halloween was over, everyone started wearing poppies. Bright red flowers everywhere. In November we learned Remembrance Day songs in music class. I remember learning “One Tin Soldier” the 1969 song by The Original Caste. I remember it because it was a ballad—a story about a mountain kingdom and a valley. It was a war song. I mean, at seven and eight we were singing about people wanting to kill their neighbours, wanting treasure (which was really peace on earth), bloody mornings. You don’t forget things like that when you’re a kid.

 

And then there was the day before Remembrance Day at school. Where we watched old herky jerky black and white silent films of WWI and WWII footage. There was always an assembly—300 kids in a gymnasium where there was the reciting of In Flanders Fields by John McCrae followed by a junior high visitor who played a painful rendition of taps on their trumpet. And then 300 squirrely elementary kids sitting criss-cross applesauce on the floor were expected to sit through a moment of silence. Out of all the holidays and celebrations in Canada, I find it the most haunting, most patriotic, the most (almost) spiritual ritual Canadians have. And I wanted my kids to experience a little piece of that.

It’s a hard call sometimes as a parent, on what you want to expose your kids to. What are the world’s necessary evils you should teach them, warn them about, experience them to.? We’ve sheltered J and W a lot about what goes on in the “real world.” Even as an adult there’s only so much “real world” I can take before I want to shut off the TV or radio for a few months.

I wanted my kids to experience Remembrance Day—in that haunting, patriotic, spiritual way. But J has severe anxiety issues and that steel trap mind for things like this. But finally I came to this conclusion–history is safe. It’s behind you, it’s something you haven’t been through yourself, almost like reading a novel or learning the song “One Tin Soldier.” You can pick it apart and analyze it. Learn from it.

So we drove up to Winnipeg early Wednesday morning and made it (one time!) for the Remembrance Day service at the RBC Convention Centre. A cute military family sat behind us, two parents, service man and woman, telling their little elementary school boy what was going on while the black and white WWII footage was playing as we waited for the parade of flags to start the ceremony. “Who died?” The mom asked the boy. “Great grandmas and grandpas died,” the mom answers her own question.

My kids got to wear poppies and we sat through the whole hour and forty-five minute service. It reminded me of a funeral, the standing, the sitting, the standing, the sitting prompted by the emcee. The placing of wreaths (which took FOREVER—all the little kids [even mine] were a quiet squirrely in their seats).

And then, while I was sweating it out, hoping my kids would be quiet and respectful until the end, one of the speakers—a WWII vet (who recalled his arrival at Juno beach with all of the horrors of war) said, “if we don’t remember, who will?”

That’s why we do this. That’s why we make our children sit still and go through these rituals. Because it IS important. It’s important to J, with all of his anxiety and rituals and (at times) paranoia, it’s important for him to learn to be still and respectful and remember. He didn’t say a word through the service. I’m not even sure how much he picked up on. But that’s okay, because I don’t know if anyone of us can really understand what happened in those wars. But we do understand this: that we need to be grateful.

These past weeks we’ve talked about refugees with the kids. We showed them this video one of my cousins posted about refugees landing in Europe. We asked them questions about “what do you think it would feel like to leave everything at home and have to move to another country without any of your clothes or iPad or games or anything?” we say, “look at these kind people helping out. Do you think you would help out like that?”

Yesterday I had NPR on in the car. My kids never listen to NPR with me, but this time J heard “Paris” mentioned and asked. “What’s going on in Paris?” He’s obsessed with geography right now. He knows Paris is the capital of France. I didn’t know what to say. Does he really need to know this? I thought, but he is asking. He’s expecting an answer.

“Some bad people hurt and killed many people in Paris.”

“That’s not good,” he said.

“No, it’s not.” I said.

Right there, in the car, J learned another step closer to empathy.

We don’t tell him about the school shootings that happen so frequently. Murders, racism, descriminiation, and violence. We try to keep him away from the heart-heavy headlines. I think he’s steel trap brain would hold on and hoard all those things.

But we’re starting to talk about the human problems and struggles. The stories that help us remember we are a human family. Because it helps us help this autistic boy understand others and ultimately himself better. to learn those lessons in empathy.

We’re asking this question more and more:

“What do you think it would feel like?”

It’s that question that helps us all remember what it’s like to be human.

Staying Inside the Lines

I feel like when you’re doing the autism gig, you’re constantly keeping your kid within the lines, corralling them into the spaces society creates. There’s personal boundaries, ethical boundaries, social boundaries. As a society I think that’s how we make sense of the world.

Autistic kids are always seeking these lines and laws and boundaries too. Except they have their own lines and boundaries and many times they don’t match up with everyone else’s.

Of course, “staying inside the figurative lines” has always been sort of an enigma to J. Figurative lines are more nuanced. You can’t see someone’s personal bubble–and everybody’s is different. You can tell a joke but sometimes it backfires and hurts someone’s feelings. These are the things you can’t see. They’re harder to judge.

Watching J trick-or-treat this year was a great reminder to me of the progress he’s made especially in the last two years trying to navigate these invisible lines. J hasn’t been the best trick-or-treater. Up until these last two years his experiences have been hard at times. I think trick-or-treating is a little bit of an enigma for kids with autism. It’s the one time a year where you ring door bells and beg strangers for candy. There’s always that awkward moment at the screen door where you’re not sure if you’re invited in, because the person at the door leaves you between the screen door and the front door (but leaves the front door open) and tells you to wait one second but you’re not allowed to come in. Sometimes the person will drop candy in your bag, and other times they’ll hold the bowl–do you wait for them to take something out of the bowl and give it to you? Do you take one on your own? Do you take more than one? Then you’re supposed to recite some phrase that makes no sense at all: “Trick-or-treat!” what does that even mean? Is the person at the door tricking you? Are you supposed to do a trick? Nobody does either of these things. All of the lines of traditional social decorum you’re supposed to stay inside are gone and there’s this weird dance between you and a stranger going on at the door.

To make things worse for J, there was the whole dog factor. J was terrified of dogs up until two years ago (when we ended up adopting a dog of our own and J could figure out dogs a little better–that’s another story for another day) and so every doorbell was like Russian roulette and if the lot fell on a dog door, J would go flying down the driveway before the dog owner could drop a few pieces of candy in his bag.

I guarantee most people don’t think about any of these things when it comes to Halloween. I can tell you I never did until J and autism came around.

This year everything went perfectly. I was so proud of our J, seeing him go up to each door by himself, with confidence, and go through all the quirky motions of “trick-or-treat decorum,” wait patiently for candy, taking an appropriate amount when offered a bowl, saying hello to the dogs. Saying thank you EVERY TIME. Wishing people a “Happy Halloween” as if he were wishing people a “Merry Christmas.” It was wonderful. And bittersweet, because just as he’s finally figured out this strange ritual we’ve constructed for kids he’s on the edge of being too old to participate. I find that’s often the strange thing about parenting an autistic child, once you’ve finally mastered something you want to pause, enjoy it, shout from the rooftops “hey look! we’ve figured it out,” but you can’t, because society’s constantly moving on and you have to keep running along too.

J went as Commander Riker (sans the beard) and W went as Rosie the Riviter this year.

Even though it’s tough, J knows “staying inside the lines” is so important to keeping himself happy. He has a really hard time functioning if he can’t figure out where the lines are. Even when it comes to school work. I think J feels constantly out of control, like things are shifting all around him–lots of times visually and mentally. Drawing lines, boxing things up, compartmentalizing, containing things. There’s a control in that, and it helps J make sense of things.

I’ve mentioned J’s visual spatial processing issues before. Containing things, keeping letters and symbols in their right place is very hard and yet very important, especially when it comes to taking notes and doing math problems. J’s been struggling with math lately. I have to say, this is hard. Because I was/still am an absolute mess when it comes to math. That’s why I became an English major. I was so terrible at math that at one point my parents made me do a stint in Kumon for a year. That year I did worksheets on fractions. Every day. Drill after drill. I have to say it’s probably the one thing in math I can do in my sleep. Right now J is reviewing fractions again–and here’s a sample of the basic method I came up with for dealing with fractions. It’s basically boxing up fractions to keep the numbers straight. Of course he’s doing more complicated fractions than this (mixed numbers, subtracting/borrowing from mixed numbers–maybe I’ll put the rest of my fractions strategies in another post), but here’s where it begins. He still struggles with some of the harder stuff–the more steps added on, the more there is to juggle. But he seems to get this method.

Here’s the weird irony of it all. As an autism parent, you’re constantly keeping your kid within the lines, corralling them into the spaces society creates, providing highly structured learning experiences for your child. But at the same time, you as a parent have to think outside all of these things. You’re forced to think outside of the box to solve problems other people can’t solve ALL THE TIME. To look at our world–our society–in ways that nobody else normally thinks of them. It gives you perspective and ingenuity you never thought you had. And I have to say that’s really satisfying too–just as much as seeing your child master the art of staying in the lines.

Outwit, Outlast, Outplay: Lessons Learned from this Month

New Jersey’s version of “The Old Man and the Sea”

Apparently toughness runs in my blood. My paternal grandmother and her family lived through some tough times in Belarus. Her family had survived World War I (most of them, my great grandmother buried two children on the side of the road as they fled from the Germans) and somehow made it through the Polish Soviet war afterward before emigrating to Canada in 1926. My maternal grandfather grew up on the Saskatchewan prairie—in the middle of nowhere—in a log homestead where in those winter months of -30C the ice would come through the joints in the wall and he’d have to sleep in every article of clothing he owned to keep from freezing during the Great Depression. His family relied on his ingenuity (as well as the ingenuity of his siblings) to make extra money and to keep everyone fed, clothed, and the household running. He later lied about his age so he could enlist in the Canadian Army during WWII to defend the country. There’s a lot of survivor grit in my family. And every day I’m counting on the possibility that I somehow inherited some of that.

Because being J’s mom requires survivor grit, and unfortunately, there’s never a day off. There is no forgiveness from deviating from the plan. If I let down my guard for a millisecond, J sees that and uses it to his advantage. Yes, sometimes our relationship is an all-out combat type of relationship. If we don’t practice reading comprehension for two weeks there’s hell to pay when we start it back up again. If we let up on piano practice for a few weeks it’s me v him, battle of the wills on the piano bench seeing who can sit long enough without relenting. If I stick with it long enough (at least 45 min) J will relent.

Outwit, Outlast, Outplay.

Most days I have no problems putting on a game face. Most of the time I can handle the stresses of having an autistic child—it’s not always a picnic, but I can do it. I get up every morning, put one foot forward, go through our routine and go to bed at the end of the day and wake up and do it again.

Sure, I’ll have those demoralizing moments of, “Well shoot. That just blew up in our face. What do we do next?” and sometimes there’s a few tears, but at the end of the day I really do like the challenge. I like to figure things out, research, research, research, (I love to read), and build new strategies. I love the fact that this experience lets me understand the human condition. I’m a writer. I thrive on that. But two or three times a year, I’ll have a meltdown–that full on cry-out where you’re body just shakes and your eyes are so puffy it’s hard to put in contacts the next morning. And there’s snot. Lots of snot: all over your face and the sleeves of your shirt. You just feel like you’ve sort of hit a wall.

A few weeks ago, I hit my threshold. I had one of those meltdowns.

It wasn’t J’s fault, really. This time it came down to burn out. Running on all cylinders, pushing an elephant up a mountain, running a marathon to find out that mile marker 19 was mismarked and you were only on mile 16. Pick your burnout metaphor.

These are the things I came out with after this triannual meltdown:

1) Know your sabre tooth tiger response. Mine is flight. Luckily I have a spouse who knows me well enough to know that’s my response and to be okay with it. It was Steve’s idea to fly me out to New Jersey to see a friend for 5 days so I could mentally regroup. I’m so glad I have such supportive friends on the other side. Hayley was more than happy to let me crash at her place for a while. I was really grateful, because sometimes I have to run away in order to come back feeling better. (My favorite thing Steve says to me right before I have to take a trip somewhere is, “Have fun! Remember to come back, right?”)

Hayley showing me the Jersey Shore

Hayley’s a good friend from grad school and it was so nice to not “do” anything and to talk writing and craft and MFA memories and publishing and to remember who I was again and what my plans for myself were and to NOT HAVE TO TALK ABOUT KIDS OR BE AROUND KIDS and just hang out with her! I needed to remember what I look like without J. Hayley took me to Princeton, probably the highlight of my trip, and I fantasized what it would be like to be a student again—a student there, just to sit in on lectures and listen and learn and LEARN. About everything. About writing. To sit in on a class taught by Joyce Carol Oates. Hayley and I joked about what our lives would be like to be a student there. Speculated what the party life would be like. I ate up the ivy league atmosphere, the trendy campus steeped in academic traditions. Because at the end of the day, I really do like challenges. I love learning new things. I think it’s in my DNA. I like to figure things out, research, research, research, (I love to read), and build new strategies. I love the fact that reading and studying lets me understand the human condition. I’m a writer. I thrive on that.

Oh Princeton, such a very pretty college town. I wonder if they have any teaching positions for Steve…

2) My two loves in life can sometimes be my mental/emotional downfall: being a mother and being a writer. There’s a lot of criticism and a lot of failure in both. It can take YEARS of your best efforts to be finished, sent of, and then rejected and rejected again. (Ugh! my Butterfly Endings manuscript is killing me. I’ve had to have sent that out to at least 30 journals by now, but all I’ve been getting lately is, “close, no cigar” type rejections). And you can never stop being either, which contributes to burnout. Obviously, with kids, you’re always on call, but as a writer, your mind is always turning too. I found this article online the other day that helped me figure out how to tame the creative burnout too:

http://performing.artshub.com.au/news-article/career-advice/performing-arts/madeleine-dore/why-we-are-burning-out-in-the-arts-249582

3) Eliminate stupid stress: This comes in many forms. Sometimes it’s just saying “no” to something or someone. Maybe it’s giving yourself permission to give into a few guilty pleasures (like downtime where you do NOTHING–no reading up on autism, no reading, no nothing. Total veg on the couch). Maybe it’s putting down that manuscript you’ve been beating your head against the wall about (I have 2 short stories that have been driving me crazy). Maybe it means not watching baseball the only time of the year you actually care about baseball (because your Blue Jays are pitted against your husband’s Royals). I kept my emotional distance on this one this year. I checked the Jays’ score on my phone up until they were out. Once the Royals made the World Series I let Steve sweat it out by himself. Usually I’m a supportive wife but this year I just needed to leave the family room. I don’t need unnecessary stress when I’m already stressed out. Sure, it’s thrilling and fun. The Royals put on an incredible show (Steve did show me the highlights) but I can’t go weeks on end, in real time, stressing out on something that doesn’t matter at the end of the day (sorry Steve. I know. Sacrilege.). Got to keep the emotional reserves up. Got to pick my stress-out battles.

I’m always teaching J how to manage his thoughts, how to “train his brain” to not respond, act, react, or become anxious about something. At 35 I’m learning that sometimes I need to play games with my brain to keep it grounded and far from wandering off into crazy town and hanging out there too long.

Outwit, Outlast, Outplay.

Here’s to survival and sanity for everyone!