Category Archives: father son moment

acceptance, anxiety, Blindness, Childhood imagination, disability, family life, father daughter moment, father son moment, feeling different, inspiration, kids' imagination

Miracles Abound, But We Probably Miss Them

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If you need to be this close to the TV to see it, you just might be legally blind. K is, but if she is this close she enjoys watching races.
If you need to be this close to the TV to see it, you just might be legally blind. K is, but if she is this close she enjoys watching races.

Recently, my daughter was made fun of at school and began to feel awkward having a water bottle with her in class. “Dad, when will I be able to stop drinking water during class?  It’s bad enough I fart, but I feel them all looking at me when I drink.” The perils of second grade can be hell on emotional well being.

I told her to remember she is a miracle. She has lived through more than most of them ever will. She needs to remember she has lived through 4 or 5 (depending on how some exploration is counted) heart surgeries to deal with her pulmonary atresia, and she had a stroke. She has been sick enough to die multiple times. She has the scars to prove her courage and toughness.  What’s more, she has bowels which aren’t moving food like they should. So she has a choice, either take the chance given to her by multiple miracles and drink the water or let the stupid things thought by 2nd graders rob her of the life she is lucky enough to live.  I told her she is given a chance so many would love to have, but it’s her resilience which will make the rest of us look to her for inspiration.  Then I had to explain “resilience.”

The irony is I ask her to be tougher than I am all the time. I tell her she and her siblings are my miracle, keeping me alive. We called the school to make sure the teacher is aware what is going on and how dangerous it would be for somebody with her heart condition to become dehydrated. We are debating as she enters a new school after our move next fall whether to schedule a class with her new school to explain disabilities and hers in particular.

It is hard to mention people’s lack of ability to see what others go through without pictures of K.  Of course I find it hard to mention “not seeing” without pictures of her.  There is hard to define justice in the joy I take from “looking” at her looking at the world around her.  I wonder what and how much she sees.  Then I marvel at the speed she chooses to live with reckless abandon.

"OK I see a change in the ground. I don't know how far, but lets jump."
“OK I see a change in the ground. I don’t know how far, but lets jump.”

On a somewhat related but funny vein, O’s class must have had somebody mention Nazis.  He said he was thinking about them again when he heard about them in the Sound of Music.  Then on Saturday morning, he said, “Dad, I think I know why they were called ‘Nazi.’  I think they could not see the goodness in different people.”  I told him he can be very insightful at times, and I was glad for a morning of the thoughtful O (leaving out the “instead of the grumpy O who usually graces us in the morning”).

Cinco de Mayo, Boy Scout style.
Cinco de Mayo, Boy Scout style.
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brain injuries, brain training, Family, family life, father son moment, fear, frustration, human brain, kids' imagination, kids' perspective, parenting

Surogate Amygdala Reporting For Duty

I was at a conference over the weekend where the presenter used a term I find fantastic to describe parenting.  She said parents are the young child’s “surrogate amygdala” while we attempt to teach our kids emotional control and how to make good decisions.  Children do not have the capacity to apply what they know about right and wrong to their decision making at the time.
The amigdala is an almond shaped part of the brain in the middle of our temporal lobes, and it plays a central role in our emotional learning.  The amigdala is the part of the brain which determines the prominence of memories which invokes fear and shame or pride and joy.  Not surprisingly, it takes until around the age of 25 for the amigdala to fully develop.
Until then parents must continue to watch their children do crazy things.    I noted she said men typically have larger amygdalae than women.  I know O is the most emotional of our kids by a wide margin which supports this assertion, and J chimed in confirming little boys cry more than little girls.  I guess society teaches us to choke down our emotions and “be a man.”  Still, I can not help but wonder if O’s brain damage as an infant will always leave him more susceptible to the often harshest of his emotions.
J and I will just have to live up to the surrogate roll.  I just hope we can do so teaching him we don’t pee on the carpet at the top of the stairs because it makes our parents angry even if our sister thinks it would be funny.  If we can stop such madness while still allowing the creative freedom of expression and comedy to think of dressing in a wedding dress and a Spiderman mask in order to save the day, then I will judge our surrogacy a success.
Spiderman's wedding dress provides the confusion needed for him to swoop in and save the day.
Spiderman’s wedding dress provides the confusion needed for him to swoop in and save the day.
Still sometimes, I find myself going back to my father-in-law’s words on the hardest part of parenting being “remembering to not get angry with a kid for acting their age.”  Perspective is difficult to maintain when a boy sprays a heating lamp with water and then describes how cool it was to have the light bulb explode.  Of all the dunderheaded things done by our children this week, this was the one I understood the best.  Curiosity can lead to unfortunate results, but at least it’s not malicious.  We all have to learn.  It’s just some things are better learned through logic, asking and stories than personal experimentation.
“Paging Surrogate Amygdala!  You are needed to instill proper fear of eye damage and burned down houses.”
Words of wisdom for patients and parents alike.
Words of wisdom for patients and parents alike.
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