Category Archives: frustration

Family, family life, fatigue, frustration, good life, perspective, Uncategorized

“Good” Friday?

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As I get older, I am becoming more and more convinced happiness and quality of life is all in the eye of the beholder.  On Friday, I had another example of just how important perspective is when it comes to looking at my day.

I was not having a “good” Friday, regardless of the Christian calendar.  The day began at 3:30 am with a tap and “Daddy, I had a night mare.”  It was the third night in a row I had this wake up call between 3:30 and 4:15.  When my alarm went off at 5:05, I slept right through it until our oldest dog’s kisses woke me.

I made it to work 30 min late after a traffic accident,  I had taken the day before off, and when I got to work I had a half dozen messages about what went wrong while I was out. It turns out there was a reporting error caught at the last possible moment before our data was finalized, but recognition of a problem is not the same as resolving it, and my boss was flying to the other side of the world the next morning needing the results ready for publication.  For added joy, I received a list of what was expected to be done for the job rotation of 2 employees, and it had to be done by close of business on Friday.  By the time I left work, I thought, “Wow, I’m not sure how I made it through today.”

Then on the way home, I got a call from J.  It seems our son started the day with his friend over “making it snow” in our basement by picking all the stuffing our of a couch cushion and throwing it in the air.  After being told in no uncertain terms what a bad idea that was by J, he and his friend went out in our backyard.  There, they proceeded to practice their taekwondo by breaking various parts of the slide and treehouse platform of the swing set.  Needless to say, it will now have to be removed before we move.  In frustration over being yelled at again in front of his friend, he kicked out a support railing on our deck.

Listening to J recount all of this, I realized no matter how much my head hurt from frustrations I had at work, I wasn’t going to place any higher than third on the worst day in the family competition.  As I sat down to dinner with K screaming her head off and J bemoaning how miserable K had been without a nap, I came to realize I might have had the best day in our household.

A couple of hours later, the kids were in bed, the dogs were walked, and I was sitting down watching some TV.  Our family still had 5 people and 5 dogs (with the possibility of the last number going mercifully down in the near future).  We still had a good safe home, and I was still going crash next to my wonderful wife.

Yes, Friday was “good” enough for me.  It’s all about perspective.  Nothing in my day had changed, but I got to realize how “bad” it really was, and it wasn’t very bad at all.  When Sat. came around I got to hear stories from J after she ran a color 5k race where she was pelted by colors.  Of course she came out of it looking great .

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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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