Category Archives: Parenting

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Snow Day

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I think we have had four consecutive Thursdays called snow days in our local schools. When the schools close, we close the office for the safety of our staff and to give our snowplow team a chance to catch up. The slow transition in how I view snow days since my childhood is kind of startling to me right now as I look back over the years. Back in the 1970s, we listened to the local radio station or broadcast station, waiting to hear if our school had decided to cancel school. It seems like it took forever to go through the alphabet to get to the S’s. When my school district was announced, I would shriek for joy. My plans for the day immediately changed from school work to outdoor playing. I know my mother, who worked full time, likely dreaded snow days, but I loved them. After going back to bed to sleep a little longer, we would find all the necessary clothes for an outside day in the snow. Even then, my forgetfulness, ADHD, would cause a bit of a struggle to find matching mittens and the search for last year’s snow boots. Snowball fights, building snow forts, finding a hill tall enough to slide down on our twin-blade Radio Flyer toboggan, and ending with some snow ice cream made great memories for my childhood. Does anybody remember wearing bread wrappers over your shoes for snow protection?

Photo by Yan Krukov on Pexels.com

As a parent, I would dread finding all the winter gear for the kids and locating the sled from the year before on the other side of snow days. I can clearly remember my envy of my peers who thought ahead enough to buy their kids new boots and snow clothes before the season hit. When we lived in Iowa, I regularly bought snowsuits and boots because you knew you would definitely need them for the following year. It’s not as clear in Kansas because the winters are not as cold as further North.

Even though I changed my perspective about snow days, here is one thing I know to be true. It’s going to snow, and it may stay around a while, and I can dread it, shake my fist at it and grumble about my plans getting changed. At the end of the day, the snow is still here, and I can look out the window and enjoy the beauty or be mad because it is here. The only difference is my attitude. So today, I’m sitting in my bedroom office, looking out the window and appreciating the beauty.

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When Diabetes Came Home

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Twenty years ago this week our son was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. It was a time of transition for our family as we had just moved to Wellsville, Kansas to serve two great churches and to get closer to our parents. It was time for the kids yearly physicals for the new school year. I’d made the appointment with a new pediatrician back in June and it took eight weeks to get into the clinic. Sarah had her physical and everything checkout as a normal eight year old. Three year old Sean was an active kid and curious about everything. He’d been potty trained for a year but during our move he had regressed to needing helping and having accidents all the time. We thought the issue would resolve itself as we became settled into our new home.
Sean was getting acquainted with his new physician, Dr. Monzon, and had climbed into the doctor’s lap to get closer to the guy with the cool toys on his stethoscope. Sean had another accident, on the doctor’s lap, and Dr. Monzon just laughed. Here’s the moment when life stood still, “Let’s check Sean’s blood sugar.” I remember thinking that my Grandad had to check his blood sugar because he couldn’t eat anything sweet. The nurse came into the room and took Sean down to the lab. I can’t remember if I went with him or not. I still had Sarah with me and so I think I was distracted from what was happening with Sean.

As I recall, the Doctor came back with Sean and sat down on his rolling stool, he grabbed my hands and looked me in the eye. He said, “Sean has a blood sugar of 600. He needs to go to the hospital immediately.” I’m a long-time health advocate and a Mom so I knew the next question to ask, “The test must be wrong. Let’s run it again.” The rest of the conversation is lost to me but the impact was a gut punch to my carefully constructed world. We spent the next five days in Children’s Mercy Hospital. We learned about counting carbohydrates, the differences in types of insulin, how to test a blood sugar on a glucometer and how long 60 seconds could be to a hungry three-year-old waiting for his lunch and he waited for the meter to count down to his blood sugar reading.

We learned how to draw up insulin into a syringe and the very worst part, how to inject it into our son’s little body. My husband and I had to practice giving injections on each other before we could leave the hospital. We left the hospital on the day of our 10th wedding anniversary. We originally planned to have a night out with a movie and a dinner. We ended up stopping at Border’s Books and buying a book called, Calorie King which had the nutritional values of every food and restaurant known to humanity.

In tomorrow’s blog I’ll take share about the early days with diabetes, reflect on the promises made by the medical professionals which offered us hope and give an update on Sean.

 

 

 

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Turning Twenty Six

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My daughter turned 26 this year. I was 26 when I gave birth to her. So I’m exactly twice the age of Sarah now. I recently began a sentence to her like this, “When I was your age I was having babies.” After I said it out loud I felt terrible and ashamed.  How often I use my life as a measuring stick for my adult children’s life is a problem.

I was proud of my own accomplishments at twenty six and felt a bit of smugness about my degrees and successes as I compared them to my own mother. Why is there is an eternal need to compare ourselves against another? All of my family systems training screams out in the last sentence, so I’ll say it this way: Why do I feel the need to compare myself with others? (For the record, my mother was a trailblazer and worked hard all of my life. She was one of the first working mother’s that I knew in my circle of friends. She taught me so much about balancing work and home. She gave so much to herself to her family. I hope to one day be the kind of woman that she is now.)

Each generation has unique struggles. I’m still trying to figure out how to be a parent to my adult children.

That's how you look in the middle of the night when they take your picture at the hospital

That’s how you look in the middle of the night when they take your picture at the hospital

I thought it was hard when she was this small, but I’ve discovered that newborns are mostly a marathon against exhaustion. The parenting game as my child becomes an adult requires me to step back and to shut up. My words and advice are not needed, unless requested. My role is to encourage and affirm, mostly.

I am convinced that every age of parent is the hardest one because each age is new to that particular child and to that parent with the child. It’s a lifetime of work.