Eat Your Heart Out, Drew Brees

The other day, I thought I had a great analogy for a mom who's child has some delays in certain developmental areas. My analogy was so great, I thought, that I found the need to repeat it when the dad came home. You know that feeling you get when the awesome thing that you have to say does not get the response that you are looking for? This is what happened to me. Its not that they didn't like what I had to say... it was just awkward timing (which is something I'm working on). Note to self- when dad is home and  mom is chasing kids around, trying to start dinner, probably time to leave rather than going on about random metaphor that only impresses myself.

Anyways, in hopes that someone will like what I had to say, I'm gonna share it again. Basically, without being too specific, the issue at hand had something to do with the kiddo's processing delay and communication challenges that sometimes inhibit him from being able to advocate for himself appropriately when another kiddo (or sibling) snatches a toy away from him, inevitably leading to a fist fight. Because the kiddo has decent verbal skills (albeit the processing delay) and a strong capacity to engage in pretend play, I suggested that he is given time to practice problem solving and better communication by acting some of these situations out in dramatic play with one of his parents. My analogy was this...


The other day on the Ellen show, FB quarterback Drew Brees shared that during the week before a big game, he mentally puts himself in the position of being a touchdown behind with 2 minutes on the clock and plays out what it will take to win the game. He says that he does this several times a day during that week so that if he actually finds himself in that position, he won't have to think about what he has to do and can just react automatically.

I thought this was a great analogy and very fitting with my recommendation to the parents- put your kid in the position to play out how to best respond to a challenging situation so that he will be able to more efficiently respond when the actual challenge presents itself.

Now, thank God I will never be in the same unfortunate position as Drew Brees, earning millions of dollars each Sunday to throw a football at very specific and fast-moving targets, and will therefore never have to withstand the pressure of coming back from a 7 point deficit with 2 minutes on the clock, but I think his technique can apply to me (and most of us) in our own lives. I think the key is probably figuring out what aspects of your life or job make you feel most vulnerable to defeat and then game-planning as much as possible so that, when those situations present themselves, you are more likely to succeed.

In my own life, I think this boils down to probably more things than I'd like to admit, but most obvious to me right now is my tendency to overcommit. I really don't say "no" to very many things (although my grad school advisor always pointed out that when you say "yes" to one thing,  you're saying "no" to another). My terrible ability to plan and organize my life probably at least partially contributes to this tendency, in that if I don't have my weekly planner right in front of me (which is a likely scenario), I have no visual cues that the decision I am making will 1) drive me crazy; 2) create a last-minute childcare fiasco; and 3) be a very bad, self-defeating decision. So, today when I received a message from a professor asking if I'd like to jump on board a research project, rather than calling him straight back and agreeing haphazardly to do it, I gave myself time to think about what I'd say. It was actually nice to plan it all out in my head (and while I was at it, I threw a few touchdown passes too), so that when we actually spoke over the phone later on in the evening, I was prepared with questions and stipulations (well, not really stipulations, but it makes me sound tougher to say that).

All in all, I felt like I was able to advocate for myself better because I am learning how to gain more respect for what my needs and wants are, just like that kiddo. The main difference is that I'm almost 30 years older and just now learning this lesson, a lesson that my friend Jamie (who you might remember from my previous post) might also want to learn.

I Don't Feel So Regular...

Thought I should check in since its been a few days. Have been trying to catch up on my sleep. Hasn't gone so well. We'll analyze that in a minute.

First, I'd like to take this opportunity to reference the legendary, sometimes controversial, author and philanthropist, Jamie Berry, of 5 Million Kids. In one of his recent posts, Mr. Berry initially blames a ghost for his behaviors that, in his wife's terms, ruin their balanced set, and he finally concludes that perhaps what has actually been haunting him lately is in fact not a ghost, but rather his own lack of balance.

I don't know about you, but I can relate to Mr. Berry. I, too, can feel very off balance at times, and when I do, things just don't go as well. And when things don't go well, it often takes more effort to get nice and balanced again. Working with kids who sometimes have a lot of sensory needs, the idea of being off-balance comes up quite a bit when discussing with their parents what plays into various behaviors. Except I use other translations of the word, such as, "out of sync," "dysregulated," "out of sorts," "off-center," "disorganized," and so on and so forth. Off-balance also fits quite well. Basically, a sensory train wreck can make a person feel out of whack, and the best thing to do is to first learn how to avoid the sensory train wrecks in the beginning, and then to have a plan for how to get the trains back on their respective tracks.

Over the past several days, I've been doing a bit of soul searching, or more like incidental learning, if you will, and have come up with a few things that almost always result in me feeling off-balanced. The first is lack of sleep, as we all know. Another one is what my husband likes to call my "time unconsciousness." I'd like to think of it more as being time-consciousness challenged. Anyways, the third is my severe lack of planning, which contributes more than I'd like to admit to my lack of time consciousness. Take, for instance, my day yesterday, which started with me running out the door with my toddler and her buttload of toys to bring to the babysitters (I pick my battles), running anywhere between 10 and 20 minutes late, which sent me into a tailspin of lateness to each of my home visits and meetings, with each commute flooding my already caffeine-drenched veins with insane levels of cortisol (a hormone that is released in response to stress, which is great when you're already jacked up on insane amounts of caffeine). Not a good pace to the day. And this is a typical work day for me. All I can say is thank God stop lights don't have feelings.

My advice to parents is usually to anticipate the sensory break-down before it happens- to open the windows before the walls start caving in. Planning, which is not my forte, has a lot to do with feeling good. I've always sorta rebelled against planning (probably an internal conflict that my Type B side wants to win), but I realized this while discussing with one of my parents- that once a routine is established and a good plan is in place, things click into place more automatically and ironically allow for more freedom and spontaneity. On the other hand, flying by the seat of one's pants usually amounts to feeling pressured, which only provides the right amount of motivation when its at a reasonable level, but can quickly unravel into a huge mess of panic. At least this happens with me. So, inevitably, a lot of energy is spent talking myself back into a recuperated state.

If you are like me and my friend Jamie and are feeling a bit unbalanced, it might help to find out what's been tipping your scale the most. If you don't know, ask your spouse- he/she would love to clue you in. We all know that Step 1 is admitting the problem. Since coming to terms with my poor sleep habits, issues with being time consciousness challenged, and disorganized planning, I now can move in the right direction, which will probably start with releasing myself from my late night Bravo TV addiction so I can go to bed earlier. Sorry, Millionaire Matchmaker. And I've already got a new babysitter lined up to watch the kid HERE on my work days so my days of leaving the house in a mad scramble are soon over (thank God!!!... and babysitter). And finally, as another stepping stone to minimizing the chaos and getting me back on track to being a more balanced person, I plan to at least try to even up my water-to-coffee ratio. None of this will be easy, but I at least gotta try it.

The Battle for Sleep Wages On

In the romantic comedy, Fight Club, Ed Norton's character hits the nail on its head when he explains that insomnia feels like you're never really awake and you're never really asleep. I've had insomnia and can say that this is a very, very fitting description. Thank God, I don't have insomnia anymore... but sometimes I feel like it... and this has been one of those weeks. As if it wasn't enough to challenge myself to sleep better, I had to make the self-inflicted challenge a little more interesting by introducing a big girl bed to my daughter on Monday. Needless to say, her excitement over it has resulted in less sleep for everyone this week. The only solution I found was to get her completely asleep before tucking her in each night. The only problem with this solution is that its taken 1-2 hours most of the nights this week to get her to fall asleep. So, tonight, I was bound and determined to put her self-soothing skills to the test and put her in there wide awake. Its like going back to infant days. Totally exhausting. Except now, instead of her screaming her head off until I wave the white flag, she uses her emerging frontal lobe capacities and pulls all the tricks in the book...

"Mama, I go potty!" (Yeah right... you didn't use your big girl potty all day, and now you're asking... I don't think so! You can use it tomorrow!)

"Mama, upstairs!" (We are upstairs, and even if you meant 'downstairs,' there's no chance we're going back down there tonight).

"Mama, rock!"  (I rocked you for a half hour already, for the love of God!)

I kiss her and tell her I love her for the thousandth time and then leave the room, reminding her that I will not go back in (yeah right). I go downstairs. Quiet... for thirty seconds.

"Mama, are you?" (Translation: "Mama, where are you?)

"Mama, are you?"

"Mama, are you?"

Knock, knock, knock on her door.

"Grandma!" (Ask for the next female option in the house).

"Graaaaandmaaaa!"

Melting down... melting down... total combustion.

I go upstairs, sit at her door and spend the next several minutes bargaining with her. "In your bed, head on pillow, and I'll sing you a song."... "In your bed, head on pillow, and I'll come in and kiss you goodnight." "In your bed, head on pillow, and I'll put your lullaby music on."

Several more minutes, a big hug, and a few more songs later, she finally consented. Doesn't take me long to wave my white flag. Takes her practically all night. And I'm the one who supposedly has all the good ideas? All I know is that for those parents who have babies or children for whom sleep comes easy, you don't even know what interesting games you're missing out on.

Now my turn to go to sleep. I hope, no- pray, that next week will be better with the sleeping situation for all members of this household. I am convinced that tackling sleep needs to come first in the lineup of mental health needs. Maybe I need to change my expectations.

Thank you, Bob... thank you.

In the psychological thriller, What About Bob, tormented, neurotic patient, Bob Wiley, suggests that "there are two kinds of people in this world- those who like Neil Diamond and those who don't." While we all know this is true, I would argue for an additional classification of human functioning- those who stay up waaayyyy to late and those who don't. I generally fall into the waaayyy too late category, which makes it really, really hard to make it a goal to sleep better. I think part of the problem is that I also tend to fall into the personality category that describes people who tend to focus really well on specific tasks. What this means is that if you give me a project, I will do my best to kick its butt. But I'm terrible at multi-tasking. As most of you parents know, babies force you to multi-task. So, in the past two years, not only has my ability to focus well gone down the toilet fairly quickly, but I have also been struggling to learn the art of multi-tasking. I still try to revert to the whole focusing thing, which means that I stay up til ungodly hours of the night to get crap done that I cannot possibly figure out how to get done during the day. Like last night, for example- stayed up til 2 am doing boring administrative stuff (which is obviously not my strength). And because it was so boring, I had to take breaks to catch up with mindless tv.

ANYWAYS, I guess what this all amounts to is something that I realized in one of my sessions today when the mom was obviously very, very tired because of the unideal hours she works at night and all the effort she puts in during the day with her infant and her toddler with special needs. During our time together, we simplified our agenda to simply making animal sounds while referencing images of animals in a picture book. Her child LOVED this interaction and even tried to mimic some of the sounds. Meanwhile, my throat started to feel a little raw and beat-up from all the oinking, mooing, and growling, so her mom took over. It was like magic. We held her joint attention for about 45 minutes doing this. That's a lot of animal sounds.

What is great about life is that it's pretty forgiving. You stay up waaayyy to late, are super duper tired the next day, work a full day, and hopefully there are some magical moments that happen. A lot of them just naturally occur if there are good sensory experiences mixed in- a step outside in the brisk air, a deep breath, a nice massage, petting a dog, playing with play-dough, or making crazy animal sounds. And ending the day with a nice cup of hot chocolate with a special other someone is not bad either. Thanks, husband.

And, thanks Bob. Somewhere in the suspenseful plot of What About Bob, Bob Wiley sports a shirt that brags, Don't Hassel Me, I'm on Vacation. Sometimes when you can't actually take a vacation, I guess its just not a bad idea to adopt the vacation mentality. A mom told me yesterday that during their 2 week trip to Hawaii, their daughter with significant sensory processing issues started talking. Shoot... who wouldn't?! But if you're not there, it doesn't hurt to bring as much Hawaii to you as you can. Paint vibrant pictures, smell beautiful flowers, and play in water. Its good for kids, but its also good for us grown-ups too.

And, by the way... why am I watching Biography- Guns N' Roses right now? I now know more about Slash than I've ever needed to know.

Word to All You Mamas

I know its not Mother's Day, but I'd still like to give a shout out to all you mamas out there... especially you mamas with multiple kids. I only have one and I joke that she's like having at least two, but I know that's not true. On Tuesdays, I watch a friend's daughter who is still and infant and this is by far my most challenging day of the week. Sometimes I pretend that I'm one of the Incredibles, going from room to room deflecting trouble and saving lives. Within a few hours, I spared my daughter from downing a bottle of baby ibuprofen, falling off a table, and pooping on the floor. Also, thanks to my supermompowers, the baby was stopped from chewing and/or swallowing possibly hundreds, no... thousands, of tiny objects or wires. And not only did everyone survive today- we all were in generally good moods. But this was a good day. For whatever reason, I was more on top of my game today. Lord knows why... my goal to sleep better this week is not going well, which might or might not have something to do with starting my daughter on a toddler bed last night. Note to self- when introducing a new sleep zone, probably best to have it set up prior to bedtime rather than an hour after. The kid might as well have been given an injection of pure sugar straight into her veins. I've never seen so much unbridled enthusiasm in the form of jumping (on the bed, of course).

Usually, Tuesdays are a tailspin of diapers, meals, fake naps, real naps (if we're lucky), Elmo, hide-and-seek, etc., etc., all of which prohibit me from finishing a single cup of coffee.

I don't know how all you moms do it out there. Honestly... there are two things that blow my mind in the realm of feasibility- one is doing pull-ups and the other is raising more than one child. Seriously... I didn't go outside all day until the baby's momma picked her up. How do moms of multiple kids ever breath fresh air? This is not to say that I don't want more; I just don't understand how the world is so populated. I could understand the feasibility of it better if I had at least 2 laps, 4 hands, and no need for sleep.

All this to say is that I appreciate there is a challenge of finding zen. Its one thing to make goals for better sleep, more exercise, a chipper attitude, and less caffeine dependency... its another thing to accomplish it with everything in life that puts these goals to the test. But it is possible... somehow... even with kids... I think. The times in my life that I've felt at my best were when I'd get up earlier than usual to read something invigorating and get my blood pumping a little. So I'll try that again and see if it works with having a kid. I'll let you know...

Staples of Feeling Good

Last night I decided to roast a chicken. Usually before I throw it in the oven, I create a concoction of spices and herbs to throw on it, but to my disgruntlement yesterday, I could find no cumin! "How could I be totally out of cumin," I thought, "it's a staple!" To those who also consider cumin to be a staple, you totally get me on this. To those who don't, you might rather empathize with my equal disappointment when I found that we were also out of honey. Anyways, all this to say that when the milk, eggs, salt, sugar, butter, honey, or in some cases, cumin, are missing right when you need them, you are suddenly very limited in what you can do and whatever you do end up pulling together would be much better if you had what you needed.

Sorry if this is a bit of a stretch, but last night I was thinking that the things that I mentioned in yesterday's blog that keep us feeling good and regulated- the whole sleeping, eating, pooping thing- are staples to human functioning. We can only go so long working inadequately any of these areas without falling apart in some way. The walls start caving in much faster, driving the caveman in us to come out. The Floortime™ approach that I mentioned yesterday suggests that once the regulatory needs are met, the individual becomes more organized, and more interested and connected in what's going on around them. Sometimes the way the body takes in, processes, and responds to certain sensory stimuli in the environment- sights, sounds, touches, smells, tastes, movements, etc.- can make a person feel "off" as well, which also affects regulation (or better put, feeling organized/centered/together/in sync/with it/tuned in/checked in... whatever you wanna call it). So, using my silly little metaphor, the regulatory functions in our bodies are like staples- if we feel like something's missing, our whole body feels it.

Last night, I went to bed about an hour earlier than usual and might have felt much better this morning except that for whatever reason (God, help me!) my daughter woke up three times during the night. Needless to say, we're both feeling a bit out of sorts today. And boy is it creating an interesting blend of moods in our household.

Even though it might seem that I'm going really back to basics on this area of functioning, I'm convinced after these past two years of parenting that things that should come so naturally and instinctually are very challenging to learn and keep consistent. And I'm also very convinced that these regulatory processes are very much connected, which makes things even more complicated if one of the processes is out of sync.

Take, for example, my caffeine addiction that has developed over the years in response to insufficient sleep. I don't sleep enough, so I cram a God-forbidden amount of coffee down my throat each day and then stay up late because I'm so wired. Its a vicious cycle. The times in my life when I've attempted to minimize my caffeine intake have been short-lived because it seems like I always find a reason to keep myself "needing" the caffeine. On the other hand, if I think rationally about this, it occurs to me that I actually feel more authentically awake and energized if I replace some of my caffeine intake with exercise and vitamin-packed foods. The exercise is a discipline that requires more time out of my busy life, but if I make it happen consistently, it becomes as necessary to me as that extra cup of coffee would have been. AND, as a bonus, I sleep much better when I exercise regularly. Imagine that. AND I am always inspired to eat more healthy foods when I exercise. Man... maybe I should've started there!

All this to say... getting enough sleep is not enough to get me feeling more centered and feeling good. I think the plan also calls for a decrease in my caffeine intake and an increase in exercise. I think I also want to start eating better. For the life of me, I have no clue how I made it through 10 years of college and grad school with the mindset that lattes counted as meals.

A Mental Housecleaning of Sorts

New year's resolutions are popular this time of year. Then they're typically forgotten about and become unpopular in about 2 months, 3 if you're a better person than me (which you probably are!). Anyways, there are probably some good things about resolutions and good reasons they exist. They give us a fresh start, a clearer vision, and a sense of purpose, a sense of starting over rather than continuing in the same path. Its kinda like spring-cleaning for the mind.

In a way, resolutions are something we should do more often than once a year... that's a long time to go trying to meet the same goal. It's a long time to have to remember a goal and muster the energy to tackle it. Anytime I'm working in a clinical setting, a quarterly or monthly assessment of progress is required in order to gather a sense of what's working and what's not. And any time I start with a child or a family, the first thing I do is take a thorough assessment of both the good and the bad stuff- the stuff that's working and the stuff that needs a bit of a facelift, or major surgery.

So, the question is where to start? When there's a lot that contributes to human functioning and a lot that can go haywire, where do you go first? As a therapist, an approach that I learned years ago and that I still use all the time is Floortime™ . Its a model that can be used in the treatment of autism, but I have found great success in using it in most all of my cases. Anyway, without going into too much detail, Floortime goes by Six Developmental Milestones to navigate the course of treatment. The first milestone is all about encouraging interest in the world, which happens when the individual feels centered and regulated. Its amazing how out-of-sorts behaviors get when a person's internal system is totally out of whack. All us parents know this very well when we drag our kids on vacation. Case and point: what should have been a 9 hour drive to Missouri over the holidays somehow turned into a 24 hour journey, which resulted in two consecutive nights of taking 2 hours to get our daughter to bed. By Christmas night, she was so off her routine that she was running circles around the living room floor for literally two hours. We have a word for this in our house- berserko. When my child gets off her routine for several days straight, she goes berserko, and it takes several days to recover from it. We've been home for almost a week and we're still trying to recover. (By the way, I'm convinced that Berserko should be included in the next version of the DSM).

No one knows the importance of regulatory needs like parents. This is why, whenever a parent comes to me for help with their kid's behavior, I always ask early on about how the kid is eating, sleeping, and pooping. How these three basic things are going can say a lot about what might be hugely contributing to the problem. And this is true not just for two-year-olds, but for all of us. Our bodies are the best indicator for how we are functioning, how we are managing stress, etc. 

So, as my first experiment in tasting my own medicine, I will ask myself to assess what is "off" in my own system.

Ok- I just asked myself and the response came instantaneously... SLEEP! Almost everyday after I've gotten my daughter's needs taken care of and can finally tune into how I'm feeling (which sometimes doesn't happen until much later in the day), I almost always feel tired. With as much as I work with parents to get their kids on a regular bedtime schedule, I am totally guilty of not keeping one myself. Learning how to sleep regularly is a hard skill to learn- for babies and grown-ups. Some fight it harder than others, and I'm afraid that my daughter has taken after me in this regard. Anyways, I feel like this is the best place to start because the rare times when I do actually get enough rest, I feel like a new woman the next day. Even though its not an easy skill to learn, its actually one of the easiest solutions in the book to feeling good, and the payoff is totally worth the discipline that goes into it.

With all this said, I'm gonna try to sleep better this week. This means that not only will I have to go to bed earlier, I'll also have to get my stuff done during the day rather than pushing it off for late at night. This will be realistic with some things and not so much with others. As the week goes along, I'm sure I'll figure out which things get done and which things I'll have to forget about until the weekend.

I'll let you know how all this goes... All I know is that my husband will be psyched about this plan. He's been trying to get me to go to bed earlier since we've been married. I hate to say that he's been right all along.

What is my medicine and how does it taste?

First of all, in the off chance that anyone might happen upon this blog within the next few days, Happy New Year. To those who happen upon it much later, hope your year is still happy.

I'm not much of a blogger, though I've attempted it in the past. But this time is (hopefully) different. This time, I actually have an idea that seems worthy of follow-through. And if I actually go through with this, even if no one ever reads it, at least I will be a better person for it. And if you are reading this, maybe it makes a difference (hopefully a positive one) for you too.

A little background- At 22, I finished college and signed up for a 6 year doctoral program in clinical psychology. That same year, I met the guy who I said "I do" to when I was 25. At 29, I walked across a stage and someone in a fancy robe gave me a piece of paper that spelled my name with a Ph.D. at the end, which took me a while to trust (until my first student loan bill came). Half a year later, my husband and I welcomed our first (and so far only) child. Its now 2 years later and I have chosen the long road to licensure since I spend most of my days at home with a toddler who keeps me very busy, giggly, grey-haired, etc., etc. A couple days a week, I work with kids and families- some in their homes and some in my office- providing psychotherapy that addresses everything from attachment issues to pervasive developmental disorders. Because I work mostly with kids, I also work a lot with grown-ups (the kids' parents), so there's inevitably more on the table than meets the eye. And I am the one entrusted to help. Gulp.

So, here's the plan: Because I have always wondered how effective my recommendations and interventions are, I am gonna try them out myself. I will, in essence, taste my own medicine everyday for the next year. I like to think of it as 52 weeks to a healthier mind, healthier relationships, and a better-working, more connected self. It'll be my journey, but you're welcome to join me if you'd like, and then it will be our journey. Wow... so existential. And what better day to start than 1/1/11? Well, I guess its now 1/2/11... didn't quite make it before midnight. Oops. Gotta post when I can with a little kiddo around.

And that brings up one more thought- motherhood has contributed to most of my learning, so some of this journey will be dedicated to navigating a better mind through the highs and lows of parenting... cuz we all know how that goes!

So, here we go....