Counselor's Corner

When the boys were infants, we walked to a coffee shop one Sunday afternoon. This was the parenting era of the double jogging stroller, which was a formidable beast to maneuver. By the time we arrived, one baby was asleep. I did the dance of crossing the doorway with the stroller while trying to open both doors simultaneously (this was before I mastered the art of entering a store backwards and using my back to push open the doors and pull the stroller through). We got inside and I ordered coffee. I collapsed in the chair and all was well until the awake twin had a dirty diaper. As I tried to strategize how to get the giant stroller around the small tables and chairs and into the bathroom to change him without waking his brother, he started wailing.   The wailing awoke his brother, who in turn started crying. The diaper began to smell noticeably, both boys were wailing, people were rolling their eyes, and I tried to control my breathing and remain calm. I was still working on the str

I loved Saturday mornings as a kid because the Superfriends came on. Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Batman, Superman, the Wonder Twins (and their pet monkey Gleek), Apache Chief…each had unique skills and they united to fight for justice. Years ago, before I had children, I bought a few seasons of this old school cartoon and started watching it on Saturday morning. It made me happy. It still makes me happy. My boys prefer the current, live action superhero movies. I like those too but I am loyal to the Superfriends and the very dated Hanna-Barbera cartoon from the late 70s/early 80s before we became digitally sophisticated. There are a lot of life lessons we learned from watching the Superfriends that we could apply to our monthlong exploration of intentions. One, their intention was clear. They fought for justice and respect for all living things. Similarly, our intention needs to be simple and it needs to be clear. Returning to last week’s question: What is one thing you would like

I don’t like the annual tradition of generating new year’s resolutions. Two years ago, I was asked to give a lecture for a group of family medicine residents on creating resolutions and maximizing their success. I got about two articles into the research and realized that I would never create a new year’s resolution again. I immediately stopped recommending this activity to clients. The research is very clear and the prognosis is poor. Most resolutions never come to fruition and have been abandoned by the end of January. If you read five articles about why new year’s resolutions fail, each author will have a different explanation. Some will blame our waning attention span, others will blame our immediate gratification addiction, others will discuss our brains’ defensiveness to change. My primary issue with resolution making is that it keeps us focused on aspects we want to fix, instead of appreciating the beautiful, messy life we’re living right now. But, aren’t we always supp

My friend has a tradition. She throws away her brooms and dustpans when she moves. She posits that we shouldn’t transport old dirt to a new place. Instead we should leave old dirt behind and replace the tools we used to handle it. This morning I thought about my friend’s tradition as I swept our downstairs. I wondered two questions. 1. What if I began 2020 with sweeping up 2019 dirt and releasing it? 2. What if I abandoned the tools I used to sweep our old dirt and sought new tools? After I finished sweeping, I noticed two types of dirt in the dustpan. There was the everyday life dirt we tracked in (dirt, dog fur, playground rocks, scraps of paper). I also recognized the emotional dirt we tracked in (self-doubt, impatience, anxiety and self-judgment). I reflected that the primary purpose of emotional dirt is to keep us safe. When our emotional dirt does its job well, it limits the risk taking and exploration we need to develop into our potential. Then I took some tim

I’m writing this blog by the light of our decorated Christmas tree. We have a “kids live here” Christmas tree. The ornaments are a hodgepodge of glittery popsicle snowflakes and triangle reindeer heads, felt picture frames from younger school eras, brightly colored, Mexican tin shapes from a favorite South Congress store, and souvenir purchases from family trips. A gold bird perches at the top because three-year-old Angel grabbed my hand during a Target excursion and said, “Isn’t he beautiful, Mommy? Could he come live at our house?” Yes, absolutely he could. He’s less glittery and shiny today than he was then. But aren’t we all? The tree and its many ornaments have me in a reflective mood and my thoughts are meandering to our weekend that is drawing to a close as I write this week’s blog. The boys’ language arts projects are due Tuesday, so part of our weekend was devoted to their finishing them. The fourth graders read a wonderful book by Lois Lowry,  Number the Stars . The

Every summer, I facilitated a group activity with our incoming family medicine residents at my previous job. I handed each person an index card and asked him or her to complete two sentence stems. I’m most nervous about ____________________. I’m most excited about _____________________. We mixed up the cards, redistributed them and each person read aloud someone else’s hopes and fears. Then we discussed the common themes that emerged. I find myself thinking about that activity after this morning’s Parent Association meeting. During today’s meeting, we discussed the tendency to overextend ourselves and minimize time for self-compassion, self-care and restoring our energy. We discussed that we insert as many activities and commitments as possible into limited time slots between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. One mother said that she is making a concentrated effort to be more intentional about scheduling her free time during the holidays. I asked her how that is going. She sighed and s

When the boys were in kindergarten, we made gratitude turkey placemats. I cut out turkey bodies and made feathers from brightly colored construction paper. They identified their gratitudes and I wrote one on each feather. There were feathers for the “big” gratitudes: Family, friends, our dog Nala, their teachers and classmates. Other feathers reflected their “small” gratitudes: Toys, the beach, Legos, fish (foreshadowing?), baths, hills, and the animals at the Austin Zoo. I drove home from work today thinking about the turkey placemats and the gratitudes identified five years ago. Predictably, our lives have changed since they were in kindergarten. My kindergarteners have morphed into fourth graders and their primary friend group changed when they started at Rawson Saunders. Each is more self-confident and self-aware than he was five years ago. Despite all that is different, if we were to repeat this activity today, many of our gratitude feathers would remain the same. If we t

A text alerted me that school is delayed two hours due to ice concerns. I am now sitting in front of a fire, in pajamas, while our two-year-old puppy sleeps beside me and my coffee is safely tucked out of his reach. My children are still upstairs, dreaming about whatever their nine-year-old, unconscious minds are imagining. Life is very good at this exact moment in time. It is easy to be grateful for these moments. My goal for November’s Counselor Corner blogs is to focus on gratitude. As we move closer to Thanksgiving, most of us become more reflective about our gratitudes – Family, health, our homes, our school community, the dedicated teachers who educate our children. The big gratitudes certainly deserve recognition. So do the smaller gratitudes that occur when we pay attention to the present moment and appreciate our experience. Last week I told you the story of our fish and my gratitude for the life lessons. This week let me tell you the story of our dog and my gratitude

I try to avoid controversy in this blog. I speak to experiences that are relevant to all of us who love children and are trying to nudge them to their potential, either as parents, educators or both. More than anything, I want this blog to feel real. I want to share my authentic experiences with you as much as possible. I accept and embrace that some of you will agree with me, some will feel neutral and some will disagree with me. That’s okay. My goal is to bring up ideas that we can talk about and learn from each other’s experiences. That said, I am going to share a story of my family’s experience and this may feel upsetting to some of you. Some of you will read this blog and have your emotional reactions to having goldfish won as prizes at a carnival triggered. If that happens to you, give yourself a moment to honor your experience. We all have reactions to this common practice that elicits excitement in children and a full gamut of emotions from adults. Make space for that reaction

Halloween costume selection is an important process in our house. With the exception of their first year when I selected costumes (Elmo and Cookie Monster), my boys and I typically begin our discussions in August and final decisions are made in September. I start the conversation with a simple question: “Who do you want to be this year?” Their choices reflect the eras of our family history and life lessons lived via what their preferences were. We had the Woody and Buzz Lightyear year. They were in early preschool and learning about the importance of being a kind friend and honoring diversity. They began expressing a preference for certain friends based on shared interests. I found myself gravitating toward friends who understood how challenging it was to balance work, life and childcare for little ones with very little independent functioning. In retrospect, I realize that this era was when some of our long-term, family friendships were formed. I’ve had a lot of wonderful friend