Back to School

Summer sizzled into September and hastened with heat the beginning of the new school year.

Many families worked with their loved ones over the Labor Day weekend to ready themselves for new classes and fresh faces in places both familiar and entirely new. Some boarded a bus, some shared a van, some saw their home return to a school setting, and some left their home.

There are so many moments in life where the next level feels so unclear, but not with school.

You start a new grade that's a higher number or greater distinction. You literally "level up" in the video game of your educational and vocational life. But even still, the grade level tells only a small portion of the story.

Are you ready for what comes next? Have I prepared them well?

The bus comes, the van pulls away, the kitchen is now class, and the class is in another state.

Students of every age and ability likely approach the school year with anticipation, but this feeling careens between the boundaries of hope and doubt as the first day dawns anew here. 

Will I feel safe? Will I learn something new? Will I make friends? Will I be included in this?

They arrive in bunches and in droves of a diverse beautiful sort on the threshold of their school. Their teachers greet and guide them down a path they have worked so hard to prepare, and the thankless endeavor of raising our children's minds and hearts begins anew for them. These teachers and their tandem forces work silently to set the occasion for learning and growing.

How can I reach her? How can I help him? How do I talk with their parents? How can I do this?

Upon teachers and their teams are foisted the blessing and burden of educating our children. They ready their classrooms and unpack their belongings and beliefs in less than one week and they do so with a smile and a scientific method to their presentation for our general benefit.

Whether you are a student or a teacher, a parent or administrator, I would encourage folks to hold fast to the belief that we are quite literally all doing it "for the kids" as we start out now. Even if we don't see eye to eye on every moment between meetings and miscommunications, I believe we are playing for the same team that is our children and their future as it unfolds.

Six Months Later

It's been roughly six months since last I posted here, and I wanted to fill folks in on my world.

I seriously can't believe that the last time I wrote was before spring started, and now the fall is moving in a serpentine, but certain manner toward the winter holiday season. Tempus fugit.

Waiting for the bus on the first day of school.

The biggest and best explanation for this writing interlude is Life itself. In May, My Better Half gave birth to our third child. Life has been a whirlwind tour of emotions and activities since our newest bundle of joy arrived, and our older children have embraced the chaos and noise with a youthful exuberance that either sustains or exhausts us (sometimes both!). Our older children have also experienced transitions (new schools, different teachers, more activities and friends) during this time period, which has made the process of keeping up challenging and rewarding.

As of this weren't enough, My Better Half managed a variety of home improvement projects during her maternity leave. The range of things that "got done" or "came up" are too numerous to mention, but my personal favorite was removing the towering trees in the back of our house that I have been complaining about since we moved in. It was an entertainment value for us.

On a professional level, I've had the opportunity to partner with both the Rochester City School District and the University of Rochester Medical Center around similar projects. The initiative with the university involves providing guidance around family-centered practices for providers of early intervention services, while the city school project focuses on partnering with educators and parents to support preschool students with more complex areas of need.

While my involvement with both projects is in its early stages, I am incredibly energized by the possibility of working with different service systems to support young children and families. 

At AutismUp's Kite Flite on August 20.

I also joined the Board of Directors at AutismUp. I feel so deeply honored to be invited to work with this organization, and I hope that I can contribute to the next steps in AutismUp's story.

In early October, I presented on intelligence and adaptive behavior to a group of graduate students at Nazareth College's Interdisciplinary Specialty Program in Autism. I encourage families and providers to learn more about this amazing collaborative training program.

I recently worked with colleagues with the Genesee Valley Psychological Association to plan and host a convention on trauma-informed care at St. John Fisher College Wegman's School of Nursing. The presenters were excellent and represented a range of disciplinary perspectives.

I hope to post more often, but am mindful that the holiday season fast approaches for many of us. I welcome those who read this blog to send questions and ideas my way. I'd appreciate it!

World Autism Day 2017

I really enjoy Christmas lights, so much so that I'm one-step removed from Walt Griswold.

While placing candle lights in the window back in November, I decided that I wanted to keep them up through April so that my family and I could Light it up Blue for World Autism Day.

I went to this website to buy candle lights, and I picked up standard bulbs at Home Depot.

April 2 is World Autism Awareness Day, making this the 10th year of recognition on this day. Initially envisioned to bring greater awareness, the focus now broadens to include acceptance, advocacy, and greater autonomy for individuals on the autism spectrum and their families.

My goal this month is talk more with my kids about people with autism and their families. They each know I work with people with autism, but I want to deepen their understanding in a way that matches their developmental level. I think these shows might be a good start for them.

I'm going to light up my house blue for all of April, and I hope that people who see the lights on at night reflect and respond inclusively for individuals with autism and their families.

Wind, Snow, Time, & Faith

These last two weeks (March 7 to 16) have been full of weather and safety-related concerns, and it's led me to take stock of what drives me these days and how I want to live my life now.

For those readers living outside the Rochester metropolitan area, we experienced a windstorm on March 7 that left over half of the region without power for days followed by a cold weather snap with daytime temps in the 20's. As many of the trees were cleared and power was mostly restored by the start of the next week, we were hit by Winter Storm Stella that dumped approximately two feet of snow in an on-going two day snow shower starting on March 14. 

I had a full caseload every day these last two weeks, but the windstorm and emerging snow storm prompted me to shuffle my schedule and cancel a full day of patients on March 15.

Now I'll be honest: I do not like it when anything prevents me from doing what I had planned. Yes: this is the pot calling the kettle black coming from this here clinical psychologist.

But the truth is I needed this dose of reality that was served up to me over the last two weeks.

It gave me a chance to meet people near us who took us in while our power was out.

It gave me a chance to be present for my daughter during and after outpatient eye surgery.

It gave me a chance to connect with people deeply because there was space and time for it.

“I wish I could say that I’d never been here before”

— Chris Stapleton, Fire Away

That's how I feel right about now as I realize I would've missed my daughter's surgery had the weather not laid to waste my plans to focus on my work instead. So many times before I've been so driven that I don't even see the road I'm driving the car of my life on. And for that, I feel compelled to reflect on how I can align my priorities more consistently with my values.

I had planned on my previous post (UnReal InstaLife) being the final one in a series about digital communication and re-framing our experience with it. After my daughter's surgery, I am reassessing how my digital existence impacts my reality as a parent, partner, and provider. I have such an intense, unrelenting desire to improve things that I very often forget to slow down, turn off the phone, and make the time to reflect rather than react to the moment I'm in.

So the weather gave me cause for pause and the opportunity to be present for my family, but another thought snuck in without my realizing it until the past weekend turned into this week.

When I think it could be therapeutically helpful and when I feel it logistically necessary, I have shared with my clients a bit about my personal life. Many folks know that My Better Half and I are expecting our third child in May and have showed such care and interest in her well-being. 

Knowing that my client's think and care about my family is something that moves me in a way I can't really describe in words, which is saying a lot given my predilection for hearing my own voice.

And on more than one occasion in the past two weeks, I've had clients look me in the face or tell me sincerely in writing that they have prayed for my wife's health and my daughter's. Now my faith is something I have generally regarded as a private matter, but the deep gratitude I feel toward my client's in sharing their faith with me has led me to re-examine mine in my work.

This then is a long-winded thank you to my clients, my family, my friends, and my community for calling my faith to mind during this unexpectedly trying month of March. So in the spirit of sharing more of myself, here is a picture of my family, in our comfy clothes, celebrating St. Patrick's Day by appreciating our warm home, our health, and some much needed time together.

Unreal InstaLife

Following up on my last two blog posts regarding social and electronic media, My Better Half shared this video with me:

The way this video represents a range of social media behaviors feels raw and real by focusing on the actions and nonverbal forms of communication in the physical presence of each person. I thought this was worth sharing in so far as it's evocative and can help facilitate a discussion. 

I have a few guidelines I've implemented in my daily life - and recommended to clients - that I think could be helpful to incorporate into everyone's daily routines:

Zero tolerance for technology during meals.

This can be delimited and brief (even 5 to 10 minutes) with no one looking at their phone. The ritual of breaking bread with others is so valuable for a variety of reasons, and I think that is a routine worth establishing as often and as early as possible with children and families.

Now, what I would encourage people to do is to have a fairly elastic definition of meal times. I get to meet with a number of children and adolescent clients who are working on skills like sitting during meals or eating a variety of food. It's not cheating if you change the definition. A meal could be a snack your kid likes to eat after school. Or meal planning time when you pick out what you're going to eat for breakfast or pack lunches for the next day together.

Keep the phone out of the bed. Literally.

Don't bring your phone in bed when reading stories to your children, talking with your partner, or transitioning to sleep. Even if you're a medical provider who needs to be on call at night, the psychological distance of putting it on a night stand that is a few feet away can be very real.

Be intentional about how & when you use your phone.

Rather than mindlessly and passively scrolling into the oblivion of your Facebook feed, go on a mission to find something or connect with someone through direct messaging. Messaging with intent is very different than just liking the buh-Jesus out of every witty or contrarian thought.

Reward yourself and your children for setting and sticking to technology limits.

If your 7-year-old child can go from 5 to 7 PM with a focus on playing outdoors or building something with their hands or their imagination, praise them like they're walking on the water. It's a big damn deal in this day and age to occupy ones self without the aid of technology. Pay attention to what you want to see more of and bring on the parade when you see the good behavior in action.

Take your teen's access to technology seriously.

A paper I read yesterday highlights the complexity of adolescents' access to social media and how it impacts their well-being. The catalytic effect of one post or accidental share can alter the trajectory of a child's academic year or self-concept without caregivers' even knowing.

This line in particular rung most true for me and ties in nicely with the video above:

“...the social exclusion and comparison resulting from vast amounts of time reading large social media feeds and seeing friends doing things without you and comparing your inner emotional experience to everyone else’s highly groomed depictions of their seemingly marvelous lives.”

While this run-on sentence may seem a far cry from the reality of parent- or adult-hood, I'd bet the farm that the so-called average adolescent could speak to the truth of this point of view. The world is both bigger and more constrained than it's ever been, making the boundaries harder to find and more difficult to delineate during times like these...