To Understand the Differences

It's not badge of honor, that's for damn sure. No child who becomes an adult looks back fondly on growing up with divisive divorce, or domestic violence, or sexual assault, or abuse, neglect, or violence of any kind. And yet, too many of us have had those traumatic experiences early in our lives (and later, too). And many of us, like my wife and I, have pledged that nothing like that would ever happen to our children. 

Growing up Generation X in the 1970's, it eventually became a social media badge of honor decades later to be proud of the fact that we never wore helmets when riding our bikes. And the fact that we stayed out past dusk without any adult supervision. And the fact that we never talked about something bad that happened to us back in those days. I didn't talk about it until I was in my early 20's. 

Again, we've pledged that nothing like that would ever happen to our children, and while we don't have control over what happens to them outside of our house, we do inside our house. So, it's hard to hear from them when they talk about some of the things some their friends go through inside their own homes. 

We empathize and talk about it with our kids, that we don't always know exactly what's happening with people, but the fact is that divorce is real, and domestic violence is real, and abuse and neglect are real, and how the ensuing stress and mental health issues are quite real.

But when more kids are willing to share the trauma they're experiencing at a much early age, or attempt to share as best they can, the new normal perception is the experienced trauma, even if it's just a subset of friends. Our kids care about their friends, but what we don't want is for them to feel bad because they haven't had the same traumatic experiences. 

In fact, while they should listen and be empathetic with friends who have experienced trauma, or are experiencing it, we encourage them to be grateful for the fact that they are not. To be grateful that they have a supportive and loving family that communicates with each other, free from judgment and shame, which in turn can help them be better friends to those who do struggle.

Even a supportive and loving family won't negate the teen angst, heartbreak, and seemingly traumatic issues our kids have struggled with, and will continue to grapple with, into adulthood. But we do want them to understand the differences we work hard to ensure they do and don't experience, and how they can help others along the way.

No Matter What We Believe

It always feels easier when our kids don't ask about horrific world events. About why some people do something awkward or horrible to others; or denounce others because they don't like a specific group, how they live, what they believe in; or push their beliefs on others because they feel they're right and everyone else is wrong. We'd rather them stick to their normal day-to-day friend drama as is. 

Thankfully our teens don't listen to or watch the news regularly like my wife Amy and I do, but they still hear about local and world events through friends, social media, school, and us. They can also experience them directly, and that's when we need to talk with them about it. 

For example, recently a group of men from Gideons International, a Christian Business and Professional Men’s Association, came to the middle school unannounced where our youngest daughter Bryce attends, and distributed Bibles to students while on the public sidewalk, which was their right. The Bibles however had a table of contents pointing to verses about abortion, sexual temptation, adultery, and many other topics, which I wasn't happy about. I remembered when I was in high school and a Christian group distributed a pamphlet denouncing the music I listened to and why it was evil. My favorite band Rush was supposed to mean "Rangers Under Satan's House." Good God, please. 

Bryce thought it was funny though and brought the Bible home. We ultimately weren't that upset and were happy about how the school responded. The school staff was respectful to the missionaries as were the middle schoolers themselves. The principal sent a note to all parents letting them know what happened and that the bible distribution was not a school sponsored event. Even better, social studies teachers made time to discuss the First Amendment, which is under attack on all fronts more and more. We also don't practice Christianity, but still had a discussion with our teens about both. 

When our teens do want to talk about something significant and/or traumatic that's happened globally or locally, we listen to them first, without judgment (which isn't easy when you're fighting with your own world-view parental demons), and then have a dialogue about it. We help them understand as much as we can the greater context as to the why of the something that happened.

We also talk all the time about verifying something we've heard about or read about with multiple "objective" credible sources if at all possible. Because if not, that's when the adulting complexity of biases and -isms of all stripes can also be dangerously impactful on our kids, directly and indirectly. We've seen enough destruction of late of what it can do to grownups and children alike. 

Talking to our teens about why people believe what they believe and do what they do is still really hard. It's hard because everyone sees what they want to see, which we have to be okay with, even in the face of sometimes unsurmountable evidence to the contrary (which we're not quite okay with), but we remind them we will always lead with love and empathy. 

The difference, we also remind them, is that when beliefs intentionally cause harm to others socially, emotionally, and/or physically, that's where we draw the line. That's when there must be accountability for that harm, no matter what we believe.

Hug Your Kids

The text floored me. 

"MHMS is in lockdown. There is no immediate threat to the school. All children are accounted for and safe."

It was from our daughters' middle school and that's all it said. I had just gotten off of a work call and immediately went inside our house.

"Did you see the text?" I asked my wife Amy.

"Yes," was all she said. She was texting herself.

"Who are you texting?" I asked.

"Beatrice. She's working in the office right now. She says they may be someone nearby the campus with a gun, so they're barricading the door."

Our oldest Beatrice, now in 8th grade, is an office aid in the morning and was able to get to her phone and text her mom. She was scolded for that by one of the adults in the office, but another had already told her she could use her phone. Most of the time the students with phones have to keep them in their backpacks in their lockers. She texted Amy that she heard they were in a code red lockdown.

Another text came through on my phone: "Police are investigating an anonymous tip of a threat to Santa Cruz High. There has been no violence and no evidence of an active threat."

That didn't make us feel any better; the high school wasn't far from our middle school. Beatrice texted Amy that they were fine, but many of the adults were scared. She wasn't panicking and that was a good thing.

I paced back and forth in our living room, not sure what to do, if anything. We didn't know how our youngest Bryce was doing, only that she was in her core 6th grade classroom on the first floor. The were reports from local media that someone had called the police to report multiple shots had been fired at the nearby high school. That was all we knew.

Amy texted Beatrice to stay away from the windows. Beatrice said they closed all the shades, but we both knew that still wouldn't stop any bullets from outside. There's been too much violence on school grounds this year; there have been at least 141 real incidents of gunfire on school grounds, resulting in 48 deaths and 115 injuries nationally. Statistically it's at an all-time high. 

It was heart-wrenching to have to wait for more information in light of what's been happening more and more in this country. I knew if we tried to go down there, we wouldn't be let inside the school during a lockdown. Beatrice would tell us later that a parent pounded on the school doors shortly after the lockdown started, which scared everyone in the office. 

Imagining both our children trapped inside the school with someone roaming the halls with guns ready to kill filled me with angry dread. Amy and I kept it under control, though. We've repeatedly discussed what to do in case of this kind of emergency and counted on the fact our girls would do their best to stay safe. Until we knew more, there wasn't much we could do and that we had to be ready for action if and when necessary. Then there were reports that the active shooter incident was a hoax. An hour later that's what the text from school indicated as a possibility as well. 

Thirty minutes later I went to pick up our daughters. There had already been many parents picking up their kids once the lockdown was lifted, and while I waited for ours, I watched every other middle schooler come out of the front doors looking shaken, even crying. It was unbearable. 

I hugged both daughters when they came outside. Hearing them describe the anxiety they experienced as well as their classmates and teachers, having to push desks and chairs to barricade doors and hide under their desks, kids crying and shaking and even throwing up, everyone waiting for God knows what, was heart-wrenching. Bryce said she had a panic attack but she was better now; I hugged her again. The rest of the day we talked through it all with them, reviewed our safety plans and our Kidpower, and were grateful to have our family safe at home.

Thank you to our local law enforcement, the teachers, and the administrators for following safety protocols and keeping our children safe. Sadly this is part of a growing trend nationally where callers disguise their number and identity through and deceives emergency responders into sending services to create fear and disruption. This combined with the real violence on the rise is no joke and the trauma is devastating. 

Hug your kids and have a safety plan. Blessings to those who have lost their lives to this violence. We have to do more to prevent it.

If we were no longer here: the elasticity of God-empowered DNA

At 16 months old, will she remember our Martian family vacashun?

Will she remember holding hands walking on the beach, bare feet treading the chilly Pacific?

Will she remember the animals at the San Diego Zoo and Sea World?

Will she remember going on her first amusement park ride with Daddy?

Will she remember Mama nursing her through her cold last week in the middle of the night?

My lifelong fascination with how the human brain works and how if plays out in our everyday behavior has been rekindled through the developmental "wonder fire" burning inside Beatrice.

The sheer number of neurons at birth -- firing, wiring and re-wiring -- and by 8 months of age a baby may have an astounding 1,000 trillion synapses in her brain!

Between reading How We Decide to the website Zero to Three to other brain development content candy bars, I'm seeking the knowledge of how and why.

Why, for example, don't I have any memories before the age of 5-6 years old, but my sister claims she does from as early as 2-3?

Most child development experts believe that short-term memory isn't fully developed until age 3, so the ability to store occurrences at any given moment with regularity is hobbled by biological development.

Barring any other predisposed genetic disability or physical defect, a loving and nurturing family environment helps to spur the healthy wiring and re-wiring.

Trauma hampers the circuitry to no end.

According to Zero to Three's Starting Smart:

At the Developmental Traumatology Laboratory at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinics in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, researchers are conducting studies in traumatized children using the most up-to-date methods to study their stress circuits and brain development. In a recent report, they described their findings on maltreated children with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) who they compared to healthy, normal children and to children with clinical anxiety disorders who had not been maltreated. Many of the maltreated children had been sexually abused beginning between the ages of 18 months and 7 years. They had also witnessed domestic violence beginning early in life, and some had been battered by family members. For most of the children with PTSD, the trauma was chronic, lasting for several years before the children were rescued.

Unlike non-maltreated comparison children, the children with PTSD had elevated levels of the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol, even on a normal day when nothing especially stressful was happening (DeBellis, Baum, et al., 1999). Thus, these children’s stress systems seemed to be turned on even when they didn’t need to be. Especially high stress hormone levels were found among the children who had been abused for longer and/or had more severe PTSD. Very similar results have been found for children rescued from Romanian orphanages, even though for the most part these children had been severely neglected rather than physically or sexually abused.

Not surprising then on how PTSD played an unfortunate role in my development and my sister's, and the teenage/adult struggles that ensued. As I've said many times before, we need a helluva lot more purple elevate patches out there.

However, the elasticity of God-empowered DNA gives those of us who fight back a semblance of sanity, and in turn, the opportunity to break the cycle of trauma -- whether that's domestic violence, extreme neglect, even genocidal warfare.

And it favors the nurtured offspring.

This morning we woke Beatrice together as we usually do, talking with her and giving her hugs and kisses, singing her our morning song, and pointing out different icons in her room -- Pooh, Piglet and the flying bees that Amy's sister made.

This morning Beatrice pointed out my ears, mouth, eyes and nose, and then honked my nose. I asked her if her nose felt better ('cause here and Mama shared a cold this last week). She squeezed it and said, "Doe, doe, doe, doe, doe..."

Not that I focus on morbidity with any frequency these days, but this morning I also wondered if suddenly we were no longer here, would Bea remember us? Would even Bryce at this stage?

I'm going to buck the expert scientific trends and say, yes -- yes they would.

I'm crazy like that. I told you before it's the dope.