We finally got in to see the specialist. It’s a re-break of his fall football injury. Casted up to his armpit. 😩
Can’t wait for Mary Anne to save the day …
As parents it’s really important to adjust the language we are using around disappointments for our kids, because we are modeling how they will process all of this. I have two athletes. Sports being canceled. . . it sucks. It’s frustrating. But will it ruin their mental health? Not if we can reframe it. Not if we can find other ways to be active and to find connection with peers. There are thousands of kids who don’t play any sports and they are not all in a mental health crisis.
Likewise, there are thousands of kids who have been homeschooled for years who have managed to stay mentally healthy. It’s really important to distinguish between things that are disappointing, and things that will ruin our children’s mental health. And A LOT of that hinges on the narratives we give our kids. We can give them narratives of delayed gratification, of resiliency, of grieving and then moving on and finding new meaning and new coping skills. Or we can give them a fatalistic view that they’ve lost things they are entitled to, that they should remain outraged, and that they will be forever scarred by their current losses.
A lot of parents are channeling the latter into petitions demanding that their kids DESERVE THEIR ACTIVITIES that have been canceled to help protect the community spread, and I promise that will be spilling onto your kids’ psyche. Mental health is important. But it does not hinge on these disappointments. It hinges on how we help them process them, and then pivot to getting their mental + physical needs met in new and creative ways.
A man gets a new plant and it doesn’t go well.
This girl is in “tech week.” She auditioned into @southcoastrep‘s junior players, which has practiced for the past year to culminate in a full-scale show. Their show was scheduled for late March, days after we went into lockdown. They postponed, and finally had to pivot, and are now staging the show on zoom, complete with professional costumes and multiple backdrops. It’s not what she imagined and to be honest, it was probably her biggest disappointment in all of this so far. But like so much in this season, we adjust. We grieve what we lost and then figure out how to find some joy in where we find ourselves. It’s a hard lesson to learn at this age, but a good one.
Just want to give a shout-up to the total ineptitude of our health care providers and insurance group which has left my son’s broken thumb wrapped in a cloth bandage and duct tape since his urgent care visit and X-ray on June 26th because they can’t figure out how to make a referral in a timely manner. Urgent care said he needed a specialist to read the X-ray and cast his hand and gave us the number of a specialist but we STILL, two weeks later, can’t make an appointment because they are waiting for insurance approval. Everyone involved is pointing at everyone else. And we’ve even offered to pay cash but we aren’t allowed! I’m sure it’s healing just great like this. This is the medically negligent insurance afforded to our country’s former foster youth and I assure you this isn’t the first situation like this for him. 👎@memorialcaremedicalgroup, @caloptima @unitedcare.medical (now @prospectmedical)
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India is very disappointed in the mothers of her childhood tv shows. 😂 @indiahowerton
Memories, light the corners of my mind . . .
