Fixing my door...

In the midst of my daily routine, I have suddenly found myself reconsidering the true value of the commodity of patience.  Patience is not something that I can go shopping and acquire a booster, reload, or cart full at any local establishment.  In fact, to me, just learning how to access this behavior from within the ocean of other types of responses stored in my habitual personality is a daunting task that I confess to be extremely challenging.  Yet so many of you that are close to me keep telling me that I am one of the most patient individuals you know and cannot believe how much I am able to put up with before I literally blow a fuse and resort to other measures and behavior.  I was not always this way, in fact I remember being much more inpatient than patient throughout the pages that I am able to recollect of my life.  Something deep inside me has changed; the core storage of my instant replies and the impulsive actions that follow their release have been altered and somehow tamed.  Personally, when hurtful and frustrating moments knock on my door and push their way in regardless of my efforts to keep them outside of my life I still feel an incredible urge to grab them by their hypothetical necks, tighten my grip, and defuse their powerful effects.  However, something else inside me pulls my hands down and brings me to an almost complete halt instead.  Is this good or is this not so good in the end?  I won't lie, the jury is still out on my own assessment to the real value of these changes in my own behavior.

It could be that I have become more of a victim; a survivor if you will.  I read about it all the time with the life stories of those which have been handed incredible difficult or painful moments which in the end numb their responsive behavior to the point of allowing the negative effects to simply perpetuate themselves through time.  Another alternative could be that I have lowered my parental expectations so low that at the current level it makes very little sense to take aggressive action in order to achieve any true change.  Or could is just be that I have in some sense lost the sense of hope that is required for other kinds of responses to want to come out and play? 

The choices are many and even though I have just given you a taste of how some of them can be very unappealing, there are other possible reasons that could also describe why it is that so much has changed and given me a larger supply of that enviable patience response.  One explanation that immediately comes to mind is rooted on the basic principles of human learning behavior.  Learning, in its fundamental mechanics requires me to substitute old information with newer and more updated information in order for it to be effective.  How many times to I have to embark in an ineffective particular type of behavioral response before I decide to stop applying it?  Sooner or later, the lack of success in one type of action typically will lead me to either try something different, or in some cases nothing at all.  For example, I the last two and a half years in which my oldest son has lived with me 100 percent of the time, he has broken into my room to many times to count searching for something when I was not there to grant him physical access.  I've learned that threats, angered responses from my end, consequences, and punishments don't make any difference in the end.  Once the next moment in which his impulsive personality finds itself needing something that might be stored in my room and I am again not there to grant physical access, everything that I did in response to the previous incident of invasion of my privacy simply goes out the window without any rhyme or reason, and much less fear or remorse.  This kind of behavior I understand is tied to his differently wired mind.  I have learned that since I do not have the power, ability, or resources to make any changes to his twisted mental wiring, me going down a path of anger simply affects my own physical and mental health and very rarely if at all affects him.  In fact there is actually very little motivation on my part to even fix the physical damage he has caused over time to the side door of my room since I already know that it will happen again.  He has broken the door while I am on travel for some of the dumbest reasons.  For example, when asked why he's broken my door to get in his response has been: "...because I needed soap...because I needed shaving cream...because I needed batteries...because I needed a charger for something...because I needed shaving blades...because I needed some medication...because I needed money...etc."  I've tried pretty much every trick in my book to convince him to please wait or ask his mother while I am not there for whatever it is that he suddenly needs from my room, but in the end it simply happens again.  As I have said before, he never lies about his behavior and actions when confronted or asked.  So the superficial reasons are always easy to learn.  It is the root of his behavior and actions that are so hard to understand.

When I got home yesterday my privacy had been invaded again with his intrusion into my room, this time needing money.  Interestingly, I rarely ever say no to him when he asks me for cash, as long as the amount and his request is done so in a reasonable manner.  "Dad, can I have some money for food...for clothes...for something I need?"  And my typical response is "sure."  I actually don't feel abused when he asks, since he typically does so in a good way and truly not that often.  I did feel extremely hurt when I discovered that he had taken a cup full of about twenty dollars of change from my closet shelf without asking while I was not home.  My blood raged, my pulse increased, and instinctively I got into my car and drove to his mother's place where they were having Thanksgiving dinner to confront him, probably not a good sign of parental self control.  As I walked in I found the three of them at the dinner table and even though every bone in my body told me to walk away and not say anything, I somehow could not resist the urge to open my mouth and say a few words.  "It really upsets me that you would steal from me...I rarely ever deny you of anything you ask me, especially money...it really hurts that you would do such a thing," I said with a calm, low volume, and none aggressive tone.  "How much did you take?" I asked, to which he replied "Twenty dollars in quarters."  Then I simply apologized for having brought it up during their dinner, told him that this made me very sad, and just walked away.

I am sure you understand that this is not about the money.  Most people can probably read the above and recognize that this is all about trust, respect, and maintain a certain degree of dignity with your own flesh and blood.  Later on that same afternoon I walked into the house to get my jacket that I had accidentally left behind on my previous entry and as I walked into my home he simply walked towards me, gave me a hug, and walked away.  Honestly I am not even sure if that was an apology or just our common greeting, but either way it did do some good somewhere inside me because afterwards some of my resentment went away.

I have spent much of the past 30 months of my life praying for both my son's and my own healing.  In fact, the word "much" truly does not do justice to the amount of time I have lifted my words and heart to God during these difficult times in my life, which brings me to my final assessment as to why it is that maybe I have found so much patience in my daily responses and actions lately.  It could be that the reality of my behavior is more likely tied to the psychobabble I mentioned earlier in this post.  However, not being an expert in psychological behavior gives me the luxury to instead give God credit for my deep well of love.  So again I pray...

"Dear God, please fill my heart with what it is that I need to keep going.  I so often feel empty and with so little hope with regards to my son's behavior.  I do trust that You have a plan, and that this plan is well on its way to being obvious.  In fact, thank you for what it is You are doing to heal us both even though I cannot see it yet.  Amen."

Dad

Boo!!!

Once again, as so many other times in the past 25 years, I was unfortunately not home for Halloween.  Many of you might think and even say "what's the big deal...it's not like Halloween is a holiday."  The statement holds true to just about anyone that does not have a child.  However, for most of us that have kids we understand that the gory night of ghosts and ghouls is much more than just a freaky day for children to go out and dress up in their favorite costume and ask for candy.  Halloween is the day that once a year we get to experience the curious world of fear, fun, and silliness all mixed up in one, regardless of age, gender, and our social status.  If you are curious about how creative and original a bunch of nerdy engineers can truly be, invite a bunch of them to a costume Halloween party and be ready to laugh your head off all night long.  The same is probably true for so many other careers that so many of us have in which seriousness takes the lead on a daily behavioral basis.  As a parent, I can't remember a day of the year that made me smile more intensely than when I would hold my boys by the hand walking down the street in our neighborhood as they would tighten their grip when we would walk by a scary house.  Interestingly though, regardless of the fear of the moment I can't remember a time in which the choice was ever made to not go in and get some candy.

Today my children are already 15 and 18 years old respectively, yet I would of given anything to be able to still be with them yesterday night instead of out here at sea doing my tedious job.  A few weeks earlier my youngest son made his typical request, "dad, are you going to be able to help me make my costume this year?"  We've kind of gotten into the habit of "making" things instead of buying them.  To be totally honest, the last thing on my mind on the week just before having to get on a airplane and land on an aircraft carrier and then catch a helicopter ride to another ship was having to spend a good ten to twelve hours making a Halloween costume.  The though crossed my mind more than once of how great it would be if he would simply ask me to take him to the costume store to buy an outfit this year.  However, once I started making the costume with my youngest son it all came back to me, the reason I do what I do even though my older man's body is constantly telling me to stop doing it, is quite simple.  It is during those moments when we look at what we are doing together and both find ourselves respecting each other more than ever.  This is something that is hard to put into words.  He probably sees in me the reliable old man that gives into his quirky request to make the most awkward looking costume imaginable, and I see in him the loving boy that even though today he has already grown a full beard, inside he is still a child.  He respects my sense of not backing off from a promise, I respect his sense of giving me enough credit to think I can pull it off once again.  Last year the costume was Pyramid Head from Silent Hill.  This year it was The Butcher, again from Silent Hill.  The names of these characters do not do justice on how complicated making their costumes can be, but go online and do a picture search and maybe you'll understand what I am talking about.  Finding the right kind of  material to build the props is a project on itself.  Building them is definitely an adventure.

I started searching for materials at least two weeks ago which was definitely not enough time, but in the end we still got most of what we needed.  Cutting, gluing, painting, filling, sanding, taping, screwing, and detailing took a good twelve hours which from the processes just mentioned you can probably understand why they cannot all be done consecutively even if you wanted to.  On two occasions we took off in my car looking for a hard hat, an apron, spray paint, and a few other materials that eventually all came together to help complete the project.  I opened up the garage and we got to work cutting cardboard, gluing things, sawing the hard hat in half, painting, and on and on I can go into excruciating details since now I am an expert at building the most esoteric helmet I have ever seen.  It fits on half of the individuals face exposing only one eye and is made to look as if it was made out of rusted iron.  Every once in a while he would tell me that he needed to go finish some homework and I would stay on the task knowing that if I waited for him to be 100 percent available I would not be able to finish it before having to leave on my work trip.  Diligently he would come back almost every half hour to see if I needed help holding things while I glued parts together and also taking pictures with his phone to later post on his own blog some of the steps of our creation.  More importantly, while we worked together we talked, shared, and bonded immensely.  I'm glad we did this together, most of all because I was not going to be able to be home on the spooky night to come.

I know it goes without saying, but I wanted to share with you this short moment in my life as an example of the things I sometimes do to be able to connect with my kids.  They might look like men, but deep inside they are still children seeking for answers in their lives that sometimes come in the form of simple acts of sharing.  Doing things with your kids is a powerful tool to stay in touch with them.  It takes effort on my part even if I make it sound easy.  I have to drag my tired butt out of bed and get up earlier than I really want to during the weekends in order to find the time to do these things.  Lately I have found myself going on hikes when I am not feeling so well, or am more tired than I care to admit to my oldest son.  However, I also confess that I have no regrets because in the end I feel rewarded by that short moment that we connect and are able to see eye to eye.  If you find yourself disconnected with your teenage kids, maybe it's time you take a closer look at how you pick your moments to connect.  It is not always when it feels right, and much less when I feel ready, but for sure I've learned to take it when I can get it...that is how spooky love can be!

Dad

A simple moment of prayer...

"God, I understand that my job is not to worry, but to dream about all the blessings you have in store for me in my life.  It is obvious that my limited eyes are not able to always see the answers, yet in my heart I truly believe that you are doing everything that needs to be done for everything to be not just ok, but truly great.  Nobody understands this path I have walked with my children better than you, so today I pray to give you thanks and praise for taking care of us.  Every single day I eagerly wait for each one of your blessings knowing that they are constantly on their way into my life.  Thank you Lord!"

Words...

It took my brain less than a faction of a second to realize that the words leaving my lips would haunt me for the rest of my life.  In anger, sometimes I have said things that I have come to deeply regret.  Being a nerd at heart, I envision a time in the future where moments like this can be avoided by implanting in my brain a "don't be a dumb ass" filter that is automatically activated when my anger rises above a certain level...that would be so cool!  Unfortunately, in the meantime I must create a semi-effective filter myself utilizing the tough lessons I have learned in my life by the consequences of my words.  You would think that at my not so tender age, and taking into account the so many times that I have screwed up, that by now my self created filter would be amazingly effective, yet I am here to testify that I am very much still work in progress.

One thing led to another and as his anger increased, so did mine.  A simple question about whether he had done his homework or not, somehow eventually led to screaming on both sides, and unfortunately in the end turned into a physical confrontation.  He had just started high school at the time, and because of my separation I took advantage of not being able to purchase a home yet to rent a place in a more desirable school district.  A better school or environment does not necessarily mean that your children are in the "right" place, but that was still a lesson I was starting to learn at the time.  It only took a few weeks before the novelty of the new school wore off, and the reality of not feeling that he was in the right place kicked in.  I can see now, in retrospect, how ignorant I was to think that he could adapt to this drastic change when in reality "adapting to change" had always been his greatest challenge.  Top it all off with his parents, me and my now ex-wife, going through the motion of a divorce, and you can probably see the impending train crash clearer than I could at the time.

My parenting instincts took over during the challenging moment, and my reaction to his defiant behavior was to take away something that he cared about in order to gain some leverage.  I walked over and demanded he hand over his iPod as a punishment, to which I was immediatelly confronted with physical opposition.  It was at that moment that I escalated the situation by trying to take it by force.  Soon I found myself in a physical struggle, and even though I overpowered him and was able to win the battle, the war was far but over.  The rage in his eyes was obvious and for the first time as a parent I felt fear.  The verbal abuse from his side grew exponentially hurtful and obviously out of control.  He ran to the kitchen of the two bedroom apartment, open a drawer, and reached for a knife.  My adrenaline raised to never before expected levels while arguing with my son and I lunged at him and took him down by overpowering him, removing the weapon from his hands and then pinning him on the floor while keeping an obviously painful grip on his hair.  He threatened some more while being overpowered by me...I threatened to defend myself and also call the police if he would not stop instantly...and when I finally let go thinking it was all over, he raised himself from the floor reached for a dining room chair, tilted it over and brought his entire body weight on top of its fragile legs tearing it into many pieces.  In retrospect, considering the level of anger and danger of the moment, we were blessed that nothing more than a chair and some headphones were destroyed in the process.

I take pride of thinking that both my son and I are intelligent individuals, yet it took more than just a few of these terrible incidents for me to realize that we both needed professional help to be able to avoid these kinds of encounters.  At the moment, as much as I had already learned that my son had issues that made him very different from other kids, I still wanted to believe that if I was a tough dad, an enforcer, and did not give into his out of control behavior, that sooner or later I could fix what was broken.  What I did not realize at the time was that much of my own behavior factored in significantly as a trigger to his anger and outbursts.  If I sat down and described every one of the times in which we went down this scary path, I think I would need to take a sedative first, since just the memories of these painful moments trigger in me levels of anxiety that I do not wish to experience again.  I can only imagine how they must feel for my son too.  Sooner or later we are going to have to deal with these memories and try to find a way to turn the lessons to our advantage without the second hand effect of their emotional triggers.  I actually look forward to doing this since I believe it will bring us both a great deal of peace.

Violence comes in more flavors than one.  Somehow I am cursed with the ability to trigger a cornucopia of violent behavior in my son.  Interestingly, he does the same to me, making me reach deep inside my basic survival instincts and say and do things that I would never consider saying or doing under normal circumstances.  This obviously is a sign that it is not just my son that has anger issues, but I myself am most definitely work in progress keeping my demons at bay.  To know me as a friend might be extremely deceptive, since unless the right buttons are pushed, I am simply not an aggressive individual.  For example, cutting me off on the freeway would never trigger an angry response on my part.  In fact, I am not one to yell at a stranger, maybe because I don't see the point of it.  However, if I find myself being hurt at an emotional and personal level, many times I have found myself lashing out in return even though in a much less physical manner than my teenage son.  Words, though, can be just as hurtful as knives, even if I do not yell them out.  It is almost as if I could compare showing a knife in an angry gesture to saying something mean and hurtful.  Even though I might not lunge at my opponent with a sharp weapon, the fact that I reveal it is threatening enough.  Certain things that I might say in anger happen to have the same effect, turning the moment into one much worse than it has to be in the first place.

Even though in those days we set out to deal with my son's confrontational issues based on a weak diagnosis of my son having a condition called Intermittent Explosive Disorder, the outcome eventually benefited us both immensely.  Forcing ourselves to accept the fact that we needed to learn to control the level to which we could allow ourselves to be angry by avoiding certain triggers, made us realize that we both could do so much more on each other's ends to bring us to a better place.  Even though it took us a while to get significantly better at this task, the results are outstandingly impressive and effective.  Unfortunately we both are probably going to need to re-visit some of the words that were said during our difficult times in order to heal some of the wounds caused by our verbal attacks.  I say unfortunately because I truly wish it was just as simple as saying that it is all water under the bridge, but I know better to assume that his love for me as a son could ever be as powerful as my love to him as a father.  I care for him so much, that I am easily self-convinced that at his age those mistakes can all be washed away with love.  However, my mistakes are an entirely different beast.  At some point he really will need to know that I am truly sorry for some of the things that were said on my part in anger.  I should of been the bigger man, the adult, the good example.  This is why it is crucial for me to eventually find the proper moment in his life to bring with me a bucket of humility to try to wash away some of damage I might of caused.  It is not about giving in, or being weak, and much less about relinquishing parental authority.  In fact, not once should I do any of the above if I ever want to retain his respect.  However, there is a great lesson to be learned by my son from him hearing me say that some of the words that I once said were only words in anger and not the reality of my heart.  The lesson would be that a good father makes sure his kids know that he can be a better man.  After all, if I am trying to set a good example, what better example than picking the right words to say I am sorry.

Dad

Above all, your real job is to never give up!

It takes being a parent to totally grasp what parenting is all about.  In fact, I have learned that one has to be at this selfless job for more than just a few years to totally come to grips with how incredibly ignorant we were about parenting in the first place.  To those who play golf I would give them the analogy of how simple the game seemed before they ever played a game.  Come on, how hard could it be to hit a little ball down a beautiful green field and put it into a hole?  In fact, the first time anyone plays golf they are typically amazed at how quickly they can learn to hit the ball straight with just a few tips from a friend.  But then they go and invest in a set of golf clubs, some dorky looking shoes, maybe even take a few lessons, and when they return to play the game truly thinking that they will be so much better at it, they find themselves losing more balls than they did when they knew absolutely nothing about golf in the first place.  Funny how that goes, the more you practice, the harder the game becomes even if you get better at it.  Well, that is a bit like what parenting is in real life.  The longer we are parents, the harder the job becomes and then we realize how simpler it was in the beginning.  This is why we find so many grandparents telling their children how important it is for them to enjoy their kids while they are little.  Grandparents also tend to give the advice to younger parents to not be so hard on our kids when they are young, knowing well that in time there will be plenty of things for the parents to take immensely seriously when they grow older.  My mother's youngest brother and parent of two boys, one of my uncles, has told me many times that "as your kids get older, the problems always get larger, prepare yourself..." as a warning of things to come.  Even though I tend to agree with my dear uncle, I also believe that you should not live life waiting for the dark moments.  Since dark moments have a way of showing up uninvited regardless, I am one to try to keep a more positive perspective and not be the one that triggers their invitation in the first place.  I rather deal with those moments as they show up, than live my life waiting in fear for them to reveal themselves.

All this been said though, I barely have any time to spend second guessing myself with regards to the decisions I have made parenting my children.  I believe that this is the same for other parents too.  From the moment we bring home our little bundles of joy, until the day they flee the nest to begin their independent lives, we as parents invest an enormous amount of time, energy, and not to mention money taking in our new roles as caretakers, enforcers, guides, and counselors.  Very few times during those irreversible years do we ever have an opportunity to once again breath the air of peace and solitude that we once so easily took for granted and later were so eager to give up in exchange of having children.  In fact, at every stage of their lives we seem to live as if constantly throwing pennies into a wishing well hoping that what is next to come will be somewhat better than the days we just went through.  Maybe when he is potty trained things will be so much easier than constantly cleaning his poopy butt.  Maybe when he starts to talk I'll be able to tell what it is that he cries so much about.  Maybe when he is finally in school, all the pre-school nonsense and headaches will go away.  Maybe when he finally has some real friends it will be easier to get him involved in some sports or special activities.  I bet that as soon as he starts liking girls he'll begin brushing his teeth and wearing deodorant without me having to tell him to do so every morning.  Our fantasies go on and on with respect to how we visualize improvement in the future without realizing that at every stage a new and more difficult challenge creeps up its head to make the past look trivial in retrospect.  Oh how I wish that my biggest problem would be the burden of having to buy diapers by the truck load!  It is no wonder that so many mothers become depressed soon after giving birth to a child.  Not only do their environmental, physiological, and emotional worlds change without warning, but to top it off they are no longer just responsible for their singular life, but also the entire life of the new born creature.  It must feel as if at every corner someone is judging their ability to be a good mother, while at the same time almost no one is willing to do anything to lessen the weight of it all.

You will almost never find a parent referring to caring for their children as it being a burden.  Rarely will you hear those words reveal themselves from the lips of a mother or father that loves their kids.  Yet deep inside we all know that there are very few words to describe the enormous amount of responsibility and hard work that it takes to be a good parent.  The job is without a doubt the hardest task anyone will ever have to complete without a good set of instructions or procedures manual.  I might sound cold and harsh by talking about raising children in these terms.  However, all it takes is to be a parent for a few years to realize that there are very few other ways to describe the weight that is brought upon caring for a child, let alone more than one at a time.  Top it off with the fact that in most circumstances being a good parent also means being the bad guy, and soon you come to realize how great your own parents were in the first place.

I write this post today to give you a rare opportunity to reconsider some of the judgements that you might of made towards your own parents in the past.  Most of the time we are so self involved in our personal lives that we rarely take a moment to go back in time and understand the reason, the circumstances, and much less the reality under which our own parents behaved and acted under certain circumstances towards us as parents.  It seems so much easier to criticize their actions and decisions that it is to truly understand their reasons and motives.  I for one feel blessed for having such dedicated parents that cared enough to give it their all in order to be good parents.  What they did right or what they did wrong truly matters very little in comparison with what they accomplished in the end.  If you are reading this post chances are that you learned enough to recognize that in order for you to be a good parent, you must listen to others, learn from others, and most of all understand that nobody is perfect as a parent.  In fact, in my humble opinion, if you feel that you are a perfect parent, then you are well on your way to being a terrible parent in the end.  Nothing screams louder "bad parenting" than an individual that thinks that they know it all, and that the only right answer is "their answer".  I believe that the most important rule in good parenting is recognizing that we all make mistakes and that sometimes we need to make amends with what we've done wrong in the past in order to get it right in the present.

I can without a shadow of a doubt tell you that if you care enough to take the time to learn from your mistakes that sooner or later you will be well on your way to becoming a good parent.  The trick is to never let it all go to your head.  Don't ever make the mistake to think that you already know everything you need to know to be a good parent.  As long as you keep the door open to allow yourself to continue to learn, chances are that you are on the right track.  Even when you think that you have nothing else to give or nothing else to learn that might change your immediate circumstances, you cannot give in to failure.  The truth is that behind every failure there is a lesson that guides your steps towards eventual success.  If you keep learning, sooner or later you will succeed.  Above all, your real job is to never give up!

Dad

You can teach an old dog new tricks!

My mom keeps reminding me to buy her one of those cat scratch pads or posts.  Somehow I just keep forgetting every time I am out doing any shopping.  Probably because my head is full of other stuff and the needs of this fuzzy friend just rank one notch below the available "Post-It" space in my brain.  A bit over two years ago one of my son's was walking back from school when this little ball of joy that could not weigh more than a pound followed him home.  We spent several afternoons unsuccessfully canvasing the neighborhood, knocking on doors, hoping that we could find the original home and owners to the almost instantly named "Seaham" kitty.  You know you are in trouble once your kids name the creature.  It is almost like the first step in an emotional adoption process.  I myself am totally a dog person, so as adorable as it might as seemed at the moment, all I could think of was finding the animal it's real owners.  Eventually we gave up after in more than one occasion somebody told us that they thought the little thing was left behind by a individual that had lost their home to a foreclosure.  All I could think of at the moment was "I hope this cat is not as much trouble as the one I had for a short while in college!"  Her name was Baby Jane, and she was more than a handful!

Immediately I scheduled the earliest appointment to have her spayed, which was at least four months down the road.  The procedure could not have been more timely, since just a few weeks prior, our back yard had already become the main center of attraction for some very scary big fat black cat that had it in his mind to become a daddy if our adorable Seaham would let him.  You could almost see it in her tiny little face how scared she was of the impending prospect of the bad kitty mounting her!  I bought her a litter box and tried to keep her indoors as much as possible until the date of her operation, which soon turned several sections of my almost new home carpet into a scratch pad, hence my mother's advice to buy the creature the cat version to keep her from doing more damage.  It always amazes me how much can go wrong in such a short amount of time when you are caring for kitties and puppies.  I have seen these little troublemakers eat shoes, remote controls, couches, cabinets, and even outdoor sprinkler systems in a backyard.  There is no end to how much chaos they can cause when left to their own supervision.

I have been pleasantly surprised with how much my two sons have bonded with Seaham.  Interestingly, soon after she became a part of our household, the boys nicknamed her Sam, which in my opinion, shorter is better when naming pets.  In the last two years she has become what I call "a very grateful cat."  She never hisses at any of us, spends most of her day in the backyard chasing bugs, lizards, mice, and the occasional bird, which she typically brings some body part to us as gifts of appreciation for our attention and caring of her.  She'll drop to the floor on her side instantly if she thinks that we are going to pet her, exposing her furry belly and allowing us to scratch her as if she was a dog.  I had never experienced this kind of behavior with a cat, then again, I only had a cat for a few months before her.  Still, the scratching on stuff can be very annoying, so every time she starts I usually yell "no!" and take her outside.  Interestingly, she has taken to understand that if she scratches on something that I will then open the door.  So now days, all she does when she wants to go outside is make the gesture that she is about to start scratching on our recliner in the family room and then immediately she looks towards the door expecting one of us to open it for her.  In other words, the cat has trained "us" to know what to do when she wants out!

Sam is now 90% an outdoor cat.  As soon as she sees me doing any dishes in the morning through the window just above the kitchen sink, she then rushes to the sliding door just a few feet away expecting her well trained grandpa to open the door so she can come in and eat her food.  A few minutes later she'll just lift her paw against the corner of the family room recliner and look at the sliding door again, expecting the old man to once again let her out.  This process is basically a daily ritual which in her mind probably keeps me trained to know how to take good care of her.  In return she will occasionally bring me the severed head of a bird or reptile and leave it in front of the door to reward me for my good behavior.  I can almost hear what she is thinking..."good boy...good boy!"  What can I say other than you can teach an old dog new tricks!

Dad

The gift of hope.

As I entered his office I noticed a picture of a beautiful Gretsch White Falcon electric guitar on the top portion of his wall calendar.  I have always had a secret fascination with musical instruments which typically forces me to hold on to music store catalogs that come in the mail until I have had an opportunity to calmly drool over its pages before I am able to throw them in the trash.  I suppose that somewhere in the back of my mind I must be a musician at heart.  At the age of 7 I started taking piano lessons after one of my sisters received a console piano as a Christmas present from Santa Claus.  For almost 10 years I continued taking lessons until one day my teenage interests switched to other age appropriate things and I was able to convince my mom that I needed a break.  Still, for years to come, as soon as I walked into a room with a piano my mind wandered to the ivory keys with a sudden rush inside me driving me to want to play again.  The drive has always been strong, so much that while I went to college in Mississippi I remember sneaking into an empty large room in the Student Union building and sitting before a beautiful grand piano and trying to play from memory some of my favorite George Winston's compositions.  Other times I would walk into the Music building and wait until a music student would be leaving from one of the small practice rooms to reach for the door before it would lock itself behind him or her so that I could sneak in and play a little.  As an adult I have learned to hold back my impulses, so now days when I walk into a room that has a piano I just look and almost never touch.  However, I am sure that if at that very moment I was hooked up to some anxiety meter the needle would probably tilt off scale since my heart rate and many more of my vital signs are obviously affected by this sudden internal rush.

"Wow, that is a beautiful guitar" I told my co-worker and friend as I stared at the image on the wall.  He then proceeded with a chuckle and a comment on how expensive and desirable that particular instrument was to many people.  One thing led to another and in less than two minutes I was sharing with him how proud I was that my oldest son had learned to play guitar on his own so marvelously beautiful.  He then went on to tell me how driven he too had been as a teenager to learn to play the guitar and how later on in life circumstances had forced him to stop playing for almost 17 years.  Another co-worker one day enticed him to try again after revealing to him how so much had changed in the amplifier technology and that almost anyone now has access to a great deal of this and other music technology at a fraction of the cost from the past.  After we shared some more on the subject I was bold in making a comment where as I reflected on all of the admirable qualities that I had learned to admire from my dear friend I could not ever imagine being able to compare him with my son.  I said, "My son is good at so many difficult things because of the compulsions that drive him to impulsively learn whatever it is that motivates him at the moment...I would however, not dare to compare him to you since I am sure you were probably nothing like him as a teenager...this boy is truly a handful...sometimes so wild and scary at the same time that I am terrified of all the possible outcomes...between his way of thinking and his alcohol and drug abuse, I am sure such a level headed individual like you was a much different child."  Instantly he started to laugh and as he looked at me he leaned back in his chair and started to share with me a great deal of stories of his wild teenage years.  Sure enough, my dear friend had also been a handful to say the least to his parents.  One by one he accounted for how one mistake after another eventually taught him enough about himself to want to make the changes that make him who he is today.  As my mind processed his words my heart felt lifted, relieved, and in a very special way blessed.  Without him knowing that he was doing so, every account, every tale, and every word suddenly became a gift of hope about my son.  Not once did he say, "don't worry...your son will be OK."  However, everything he shared in those ten or fifteen minutes that I was in his office brought a great sense of hope to me.  I would probably be betraying a great deal of his confidence if I wrote here his stories without first asking, so I defer to your imagination to fill in the blanks.

I hope that this does not sound too righteous or religious, but I have to share my thoughts on this gift given to me by a good friend.  I remember over 13 months ago when I started to write this blog how desperately hopeless I felt about my parenting of my difficult teenage son.  If you read from the bottom up it is not hard to notice a transformation taking place in my thought process.  I began sharing with you at a moment in which things were terribly confusing and I desperately needed to make sense of it all.  One post after the other gave me the opportunity to not only share my story, but also to take the time to re-think what had gone on in the earlier years, and re-process the events that led to me writing these stories in the first place.  Amazingly, some of the things that seemed so frustrating and difficult to understand at the moment that they were happening, became much more clearer as I recounted and shared them with you.  What began as my own personal way of venting, sorting, and sharing, eventually became my own personal way of understanding, accepting, and healing.  I do however do something much more often than I share with you here.  Even though I am admittedly very much a man of science, I am conflictingly also a man of faith.  You need to know that this realization comes even more difficultly to me than it does to you since I am constantly seeing the world with a great deal of scepticism.  However, if there is something that I am certain of and can give testimony to, that would be the fact that God has always blessed me with whatever I  need in order to be able to go on trying to be a good parent.  I find very little coincidence that a musical instrument calendar hanging on the wall of a fellow engineer which has year after year shared with me every discovery in quantum physics that he has read about, suddenly serves as the prelude for him to open up to me and starts to tell me his wild teenage life story.  I know in my heart that these moments of refueling are God's gift to me when I am in need of hope.  To a non-believer these moments are just coincidences, happenstances, and moments with very little special meaning.  To me, it is God's way of lifting up my spirits when I am lonely and dragging my feet.  So in my own simple way I am here sharing this story with you while I quietly whisper "Thank you God," and type away.

Dad

Little rides...

As I travel back in time in my mind I am always fascinated by how complimentary my mom and dad's relationship seemed at any given moment.  For example, my dad used to love to drive, while my mom was extremely content to be sitting on the passenger side for hours on end.  At any given instant I can close my eyes and visualize in my head the image of my mom's left had reaching over my dad's right shoulder touching the back of his head as he took us all on a "little drive" which typically meant several hundred miles of sightseeing.  Many times we would start at noon and usually not get back home until dark.  When I was just seven years old and the household finances would allow it, we would get started on a Saturday morning around 5:00 a.m. and drive in my father's Chevy Malibu all the way from Phoenix Arizona to Southern California.  Typically we would arrive just within minutes of our destination opening its doors and would not start heading back to our home the same night until Disneyland, Universal Studios, or Sea World was closing their doors for the night.  One by one we would all fall asleep, except for one of my sisters that typically kept dad company awake most of the way back home.  I can only assume that with my father's Air Force salary and my mother's private school income, the budget only allowed for one day of fun at a time without the extra added expense of lodging.  Incredibly though, I never once heard my father complain about being too tired to take us out on these "little rides."  Every time we would go out as a family we truly had a great time regardless of our financial limitations.

The first time we went to Universal Studios Hollywood I remember being so impressed with all the special effects and secrets the movie industry used to make movies.  My most vivid memory is of us posing for a Kodak moment next to a giant rotary phone and some enormous sized scissors that were used as a prop in the creation of episodes for the show "Land of the Giants."  The show was not a great hit, in fact it was cancelled after only two seasons, yet the memories of being exposed to the magic of Hollywood in the creation of this show remain solid and fixed in my mind.  One by one my childhood experiences create a scrapbook or memories that I am now able to easily flip through its pages and enjoy at will.  Of course not everything is a good memory since in between the great times there were also hard times.  For example, my father had his first heart attack at the age of 33 sealing with that event a great deal of insecurities and worries in all of our minds.  It was bad enough that he had been gone for almost a year serving on a tour of war in Vietnam when he was suddenly brought back home to attend his father's funeral, but then about a year after this he found himself holding on to dear life himself.  In an instant the joy of having our family finally back together again was ripped away with the preoccupation of my father being ill and close to death.  Of course both him and my mother tried to trivialize their new reality in order to not have us children freak out, but the truth is that we all knew that our lives had changed and one way or the other we all needed to adapt.

"Let's go for a little ride..." my mother would say after attending church while pulling out a map of the state of Arizona that we kept in the family car.  In less than a minute my father would find a road that we had never taken before and steer us in the right direction for another day of family time.  If the road would furnish us with some obscure little Indian reservation museum or shop, immediately the car would come to a full stop, we would all get out to stretch our legs and check it out.  One weekend after the other we visited pretty much everything that there was to see in Arizona including the border towns to Mexico.  A lot changed after my father had his first cardiac arrest, but a lot stayed the same too.  Family time remained pretty much intact with the exception that it really took a lot more out of my father to do so many of the things he was used to doing and had taken for granted.  Walking up hill looking for the perfect Christmas tree to cut in Flagstaff Arizona was a much different experience that year.

Eventually my father was forced to retire from his military career much earlier than he really wanted to.  On our last summer before permanently moving back to Puerto Rico he took us all for a three month "little ride" all the way down from Arizona to Acapulco, then back up to Arizona again to pick up our dog and all the way across to Florida, and finally back up to South Carolina where we took a standby military aircraft ride back to our beloved island.  I've written a previous post detailing most of this trip that included a new car, a squeaky and leaking windshield, a new transmission, three adults, three kids, a dog, and towing a uHaul trailer with our luggage for almost 90 days.  As you can see from the highlights, it really was an adventure!

Eventually and finally we made it back to Puerto Rico.  School had already started by then, so us kids basically had to get ourselves back into the groove of learning without hesitation, and our mother went back to teaching again but now in a totally different language.  I guess the hardest one hit with our move back home was probably my dad because he had to adapt to the idea of not doing what he loved to do at such a young age.  Retiring in his early 30's was by far not ideal and had probably never crossed his mind.  At different stages he tried different things including going back to college, but in the end nothing was as fulfilling as his job in the U.S. Air Force.  One thing though never changed, even though we were back living in a small island, we all still packed ourselves into the car to take our little rides as a family.  Sometimes we'd get in the car with no destination in mind and eventually end up on the south side of the island visiting relatives or just driving around taking in the sites.  Typically we'd head out in the early afternoon and not make it back home until at least midnight or even later.

The little rides were not all saved just for weekends only.  During the week, when it was almost bedtime, many times my mom would ask my dad to take us for a little ride.  These midweek little ride requests meant just driving from our home in the countryside until we reached downtown, taking a few different roads to get there, buying milk and some fresh baked bread or treats from one of the local bakeries, and finally coming back home to dunk the still warm fresh bread covered in butter in a cup of hot coffee or chocolate.  Many times, if it was early enough, instead of coming back home after the drive we would take our warm bread bounty over to my grandparents home and eat it there instead.  Both my mom and dad loved visiting her parents and two sisters that lived in the farm house that was just five minutes away from our home.  As we'd drive into the narrow road entering my grandparents farm my father would slowly and carefully navigate his huge Chevrolet Impala between the branches of bushes and trees that would reach out and make their mark on our car if not done correctly.  In the early years the road was not paved, which also meant making sure that you knew where the potholes full of water from the typical earlier rain where located.  As we would pull our car in total darkness in front of my grandparents home, someone would peek through the one of the windows and instantly turn on the porch light as a welcoming gesture of hospitality and love.  Stepping up the steps into their home my mom and dad would typically lead asking my mother's parents to give them their blessings.  Originally a protestant, and before marriage converting to Catholic, my grandparents had become my father's godparents at that time.  I never heard him call them anything other than "padrino" and "madrina", and these titles where always preceded by a "bendición," which translates to "bless me godmother or bless me godfather."  This genuine and whole hearted gesture became a beautiful example of respect and love that I still admire from both my parents.  All of us kids learned to do the same and from the moment we were able to speak we always walked into my grandparents home asking for their blessings and greeting them with a hug and a kiss.

If I consider that my own kids were already talking full sentences by the age of 3, I can assume that for the last 45 years of my life I have been asking either my grandparents, uncles, aunts, and parents for their blessings every day.  This means that as a minimum I have been blessed at least 16,425 times.  In fact, if I extrapolate the thousand of times that I have requested blessings from my loved ones I can probably safely assume that I have easily been blessed more than 30,000 times in my lifetime.  That my dear readers is a lot of blessings!!!  The point that I am trying to make here is that thanks to what my parents taught me at such a young age, I am a very blessed man!

Recently my oldest son has curved his impulses and obsessions towards becoming more independent.  The same powerful forces that drive him to do scary things is currently at work to better himself.  Being sober and wanting to have more control over his own life have brought out of him a great deal of the tenderness that I had not seen a very long time.  I have always hugged, kissed, and given him my blessing regardless of how difficult a moment we might be going through.  Not an easy task if you ask me, but I have always felt it important to be this way.  Since I came back from my absence due to my job out at sea, everyday he has been the one to approach me with a hug when we greet first thing in the morning, or later when I get back home in the afternoon.  I am amazed of how powerful this beautiful habit of showing a loving gesture consistently since he was a child truly has become at this age.  I feel it genuinely, from his heart, and not imitated or forced.  To me it is an amazing indicator of how love can surpass some of the most difficult challenges in an individual's life.  We went hiking just the two of us on Saturday, then with his brother on Sunday.  Later on Sunday night we all got into the jacuzzi together and spent something like 90 minutes sharing stories and jokes.  To me, all of these moments are like those moments in which we would all get into my dad's car for a little ride.  One by one they create pages in the scrapbook of my children's lives so that they can later on, when they are older, go back and see how much they were loved by their father too.

Dad

Catching my breath...

It always feels so good when I finally make it home after being gone on work related travel.  My longest absence in my 25 years of working for the Department of Defense was 6 weeks.  At the time I was still single and without any parenting responsibilities, so even though it felt like a really long time to be gone, it was not as bad as it might seem.  Now days, when I am gone anywhere from one to three weeks at a time, it truly feels like a really long time regardless of what the calendar might say.  This last trip was almost three weeks long, which is on the borderline of being too long.  Just a few minutes after arriving at my home, my ex-wife brought my youngest son over and as I approached to give him a hug and kiss I found myself looking into his Adam's apple.  "My goodness, when did you suddenly grow another inch?" I asked while feeling so short standing in front of him.  I went into the garage, grabbed a measuring tape and made him stand against to wall to mark and measure how tall he had become during his summer vacation.  The almost 15 year old young man had grown a full inch during those short months, making him now five feet and 10 inches tall.  He grinned as I said out loud his new height, knowing that he was now an inch taller than his older brother which just a few years ago would constantly torture him by telling him he was "short."

That same day, while catching up with my oldest son on how he had managed during my three week absence, he surprised me with a request for me to take him hiking the next day.  This sudden request was like music to my ears knowing that being able to spend some time with him outdoors typically brings out of both of us some very enlightening conversations.  I quickly agreed and offered to head up a local mountain the next day.  We invited my younger son to accompany us, but he had already invited some friends over for that day and thought it would be rude to cancel.  So there we went each carrying a small water bottle in one of our hands with a very small and conservative goal of just doing 4 miles that day.  On our way up we started simply sharing generic information about movies we watched during our summer vacation, books we've read, and other simple pleasantries.  However, it was not very long before we started opening up with regards to more personal issues.  To get things going I inquired about what were the different motivations for people to turn vegetarian, all along knowing that he had done so several months back.  In his typical bright mind style he summarized for me all the different vegetarian categories which served me well to inquire about his own personal reasons.  To that question he replied by saying "I just like being in control over certain things in my life."  I thought that was extremely insightful while he continued to explain that it was only temporary and anytime soon he would be treating himself to a plate of his favorite buffalo wings to commemorate his achievement of losing weight from a high in the 190's all the way down to 140 pounds.

As the hike continued, a little bit at a time I found different ways to bring up a lot of unanswered questions that I had been waiting to find answers for several months by now.  I told him, "I've noticed that none of your friends have been coming over anymore and that you have locked to gate on the side of the house, what's going on?"  He answered the question telling me that he had graduated from high school a year early and that he thought it to be important to start being more independent.  "They are all hanging out and doing the same thing every day, in and out...all they do is play beer pong, and if I go there I am going to want to play too, which means I am going to get drunk, and I've discovered that when I get drunk I eventually pass out and then cannot remember what happened the day before while I was drunk...the next day everyone is telling me all the stupid things I did and said and I find myself having to apologize for things I can't even remember saying and doing in the first place."  At that very moment my heart skipped a beat because I knew he was, as he usually is, being truthful and honest and what parent does not want to hear that their wild child has grown another inch in his personal life.  It felt just like I felt when I reached into the garage looking for the measuring tape to see how tall my youngest boy had become during summer vacation.  Again I wanted to reach out and find anything in my toolbox that could tell me the true measure of his personal growth.

I then asked him how he was doing with his sleeping problem.  To this he answered that he was having major problems with anxiety at nights.  He said that when he closes his eyes to go to sleep he finds himself realizing that he is about to turn 18 in two months and that he still does not have his act together.  He said that he wants to be independent and not have to be asking me and his mother for money and things so he was already trying to find a part-time job to fill in the hours between the classes that he wanted to take at the local Community College.  I tried to give him some perspective and told him that I thought it was great that he was taking responsibility for himself, but that he should give himself realistic goals and not put too much pressure so that he could curve some of the anxiety it was all causing him.  I told him that the important thing was that he was aiming in the right direction, which I thought was a true sign of maturity and growing up.

I took advantage of the moment of clarity between us and offered several recommendations and advice.  We also talked about being sober and how different the world seems when you look at it with a clear mind.  By the time our hike was done, in one day I had learned more about his current state of mind than I had been able to during the last six months.  It was a very hot triple digit day and I was not in great shape so by the time we reached the peak I was totally out of breath.  Amazingly, he looked pretty much the same as he did when we started our hike.  Just a few months ago I had taken a good look at my son as he dragged himself staggering into our home drunk and out of control and all I could see was ugliness.  His appearance was that of a young man that had suddenly turned into an old beaten individual with wild eyes, totally out of control behavior, and such a scary demeanor that I had no other choice but to lock my bedroom doors at nights in fear.  Suddenly, just as I have been praying and asking God for a miracle to open his eyes, heart, and soul, the miracle seems to be happening right before my eyes.  I am not ignorant to the reality that he will fall again, we all fall again.  However, these moments of lucidity, of brilliant behavior, or amazing self control are nothing short of God's way of telling me to hang in there a little longer because this child is blessed.  I cannot describe how good it feels to have peace in our home, to be able to sleep without locking my bedroom door.

A week later we did it again, this time we coerced my youngest son to go with a promise to buy him the biggest size fresh squeeze orange juice from Jamba Juice after the hike.  I took a step back and watched and listened as both my teenage sons walked just a few feet in front of me sharing and endless supply of good humor between themselves.  Both of them so beautiful in my eyes, so talented, so incredibly loving.  As we hiked up the mountain I was remembering how just two years earlier the oldest boy would be calling his brother "short" in almost every sentence spoken out of his mouth, yet now he was an inch shorter himself.  Without saying a word I just smiled to myself understanding quite well how this process of growing up takes time.  I am still amazed how well they get along even while there is a three year difference between each other, so just imagine how amazing it is that an old man like me can still get along with two teenage boys too.  It was easier to share on the way down since in an effort to stay by their side I had to step up my pace and pretend that I was not having a heart attack on the way up.  The subject matter was much more light hearted on our second hike, but still just as enlightening because of their willingness to answer any question I would ask them.  I love that about my kids, I can ask anything and regardless of how terrifying the answer might be they never lie to me.  I have learned to censor myself at the moment and become a good listener in order to give them the freedom to speak their minds.  I don't intervene during the moment of sharing, but I do eventually find a place and time to plant my seeds of warning.  Telling a child not to do something is almost like begging them to do it in the first place.  I have learned that if I want them to stay away from something, it has to seem like it is their idea to stay clear of whatever it is they should not be doing in the first place.  So I typically try to steer the topic into a reasoning process, but not at the moment of the confession, later on.

Today I pray with more motivation and faith than ever, thanking God for his intervention and allowing me to have a moment to recharge my mind and heart with what I need to stay true in my parenting path.  I am blessed with two amazingly beautiful children that are on their way to become great men.

Dad

Lesson #1 - When to bend my knees.

The 10 most important things I have learned in the past 12 months...(Part 10).

Today I celebrate an entire year of an incredible journey of sharing my parenting life with all of you.  I now look back at over 150 posts that one by one gave birth to an amazing relationship between us all.  To be honest it never occurred to me in the beginning that so many of you would take the time to read these pages.  At the most I expected only my closest relatives and a few friends to be interested, and yet a huge array of individuals have crossed through these pages of love and hope from many different parts of the world.  There is a small feature in my pages that allows me to know how many times somebody has tuned into read one of my stories, and another one that gives me an idea of the general area where they are at when they do so.  Do not worry, your visits are anonymous and not even I am privy to the actual individuals that come in to visit.  The United States of America, Kenya, Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Greece, Netherlands, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Great Britain, France, Russia, Mexico, Panama, Argentina, Chile, Spain, Italy, and my dear Puerto Rico are all just a few locations that I can name off the top of my head that have been shown to read this blog.  Something else the feature tells me is whether the visitor came in directly or by doing a search online and then clicking your way into my pages.  Surprisingly, many of you that originally showed as just wandering in, later on kept coming back to share with me some more.  I am aware that when something is very popular its online content can reach millions of visitors a year.  That was truly not my goal at all, yet I am still amazed that over 3,700 times somebody has been driven to read these excerpts of my life as a father.  Today, twelves months after beginning this path of bare honesty and and many times brutal truth sharing, I sit humbled by your interest and support.  I celebrate quietly while typing away on a computer on board the mighty USS Cape St. George, where again destiny has taken me for a ride because of my job.  It is almost ten o'clock in the evening, but today I want to share with you the number one lesson I have learned in the past 12 months.  Read and enjoy!

Lesson #1 - When to bend my knees.

As a young boy my family did a lot of moving around because of my father being part of the U.S. Air Force.  Us kids that have lived this kind of life are called Air Force brats, a term of which I am quite fond regardless of its possible original intent.  In my lifetime we lived in England, Arkansas, Arizona, and back and forth to Puerto Rico in between every move.  My mother was always a teacher in whatever school we attended while growing up, giving up a career with much better retirement benefits from the public school system by always teaching in the private sector in order to be with us and keep us in better schools.  By private sector I really mean Catholic schools, which brings me to the next part of this story.

At age seven, since my mother was always an early bird getting to school at least an hour before classes would commence, and not having much more else to do, I attended Catholic mass every morning during the week.  Soon enough just watching these services did not fulfill my curiosity so I became an altar boy for more of a hands on experience.  Every morning at the crack of dawn I went into the St. Vincent de Paul church, put on the white garment that seemed the appropriate size for my scrawny little body, and served as an altar boy in mass.  I really enjoyed doing this and it took very little sacrifice on my end to participate.  I believe that it was this early interaction with God that put in my heart the desire for me to be a good son.  As a child my parents gave us very little choice of whether we would attend mass on Sundays or not, so unless you were on your death bed, odds were favor that you would be bending your knees for a while that day.  The funny thing is, no matter how much that act of humility might of hurt, it grew on me as a sign of what it took for God to listen.  I know what you might be thinking, those Catholic rituals are probably totally unnecessary in order to make a phone call to heaven, but the truth is that we all  grew up with different habits and it is very doubtful we will change them that much later on in life.  What can I tell you about bending my knees?  To begin with, you have to understand that in my religion, talking to God is serious business.  I do not take it lightly when I decide to get in touch with the Big Kahuna, the fact of the matter is that if I am going to dial 911 for help upstairs, I am definitely going to do it my way.

Life found a way to do what it does best, throw me curve balls on every single important pitch.  My marriage was a prime example that life took its sweet time in teaching me how to get it right.  In fact, it took me so long that it eventually cost me my marriage.  Then again, life could of given me two kids that were perfectly wired and ready to challenge me in all the different ways it does to the average parent.  However, there too life decided to throw a fast ball with a really good spin on it so it would slide right under my bat by giving me what I find to be a REALLY challenging older son.  As I have said before, if it were not for my younger son, I might of never known that my oldest son was so different.  This time however, I did not proceed in the same way that I did during my marriage.  Instead of trying to figure it all out on my own, I found it totally necessary to dial up the Boss and ask him for help.  It's a really good thing that I did, otherwise there would definitely not be much left of me today in order to be writing this post for all of you.

The most important lesson I have learned during these past 12 months is that I am not in control of my son's life.  If I was, I would of been able to straighten out everything that is twisted without any help.  This lesson is a hard one to swallow and much harder to accept.  I do not have the power to change my son.  In fact, I do not have the power to change anyone else but myself.  So if I am going to take on the job of trying to be a better father, I might as well figure out who it is that has the ability to make any real changes around my kids.  In my incredibly stubborn and surprised mind I have come to accept the role of facilitator as a parent, and not that of an enforcer and much less a dictator.  How is it that I am so sure that God is the only one that is in control and has the power to help my son?  Because when I have given it my all, and I really mean my "all," I have seen myself fail miserably many, many times.  So much have I failed in my quest of being an effective parent that I've found myself way too often bending my knees and assuming the position of humble prayer begging for God to intervene and help me out.  I can tell you that without a doubt, every single time I have done so, I have received God's grace in one way or the other pulling me through those difficult moments.  I might scream and yell at the world for the injustice that I feel by being hurt so deeply when my son has pointed a knife at me, or spit in my face in a moment of rage.  However, those desperate words that depart my from the bottom of my heart and soul have never done me any good.  Instead, one day, when I was pacing around in my room like a caged lion from side to side waiting to find the strength in me to carry on after an incredible hurtful moment with my child, my knees came off of their walking position and they took me down to the ground as I finally gave into accepting that only God could get me through that moment.  I would be lying if I told you that from one desperate prayer all of the solutions to my problems came flowing from heaven.  I would be exaggerating if I told you that instantly I found peace in my heart and soul after calling up to my Lord for answers.  However, what is the God honest truth is that He definitely got me through those incredibly painful moments by filling my mind with a true understanding of my son's condition and putting inside my heart a great deal of love to be able to get through it all a little bit at a time.

Everyone is free to deal with their challenges in any way they seem fit.  All I can tell you is that it was not until I turned over this incredibly difficult parenting challenge to God, that I started to see through it all.  The best way I can describe it would be to say:

"Imagine an incredibly dark forest in which every branch in the night seems to be reaching out to grab you and scare you to death.  As you wander aimlessly through the darkness you find yourself lost and confused.  You try to build a fire but every branch you reach out to is either wet or too green for them to ignite with the only box of matches that you have in your pockets.  Soon it starts to get colder and no matter how prepared you thought you were with the garments you put on in the morning the chilling air finds a way to filter itself inside and make you shiver.  You call out for everyone you thought that might be there to get you through this darkness, yet the only thing you hear back is your own echo as it bounces off nearby rocks and more.  You've heard of others not making it through this dark forest either because they were lost and never found again, or somebody else later finds their carcases huddled up inside a hollow tree where they were trying to stay warm and survive.  Just as you think that there is no hope and you too will end up inside the belly of some ravaging creature, you finally see a very dim light at the other side of what seems to be the edge of the forest.  Tell me my dear friends, what would you do next?  Would you ignore the light and stay put in hopes that somebody else will come and rescue you?  Would you pretend that the light was not really there and keep looking for something else?  I somehow doubt that you would do any of the above choices.  The logical and instinctive thing to do would be to march on towards the light in hopes that it might be shelter or something that could save you from your impending doom.

I've found hope in my solitude and prayers.  I truly believe that my son is destined to be a good man with an amazing future.  It is true that he is very different to many other kids, but it is also true that he has been gifted with an enormous collection of talents that puts most of us to shame.  Why else would he be given so many beautiful things if it were not because he has an incredible journey ahead in his life?  Why else would he be given two good parents that love him so much that they are always ready to charge into his life when he needs us?  I choose to believe that the reason is because God has an amazing plan for him, and everything he and I have had to endure is part of that plan.  I once stood there in total darkness in the past, not  understanding why this journey had to be so hard and many times even cruel.  I reached out and found very little help in the so called professionals and experts, none of them had a single dry branch to light up a fire inside of my then dark soul.  It was not until I saw that dim light at the other side of my journey that I realized that God was there for me to show me a way out.  Today, after so much that has happened I can honestly say that the most important lesson I have learned during the last 12 months is when to bend my knees in humility to thank my God for my beautiful children, just the way they are!

Dad

Lesson #2 - Finding the right moments.

The top 10 most important things that I have learned in the past 12 months...(Part 9).

Just as there is a season for everything under the sun, there is also the right moment for taking action or taking pause with the growth of your children.  The mere fact that you want them to understand something makes absolutely no difference when they are not ready to consume your wisdom.  Every child is a little different than the others, so no single strategy will answer all of your questions as to how to find the right moments in which you can reach them effectively.  As a parent I have learned in these past 12 months to pick my battles, listen and watch carefully, and act only when the tide is in my favor.  The alternative of putting on a blindfold and constantly spouting out rules and reprimands is just not very effective at all.

Lesson #2 - Finding the right moments.

It is said that in comedy timing is everything.  An effective comedian not only knows and understands his audience, but he also knows what to say, when to say it, and most of all when to pause.  Jumping the gun is much less effective than timing it just right with a good punchline.  It took me a while but I eventually realized that there is a very similar correlation to being an effective parent.  In order for me to be an effective father, I too need to know and understand my child well enough to be able to gauge what words are effective, when I need to intervene, and most of all, when I need to stay out of it during challenging moments.  Otherwise I am just talking to myself, and wasting a whole lot of time gaining absolutely nothing in return.

The hardest part of being effective in helping my son during challenging moments was realizing that it is in those exact moments that I typically must take a back seat approach and take almost no action at all.  Instinctively I want to rush in and save him from the moment, the dangers, the repercussions that I already can see coming his way from a very great distance.  However, it is my intervention that keeps him from learning and figuring out what is a good or bad decision on his part in the first place.  The shallow gratification that comes afterwards by me being able to say "I told you so" does nothing to improve his level of maturity and much less our interpersonal relationship.  In fact, it simply draws us farther apart in the end.  So, instead of waiting for when he is about to, or in the middle of doing something really scary for me to intervene, I need to find prior moments in his life to plant the seeds of knowledge that he is going to need to make better choices.  These prior moments are not so easy to find, so this is where your parenting skills and tools need to be taken out to do their mystic work.

I have learned a great deal about finding the right moments during the past 12 months.  First of all you should know that making a connection with our teenage child is never going to be easy.  The way my oldest son is wired makes it an even greater challenge, but to my surprise not impossible to do.  The key is to not force the moment, it can never seem to be artificial or induced by an eager parent that wants his child to listen.  Instead you must be patient and wait for the few and in between opportunities that grant you access to their mind, heart, and maybe even soul.  For me this became an incredible challenge for which I refused to give up until I felt I had succeeded.  Perseverance pays off.  It is not as simple as walking into the room and saying "let's talk about drugs today!"  That would just be futile to say the least.  Instead, when I noticed that there had been drama in his life because of one of his friends making mistakes related to drugs, that signaled an open door.  Again, the direct approach rarely works, so I became a master of knowing how to ask the right questions.  For example, "I noticed that seems to be kind of down, is he ok?"  The passive approach of showing empathy for his friend allows him to talk about others instead of himself without the need of revealing his own drug related issues.  Another approach that has a much less immediate positive effect, but nonetheless typically results in a connection in the long run is to simply state "I can tell that you are going through a rough moment, if you need me, I am here for you..." which leaves the door wide open for some other time.  Not barging into his life and trying to portray that I know all the answers is crucial.  In fact, for most moments to be right, he has to believe in his own mind that "he" is the one that is picking the moment to open up and share.

Whenever my son is playing some new music that I have never heard before, regardless of whether I like it or not, I take the time to ask him who the band is and what else he knows about them.  It is instantly that he is willing to open up and talk about this kind of stuff.  The same thing goes for any books he is reading, no matter how scary the subject matter might appear at first glance, I always ask him to tell me about the author, before I ask him to tell me about the subject matter in itself.  He never feels pre-judged when I do this, allowing him to give me the true reason for why he is reading the book in the first place.  Since I have never contradicted any of the material that he puts on paper in writing, it is he that typically approaches me to tell me that he has written a new essay.  I usually tell him, "If you'd like me to read it just leave me a copy on my dresser..." which puts all of the weight on him as to deciding to share it with me or not.  In fact, he has always done so in the end, giving me access to his mind and thoughts.  The subject matter can sometimes be frightening and other times simply delightful, but my intention is not to pass judgment on his mental process, instead I utilize this opportunity to ask him more questions, to clarify what he means and why he feels of thinks at any given time.  Since I do not criticise his stuff, he's gone forward and allowed me to read just about everything he has written.  In the end it is I that mostly benefit from these opportunities by utilizing them as portals to plant seeds of love, hope, compassion, wisdom, and much more.  One by one these seeds have a way of growing inside such a fertile mind and heart.  Not all will stick, but the ones that do make it all worth while in the end.

Offer to do simple things with them...instead of bringing the pizza, ask them to go with you to get it.  On the way there find something simple to share about your own day that will make them feel that sharing your life with them is important to you.  Instead of picking up the favorite book, movie, or game for them, always find an excuse to have them come with you and do it together.  If you have more than one child, take turns doing special things with each of them individually because they need to feel that they are each special in their own way.  It is great to have family time, it is even greater to have "you and me" time.  Don't play favorites because one is easier to convince than the other to share with you...make the extra effort to get them to be part of those special moments.  "No" does not mean "never", so if they say no today, ask again tomorrow, and the next day, until they finally give in, which they will if you are persistent.

Finally, realize that children are people too.  They have their ups and downs just like anyone else, so don't be so hard on them that one mistake on their part ruins your entire relationship all together.  I have said this before and I will say it again, forgiveness really means letting go of the issue and not bringing it back every time there is conflict.  It will not win you any battles to bring forth issues from the past that you have already agreed on letting go and forgiving.  The more you do this terrible habit of repeating old issues, the less opportunities you will find in the future to bond with your children.  Nobody, not even them who truly love you because of your parental role, can live up to expectations of being perfect at all times.  In fact, if there is something that drives you nuts because they are unable or unwilling to change in their behavior, just let it go and watch as the wheels of time teach them the lessons they need to know for them to change all on their own.  I have yet to know an adult that truly enjoys listening to music at ear piercing levels, we all give up those habits sooner or later on our own.

Dad

Lesson #3 - Managing my own life.

The 10 most important things that I have learned in the past 12 months...(Part 8).

One of the biggest mistakes that I have found myself doing in the past is allowing my own anger and frustration to cloud my vision of the rest of the things that important in my life.  As impossible as it might seem at times, the task of prioritizing and separating issues is actually more important than the issues themselves.  If I fail to manage my own life properly I find myself taking things too personal when in fact many times they are not meant to hurt me at all.  These last 12 months have been groundbreaking in my own personal development.  I suggest that anyone interested in having clarity when looking at the problems that surround them first take a really close look at themselves, manage their lives properly, and then set themselves out to helping others.  Changing the order of this suggestion is just asking for trouble.

Lesson #3 - Managing my own life.

It was easy to be a good dad when my children were little boys.  The most demanding side of parenting in those days was making enough time for my kids.  As a relatively young father I had career aspirations, marital challenges, and personal desires that seemed to be pulling me each in opposite directions.  Eventually though, I did find a center, a comfortable place in my life that allowed me to be relatively happy with myself while still having ample time to give to my deserving wife and kids.  I guess it takes growing up, maturing, learning a few good lessons to make a young man into a better father.  Life never stoped to give me a breather.  One day turned into the next and soon enough my children were teenagers ready to challenge my parenting skills at every possible level.  At that very moment when this all began I did not have my life in order, and I really wished I did.  Every personal struggle took away moments of my life that could of been better utilized in being a better father.  My failed dreams came in many flavors that somehow mixed themselves creating a muddy substance of my life and making it so much more difficult for me to see a clear path on how to proceed.  I sat still because all of my troubles had taken the wind from my sails, and for the length of time that I did not move, I lost precious valuable time that should of been put to better use with my children.  By the time I woke up from my own personal and emotional crisis, when I finally opened my eyes and was able to see clearly again, my boys had gone from being babies to quickly becoming young men.

I believe that to be a good parent you need to get over yourself, recover from where ever it is you might have fallen into, and bounce back into action.  In the past year I have learned that nothing is more important to be able to have a clear vision than managing your own life first.  If you are hurt, you need to heal.  If you are angry, you need to learn to manage your anger.  If you are frustrated, you need to channel your frustrations elsewhere and not towards your family.  What happens at work needs to stay at work and never bring it home.  Separating, compartmentalizing your life is crucial to avoiding a blurred vision of your path.  This is not only sound advice for parenting, but also for any relationship in your life.  When I was in the middle of my own emotional crisis, I took everything personal and as if it was all about me.  The discovery that none of the challenges that my teenage son has been putting me through were about me made a huge difference on my ability to be part of the answer, a solution, and not part of the problem.  It was too often that I as parents took my rude teenager's response personal and to heart.  It is difficult to separate the child from the behavior, but the truth is that they are two very different things.  The child is still the same child I cuddled in my arms when he was little, the only thing that has changed is the behavioral responses that this child has towards what he is facing in his life at that very moment.  Not that different from you and I, right?  I doubt that you would say that you are a totally different individual than what you were when you were a young adult.  Not at all.  In fact, that is why it is so hard to look at myself in the mirror sometimes, I barely recognize the older full of grey hair reflection.  It is almost as if when I peek I am seeing a stranger, a "me" dressed up as an "older me" instead.

As soon as I started taking care of my own emotional needs, I then discovered that it was easier to understand my child's emotional needs too.  As soon as I learned to manage my own anger and frustrations, I also learned how much simpler it was to understand his anger and frustrations.  They say that you should not through stones in a glass house.  I agree full hearted with that statement.  If you want to be a better parent, start taking a really close look at yourself, and your own shortcomings and try to work on them a little bit at a time.  Nothing worth doing can be done quickly, so take your time and realize that it is not a one or two day process.  Invest in yourself by healing some of your own wounds and finding help from the outside if needed.  Look into your own reflection and decide what needs to be improved in order to be more appealing to your family.  Start by managing the little things first, so that you can see success and savor it's beauty.  Then, once you get a hang on making progress in your life, pick something a little harder to fix or improve and go at it with all your heart and soul.  Give it a try, I promise you won't regret it.

Dad

Lesson #4 - Listen to what others have to say.

The top 10 most important things I have learned in the past 12 months...(Part 7).

There is nothing more important in any successful quest than knowledge.  The more you know, the simpler it is to be successful at almost anything you set your mind to.  However, there is always the matter of the difference between book smart and street smart.  In other words, you could read every book ever written about swimming, but unless you go out there and jump in the water and try to swim, chances are you will never be great at it.  In parenting believe it or not, the experts are not all those books that pleasantly sit comfortable on the shelves of a bookstore or library.  Although there are several good authors that will inspire you and give you insight into different techniques and tools you should know about parenting, nothing beats the knowledge you are able to gain from other parents themselves.

Lesson #4 - Listen to what others have to say.

I have been on a quest for the last 18 years in search of answers on how to be a better father for my now two teenage boys.  As early as when they were still in their mother's womb, I had already taken the task of buying and reading educational material on the matter of good parenting.  In those books I discovered subjects like "effective time out" and "tough love."  Each and every one of these experts brought to the table an assortment of what in their minds and experience worked, and what did not work or simply made things worse when parenting your children.  I will not lie, as inexperienced in parenting as any other young father I too found a great deal of wisdom in many of these books and took their what at the time seemed solid advice to heart.  What none of these books tell you is that not every child is wired equally, and what might work outstandingly well for one, might have the total and opposite effect for the other.  This I learned on my own, the hard way, by doing what I thought was right and later on discovering that it was just a really bad idea to proceed as it had been recommended in a book.

I, like most parents, also took the approach of "well if it worked for my parents with me, why should it not work for me with my children?"  Not that our parents were not wise in their parenting abilities, but again the same situation you encounter in the books, where one size does not fit all, repeats itself with the single point of reference of utilizing your parent's skills on your own children.  Another fault in the "do as it was done to me" technique is that several generations have already transpired during my time and my children's time, so a lot has obviously changed on what is going on in the lives of my children versus what was going on in my life as a child.  So, if the experts are not the best source of parenting knowledge, and your parents aren't either, then who is, you may ask?  The answer is simple, all of you, my readers and my dear friends.

Every time I take the time to share some of my parental situations with friends, co-workers, family members, and even total strangers, I suddenly find answers to many of my questions.  Why does my child do this?  What do I do to stop him from doing that?  Where do I find help?  How long does it take him to get past that stage of behavior?  I can go on and on with questions that as far as I have been able to ascertain, only other parents that have been going through similar situations as my own have a good realistic answer.  Everything else is pie in the sky.  The so called experts typically talk in general terms and afraid to give any advice that could come back and bite them in the end.  Other parents on the other hand, well let's just say they have had plenty of time to digest their own reality and figure out what to say about it without fear of any repercussion.

The key to gaining true knowledge from other parents is to be a good listener.  Yes, you need to plant the seed by giving enough information on your situation to be able to compare notes, but once another parent, grandparent, or guardian starts talking about how difficult it has been for them to manage their children, trust me, you are on the right track to learning a great deal from them.  I have discovered that if anyone starts a sentence with saying, "oh that's easy, I simply...," never mind the advice you are about to receive, if it is easy it means that their child is not really a challenging child and most likely their technique will not work with your own child.  On the other hand, if their advice starts with them saying, "that was a challenge for me, it took time but I finally figured out that...," then you are back on track to learning from someone that has a child that is pretty much a handful to say the least.  I think that you understand where I am going with this, right?  Become an attentive true listener when you share while you are seeking true parental wisdom.  Even if you disagree with their approach, pay close attention to their story, in the end there is typically something useful in the overall context of their approach to solving a difficult situation.

In the past 12 months I have become a very good listener compared to what I was before then.  Since I come here and pour my heart out to you telling you all of my stories and sharing with you so much of my difficulties, I find it easier to take the passenger seat when I am sharing with others.  I have pretty much said my peace by the time someone starts giving advice, so I am able to focus and listen better than ever.  I have never found a single advice that has been given to me that in one way or the other, once I have modified it to my particular set of circumstances, has not been useful.  I hope that with me sharing all of this with you, at some level I have given back some of what has been so freely given to me by my friends, family members, and others too.  Listen to what others have to say, within their words there is a gold mine of useful parental advice, skills, and tools that you too can use to become a better parent.

Dad