Leading Our Kids Toward Jesus

"It's her first day back to full days," I told the group of moms standing by the flagpole waiting to pick their elementary schoolers up, knowing two out of three of them had no idea what that really meant or what a big deal that was. For months, our lives had been hijacked by her medical issues...her life hijacked worst of all. The past three months the doctors had her go for half days only because her little body couldn't handle the energy exertion and trying to be "on" all day while she was having so much pain. She needed weekly IVs and a bunch of lab tests run and rerun to see if she needed to be sent to a bigger hospital like the Mayo Clinic. She needed to take about 19 pills a day, a couple of them medications, and others which were supplements and minerals to help with the weight loss and bone loss that were side effects of the medication. She spent most of her afternoons at home resting, taking pills, and eating a ton to try to gain the lost weight

Anger or Anxiety in Action "I have thirteen other patients waiting to get poked, so if we are going to do this we are going to do it now," the nurse said to me as my first grader waited to get her IV. "I'm. Not. Ready." she said. "Let's just get it over with...it doesn't help anything to let it drag on, that's just going to increase her anxiety." "I actually think with her it doesn't. She needs some processing time, and for the five other IVs she's had, she's taken a few minutes to take deep breaths and then told us she was ready and been willing to do it. I'd much rather do it that way than force her- I'm not sure we can really successfully force someone to keep an IV in anyway." A thousand thoughts and emotions whirled through my mind and heart. Embarrassment. "I'm so embarrassed." Doubt. "Am I right? Or is this completely the wrong strategy and I'm making it wors

We moms sat around the table at the pizzeria and one of our newest friends there shared that she had just bought at "sleep training" book and was two days in to trying it. She wondered what I thought since a lot of the psychology work I've done has focused on brain health. I said, "I'm glad you found something that seems to be working, but do want to encourage you to be careful. So much of the sleep training and coaching is appealing because it seems to produce immediate results, which the authors claim will help long term, but I've seen a lot of kids and families experience a lot of long term damage because of it." Why is this? It can impact healthy attachment (it's normal for babies to cry to be comforted, and healthy for their brains and their parents' brains for that crying to be met with comforting). They can't tell the difference between real and perceived abandonment so it impacts their brain in the same way. I always encourage peopl