Family Matters

I always say we pay for insurance to give us the imaginary belief we will be financially OK when something wrong ever happens to us, but instead, we should pay for insurance to give us the imaginary belief we will never ever use it.

Over a month ago, our Friend Tom had a plane crash and broke a bone in his back without feeling his legs (see A Lesson in Proportion). As you can imagine, we were very disturbed as his friends and looked for ways to support him. Using all our happiness-coaching skills, we helped him imagine a happy future and set goals for every day and week. Sure enough, he started feeling parts of his legs gradually and our hopes grew stronger.

For weeks, every time we came to visit Tom, he had a “story of the day” for us. Some stories were happy, but unfortunately, most were sad and disturbing. We tried to encourage him to write down his hospital “adventure” for several good reasons.

Grief is hard for grownups and can be even harder for kids. As we grieved for our lost hopes and our two dead babies, our very-much-alive daughter Eden was going through a very tough time.

Eden was 5 years old and could not understand why these things had happened. She was angry with us and we could not comfort her, because we could not comfort ourselves. Most people treated me as the grieving person and did not recognize Gal or Eden’s loss. I was angry, sad, in pain and found it hard to give her answers.

…I hugged my belly every day, trying hard to gain strength to survive another day. Twice, I did a special ultrasound check to confirm that the heart defect that killed my son would not hit us again. Every time, the specialist reassured me this baby girl was perfectly fine.

Eden, who was just 5 years old, was very anxious. As most parents know, time is not a concept kids understand very well. She had been asking for a baby sister (she would even settle for a brother) for over 2 years and waiting through two pregnancies was way too long for her.

Every time, she asked, “Mom, how do you know it won’t happen again? How do you know this baby won’t die too?” and every time, we said, “We go to the specialist and he checks and tells us that our baby is perfectly fine”. Every night, before bedtime, I explained to her that it had been an accident, that at the end of 9 months, we would bring home a baby and that this baby would bring the smile back to our life.

Parenting kids is a challenge for most people. There are many things that make parenting such a challenge, but one of the big ones is that a couple of parents is made up of two different individuals, each with their own upbringing, values, beliefs and preferences.

If life was just smooth sailing, this would not be such a big problem, except life is bumpy sometimes and when tensions are high, things can get silly and weaken the parents’ position of authority.

Even when things are pretty quiet, the ever-so-sensitive kids can detect notes of disagreement between their parents and immediately try to use them to their advantage (little buggers). Parents who are too preoccupied to notice end up facing the “But Mom/Dad said” and looking pretty stupid being caught unprepared.

It was Friday and many people gathered at the funeral home. I knew 3 people in the crowd – Nicole and her two kids, Jane and Russell. The hundreds of people in the crowd were all like me, pieces of the puzzle of the life of the person they were saying goodbye to.

I looked at Nicole and the kids. It is just an irony that when you feel you need lots of strength to survive the heartache in your life, worse things happen and change the whole picture. They stood there carrying a burden that I sometimes wonder if time can heal.

The dead are always at peace. It is the other people who remain to suffer their absence. The members of the Lance Family were left to suffer the shame, the guilt and the secret.

A week before, 45-year-old Bryan hung himself in his garage.

Someone very close to us lost her son to teen suicide. Her son was 18 years old, a great kid who took his dad’s gun one day, sat in his parents’ car in a park and shot himself to death.

He is gone and is probably not suffering anymore, but a whole family he left behind is still picking up the pieces of their shattered life and cannot find comfort.

I am writing to you because I pray you never have to be in the same position.

Let’s start with some big words. According to Wikipedia, “Intimacy generally refers to the feeling of being in a close personal association and belonging together. Genuine intimacy in human relationships requires dialogue, transparency, vulnerability and reciprocity”.

When I mention intimacy to people, many of them immediately think of romance and physical closeness, but this is only a borrowed meaning. In fact, many sexual relationships have little or no intimacy in them, while other relationships are based on deep spiritual bonding without any physical contact whatsoever.

In a family, some relationships are chosen for us (parents, siblings and extended family), while we get to choose the others (spouse and kids). Either way, the degree of intimacy in a relationship determines its quality and importance for us, not the kind of relationship. In a sense, when we rate a relationship as “good”, it is because there is enough intimacy in it for us.

Last week, I wrote about the influence of TV on kids’ outlook on life. We risk them being emotionally numb or developing fears that will translate to a life of anxiety and distrust. Today, I will touch on the effects of TV on the relationships between parents and kids.

When people debate what to say to parents when their kids have problems, they say, “Parents don’t want to know”, but I say that if the parents had not thought something was wrong, they would never have come to see me. After years of following what I believe my job is – to highlight the challenges and the gifts and make sure kids develop without obstacles – I feel very confident telling the truth. My reports are the truth and nothing but the truth, and when I do not know exactly what the problem is, I recommend seeing someone who does.

When Amanda had her second child, she invited us to stay over for the weekend. Her older son, who was at the same age as Eden, was the most wonderful kid and we got to their place to see Eleanor, who was a 3-month-old baby. Eleanor was gorgeous and while Eden and Amanda’s son went to play, we spent a wonderful weekend talking to Amanda and her husband Peter. All day long, Eleanor was either in their arms or crying. I had heard many crying babies, but I had never heard any baby cry that much. Amanda said she had been like that since she was born.