The Resilient Parent

Support, self-care, reflections for parenting your child with special needs, based on the book by Mantu Joshi

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A prayer for change after a mass shooting:

God of compassion in impossible times, The portraits of the fallen are killing us. We cannot survive another massacre. 
Panic driven stampedes, driven forward by pain and chaos.

Heroes standing between loved ones and bullets
.

When will we as a nation have such courage, to stand between loved ones and ammunition, to stand and claim that we have had enough running?


Everything has changed and yet again, nothing has changed.
You are the mover and changer, O God. Let your Spirit speak healing and peace on the mourning. 

May we as a people also gather in your wisdom. In our hardened positions, break the ice, lead us to change that honors those who fell in the river of cold furious sound. And sound forth your song of compassion and lasting peace, a harbor of unexpected grace and tranquility, whispered from your lips over an ocean of uncertainty. 
Amen.

Written by Rev. Mantu Joshi, a United Methodist Church minister from the California- Nevada Annual Conference

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"Resilience is not about staying sane or handling stress well. It is not about bouncing back. We never bounce back. Real resilience is holding on to your people and your beliefs in such a way that the hard stuff takes you to a new place. True resilience is letting go of where you were, and embracing the new becoming of who you will soon be. A caterpillar does not try to survive the enzymes and cell changes that eat it alive in the cocoon, only to crawl out of the situation. The only way out is to discover a totally new way of being. This new meaning making is the key to resilient people." — Mantu Joshi

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“Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.” Buddhist teaching as quoted by Pema Chodron.

It would be easy to interpret this as the platitude, “what doesn’t kill you make you stronger.” This would be an inaccurate view. You see this means quite the opposite, and points to a paradoxical truth that is hard to explain. We have been taught to survive, to endure the worst that life throws at us. We may even teach this platitude to our children, in the hopes that they will not be burdened by their past, especially if they have experienced trauma.

Yet this Buddhist idea is that actually we must die and to some extent NOT survive. There are some things that are so hard in our lives that we cannot learn from them without actually being destroyed by them. A marriage dissolved. A financial loss. Your child having to leave a school. Your adult child who steals from you. A child who turns violent. Something that doesn’t just knock us down, it destroys us below ground, cracks our very foundation and illusions of control. Each of these life happenings have such destructive power that whoever we were before must die. Whatever new thing that comes must now be built on this cracked foundation.

In science terms, I think of this as trauma to the brain. Whatever trauma we have endured, it is now a part of our hard wiring and is carved into our subconscious mind. AND on the positive, whatever strength we have claimed in the process of accepting this annihilation is now ours to claim with some real permanence.

Jesus taught it this way: Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.(Matthew 10:39)

This is not just a teaching about discipleship. It is also teaching that there is a piece of life that can only be found in loss. There is a wisdom, a grounding, a piece of deep strength, that emerges in facing your pain.

I think of this as I look at my daughter with emotional special needs, at my wife who is battling cancer, and as I think of the son we no longer have. The losses are not gifts, but they are a part of the necessary cycle of losses we all experience. There is some peace in knowing that all of this is part of what it means to be human, and to grow perhaps out of the rubble into something that holds beauty and strength for the future. Even the ugly stuff that comes out during the struggle has its own lessons to teach.

What loss have you endured? What was destroyed? What is the strength you now claim?

Sometimes the answer is not just staying alive in parenting, but living into the losses with courage.

Shanti,

Mantu 

Mantu Joshi is author of the life altering book, “The Resilient Parent: Everyday Wisdom for Life with Your Exceptional Child.”

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What is at the heart of our shouting matches? With our children, our spouse, even ourselves?

What I did not realize, until recently, is that so much of my overreaction to my daughter is rooted in fear. Fear that her instability will be too much to bare. That all the back talk and mean talk will start to permeate into my self belief. That every time she implies that I am a bad parent or even a bad human being, I fear that I will become those things by her very words. But the fear is not something to run away from. My fear does not need to be appeased, drugged, or even ignored. These fears must be invited closer, like a child stepping close to a camp fire for the first time. The fear is dangerous, but it is also illuminating. It can warm away the numbness around my very concept of self.

The truth comes from the flame. It hurts me so much to be ridiculed by a disregulated child because I fear that I will not be enough of a parent to deal with all the chaos, so I think. And then a deeper truth emerges. We each hold an ideal of the parent we want to be, and the image that we hold can become an idol if we begin to believe the image as real. If we do not notice, we begin to defend this idol with sarcasm and biting retorts. Again and again, our image of parenting perfection must be let go. Only then do we understand, we are not the great parent we hoped we would become. We might not even be average. We may at times be the worst and the best, a crazy shaken mix, a cocktail of humanity.

So when the child yells, “I hate you! You are a terrible parent! You are so mean to me!” We refrain from blocking the blows, or reacting with any defense. Internally, silently, we acknowledge that there is some truth in the worst that they say, and there is some truth in the best anyone might say about us. We set to work at setting limits, not to make things more fair and just, but because we love them enough to help them through another bought of disregulation. The shouting match is replaced with observation. “That was a really hard thing to say, can you say that in a kinder way? Let’s do a do-over. I know you can do better than that. Let’s give everyone a chance to cool off first. Or even if there is a shred of truth in what they say,”How can we make this right?”

And slowly the idol melts away, and all that is left is our love for this child yelling before us.

Let the image of the perfect parent melt away. The resilient parent will emerge from the flame.

Shanti always,

Mantu Joshi, author of The Resilient Parent

http://www.amazon.com/Resilient-Parent-Everyday-Wisdom-Exceptional-ebook/dp/B00HRJ9HTC/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=8-1&qid=1429127067

#special needs parenting, #FAS, #sensory, #disregulation, #parenting, #ADHD, #Buddhism,

Note: I have decided to revisit a book from my reading past. The book is called “When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for difficult times, by the Buddhist teacher, Pema Chödrön. I am going to write out of my reflections that emerge from reading this book for a while because I believe that the Buddhist ideas of mediation and perspective have huge potential for healing and growth as a parent. I hope you enjoy the thoughts and invite you to discover the book for yourself if you are going through any challenging piece of life.

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Even though this blog is largely about resilience in parenting, I could not help but share this reflection on my wife’s breast cancer journey. I think the resilience for parenting overlaps:

Today is the fourth infusion. For the first time I noticed this sunburst quilt in the hospital  and I thought about the details of the stitching and the work of the artist.

Cancer is a bit like quilting. There are scraps of your body, your family life, the new stress, that you are trying to map together. Integration, growth, perspective are the hard work of laying out the cloth and stitching forward.

And the mistakes. The screwed up, human pieces of ourselves that show up, even those must be accepted and brought into the picture. We are all painfully human and mixed, unable to be everything, or even see our flaws in the mix.

But a quilt reminds us that God, the universe, inner perspective, is reconciling, stitching together even those pieces. The big picture is only more beautiful, more precious when the short comings are loved and accepted in each other.

Cancer is also a big picture of the brokenness of our own bodies, the reconciling of impossible choices, failed bodily mechanisms, and mixing poison and healing together. Cancer is the quilt of conflicted thoughts and powerfully undefined layered, raw feelings.

And finally beauty. Broken beauty that is reflected in all the nurses and doctors, the cancer community, the hats, the wigs and scarves. All this, coming together, and even the stress finding its substance, providing the batting.

And like quilting, it is a slow, fractured, process, this coming together. But the end product will be something new and acceptable, perhaps with some small new glory. In this we trust. Grace is the great quilter.

Shanti,

Mantu

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Words added on pinwords.com

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Resilient Parenting in just six words

Michale Pollan, a noted food journalist, wrote that good eating could be summed up in just a few words:

Eat Food Mostly plants Not too much

I wondered as I read his book “Food Rules” how I might summarize what I ponder about self-care and co-regulation in parenting, in much the same way.

Here are my six words for more resilient parenting.

Yell less. Play more. Stay grounded.

What would be your six or seven words that would summarize what matters most to you right now?

Shanti always, Mantu

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An interview I did for SPD Parent Zone, just went live. If you have a minute, listen to Kelly's cool intro. If you have more time you can hear me talk about those normally unspeakable feelings we all have as parents with kids with special needs. (Note. You will need to turn up your volume to hear it, and please pardon my overactive laughter. I was more than a little nervous.)

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Could an ancient women’s hardest moment, speak courage into my heart?

I sat in church on Sunday for the first time in a while.The message was about Mary at the foot of the cross and family systems dynamics. I thought about how unstable I feel as a parent at times, and I wondered if that would have been true for Mary. Could her life as a parent teach me something?

She had a child with special needs (probably in an advanced, exceptional way), as evidenced when Jesus started teaching in the Temple at the age of 12. She must have known that she had a challenge ahead of her. She had no road maps and could not rely on typical parenting no doubt.  I have to imagine it was a crazy and stressful parenting road, a road that would eventually lead to Golgotha.

Yet, she hung in there. She showed up again and again in key moments in scripture, at birth, at pre-teen, at the first miracle, at death. (There are other accounts and nuances of the story, depending on whether you are reading the Koran, Gnostic Gospels, or the traditional Christian cannons that include Mary.) I have thought of this as I think of our own journey as a family, losing a child in an unusual way, and now seeing how our family is affected with the physical and emotional meat grinder that is cancer.

Was Mary ever as tired, as overwhelmed, as ready to lay down on the kitchen floor with emotional nausea at times? Was she ever frustrated that she could not just parent like everyone else? Did she wrestle in bed with depression? Did she struggle to make the kid’s lunches in the morning? Did she fear for the future? Could an ancient women’s hardest moment, speak courage into my heart?

No major answers here. Mostly questions. And hope.

Because from my faith tradition, my view of Mary is not just the pain that pierced her heart, but the story of the resurrection. I trust that our family will need to go through many deaths, (figuratively I hope), and many resurrections. At the point of giving up, just in time, will come the desire to open up in love to each other and the sheer will to try again.

My wifes’ third wave of chemo is coming up Wednesday. There is something about standing at the foot of someone going through chemo that wishes for Mary’s strength.

Are you standing at the foot of something too, something that needs resurrection power of some kind? What is the weariness that you would like to put down? Where is your hope from your own tradition/thought process?

Shanti always,

Mantu

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Wig Store

The woman who helped us at the wig store today should have been frustrated that we brought our whole family to shop for my partner who is starting chemo next week. Our nearly two-year-old, was poking at the Styrofoam heads underneath the elaborate display of every feathered, bangs, layered, bobbed hair, Jane Fonda, Ja Ja Gabor, Madonna due you can imagine. My eldest at age seven was living out her ADHD diagnosis by spinning in the spare chair. I was using every creative idea I could muster to keep the kids controlled. I gave names to all the wigs and started to make up stories for our eldest while offering rides to the toddler.  

 The clerk whispered, “You remind me of my father. He was always hands on with us while my mom battled polio.” This was the compliment of a lifetime for a stay-at-home dad.

It was at that time, that I realized that there was a deep story behind the woman who sold wigs and taught us the intricacies of weave and hand-stitched mixed with machine and how to make a part look real. I looked at her and saw a broker of resilience, a woman who helped others to smirk, laugh, and applaud at the bare and peach fuzz layers of life. I saw the women I had just named held up on the Styrofoam pedestals as witnesses that all who came here would be defiantly claiming well-being while accepting their given reality. --A maturity of becoming, a determination to stay in life while some faced death.

 My own partner of twenty years I saw feeling each wig and claiming her own resolve in her unique journey as a blind woman with cancer. I saw her claim her piece of the wall, her choice of blonde with a bob and a part to one side. My pride in her was beyond measure.

 “Mommy, do we get to shave you now?”, our daughter asked expectantly.

 “Soon, Lamb. Soon.”

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knock the shit out of despair

A picture of resilience. We tried to track down a friend yesterday who we knew was another young blind professional who had breast cancer and had been a survivor. She also had two kids and when we found out about my partner’s breast cancer, I suggested we try and track her down again. We found her on Facebook and I sent a message about our new journey. She never answered back. 

Later, her husband called to tell us she had passed away the previous year. The cancer had come back stage 4 and after a vigorous but brief fight, she died. I spent the next hour talking to this amazing husband and father who was trying to make it for the sake of his children. 

This is what I learned. That people make it. Somewhere there is someone who really is in our situation and they are making it. If you feel alone with your struggle, with your kids, your family, your finances, whatever, there is someone who really does get what you are going through. AND they are making it work. You are never alone, ever. Someone is living in very nearly your shoes and is finding the strength, so you can too.

Of course, I believe and hope our story will end up very differently, but I talked to someone who had faced my worst fear and still found the resolve he needed.

That is resurrection power for me. That is kick me in the butt, be there for my family, knock the shit out of despair, resurrection power. Everything is redeemable.

Shanti always,

Mantu

Mantu Joshi is author of the book, "The Resilient Parent"

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5 ways to care for yourself as a parent in 2015, including wasting your time and looking at your role as an endurance sport.

5 ways to care for yourself as a parent in 2015, including wasting your time and looking at your role as an endurance sport.

Drink a smoothie, make some oatmeal.

Parenting is an endurance support. You don’t need to go out and buy new running shoes and pop goo like a century runner, but it would not hurt to learn from those who push themselves physically. Nobody before a marathon would get 4 hours of sleep and then consume a block of cheese and a latte before powering into an endurance sport, so why do you ignore your body’s needs? If you have a challenging home-life, then you need the brain energy to have the patience, the creativity, and the chutzpa to engage. There is probably nothing better you can do for your self-care than to eat some oatmeal or make a veggie smoothie in the morning. What is one thing you can put into your body each day that strengthens your endurance?

      2. Organize your thoughts, and make some thought boundaries.

For some reason we think that our thoughts are not our own. You clean your car, scrub your kitchen, and do what you can to keep clutter at bay, and yet mentally we rarely put much effort into keeping chaos from winning our energy. If you have something that is worrying you and draining you, consider compartmentalizing your thoughts. If you are dealing with a loss, a divorce, a broken relationship, or an impossible situation that most people don't understand, then give it a rest. Choose ten minutes a day to worry about it, write about it, talk to a friend about it, and then wait until the next day to do that again. 

I once heard a story of a woman who had been burned from head to toe through an act of bitter violence. She shared that she allowed herself two minutes a day to cry from what had happened. She then made an effort not to think about it and to get on with her life. If you have been burned by life in any way, perhaps dealing with special needs or someone's crazy expectations, give yourself some time to deal with it everyday and the rest of the time put up thought boundaries and stay in the present.

      3. Arrange for wasted time for you.

Wasting time is really hard to do for the over-scheduled lives we lead. I really struggle with this. But as I look back, the biggest insights have come when I am not really engaged in a task. As Stephen Covey, the time management guru would say, we might find that we are putting all this effort to climb a ladder that is on the wrong wall. When we “waste” time going to an art museum or taking a hike, we are like the painter who steps back from the mural and we start to see the big picture of our life.

I cared for a violent child for three years. I was consumed by problem solving as a parent. But it was in the times that I spent in prayer, or dropping into the library, or writing at a cafe, that I began to get my bearings not just as a parent, but as a human being. If you are dealing with any kind of trauma, wasting even fifteen minutes every week intentionally may give you some relief.

    4. Plan for about 25% unscheduled time with the kids.

Taking time for your kids is really taking time for you. You child will behave more, care more, and respond better to your requests if you have spent time rolling on the floor or watching their favorite program with them. Scheduling our kids for every minute of the day, seems like the best way to get some peace for yourself and to feel like they are not missing out. The truth is that the transitions are probably killing you and putting pressure on your relationship. See how often you can unschedule time so that FUN is something that evolves naturally every day and not something that is forced. 

     5. Read about parenting, ponder what is important to you.

So I am biased as an author, but I do believe that reading about parenting, getting other perspectives, and other worst case scenarios, is a great way to move beyond self-pity and get into a positive mind space. I love reading meditations from authors like Anne Lammott, who share from their life experience and/or faith. Like she once wrote, “lighthouses don’t go running all over an island for boats to save, they just stand there shining.” 

In the same way reading about parenting will help you stand still, to keep perspective, and to be mindful in the moment you make that crucial choice that changes everything.

Shanti always,

Mantu

Mantu Joshi is a stay-at-home dad in Portland, OR, an ordained minister, and author of the recent book, “The Resilient Parent:Everyday Wisdom for Life with Your Exceptional Child”

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Acceptance and toddler shoes

The other day I was literally waiting for the other shoe to drop off my toddler. I looked down and once again she had undone the velcro and pealed back her flowery socks in ninja like precision. When did she manage that? How was I to get my holiday shopping done now? Do I retrace ALL my errands?

That’s when it hits me that so much of this parenting journey is about acceptance. Rather than dreading the inevitable, I accept that the other shoe will drop. I cannot catch her every moment and I am no super hero.

Acceptance in the real world is tough. I was thinking of this as my other daughter had a weekend from hell. Sure, anyone can tell you to accept your child’s special needs and then you will be better off. But in the real mix of this, acceptance is like trying to dress a toddler. You put on one piece of this as your child undresses somethings else. You put a sock on while they pull of their shirt. You accept the change in front of you. You absorb the current challenge, only to discover that you have moved to another stage of development or there is a sudden regression, and suddenly you have to accept a whole new set of factors. 

I don’t have any magical answers. I have just been mulling this over and realizing that acceptance is the core of being resilient. At the same time, acceptance is a constant process, not a destination. Maybe a part of the acceptance then, is a resting into a life with no real resolution, no sense of the future, and no guarantee that any effort will stick. The other shoe will drop and short of Duct tape, we have a limited ability to hold it back. 

We replace dread with a kind of resolute hope, a real sense that even though the other shoe will drop, we will find a way to live without it, or that we will stop and take our own shoes off as well and dance out the chaos, letting joy into the mix.

What piece of acceptance is helping you to get through the holidays or whatever else is before you right now?

Shanti,

Mantu

Mantu Joshi is author of the mindfulness book, "The Resilient Parent" available through Amazon and wherever books are sold.

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Thank you for sharing this pic, Carolyn Dalgliesh - Sensory Organizing. One of the twins was suffering and so the other was placed in the incubator. The baby threw her arm over the hurting sibling. Both were able to come home healthy. I thought of my daughter who struggles with sensory processing issues and the challenge it is for her to regulate her emotions. I pondered how we as a family are called to hold her. The dog, the sibling, the parents, and even the plants and harmony of the household-- all these things are her embrace. Everything is about nurturing a sense of safety, even while her body screams to her she is unsafe and uncomfortable. This is co-regulation and this is the power of a healthy home-life.  Shanti, Mantu

MOTIVATION MONDAY: THE RESCUING HUG Still processing all the wonderful presentations from the Learning and the Brain Conference last week. Had the...

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From Awful to Awe-filled

Facing the hardships of being a parent, especially with a tough to parent kiddo, pressures us. What we do not always pull into consciousness is that the pressure which feels at times like failure, like collapse, like remorse filled disruption, can be reshaped into something better. 

Taking the awful experiences, the ones that you have a hard time even verbalizing because you never thought it could get this bad, and finding the awe-filled moments, sounds like saccharine coated word-play. Even so, it is true. Awful and awe-filled are not opposites, but the intersection of an internal choice. This choice is the difference between the person who is crushed by all of this, and the one who finds a way to thrive against all odds.

The choice is to be open to change, at an existential level. To deeply accept that you do not have to cling to who you were before being a parent to still be your best you. That choice becomes the fulcrum point of your transformation. 

This is not “what doesn’t break you makes you stronger”. 

This is what DOES break you gives you the choice to reform and rediscover a better, more resilient you. 

The prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 18) saw a potter botch a pot on the wheel and saw him start over. That, he realized, is what what God would do for people. 

In the same way, we must stop fighting the pressure, and surrender to being reformed again and again. The openness to the potter’s wheel is the difference between broken dishes, and works of art, between a broken family, and a family that thrives anyway.

Shanti always,

Mantu

Mantu Joshi is a stay-at-home dad in Portland, OR, an ordained minister, and author of the recent book, “The Resilient Parent:Everyday Wisdom for Life with Your Exceptional Child”

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Rooted in contentment and flexible in frustration, the lesson of the trees and the sages.

The winds are howling up to 65 mph in Portland. I swerve around something bushy in the road, blurred by sideways rain. As I glance over my shoulder I see a tree that is split in half and this mighty oak is splintered and torn. In that moment I ponder, this is what my life is without my faith. Too rigid. Too proud. Ready to split in two when the winds of life really bring it on.

I see another tree still standing and notice two things. First, I notice that it is swaying. It looks like it has given up at first glance, just flopping over. Then I see its wisdom. It is holding on, but only onto the ground. Much of the tree, I realize, I cannot see. It has taken time to ground itself, wrapping around and through rocks and sediment, holding on with a quiet fury. The rest of the tree, what is in the world, is ready to bend, to dance, and to surrender. This wind I feel is the myriad of daily disappointments, struggles, the “What-ifs” of life. A lost job or house. A possibility that someone else won. 

Rooted AND flexible. Being rooted and planted in faith gives us a foundation of contentment. At the same time, we are in the world ready to give in to its whims. To let what happens run its course, letting pride and internal forecasting give in to the reality at hand. A ruined day and plans are fine with us.

And so I read this scripture differently today, understanding that contentment is of deeper value than even necessity:

Jesus said, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?” (Matthew 6:25)

And I ponder what Buddha said, “Contentment is the greatest wealth.”

Rooted in contentment and flexible in frustration, the lesson of the trees and the sages.

Shanti,

Mantu

Mantu Joshi is author of "The Resilient Parent: Everyday Wisdom for Life with Your Exceptional Child" 

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Stillness, the shortcut to respite

Holy spaces carry great weight for many. This is not just because these are places of power. It is because these spaces draw one’s soul to stillness. It is easier to go to a place that holds us in one place, tempers our mind, and rests our inner being. 

Even the journey toward a holy place, is centering. The pilgrimage toward these spaces demands our letting go, coming to center, reaching in and then out.

When parenting is toughest, we need this kind of deep respite. We need stillness and pilgrimage. Look up even a moment and focus on a leaf changing color, a goofy space where a tooth used to be, a funny bumper sticker. Impress on your mind just for a moment that you are ok with stillness. Let that stillness give you the deep rest and perspective you need. Don’t force it. Just trust that the stillness is enough. That stillness can be your holy space for now.

Shanti,

Mantu