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Christmas Blessings and Expectations

“It’s the most wonderful time of the year”. We’ve all heard that song and possibly, it is the most wonderful time of the year.  It also is perhaps the most stressful time of the year for families who have a child with special needs. Worries about your child’s behavior at family gatherings, changes in routines and schedules and having your child out of school for 2 weeks can make the holidays difficult.  Couple this with the expectations of how a “perfect” Christmas should be and, well, it is easy to [...]

By |2018-12-21T07:43:13-05:00December 21st, 2018|General, holidays, Uncategorized|Comments Off on Christmas Blessings and Expectations
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Siblings – Part 3

Sibling relationships are, well, complex.  Our siblings can be our best friends, confidants, rivals or pain in the necks and often all at once.  You add the dimension of a sibling with a disability and the relationships become even more complex.  However, one of the questions most asked at our seminars, pertains to siblings.  So, to write this series, we asked our grown children (Emily -29, Albert – 25) to give us their insights.  In the past two blogs, we’ve shared the blessings and struggles that siblings have growing up [...]

By |2018-12-13T22:18:01-05:00December 13th, 2018|family life, General, siblings|Comments Off on Siblings – Part 3
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Siblings – Part 2

Last week we wrote about the impact that having a sibling with special needs (SSN) has on our typically developing (TD)children.  To write this week’s blog, we asked our TD children for their input. We asked them a few questions and we’d like to share their responses.  Every child and every family are unique and certainly, their experiences are not necessarily the same as your TD children; but I think the responses are interesting and hopefully it might generate some discussion with your kids.  Because both Emily (age 29) and [...]

By |2018-12-09T09:19:05-05:00December 9th, 2018|family, family life, General, Harder, siblings|Comments Off on Siblings – Part 2
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Siblings – Part 1

Often when we give our marriage seminars, someone asks a question about siblings: “Would they be resentful of all of the extra time we devote to our child with special needs?’, “How much responsibility for their sibling with special needs should we place on them?”, “How do we find balance in our families?” This concern weighs heavily on parents; we know it did for us.  Each family and every sibling are different, but as our “typically developing (TD)” children are now adults (Emily is 29, Albert is 25), we’ve had [...]

By |2018-11-29T15:45:38-05:00November 29th, 2018|family, family life, General, siblings|1 Comment
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Finding Time For Each Other

Facebook, I think, has changed how we live and think about ourselves.  I love that I have been able to reconnect with old friends on FB and find out what is going on in their lives; but I hate the fact that looking at Facebook can also make us feel worse about our lives.  Too often, we allow ourselves to compare our lives to those of our friends' on Facebook, and we are led to believe that we come up woefully short.  Everyone’s life “seems” more exciting and glamorous than [...]

By |2018-09-20T06:11:29-05:00September 20th, 2018|General, teamwork, time, Uncategorized|Comments Off on Finding Time For Each Other
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Hurricane Warning!

Our blog post is a little later than usual this week because for the past two days we, along with 1.5 million other people, have been evacuating the Carolina Coast ahead of Hurricane Florence.  During the past several days, we have been in a lot of traffic, waited in long gas lines and have watched entirely too much of the hurricane coverage on the Weather Channel! Although we certainly have prayed for God’s protection on the people and property in the Carolinas, we also heeded the warning signs and did [...]

By |2018-09-13T19:19:47-05:00September 13th, 2018|argue, conflict, General, warning sign|2 Comments
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Happiness and Success Through Mary’s Eyes

We are shaped by our environments. My career centers on the tech sector and higher-education. Both worlds can be very performance-driven; the tech sector with its focus on company valuation, innovation and financial performance and higher-education with its focus on research, publications and teacher evaluations. While these worlds do not have to be seen through a performance-driven lense, it is predominately how I saw both worlds. These worlds shaped my definitions of success and happiness and I eventually realized that I had largely viewed success and happiness from these secular [...]

By |2018-09-06T06:12:55-05:00September 6th, 2018|General, happiness, success, Uncategorized|3 Comments
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Mission: Possible

Forgiveness; probably one of the most powerful, yet difficult obstacles in our lives.  We cannot underestimate how important forgiveness is to our faith walk, our relationships, and our overall health; truly a juggernaut in our lives with the potential to heal or destroy.  Too often we hold onto our resentment as if by not forgiving someone, we are getting even with them or returning a hurt. But being unwilling to forgive always ends up hurting the offended, not the offender.  Corrie ten Boom, who was a Nazi concentration camp survivor [...]

By |2018-08-30T06:47:47-05:00August 30th, 2018|forgiveness, General, perspective, Uncategorized|2 Comments
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The Power of a Thankful Heart

There are some things we learn by reading or studying. Some things we learn through experiencing a single event. And then there are things we learn by virtue of being on this earth 60 years (did I actually just admit to being 60!); certain things that have stood the test of time and circumstances. Hopefully, I’ve learned a lot in those sixty years and I don’t claim that what I’ve learned is applicable to you, but I’d like to share two things that have made a difference in my life.  [...]

By |2018-08-23T19:27:07-05:00August 23rd, 2018|General, thankful, Uncategorized|4 Comments
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Pursuit of Perfektion

Everywhere you look, we seem to be enticed by the possibility of perfection.  Eharmony.com can find you the perfect mate.  A certain facial cream provides perfect skin.   Liposuction can help you get the perfect body.  “Cosmo” can tell you how to have perfect sex.  I even saw an advertisement for a prep course that would help you get a perfect score on your SATs!  We are surrounded by these messages that tell us that perfection is obtainable and therefore we ought to pursue it.  Well, I believe that perfection is [...]

By |2018-08-16T21:46:06-05:00August 16th, 2018|General, perspective, Uncategorized|2 Comments
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