Best Summer Ever: Day 3

July 3
Start Keeping a Notebook

Inspiration tends to strike when we're at our most relaxed.

Start keeping a notebook so your best ideas don't go AWOL on you this summer.

A blank notebook can be a bit intimidating. Once you've written something in it, it becomes an old friend.

So start out by listing ten things you really want to do this summer.

Then figure out what you need to do right now to start making each of those things happen.

TIP: If you have a hard time translating your to do lists into action, you might want to pick up a copy of David Allen's very practical and helpful time management book Getting Things Done. It's one of my favorites.

 

 Related:

Flickr: Flickr is a great place to connect with people who are passionate about pretty much anything, including keeping a notebook. Two of the groups devoted to the subject include Notebookism and How to Wreck a Journal. You might also want to take a look at Mike Rohde's thoroughly inspiring Sketchnotes set.

Moleskinerie.com: A creative and inspiring website devoted to the art of keeping a notebook. There is also a Moleskinerie group on Flickr. (The notebook brand of choice of devotees of Moleskinerie is, of course, the Moleskine.)

Allen and Unwin: Keeping a Notebook: Excerpt from Making Stories by Kate Grenville and Sue Woolfe

Ranablog.com: A copy of the classic essay "On Keeping a Notebook" by Joan Didion (.pdf).

Photo Credit: DvortyGirl, 2008. (Flickr: Creative Commons)

Best Summer Ever: Day 2

July 2
The Top 10 Things You Really Want to Do This Summer

Make a list of the top ten things you really want to do this summer. Start thinking about how you can make each of these things happen.

Related:

TadaList.com: A free online list tool. You can make as many lists as you'd like. You can also share them with others or keep them private.

ParentCentral.ca: Places to Go: ParentCentral's huge -- and growing -- collection of articles spotlighting family-friendly excursions and activities.

Poetry Foundation Podcast: How to start your own poetry movement.

Photo Credit: Ann Douglas, 2009.

Best Summer Ever: Day 1

July 1
Happy Birthday, Canada!

Play Gordon Lightfoot's Canadian Railroad Trilogy, eat red-and-white foods (strawberries with ice cream or a cake inspired by this design), and find other fun ways to celebrate Canada's birthday.

Related:

Best Summer Ever Series (63 Days, 63 Tips): Make This Summer Really Count for Yourself and Your Family: Over the next 63 days, I will be featuring a tip a day for parents who are hoping to make this summer really count for themselves and their families.

O, Canada! 7 Sensational Ways to Bring History to Life for Your Kids: Tips on making history come alive for your kids in fun and fabulous ways.

Best Summer Ever: Make This Summer Really Count for Yourself and Your Family

Over the next 63 days, I will be featuring a tip a day for parents who are hoping to make this summer really count for themselves and their families.

Sixty-three is just the right number of tips to keep you motivated and inspired from Canada Day right through to September 1.

I'll be suggesting ways to reduce stress, up the fun factor, maximize your health, and reconnect with family members in simple yet meaningful ways.

Those are things I'll be working on in my personal life - issues that seem all the more relevant in the wake of my scary experience yesterday and the weekend I spent reflecting on what I want as I begin writing some new chapters in my life as a mother, a woman, and a friend.

I'll be suggesting links galore and looking for you to share your experiences as you celebrate all the great things a Canadian summer has to offer.

I hope you'll really get into the spirit of things and vow to make this summer really count for yourself and your family.

Are there any takers for this 63-day detour from the ordinary? You can participate as much or as little as your life and circumstances allow. (If you've spent any time at all hanging out on this blog, you know this is a 100% guilt-free zone.)

Photo Credit: Ann Douglas, 2009

Lucky: Reflecting on a Journey on an Ordinary June Day

It’s been more than 12 hours since a tire or tow strap flew off the tow truck in front of me and crashed into the windshield of my Honda Pilot. “We’re going to be hit," I shouted as I prepare myself for the moment of impact.

We were lucky.

• - I was able to maintain control of the Honda Pilot, even though the crash was severe enough to take a chunk out of the windshield, covering us with a fine layer of glass slivers.
• - We were driving with our windows rolled up. This protected my youngest son from possible eye injury when the passenger-side mirror smashed against his window.
• - We were within minutes of my husband’s workplace, so we were able to drop by to wash off the broken glass and to show him the car. (I’m not the car pro in the family, so I wanted to know if the car was sufficiently road-worthy to make it home. We decided I’d continue driving home, at a reduced speed; report the accident; take the car to the auto-glass repair place; and rent a car for the next few days -- a nice extra that is covered by our auto insurance.)
• - Everyone I dealt with as I went about reporting the accident, dropping the car off, and arranging for a rental car was extremely helpful, including the O.P.P. officer, who pointed out that I should have called *OPP on my cellphone from the highway to request roadside accident reporting assistance. (I didn’t know this: maybe you don’t know either. That’s why I’m passing this info along.)
• - We escaped with very minor injuries (a few minor cuts from coming into contact with the broken glass, which quickly spread throughout the vehicle).

The two teenagers appear to have bounced back completely. My 11 year old, on the other hand, is still quite shaken up. (When I sent him off to bed this evening, I prescribed as many episodes of the CBC Comedy Factory podcast as it takes him to fall asleep.)

He told me that he keeps seeing movies in his head of what happened in the car. I know exactly what he means. When I took a nap late this afternoon, those movies were playing in my head, too. I'm all-too-aware of what could have happened if I'd lost control of the vehicle or if the windshield had been shattered entirely.

I keep hearing what the police officer told me: "You were lucky."

Don't I know it.

Related:

AAA Foundation: The Safety Impact of Vehicle-Related Road Debris (.pdf). A  2004 Study examining the causes and impact of vehicle-related debris on highway safety in North America. The study concluded that vehicle-related debris is responsible for over 25,000 crashes and as many as 90 deaths each year.

NaplesNews.com: Artist's Work Looks More Like Junk:  Ken Andelexer, a Naples, Florida, artist, has collected 10,000 pieces of debris found on highways (everything from a still-warm tray of freshly baked chicken to a table saw) and has turned some of those found items into sculptures designed to heighten awareness of the importance of properly securing loads on both private and commercial vehicles. “Let’s keep the road ways safe by double checking our loads, especially items that can become dangerous projectiles,” Andexler told Florida’s Naples News.

Parenting Timeout: The Parenting Pause That Refreshes

I just got back from a girlfriend getaway weekend with a friend I’ve known since junior high. The agenda for the weekend was simple: to catch up on one another’s lives and to take a temporary time out from the day-to-day worries and responsibilities of motherhood. (She has two teenagers; I have four kids, ages 11 to 21. We've got a lot on our minds.)

We packed the gear we knew we’d need: books, notebooks, cameras, and art supplies (she’s an artist; I’m a writer; and we both share a love of photography); movies about women’s lives (Nine Lives, Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her); all kinds of healthy food; and a couple of bottles of wine.

Mother Nature was definitely on our side. The mosquitoes that had been intolerable all season must have planned a retreat of their own. And the weather was travel-brochure perfect.

The number one item on our itinerary was conversation. We talked while we were making meals, reading on the dock, swimming out to the floating dock, eating dinner on the deck under the trees, and watching movies. We never ran out of things to talk about. How could we? There was so much to talk about. Husbands. Kids. Parents. Siblings. Grandparents. Cousins. Friends. Co-workers. Parenting. Love. Passion. Marriage. Creativity. Politics. Philosophy. Sports. The Environment. Art. Writing. Books. Movies. Travel. Health. Hopes. Dreams. Disappointments. Fears. Roadblocks. Life. Death. Grief. Survival. Renewal. Growth. Celebrations....

We talked about it all.

***

As our weekend wrapped up, we both felt refreshed and renewed. We’d also gained new insights into our lives, past, present, and future: the paths that had led us to where we were, and the paths we intended to follow during the weeks and months ahead. We vowed to make our getaway an annual event -- a once-a-year investment in our friendship and ourselves.

* * *

Do you occasionally take breaks from parenthood? If so, what types of breaks do you take? How often do you take them? How old was your child (children) when you started taking a parenting timeout? What advice would you offer to other parents about taking breaks from parenting?

Photo Credit: Ann Douglas, 2009.

The June Blues: End of School Year Routine = Challenging Time for Kids with Autism Spectrum Disorders

My 11-year-old son is having an extra tough time these days. Now that school has wrapped up until September, the daily routine that has provided structure to his days for the past 10 months is no longer in place. He’s in a no-kids-land between the familiar and the unknown.

Here's the glitch: 

Summer routines are never as solid or as predictable as school year routines. The structure and the rules of summer tend to change from day to day, if not from hour to hour. That's what makes summer an idyllic time of year for most of us and treacherous territory for those who cling to routines like a life jacket.

His pacing is sending my anxiety level higher and higher. I try suggesting some activities that would normally score highly with him:

Play with your remote-control truck.

Use the shop-vac to vacuum the dirt out of my car.

Read these Charlie Brown comic books that belong to your Dad.

Make something out of all those pieces of scrap lumber you scavenged from school.

I'm doing this more for me than him. I want him to settle into something so I can settle into something. While he's restless, I'm restless.

He’s not ready to stop grieving yet. He's clinging to the memory of something that has already been lost (his comfortable-as-his-own-skin school year routine), but that he's not ready to let go of quite yet.

He walks through his daily routine for me as we drive across town on his second school-less morning.

“I get to school, sit on the bench, take off my outdoor shoes, put on my indoor shoes, take out my agenda, hang up my book bag, walk down the ramp, into the kitchen, turn left, through the doors, drop off my agenda, fill up my glass, and do my HANDLE.”

The end of school year transition that was such a non-issue for my other three kids -- kids who do not have Asperger’s syndrome -- is a very big deal for my youngest child. It's also become a very big deal for me. I spend a lot of time watching him and quietly noting what’s happening in his world, trying to puzzle how what, if anything, I can do to guide him towards those carefree days of which childhood summers are supposed to be made.

* * *

Note: Since September, our family has been participating in the Relationship Development Intervention (RDI) program developed by clinical psychologist Stephen Gutstein, PhD, for families with a child on the autism spectrum. Our 11 year old son has also been participating in HANDLE since he started at his new school last September. We’re seeing a lot of positive changes in our son. I’ll be talking a bit more about these programs and our family’s experiences in future columns. For now, I just wanted to introduce you to the acronyms so you would be familiar with them when start to use them more regularly.

Photo Credit: Ann Douglas, 2009.

Looking for Dr. Good Dentist: Meeting the Needs of the Modern Family Through Technology

Technology can make or break your relationship with your customers. It’s a lesson some businesses understand intuitively while others simply choose to ignore.

Take my dentist, for example. She uses a telephone auto-dialer system to remind patients of upcoming appointments. It’s a great idea in principle -- but the system she has chosen doesn't work well in real life.

Instead of making one telephone call to let patients know that members of the same family have appointments at the same time, the auto-dialer system calls your phone number (or leaves messages on your voice mail), back to back, repeating the same lengthy message for each patient. It’s inefficient and extremely annoying.

And that's not the worst of it, unfortunately.

The phone message on her telephone system informs patients that they have to provide the office with 48 hours’ notice if they wish to reschedule an appointment. Unfortunately, patients are also informed that they are not allowed to leave messages on the voice mail system: they must call back during business hours, when a staff member will be available.

It wouldn’t be so bad if there were other ways of making contact with the office: if patients could communicate via email, Facebook, or Twitter; or log on to a secure area of the dentist’s website to cancel and rebook appointments. (If we can book our own airline tickets online, why can’t we schedule our own dental appointments?)

A dentist open to engaging in two-way communications with patients could enhance relationships while keeping patient information up to date. Patients could verify personal and billing information (thereby reducing the number of health insurance claims that get rejected), indicate their interest in receiving dental health info-bulletins, and sign up for online or face-to-face dental education events (for example, a session on dental care and the child with special needs). The dental practice, in turn, could share information about its patient care philosophies (which, hopefully, would be reasonably in synch with this really progressive child, youth, and family health patient care code of conduct from the UK).

At this point, I fear I’m dreaming of dentists who haven’t even entered the realm of fiction. (When was the last time you watched a TV show or a feature-film about a happy or well-adjusted dentist?) But I’d love to be proven wrong.

Maybe there is a Dr. Good Dentist out there somewhere. Maybe you’re lucky enough to have such a dentist:  someone who is a great dentist, technologically savvy, and personable and patient-friendly to boot. Anyone know such a dentist?

Daycare Issue is Your Issue, Too, Toronto Moms and Dads - Part III of III

The parents who showed up at councillor Bill Saundercook’s office on two separate occasions this week to protest the one-year moratorium on day nurseries on High Park Avenue have a message for parents across the city.

This is your issue, too.

“This City decision sets a dangerous precedent for all of Toronto and anyone who needs daycare, or might need daycare in the future, should be angry about the decision,” says High Park constituent and parent Lindsay Viets.

“[What] makes this more than a neighbourhood issue is that council will be unifying all the varying by-laws from when Toronto was five different municipalities and applying them to the entire city,” adds Rebecca Keenan, another High Park resident and parent.

“The old, downtown city has always been more open to a blend of residential and commercial developments. Day nurseries, for example, did not need to go through the same hoops as other businesses, and could open on residential streets. The suburban municipalities, though, enforced by-laws that maintained a greater divide between residential and commercial properties and there is a push to have those suburban by-laws govern the entire city.”

Both Viets and Keenan were shocked by the ease with which City Councillor Bill Saundercook was able to carry forth a complaint from a handful of disgrunted High Park Avenue residents -- and that he chose to do so without consulting other area constituents.

Viets explains: “Saundercook was approached by a handful of homeowners complaining about a new daycare going in on High Park Ave. Saundercook took their complaints to City Hall and pushed through (at the end of the council meeting, on a day when 22 councillors were absent, no less) a decision to impose a one year ban on new [day nurseries] in the High Park area. He did not consult with any of his constituents beyond the original few complainers. I am astounded that a councillor can be so out of touch with his constituency. Ward 13 has one of the highest birthrates in Canada, and accessing daycares spaces is a huge issue for the many many young families in the ward.

Keenan is equally frustrated. In a post published to her blog, PlaygroundConfidential, she reported that she "could barely believe it" when she learned about the moratorium:

A vocal minority of extremely affluent home owners on High Park Avenue...were able to persuade Saundercook that their right to a quiet neighbourhood should come before the vast majority of constituents’ access to child care.

Viets feels that the homeowners complaints of daycare-related traffic and noise were overblown.

“The street in question is a grand, wide avenue, the widest and busiest in the neighbourhood. It has a parking lane on either side of the street (an unheard of luxury around here) and nearly every house on the street has a driveway, so residents are not even using the street parking. Additionally, many parents will be dropping their kids off en route to the nearby subway station, and will be walking, biking or taking the bus to the daycare. The noise issue is even more irrelevant. This is a busy street with a bus going by every 20 minutes, and the daycare would only be open during business hours. I doubt that the noise would interfere with anyone's enjoyment of their property.”

Now that the moratorium has passed, Viets, Keenan, and other junction parents are urging parents across the city to take up the issue before they find themselves faced with similar bans in their own backyards.

“Families do not have the time, typically, to keep abreast of these political details, but it is important that our representatives know our need and wishes,” Keenan stresses. “If parents want to affect political change they need to speak up. Write to your councillor to complain about a need for daycare, for example, or stroller access, or better playgrounds.”

Viets agrees. In fact, she has drafted a letter that parents can send as is to Councillor Bill Saundercook, Mayor David Miller, and their own Councillor -- or that they can adapt as they see fit).

One last thing. Don’t underestimate the power of blogs and Facebook and Twitter in coordinating your local political actions. You want to get maximum impact from the time you have to invest in creating a better world for your kids. Perhaps this snippet from PlaygroundConfidential will convince you that the hand that pushes the publish button and the stroller can change the world, starting in your own backyard.

I read the article and thought, alright, let me twitter that. At 3pm I noticed that neighbourhood blogger and organizer extradonaire, Irina Yu of Junction Parents, was teaming up with Alison of the High Park & Roncesvalles Mom’s meetup group to stage an impromptu stroller march protest outside Saundercook’s office at 4pm. Well, you know I twittered that. More than once. I then set about scrambling to get my children ready to go while spreading the word on Facebook, too, and learning that the Toronto Star would be reporting on and sending a photographer to our protest.

You Can’t Call Yourself a Family-Friendly City if You Treat Childcare as a Non-Issue - Part II of III

It’s one of those dirty little secrets that comes out in conversations between parents: how a society that pretends to be child-friendly is often anything but.

Shadow a family with young children for a day and you’ll get an inkling of what I’m talking about.

Someone rolls their eyes (or groans audibly) as they take their seats on a bus or (heaven help them) a plane with a baby or toddler in tow.

A nursing mother is subtly (or not so subtly) redirected to a less conspicuous spot in a restaurant or other public space so the sight of her feeding her baby won’t offend other patrons. You know, the kind of patrons who hate to see a baby eat.

All too often, society treats children as inconveniences (as opposed to members of the next generation that we have a collective interest in nurturing along) and their parents as the perpetrators of some crime against society, for bringing these unpredictable, noisy, uncivilized beings out into public.

And yet, when it’s time to feel pride in our country or our city, we're awfully quick to highlight its family-friendly characteristics. Never mind the fact that the data generated by objective third parties paints a very different picture than the one we may be carrying around in our heads. It’s much easier to feel a misplaced sense of pride than to accept the fact that Canada today isn’t the Canada it once was.

What happened this week in Toronto made it painfully clear how far out of touch some politicians have allowed themselves to become with the needs of real families in this city - and how willing they are to put the needs of a vocal few ahead of the rest of their constituents. That's a lesson parents in this city can choose to heed - or ignore at their peril.

But back to the politicians - and the lack of political vision they exhibited this week.

Being a child-friendly society, circa 2009, means making access to quality, affordable daycare a priority. As any employed parent who has faced a childcare crisis can tell you, childcare is the foundation upon which everything else is built.

When your childcare arrangement falls apart, your family and work lives cease to function until your childcare crisis is resolved. The crisis doesn’t just affect the family (in terms of massive stress, work-life conflict, and potentially lost wages). If affects the employer (who has to deal with reduced productivity, because an employee is off the job), results in unhappy customers (if that reduced productivity leads to unmet promises or reduced levels of service), and stressed out coworkers (who have to pick up the slack for the coworker whose childcare arrangement has fallen apart).

To put it simply, childcare isn’t a family problem. It’s everybody’s problem. That attitude should be reflected when childcare policy is being set at the national, provincial, and local level, don't you think?