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?