Chaos!!

By the time I was in second grade, I had seen my parents divorce and my mother remarry.  I had lived in five different houses and had attended three different schools. My parents were involved in a wild custody fight for me, my three sisters and my brother. My mother's struggle with depression and alcoholism were just two of the many complications in her new, tumultuous marriage.  I use "chaos" often to define my early childhood.

I was the middle child. My older sister and brother were six and seven years older than me.  My younger sisters, eighteen months and four years younger than I. I coped with my chaotic home life by thriving in schools.  I loved the routine and structure offered there and the consistency of teachers and other adults who work in school.  I was a charming, precocious child with an outgoing personality. I coped by creating a village of my own full of teachers and other adults who I knew I could count on. I compensated for the chaotic life that was my home by creating a life outside of it that I could escape to. I always felt connected to my dad, even when I wasn't living with him.

People who have known me my whole life will often tell me that I have always been rigged for optimism and it's true. I think my best attributes are resiliency and optimism.  I think they helped me survive a wild childhood and the death of my mother when I was seven. I will tell you that the journey for me and my siblings has not been easy.  We are connected by trauma and tears.  We work hard as adults to see past our childhood to be the best adults we can be to each other.  Below is a picture of me and my siblings.  I believe it was taken the last Christmas we had with our mom.

I am losing sleep over the preschool children in New Jersey. One of my dear friends teaches in NJ and has asked her teacher friends to help children who have been displaced by Hurricane Sandy.  I collected and sent off backpacks and supplies to five children and one teacher last week.  I felt a great need to DO SOMETHING! I have seen the pictures and watched the news as community after community all along the coast out east deals with the aftermath of Sandy.  I just cant imagine.  How will small children cope with storms, wind, rain and water for the rest of their lives after experiencing so much trauma? What happens to a child ability to trust when they have homes and schools one day and nothing the next?

I have also watched people rally in the face of disaster, in this case the disaster is Sandy. The response has been a great lesson in the role of government when great help is needed. I grew up seeing very small interventions in my family to help the children in my family.  New Jersey is seeing huge interventions for a whole state to support children to have food, clothing, shelter, and school in their lives. There is great help to help deal with the geographical harm done to the shores of New Jersey.  I hope there is enough help to minimize the harm to the emotional lives of children who live there.

Depression

I have been curious about depression since I was a small child.  I didn't have a name for it but even as a very small child I knew that something was wrong with my mom.  I know now it was depression.  It eventually was a contributing factor in her death at age 37.  Depression has been a life long curiosity for me, a puzzle I long to solve. The mystery of my mother's depression was a key factor in my career choice.

As a parent educator, I see many women struggle with postpartum depression in particular.  I am trained to recognize it and to make the necessary referrals to keep her and her family safe. One of my teaching units is as a "Baby Connector" in Winona County.  We visit homes of new parents.  We teach them about what to expect, we answer their questions about their new role as parents, and we do what we can to connect them to a parenting community.  It is one of my favorite parts of the week.  I often make more than one visit to a new family and am always taken aback when I see the impact postpartum depression has on a family.

 The latest statistics in the US report that 12% of adult women have been diagnosed with depression.  For adult men, the number falls to 6%. In my work, I see higher numbers and always see the population I work with as "at risk" for depression for several reasons:

~Many of them are stay at home parents.  Staying at home with small children can be very isolating and  repetitious.  Children are unpredictable and often frustrating.
~We live in Minnesota.  I often introduce the concept of "the dark season" as soon as November hits.  I see the effects of fewer daylight hours and colder weather on my population of parents and their children.
~The mother's I work with often have unpredictable hormone changes after birth and during their time nursing their babies. They often do not take care of their own nutritional or emotional needs.

My trip to China this past summer was wonderful.  Some of the "risk factors" that I look for in my population of parents look different in Chinese parents.

~They share parenting responsibilities with two sets of grandparents.  Where Minnesota parents are often isolated, Chinese parents may be overwhelmed with the number of adults sharing parenting responsibilities. Most Chinese families have one child.

~The weather pattern is somewhat similar although winter in China is not as harsh as it is here in Minnesota. Chinese parents in big cities often suffer from lack of sunlight due to the constant presence of smog. In the 12 days I was in China, I saw one sunny day.

~Hormone changes are a universal concern for all women who give birth.  When I spoke with my friend Tong, she talked about women bearing some shame for depression in China.  Clearly, more education is needed there to bring depression out of the closet.  China has a long way to go in understanding and accepting depression as an illness.