Thirty-two months ago today, I published my first blog post. A little over a year into my writing I was honored to have the “Life Reflected” blog included as one of the now thirty-five blogs listed in the “Best of the Web” directory of blogs on the topic of parenting. With the arrival of this hundredth post, I have decided to make this a ten year blog with three posts each month until 2018 shortly after Chloe departs for college. I began writing for many reasons that were compelling to me then and remain compelling to me now.
First, I saw there was a poverty of material to help parents like me. This poverty existed in both the professional media as well as the emerging amateur media, better known as blogs. Specifically, most parenting content targeted mothers and parents of younger children, especially babies. I was and still am a father of older children. Nearly three years later, I find I still have very few peers writing on this topic and even fewer peers writing on this topic with consistency, regularity and fresh content.
Second, I found that the media tended to focus on sensational stories and data but provided little to no content describing more common experiences. As such little is written about the way normal teens and tweens successfully overcome common adversities. A good example is the topic of bullying and online bullying in particular. The professional media primarily focuses on the extreme cases that include suicide. The amateur media in turn tends to echo the professional media. What is missing from this equation is normal experience. I want to know how the kids and parents successfully deal with common adversities like bullying. As I have watched Philip and Chloe face and normally overcome these challenges in their lives, I have tried to document their experiences for the benefit of others.
To date, Philip and Chloe have generally supported me in this process. I introduced anonymity to protect their privacy. Occasionally, Chloe finds something particularly embarrassing, but usually the story can be adapted to satisfy Chloe’s preferences. Anonymity has allowed me to offer details about my kids’ experiences that most writers could not include for reasons of privacy. I would certainly not publish many of these experiences to the world if I needed to use my actual name rather than my pen name.
A lot has happened and a lot has changed in the time that has transpired thus far. The economic recession has meant that I have had three different employers and faced two brief periods of unemployment plus the financial difficulty that is accompanied by such challenges. Philip has completed the eighth through tenth grade while Chloe has completed third through fifth grade. Soon Chloe will enter middle school and Philip will begin the second half of high school. I am particularly feeling the ticking calendar when it comes to Philip with just over two years before he is likely to leave home for college. Both of them have matured so much in such a short period of time and I know this trend will continue.
During this same period of time, my wife Amelia has developed chronic back pain that forced her onto short term disability and eventually to leave her employment for medical reasons. Amelia’s health situation has amplified the family’s financial challenges. More importantly, her pain and physical limitations have made it very difficult for her to single-handedly stand up to the adolescent resistance Philip and Chloe put up against her parenting efforts. While some fathers can offload all the difficult parts of parenting to the kids’ mother, this is not even an option for me and for Amelia. As time moves forward, Amelia’s efforts to create ways to earn money despite her physical limitations will be a key part of our developing story. At this time, Amelia is developing a tutoring business that is targeted to begin in earnest beginning with the next school year.
Between now and the day I write my final blog post, I have no doubt our family will encounter more of life’s unexpected twists, turns and outcomes. I also expect Philip or Chloe will continue to have their own anecdotal experiences in contexts for which extreme cases are sensationalized in the broader media. Meanwhile, my goal as a parent remains the same. I want my son Philip and my daughter Chloe to grow up physically and emotionally healthy, socially confident and academically successful - all while having fun and forming great memories too. Stay tuned.
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