parenting

Parenting with PTSD

~ Jessi Kallison ~ Leave a comment

I fought hard to maintain normalcy for my kids after my attack. My son’s birthday was four days after the attack, and I wrapped presents and took him to the Aquarium as he requested.

But looking back, I wonder, how did I do that? And more importantly, why did I do that? I was still having panic attacks every time I went to my house. We opened birthday presents at Starbucks and stayed out all day. I had bandages on my face and bruises on my neck, but we went to the Aquarium.

Do parents ever have a good enough reason to selfishly take time to recover? Yes. And they should.

I have since learned to communicate my needs better and to put my needs first when I am struggling. If I don’t, I tend to panic, fall victim to my sensory hell, and not sleep anyway. And if I am in that state, you can imagine what it’s like for everyone living with me.

Here are the best suggestions I have for parents living with PTSD:

1. Be honest with your kids. I told my kids about my sensory issues and that is not their fault that I freak out about every sound sometimes. If your kids know about your struggles, they will minimize them (be quieter) and they won’t think you hate everyone when you sit by yourself in a quiet place.

2. Put yourself first. This seems counterintuitive to selfless moms. But it’s like when an airline tells you to secure your mask before assisting others. You can’t help anyone if you’re gasping for breath. If I need time to veg out after a bad day, I tell my kids that. If I need help with dinner, I tell them that. If I feel lost or upset or panicky, I tell them that. I started with going for a run, even when I didn’t really have the time. My family learned to do without me for an hour, and we were all saner.

3. Have concrete ways they can help. My kids wanted to make my life easier. Sometimes that means making dinner. Sometimes it means helping with chores or just doing something quiet instead of blaring the dulcet tones of Minecraft. My kids all watch TV quietly now, conscious of their volume, and we are a family that loves captions. Sometimes help is simply muting the TV. They do best when I give them lists on sticky notes with reasonable requests.

Being open with your kids is tough because you want to shelter them from adult problems. But you both can grow through that real, raw relationship. My trio became more empathetic and aware of things happening around them from people being bullied to kids with eating disorders to kids who wanted to be out and proud. Give your kids a chance to be the awesome humans you are raising them to be. Sometimes they’ll disappoint you, and other times you’ll be bursting with pride.

On this journey, my kids became some of my biggest cheerleaders. They saw the bottom I hit, and my slow rise from “I’d like to die now” to “I’m going to be a doctor. I need to study.” Treat them like they are on your team, and you’ve got a playbook.

I hope this helps you when you’re tired, overwhelmed, despairing, and clueless. Hang in there. Keep swimming.

–Jessi

Poetry: Some People Are Worth Melting For

~ Jessi Kallison ~ Leave a comment

I gave the context for this poem in yesterday’s blog post.

Some People Are Worth Melting For

Little eyes are pouring salty waterfalls at us.

“Olaf can’t talk to me anymore!” she wails.

I didn’t know that she even cared about Olaf, or his battery-powered repertoire.

His prognosis is grim to her.

His vocal cords have cancer, and his remaining time is a few crossed-off calendar days.

I propose a thorough surgery to restore function.

He didn’t get this way from chainsmoking, and we can fix it.

She questions the consequences, the scarring, the methodology.

“There’s no seam near the button! Don’t you think this is a delicate procedure requiring laparoscopy?”

We hash out an entire exploratory surgical plan,

yet no one can turn off her lacrimal glands.

“Lilly? What else happened today?”

Her lip quivers. And I also perform heart surgery.

Author Life: It’s Not What You Think

~ Jessi Kallison ~ 1 Comment

I video chatted with my daughter last night, and she was teary-eyed, seeming so much smaller than I know she is with her eyes wide and upset, taking up half the screen. She was blubbering because the battery was dying on a beloved Olaf stuffed animal. (Olaf is the snowman from Frozen.) That piqued my motherly intuition the moment I heard it. I didn’t even know she had an obsession with Olaf. And if I don’t even know about this stuffed animal, then it can’t be worth crying over.

I was already tired and had summoned every ounce of patience I had left. My bathtub pipe was leaking catastrophically after it was “fixed”. It had flooded through the ceiling over my kitchen table, making my kitchen a slosh-zone. My significant other and I’d had a disagreement. (I hate those.) My co-parent had already called me over because he didn’t know what to do with the diminishing morale about virtual school, and I’d brought donuts to get a few smiles. I didn’t get a job that I knew I’d nailed the interview for. (Authors need insurance, too.) And I had been afflicted with stomach cramps all evening. So, for context, I was done with the day.

I reassured my daughter that we would fix the stuffed animal. Then, she started wailing that it didn’t have a seam near the button for the sound. I asked her where the seams were, and she told me there was one in its head and one on its bottom. Before I knew it, I was agreeing to give a colonoscopy to a stuffed snowman to replace batteries that are probably non-standard and need to be ordered.

But I still knew that wouldn’t normally upset my cheerful girl. My daughter is a force of optimism and confidence. So, I asked her, “What else happened today? Was it a good day?” And then she launched into the real problems. My children were issued school laptops long after their peers and were behind in virtual school at a new school, and she was positively petrified about French and the “jibber-jabber” she couldn’t interpret. Launching into a new language three weeks behind everyone else would be enough to shake anyone, so we talked it through and made a plan. I had the perfect anecdote about a time that I thought I would fail Latin, and the tears abated.

I find myself upset sometimes, too, with seemingly minor triggers. But those are often only the last thing added to the mountain of stressors upsetting me. After I disconnected our chat, I was mulling over the hellish weeks I thought I would fail Latin when I was fifteen. And then I thought about the anxiety and PTSD that let me see she wasn’t crying over Olaf. Both the anxiety and the Latin class seemed impossible to me and without meaning or purpose when I endured them. As my tiny daughter asked me last night, “Why is life so hard?” I thought back to myself, panicking in the closet earlier in the day, asking my significant other, “What did I do to deserve this?”

And the challenges I overcame seemed to have meaning as I guided my daughter through her own fear and stress. If you do make it through hell, you’re a lot better at going back and guiding those you love out.

I’m raising a giant cup of coffee to all of you this morning. She’s going to conquer French, and I’m writing more on Iron Spirits. Let’s continue our march out of hell today.