First confusion, then glimmers ✨

When Cooper was 1.5 years old, we lived in a small apartment in Washington, D.C. 

Our neighbors in the building also had a toddler. I'll call their little boy "John."

We decided to organize a nanny share together with a nanny who had 35+ years of caregiving experience.

Two weeks in, the nanny announced to me that she had never met a child like Cooper and would "rather care for three Johns than one Cooper."  😳

So that was the end of that nanny share. 

I was left confused and disheartened and not for the first time.  

What were we doing wrong? I asked myself. 

l looked for someone to blame, which was usually my son or myself. 

Sometimes I blamed God. 

This feeling that something was seriously wrong haunted me from the moment Cooper left my womb in January, 2015 until I learned about - and accepted - what PDA actually was: a fluctuating nervous system disability.  

As I peeled back the layers of acceptance, I started to ask:  

What if nothing is wrong? 

What if this belongs as part of his and my human experience? 

This started to shift the energy in my home, something Cooper perceived as safety. 

More recently I have been peeling back another layer of the acceptance onion 🧅 and asking: 

What if things could turn out better than ever expected?

This is the perspective I am choosing this week, even though my husband Jake is out of town for five days and I am solo-parenting my younger son, William (7), who has been in burnout. 

Yes, it's true that it's been a harder few days, with more food deliveries, William controlling my line of vision as I watch four straight hours of "How to Train your Dragon," and some later bedtimes than I prefer.

But I am *also* observing:

👉 William moving solidly into recovery from burnout

and

👉  Cooper's increased capacity to tolerate his safe person being out of town and hold space for his brother. 

Here are my glimmers: 

✨ Baking cookies with William at his request 

✨ William getting out a puzzle and starting to assemble it quietly next to me, as I meditated in my room

✨ William spending time with me downstairs and chatting up a storm about politics, God, school, and other deep topics that seem to come out of nowhere

✨ Cooper letting William win every card game 

✨ Cooper getting his own water and snacks

✨ Cooper allowing me to listen to NPR on the radio on the way to and from school, and commenting, "Wow, that was interesting." (He has been dysregulated by the radio for almost a decade!)

So now it's your turn.

Even if your life looks different than you expected or wanted, what glimmers are you noticing with your PDA child or teen this week? 

Feel free to reply to this email with a short anecdote or glimmer you would like to share. 

We will compile and anonymize them and send them out in an extra email to you early next week for inspiration.

Keep going, my friends! 

You are doing great.