The Vanity Pounds, Southern Style

When we moved north from South Florida "to the South" I learned a little bit about southern charm.  One of the things I found particularly charming was the way my new friend Laura would respond to the question, "How are you?" Instead of saying "Fine" (the correct non-answer where I am from) she will frequently say, "We had a really good weekend", with a few details about why.  This level of disclosure surprised me, because where I am from, "How are you?" is a rhetorical question. Unless you were a child, the only acceptable response was "Fine". I found it charming, though I was not really sure why until later, when it became part of a big change in my outlook.

Fast forward a few years, and the new found knowledge that I was the mother of a child with special needs. No one is prepared to hear the news that your child is not developing normally.  It's hard to know what to do with that news, and in the beginning I admit that I had some pretty dark days and nights.  One time my husband saw me sitting on the stairs staring ahead.  My husband, wiser than I, gently pointed out that this was not helping anyone.  It was clearly not good for me, and wasn't helping either of my children. 

I needed a different way of looking at the future and luckily I remembered Laura's yardstick of measuring progress a day at a time.  Using the yardstick of days or weekends got me through some tough times.  I even blogged about it a few times!  It gave me the opportunity to focus on the good things that were going on now.  Furthermore, besides setting career, educational, and financial goals, I decided that I should set goals for my family to have a good and happy days, weekends or weeks.  Of course one cannot completely forego long term goals but it is possible to try to balance that focus with some shorter term goals.   

Being a mother changes you, and some of the techniques I have adopted as a result of my daughter with special needs are good for all of my life.  They are not always easy to adhere to but it is worth trying, right?  If you can identify the components that make up a good day, you can more easily measure your progress.  You may not be able to incorporate every component of how you define a good day into each day but that's okay.  You'll have bad days, so take that opportunity to learn from them.  Write it off as a bad day, grab a good book or turn on a good movie, and move onto the next day! 

You'll have bad days. I am sure Laura does, but she does not report on them. She focuses on the good times, which I am pretty sure drives more good times.