Kristin Bennett

This book is one I picked up about a month ago when I saw it at Barnes and Noble, I don’t recall which one but I remember seeing it featured, the author was going to be at an event in Seattle! University Village is where the signing was and though I didn’t make it there as I was in the midst of my Flare I was there soon after and was able to pick up an Autographed copy.

It caught my interest of course because I had JUST been at the symposium which talks about a lot of the same issues and how to deal with them. I immediately scanned the table of contents and the index and was VERY happy to not see much/any attention being given to the option of sending ones child away. There is a lot of great tips and examples about how specifically to and NOT to interact with ones child when there is a difficult emotional situation.

I’m just over halfway done and I absolutely recommend the book! I really like that it is more modern and relevant than the ones I have seen from my parent’s old collection from when I was a tween…which of course I felt were gross over-simplifications. This book is good general advice for dealing with anyone who is loved and going through a hard time.

I started reading this book about a week ago, I’m not done yet but really want to talk about it anyway. I picked it up as the sole book I purchased on a day that I wrote down about 20 titles of books that I ‘want’ to read at some point…I’m recently obsessed with psychology, self help, normal (I’ll explain in another review), parenting, Multiple Sclerosis and Alternative Healing. I ended up losing that list of books that I so wanted to read but at least I bought this one, to remember that day by. Sleepless In America.

So far I’ve learned that YES…my family and definitely I am lacking sleep…personally I know that I am because that was a HUGE part of what led to my recent flare-up that I am still getting over. It was interesting though because I could see some examples of my daughters in there as well and I think what I’m most grateful for is the healing ‘what to do now’ kind of information and stories that are being shared. I don’t think we give the girls adequate time to sleep. I think for me it was a lazy/being ‘cool’ about it hing where I sympathized with my daughter (4) who wanted to stay up with me, and she is so persistent that I figured I might as well let her stay up and just go to bed with me (yes we co-sleep) and so life happens, she’s still with me and most nights staying up late enough that I fall asleep or at least get too tired to get back up by the time she falls asleep.

I’m absolutely always up for doing what is best though, for me and for her, at least when I am SURE that it is the right thing… I have been a nag for a while about how we need a routine evening schedule for the girls, but now I MEAN it. I think a huge part of what I love about this book is that a lot of it gives me back up to things I either learned and forgot the source of or just intuitively knew that I had a hard time rationalizing to both my husband and myself.

So now we’re on the journey to us all sleeping better, tonight is the first night that both girls were asleep AND both adults emerged awake (hence me writing this at almost 11pm). It was very sweet, I got her to let me leave by letting her wear one of my socks and promising I’d be back to snuggle after I finished some work. I haven’t gotten to the baby part yet, that’s hard, she’s on me sleeping now so hopefully I’ll learn some insightful tricks on this one…

Hope you have a lovely restful night!!!

Abuse of Youth in Residential Placements: A Call to Action

The growth of the troubled teen industry, including wilderness camps, therapeutic boarding schools, and boot camps, has given rise to allegations of inhumane treatment of youth, and exploitation of families who are desperately seeking help for their teenagers. This topic, previously the subject of two hearings in Congress and two special reports by the GAO, was examined further on Feb. 19th 2009, at a meeting sponsored by the Alliance for the Safe, Therapeutic, and Appropriate Use of Residential Treatment (ASTART) and CAFETY on Capitol Hill. This timely meeting was held several months prior to yet another death arising out of negligence (Sagewalk Wilderness Camp) and the closure of Mount Bachelor Academy as a result of substantiated abuse allegations considered part of their therapeutic milieu. (Both programs are owned/operated by Aspen Education Group, subsidiary of CRC Health).

Please help increase awareness of this issue and distribute widely.

Part of the book I’m in the process of writing talks about my experiences in 1995 as a young 14 year old being sent to a ‘therapeutic’ wilderness program and then to a therapeutic boarding school that I ran away from.

14 years later, seeing the story in TIME about the school I ran away from has hit me hard. On some days I feel kind of vindicated, and confirmed in my reasons for choosing the streets over this kind of residential treatment. Other days I feel lucky, lucky that I was brave. smart and capable enough to pull it off and get away, not to mention surviving on the streets long enough afterward to be able to continue life afterward.

I do not believe that it was the correct decision to send me away. As an adult looking back, and looking at teens I see around me I strongly believe that what most teens really need is attention and help in cultivating their interests. If you skip all the time between my being sent away and my graduating from high school and leaving home for college, it looks like it all worked out as planned. I always loved taking any kind of art class from pottery to drawing, origami, and much more. Upon graduating High School I went to and graduated from Parsons School of Design. Just to make one alternative obvious to me they could have put me into art therapy, or into an art class.

Parents however naive aren’t necessarily the ones to blame however, most parents who send these kids like myself to these ‘therapeutic’ treatment centers consult with people claiming to be professionals in the field, people called “therapeutic consultants” or “educational consultants” whose credentials are extremely hard to find and I’m willing to bet in many cases are non existent or come from a kit they ordered online. In my case the person recommending that my parents send me away (I’d been caught smoking pot) never met me. I’ve worked with children and I do not believe anyone’s untrained description of a child OR an adult can be taken as fact, or even as strong evidence regarding what they ‘need’. An adult who has been through challenges or is well trained should work with the child to do an evaluation and ideally eliminate the need for a child to be legally kidnapped into the desert.

I just read some absolutely comical and sickening ‘journal’ entries of a reporter claiming to have had a taste of the experience of one of these wilderness camps and it is laughable. It is very lighthearted and implies that the camp is not a boot camp but more of a boy scout camp. Comical, I wonder if she saw when they made a kid dig his own coffin? How often they are allowed to clean their bodies? My memory only recalls about 3 camp showers over the 54 days I was living in the desert, with only one change of underwear every week or two, is that humane?

Parents need to know there are other alternatives to this, and also need to learn the importance of community. If I had other family members or other members of the community who knew me and were looking out I would have had other places to go for help, for guidance. I agree with the title of Hilary Clinton’s book “It Takes a Village” wholeheartedly.

Today I realized that someone needs to figure out how to make parents aware of these needs and alternative actions they can take to preserve their relationship with their children and guide them to succeed by building their strengths, not breaking them down. It is my goal to step into this role as educating parents, teachers, guidance counselors and more about their options. There are not any real standards in this industry of ‘fixing’ teens and it is time there was.

Most of the kids getting into trouble are already broken down, it’s the last thing they need.

So, we left the house, in the car, baby in back, kitten in the cat carrier in front on our way to pick up Kenzie my 4yo daughter. If you missed yesterdays post this is a feral kitty, who came to us last night, and we decided to take it to a no-kill test/alter/release or adopt clinic after picking up our daughter so she could be a part of the process of saving kitty.

So we got to the school, I went in and had to stop and talk to the owner of the daycare for a little while. We are behind in payments and it’s getting to a breaking point, our only income is my unemployment and we don’t qualify for any assistance programs because we aren’t both ‘working’ when in reality, hubby and I are both working like CRAZY to make some money, there just isn’t any money yet, we’re also both applying to jobs like crazy but what is on the news is true in that it isn’t as easy as it once was to get a job. Verdict was that I promised to go try and apply for a DSHS Emergency Childcare Assistance and after that, if it was denied again we would try to file an exception with the city, as there is a special program for all pre-k students to keep them in school. It’s an odd loophole that we are in because we don’t have real jobs and so our work counts for nothing and these programs require working parents.

So I pick up my daughter and explain what we are doing, and then we all get in the car and drive on up to the clinic which is a great little place that seems like it is run 100% on love and donations so if you have any kind of soft spot for this kind of work please donate because they need it. Their site is: http://animaltalkrescue.org/help.html We brought kitty in, and the lovely lady there who has seen soo many cats come and go gave us her sad evaluation which is that the kitty seems to have the symptoms of distemper, and would likely not be living much longer. Fortunately K was having fun playing with the cats who were up for adoption and looking at the birds, lizard and other fun animals they had visible as well. I think she was hungry at this point as well because she didn’t seem too overly concerned.

We left the kitten with them, they will keep an eye on it and let us know if it survives/dies and hopefully it will live and if that is the case it will get fixed and vaccinated. We will keep or release the cat at this point depending on it’s temperament, they explained even letting it go will help reduce the feral cat population because the cats get territorial.

Also, we became pretty passionate about the cause, there are at least 2 other kittens in the litter this kitten came from and of course the mother cat as well. We are borrowing 2 traps from the center and will be trying to catch the other kittens to get them all taken care of. This is of course if they are still around, we have not seen them since we brought in yesterday’s kitty which is either because they too have distemper and aren’t moving much or hopefully just because it is raining and they have found some safe place to stay.

All in all it was an enlightening experience, I think it is very sad that the kitten will probably not make it but feel good that it will be somewhere safe and warm surrounded by loving people in it’s last hours if that is the case.

Kitty came to us when in pain, was crouched on our front porch and did not fight us much when being put into the kennel. We feel strongly this was for a reason of course because we are like that and we are grateful that we had the experience of helping this kitty, and of course we are hopeful we can help the other kitties as well.

I have joined in the movement called 29 Gifts recently and yesterday was day 2, I’m considering this rescue effort as my gift of the day yesterday, giving the kitten a chance of living and of sharing the concept of rescuing animals with my daughters, one of which will remember but the other one will just hear the stories.

Here are some pictures, the first is our cat Bello, who doesn’t seem to really know what is going on, and the following is the rest of us getting ready for our adventure.

I will follow up with any more Kitties or the Mom Cat if/as we get ahold of them…I’m hoping we’ll get a kitten that we can rescue and keep too! They did say that they are about 5-6 months old and probably domesticate-able still.

I’m sitting here with my 5 month old baby girl in my lap. My almost 4 year old was dropped off at her Pre-K class just a few hours ago. My tears are dripping onto my sleeping baby’s belly as I type this.

Boring is a word that I don’t remember using since I was about 12, maybe 11. My dad used to gleefully tell me how I was acting ‘so eleven’ which is what I remember most about that year so I probably was bored then. Since then though, and now, my life has been chaotic.

In my mind, and out of my mouth, anyone who knows me is well aware of these patterns I’m sure. I constantly am spewing the desires I have for a ‘stable’ or ‘secure’ life with ‘routine’ and ‘predictability’ however I’ve never experienced any of this!! I tell myself that ‘as soon as I/we get through this, things will be normal‘ though it doesn’t happen, even I wonder if I really want it? I think I do, but if I look at all that I do, do I really want that?

Maybe I do want that, consciously but unconsciously I have ‘programs‘ (as my Klemmer trained husband calls them) that are against this, and insist on keeping the chaos rampant in my life. I haven’t been through that program, maybe I will someday and then I’ll understand, at this point I don’t though. I am too busy chaotically living my life of chaos trying to make it calm down enough to learn what this word ‘relax’ means, because right now I don’t know.

My biggest fear is that my daughters will only know me as this high strung multi-tasking fake “normal wanter” who can’t seem to figure out what the words normal or calm really mean. It’s clear that my family, dysfunctionally raised from an established military upbringing thinks I’m nuts, or have such unrealized potential.

For me the concept of normal is about as foreign as this flying spaghetti monster I hear about.

For me sending my children away so I can go repetitively do the same thing over and over and over again sounds like pure insanity, I don’t understand the appeal. I haven’t been able to get a job anyway though so it’s not like that is a real option.

What I really want, is for my life, to make sense. Just a little bit of sense. Right now everything is a mess, I feel like an interruption to the world around me. My daughters watch me feverishly accomplish nothing spending my time online, while I explain that I’m trying to make money to make things better though nothing happens to support this.

I agree enthusiastically when people tell me I should write about my experiences, my experiences being sent away as a child to survival camp, running away from boarding school, MS, 9/11, stroke, and the abusive relationship that created my beautiful little girl and that I left behind etc. etc. but have I written? I have written a little bit, here and there but enough for a book? No. Do I know how to get started? I know I need to write, but I don’t know what comes after that. Do I try to take care of myself even? Yes, though I don’t think I’m doing a very good job, I’m getting medical treatment to feel better but all of that is leading to piles of bills that just remind me I’m broke. Then I start working, or writing, and then my daughter cries, or wants to be picked up, to drink mommy milk, go outside, or eat some food.

And it feels like I’ve failed, either at the working and writing by attending to their needs, or at mothering by spending time writing or working.

Balance is another word I need to become more familiar with. Maybe after I meet, my balanced self, I will be able to introduce her to my little beautiful girls who deserve so much more in a mom. I know she is in here somewhere.

I have been so excited to watch my recent launch of MomsWithMS.com launch!! We have over 100 members and I have received such nice notes expressing how much they appreciate the community they have found on this site!!

I am looking forward to expanding the site quite a bit to include much more resources as well as links to relevant articles for us Moms who aren’t ‘just’ dealing with kids but also MS.

For me, I feel like I was lucky in a strange way to have been diagnosed so young…I was 18 years old when it all started, that’s when I was diagnosed with a stroke of all things, and after many many tests a heart surgery and more, at age 20 I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.

The reason that I say I was lucky, is that I found out what I was dealing with, when I was in the midst of getting started with life. I didn’t have kids yet, in fact I was barely in college!! On October 1st 1999 when I went to the hospital for my ‘stroke’ I was in the middle of my very first semester at Parsons School of Design in NYC. I managed to stay in school, though all the medical treatments/tests/appointments I had to go to absolutely affected my GPA, I was determined to not take a year off though because for me it would have been so hard to come back, I knew I just had to tough it out and finish. Which I did, I graduated in May of 2004 along with my class with a degree in Communication Design.

I did eventually of course have kids, my first being born in NYC. That was an interesting situation which eventually led to my becoming a single mom. Technically I always was a single mom as I wasn’t ever married to my ex. The reason that I bring this up, is at first, when I was with him, I felt like I had to stay with him because he had ‘been there for me’ when I was going through all of this medical hell. The relationship had turned emotionally/psychologically and almost physically abusive at this point and I left him when my daughter was 6 months old. At the time I didn’t think twice about it, he’d threatened my life at that point and there was no way in hell I was going to let my daughter see this, she deserved better.

Soon after the prospect of being a ‘dating’ single mom was a bit daunting, though honestly I didn’t think much of it most of the time. I was ‘grateful’ that I was able to filter out the men I dated and the one I eventually married with the disclosure of my diagnosis. That is, I feel, the most beneficial part of being diagnosed when I was young. When I finally got married, I was lucky to know that my husband was fully aware of what he was dealing with, and true to his vows, he has always stayed strong in my times of need and doesn’t bat an eye when I need a little more (or less!) help.

One more quick note, especially to any single dating moms with ms out there…if anyone rejects you…they are doing you a FAVOR. I say this because they are sparing you the pain of getting seriously committed to them and then breaking your heart. They are letting you know that they aren’t ready for that kind of commitment which frees you to find someone who is. I also find that just about everyone I told had some kind of story of their own that they felt made them ‘flawed’ in some way, everyone has their own little secrets and MS isn’t that big a deal unless you make it one.

Back to the point of this post. I am absolutely loving the community that has developed out of MomsWithMS.com and am working hard on making it a much more common and valuable resource for all of us who either are, know, love, or care for Moms with MS. I’m looking into potentially turning it into a non-profit or partnering with a non-profit to make it more official now.