The power of gratitude is well-documented: more positivity, resilience and innovation — and less risk for depression, anxiety and even physical ailments. So, why don’t we all make it a habit to actively practice gratitude?
A few years back, I tried making mental gratitude lists every day. It was a nice way to pass the time on a dog walk and certainly helped strengthen my outlook — but then came (more) kids. Dog walks devolved into screamfests, and my attention to my own outlook plummeted.
But as we settle into the holiday season — at the risk of sounding like a reformed George Bailey — I’ve had a few powerful reminders recently of just how much I have to be grateful for and, in turn, how valuable it can be for parents to wholeheartedly embrace that gratitude.
From hopelessness to hilarity
Avery was born with hydrocephalus, a condition in which fluid builds on the brain. When we got the diagnosis, her neurosurgeon didn’t beat around the bush: immobility, blindness, deafness, severe cognitive deficits — it’s all on the table for kids with hydrocephalus. After four months with a shunt that created a massive bubble on her head and a series of brain surgeries, Avery was a contender for a procedure called ETV — essentially the drilling of a hole in her brain to allow fluid to flow. We were told it was only successful in a minority of patients; if it failed, she would need a permanent shunt, which can malfunction very easily and may result in thousands of surgeries over one’s lifetime.
Fast-forward a year-and-a-half, and Avery and I were back at Nemours Children’s Hospital last week for a follow-up brain MRI and neurosurgery appointment to ensure her ETV was still holding (it is!). I couldn’t help but be flooded by memories. She was born just before Thanksgiving two years ago and I remember vividly how weird, in those first few weeks, the holiday decorations looked and the Christmas music sounded given how dire our situation was. And here we were, Avery excitedly pointing to the giant Christmas tree and yelling “Elmo” at the stuffed animals as we passed the gift shop.
Her brain MRI left absolutely nothing to be grateful about: Pediatric brain MRIs involve strapping the kiddo’s arms and legs to a table (she loved that), wrapping her tightly in sheets, securing earmuffs over her ears and having the parent lay on top of the patient to enter the MRI tube. (I needed a drink after this experience.) But at the end, after burying her face in my chest and sobbing for a minute, Avery picked her head up and wagged her finger at the handful of techs, yelling “No, no, no!” (her usual response when her brothers or dog are doing something wrong). She continued to angrily scold the staff over my shoulder as I carried her out of the room, and I couldn’t help but laugh at her spunkiness and feel tremendous gratitude at how much has changed in two years: These halls had held so much hopelessness for us and now, here I was, hilariously trying to restrain this tiny toddler from getting into what looked like a bar fight with her radiology techs.
Accidents happen (twice)
Avery is the twin who’s well-versed in hospitals and doctors but August got his shot last week as well. After a bath one night, I was bringing the kids down the steps and while turning to help Avery scoot down, I saw August wobble coming off the landing and, before I could reach out, he face planted over three steps and whacked his forehead hard on the corner of the metal baby gate. Tons of blood, tons of screaming and a whole lot of chaos! Thankfully, my nurse wife was upstairs and able to better manage the scene than I was and whisked him off to urgent care for a two-hour wait and an adhesive closure of his wound.
I committed that he’d be sitting on his butt to go down the steps for the next 10 years but, as luck would have it, just 12 hours later — home from daycare with me because of his injury — he stood up mid-sit and, thanks to his clumsiness and defiance toward my “Sit down” protests — quickly took another tumble. This was a dramatic head-over-heels down the full flight, banging his head at the bottom and reopening the gash. Though I was slightly concerned the doctors would call child services on me, I rushed him back to urgent care for another look.
He’ll likely have a pretty gnarly scar on his forehead but, if that’s the worst outcome that came from those ill-timed falls, we can deal. Even though I tortured myself replaying his spills for a couple sleepless nights, I ultimately leaned into gratitude, recognizing that this could have been much, much worse. And also committing that August will now be in stair jail and carried up and down until he’s 12 years old.
’Tis the season
Jackson’s school offers a holiday shopping event where students can bring in money to buy gifts for family and friends. In talking with him about the presents he may want to buy his brother and sisters, he had probably two or three full-on meltdowns about why he couldn’t buy them things he wanted for himself. We eventually gave up and nixed that idea, resigned to the fact that maybe generosity is a life lesson learned in first grade and not kindergarten. We limited his purchases to the grandparents and hoped he didn’t come home with soccer balls and Squishmallows.
I was pleasantly surprised when Jackson ran in the door and started unloading his finds: “Grandpa’s going to love this!” (said about a backscratcher) and “Grandma likes doing arts and crafts, right?” (said about a flashlight pen). He nearly screamed with excitement showing me the rose-topped pencils he used his leftover money on for me and Ashlee. The gifts, of course, are ridiculous but his enthusiasm was adorable and filled me with gratitude (and a bit of relief that maybe the roots of generosity are starting to grow!).
While these three circumstances had me turning toward generosity in the last few weeks, I’m the first person to admit that the challenges of parenting can make centering gratitude a bit tough. On the days when everyone’s crying, the fighting over toys is non-stop, no one will eat and the overstimulation is at its peak, there’s often little room for gratitude to shine through. On those days, sometimes it just feels better to lean into annoyance and frustration.
That’s why, whenever I hear people lecture parents about “staying in the moment” and “enjoying it while you can” and “not wishing time away,” I’m urged to invite them to join my family for the 4 p.m.-5 p.m. meltdowns/fistfights/foodfights and more! Yes, some days I absolutely am going to wish that time away because it can be downright brutal. But not all days are like that and, on the ones where I have a bit more bandwidth, I want to start using that capacity to make room for gratitude.
These last few weeks have shown me that gratitude can be a multiplier — the more I embrace it, the more I find the space to embrace it again. And while the holiday season certainly brings some headaches for parents, they’re headaches that I’m ultimately realizing — on those better days — that I’m grateful for.