No doubt about it. There’s truly something unique about firstborns, the leaders of the pack. They can take the world by storm—and accomplish more than you think is humanly possible, because they are exacting and precise. You may be one of them. Or you may be one of them and not know it. Why would I call a guy like Steve Martin, who is the youngest kid in his family, a firstborn? And why would I call Martin Luther King Jr., who has an older sister, a firstborn? Because you can be number eight in a family of nine, like my mother, and still be a firstborn.

“Uh, Dr. Leman,” you’re saying, “how could you be a firstborn if you’re not born first? That makes absolutely no sense.” Ah, but it makes perfect sense. It’s not about who came out of the womb first; it’s about the relationship that child has with his parents. Are you the only son or the only daughter in the family? Are there five or more years between you and the sibling above you? Did you have a critical-eyed parent?

You see, the firstborn child is the lab rat of the family. The new parents practice on the firstborn. There isn’t a firstborn living who hasn’t said to her parents at some point, “Wait a minute. You’re not going to let her do that, are you? You never let me do that when I was her age.” There’s also not a firstborn who hasn’t heard, “Listen, I don’t care what your brother did. I expect more out of you, young man.”

A firstborn in a park reaches down and picks up some dirt, a cigarette butt, or any other foreign substance, and puts it in their mouth. What do the parents do? They freak out. “John, call 9-1-1! Take her to ER! Swab out her mouth!” Fast-forward six years later. The third-born child picks up the same foreign substance, chews it, and swallows it. What does Dad do? He looks at Mom, shrugs, and says, “It’s good roughage. Good for the colon.”

As little cubs get added to each family’s den, the birth order changes because the family changes. If a firstborn is discouraged by a critical-eyed parent, the secondborn can usurp his role. And if the second child is one of a different gender, that child is also a firstborn. Because new parents work that firstborn over, projecting their own unfulfilled dreams on that child, the firstborn tends to be reliable, conscientious, tends to do things “right,” and predictably drifts toward perfectionism. That’s why today you’re a leader, an organizer, a visionary, a doer, a planner, and why you’ve risen to the top of the pack. Yes, you’re top dog, hands-down, but your greatest challenge will be to let other people win—to be joyful for others’ successes and to come alongside them to make those successes happen.

Your words and your actions leave an indelible imprint on your spouse, children, and coworkers. Use that firstborn power wisely.

Liked the post? Read more from Kevin Lehman--

What Do Barack Obama and John McCain Have In Common?

Tracey Seaman--

We buried Dad on my daughter’s third birthday. (He had taught me how to make eggs when I was five.) My son was just a year and a half and had started to talk. Suddenly, about a month later it was like someone shot out the light and left us all in darkness. I was “lucky” enough to get a last minute, cancellation-list diagnosis for my son from Isabelle Rapin, a neurologist guru at Albert Einstein Medical Center in the Bronx who only worked on Mondays. P.D.D. (a developmental delay—not otherwise specified) was what she told me, after my boy was observed. The process was painful and so surreal because the change happened quickly and without warning, and Darren did nothing she prompted or requested. Dr. Rapin said we needed an overnight EEG (to make sure he wasn’t having seizures) and referred me to a more local neurologist, who suggested speech therapy and a behavioral program. It didn’t take long for my husband to mentally sail off to the land of denial.

A friend at work said her friend’s sister’s son received a diagnosis like Darren’s. His mom had taken all gluten and dairy out of his diet and he was as good as new in six months. Back then all I could do was promise myself and my child that I would bring him back from wherever he was, if it was the only thing I ever did for the rest of my life. I told my friend I was going to try the suggested therapies first and see what happened.

After about nine months of therapies—forty hours a week is suggested for early intervention (two hours would have been covered by my county but I was wait-listed for one hour, but through the assistance of my family we were able to get at least a total of five hours a week)—there hadn’t been any change. As this time passed, I began to observe that Darren had stomach pain and wondered if it was from milk. I asked our pediatrician to do a food allergy test and he actually told me the insurance company would be mad at him. Naturally he suggested I switch Darren to soymilk. When I found a new doctor, through the help of my friend’s sister’s friend (whom I did call by that time), the test showed that Darren had a slight sensitivity to wheat, dairy and a few legumes but the worst was his sensitivity to soy.

Since I had been a recipe developer for a number of years I wasn’t completely unglued by the news. I had already done some research and found several catalogs, which carried gluten-free mixes, and I bought a gluten-free cookbook. The mixes and cookbook were both disappointing, so I concentrated on trying to devise my own recipes for baked goods that were gluten, dairy and soy free.

By the time Tanya and I were working on our book the number of autistic children had reached 1 in 166, and it is even worse now. (In my state of New Jersey it is 1 in 97.) For that reason and also because we have seen children with asthma improve when dairy was removed we decided to include a chapter on food sensitivities in Real Food for Healthy Kids. 

Teach Your Children Well: Embracing Their Inner Spinach Lover

Autism, Green Vaccines, And Jenny McCarthy

In the Industrial Revolution, we designed machines to save us effort. Later, we created devices to save us time. The Holy Grail was to have the opportunity to spend more time with our family, to cultivate ourselves, to contribute to the community—in short to do what we wanted to do not what we had to do.

Early innovations saved us from backbreaking, lifespan-shortening work, but lately our inventions have taken an insidious turn. With the exception of a few miraculous medical tools, they now do us as much harm as good. The demands we make on ourselves in the face of our technology create stresses that literally kill us. The silicon chip, and cutting edge manufacturing have set a new pace for life on Earth, a pace better suited to our creations than it is to us. The machines we inhabit, the bodies we are, have vibrations, harmonics, rhythms and limitations that differ from those of our creations, but we often decide in favor of our creations rather than in favor of us. We have, in short, become slaves where once we were masters.

The solution became clearer than ever to me the other night when playing the new video game, Spore, with my 8-year-old son. Brilliantly conceived, Spore explains the process of evolution far better than I can. It involves creating a creature and helping it grow to meet the challenges of increasingly complex environments—to see it evolve from a single–celled organism in a primordial soup to a space traveler colonizing distant planets. The game reveals much about how the forces of nature act on us, and also the pressures we put on ourselves by letting our population run amok. To secure our place in the sun, we are driven to ever more competitive and ruthless behavior, and to use any tool and weapon we can find to survive.

What is a human being to do to find more meaning, less stress, greater fulfillment, and less complexity and speed? I was deep in the game when it hit me. I could decide against playing, bow out, and simply turn it off! What a metaphor for the world outside the personal computer. So obvious, so simple, so doh! but so few of us do it. Bowing out is an option that comes with increasing consciousness. It means to cooperate rather than contend, to use technology with awareness of its benefits and its costs, to emphasize depth, slow down, pay attention, achieve happiness by substituting spiritual goals for material ones. Be a person, not a bug! Let the spore of you fully flower. 

More Better Living Tips From Arthur Rosenfeld--

9 Tips For Surviving Tough Times

Turning The Nation Around From The Bottom Up

Book Review: The Mind-Beauty Connection: 9 Days to Reverse Stress, Aging and Reveal More Youthful, Beautiful Skin (Free Press, 2008)  by Amy Weschler, M.D.

Author Amy Weschler is one of only two physicians in the United States board certified in both dermatology and psychiatry.  She is also a member of the RealAge Scientific Advisory Board.

Following in the recent tradition of whole-body medicine, Dr. Weschler has identified the correlation between health, aging skin, and the mind in her new book.  All of these factors play a part in how we look and feel.  As a doctor, the most common skin problems she sees are premature aging and adult acne, both of which are frequently caused by stress and exhaustion.

Key points of The Mind-Beauty Connection:

• 70-80% of our health and longevity is up to us.
• Skin cells need water, oxygen, vitamins, nutrients.
• Cosmetics are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration.
• The only proven wrinkle-reducers and age fighters are retinoids.
• "A good moisturizer will do more for you than drinking 20 gallons of water a day."  (See pp. 31 for necessary ingredients.)
• Americans have about 50 minor stress attacks each day.
• Stress affects the mind, body, skin, and aging.
• Eat: fruits & vegetables, nuts, seeds, olive oil, lean protein, and whole grains.

Related--

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by Kelly Jad’on

Book Review: Mother Warriors: A Nation of Parents Healing Autism Against All Odds (Dutton, 2008) by Jenny McCarthy

Jenny McCarthy is well known for her acting abilities and her relationship with Jim Carrey, but Ms. McCarthy has drawn incredible attention to autism from all sectors of our society in her public fight for the greening of vaccines.

As the mother of a child who developed and recovered from autism, Ms. McCarthy has built upon her successful first book, Louder Than Words: A Mother’s Journey in Healing Autism, with this best seller—Mother Warriors. 

Offering her own experience to readers, who will cry and rejoice with her, Ms. McCarthy narrates throughout and tells the stories of other Mother Warriors too, including Lisa Ackerman—founder of Talk About Curing Autism, and Katie Wright—daughter of the founder of Autism Speaks.

Mother Warriors points of view:

• There is a battle raging between the medical community and mothers fighting for their children.
• No one believes that autistic children can recover, but they can. They are not just misdiagnosed.
• Some pediatricians are unaware of autistic symptoms—leaky gut, dysregulated immune systems, inflammation, food allergies, eczema, constipation, fungal overgrowth, viral/thyroid/cholesterol issues.
• Autism is an epidemic.
• The American Academy of Pediatrics needs to focus on alleviating fears and concerns of parents instead of trying to prove them wrong. The “AAP is years away from recognizing how we are making our kids feel better, it is up to the mothers of this generation to teach other mothers.”
• Glutathione is a natural antioxidant in the body, but is low in most children with autism.
• Alternative therapies are healing autistic children: hyperbaric oxygen, methyl B12 shots, gluten-free and casein-free diets, L-carnitine supplements as examples.
• Defeat Autism Now (DAN) is a group of doctors and scientists who are leaders in healing children with autism.

Mother Warriors also brings to mind questions about the future of children with autism:

Why is the divorce rate in autism families at 80%? Why aren’t our vaccines green? What will happen to these 15-year-olds who are still wearing diapers?

The beginning of the book hosts an introduction written by Jay N. Gordon, M.D. Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the UCLA Medical Center.  A Former Senior Fellow in Pediatric Nutrition at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute cites that aluminum exists in vaccines and comments further that diet and alternative therapies lessen the symptoms of autism.

Mother Warriors includes a resource section for organizations and doctors around the country who are experienced with healing autism. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of the book will go to Generation Rescue to support families in need of care and fund autism-related scientific research.

Why is Mother Warriors a best seller, even though it flies in the face of our established medical community? Moms know. Mothers birth their children, nurture them through sickness, and know them better than anyone else. Carrying their children’s pain within them, they are the ones who recognize when change must occur. I myself am the mother who once defied doctors who believed my son would die. Mother Warriors—a book of hope.

5 Stars

Related--

Healing the New Childhood Epidemics of Autism, ADHD, Asthma, and Allergies

Autism: A Thief in the Night

Autism: A New Cultural Competency

Alex Pattakos, Ph.D., affectionately nicknamed "Dr. Meaning," is the founder of the Center for Meaning, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and author of the international best-selling book, Prisoners of Our Thoughts (currently the national Top BestSeller Listing for nonfiction books in Spain), which is based on the wisdom of (and was personally encouraged by) his mentor, the world-renowned psychiatrist, Dr. Viktor Frankl, author of the classic best-seller, Man's Search for Meaning. A former therapist and mental health administrator, political campaign organizer, and full-time university professor of public and business administration, Alex has worked closely with several Presidential administrations on public policy matters, and served as an adviser to the Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. He was also one of the initial faculty evaluators for the Innovations in American Government Awards Program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and has been a faculty member at The Brookings Institution. He is a past president of Renaissance Business Associates, an international, nonprofit association of people committed to advancing sound business ethics and elevating the human spirit in the workplace.

Alex Pattakos--

In light of everything that is going on in our country and the world right now, including the financial crisis and political discord that are now on center stage, it may be a good time to talk about a topic that usually gets ignored when the “blame game” is in full swing. I’m talking about forgiveness. Indeed, getting to forgiveness is perhaps the most difficult and challenging thing that we can do to go beyond ourselves when we are so fixated on our problems, our needs, and our demands. Let’s face it, when things are spinning out of control -- and especially out of our control -- it’s at least comforting and cathartic, even if it doesn’t really resolve anything, to be able to point the blame on others for our situation. Of course, getting to forgiveness under such circumstances is much easier said than done. But it can be done! And, importantly, our capacity to forgive actually provides us with a pathway to true freedom and self-empowerment that, at the same time, is a platform for healing what ails us and for confronting what challenges us.

Forgiveness means “letting go” of our suffering. In effect, it has much more to do with our own well-being than that of the  person or persons we forgive. When we hold on to our suffering-- our resentment, hurt, anger --we are inside ourselves with self-pity. It becomes a veil through which we see ourselves and others; it becomes something we have to feed, keep alive, and justify. If we don't, we think we allow the other person or people to be “right” in their unjust treatment of us.

But forgiveness can be one of the most powerful things we do. Like any muscle, however, it has to be exercised to work well. Forgiveness can be very complicated. Sometimes we think that it equates to forgetting, diminishing, or condoning the misdeed, but it really doesn't. It has much more to do with freeing ourselves from its hold. Our ability to live our lives with love, understanding, and generosity is impeded when we don't forgive. It doesn't mean that we have to love and be generous to the woman who was disloyal to us at work or the man who belittled our ideas at a staff meeting. Neither does it mean that we have to love and be generous to those government officials who dropped the ball by not managing the  public’s business with integrity and accountability or to those corporate executives on Wall Street who dangerously let the will to money trump the will to meaning at the public’s expense. No, this is not it. But what it does mean is that we forgive them and liberate ourselves from further captivity. Love and generosity, as well as understanding, will return in their own time and on their own terms (the same holds true for things that happen to us in our personal lives and relationships).

There is another aspect of forgiveness that I would like to share with you. It involves what is referred to as “collective guilt.” In this regard, Viktor Frankl, who had survived four Nazi concentration camps, had spoken out all his life against the theory of the collective guilt of the German people. Frankl, in point of fact, had given a now famous speech in which he urged Jews to go and confirm that there were both kinds of people under the Nazi regime, decent people and unprincipled people. Therefore, he argued that it would be unjust to condemn them all, lock, stock, and barrel. By the same token, it would also be unjust to condemn all future generations of Germans for the deeds of those who were, to use Frankl’s descriptor, unprincipled.

Fast forward to the present day and ponder the temptation to use the notion of collective guilt against all Saudi Arabians or Muslims for what occurred on September 11, 2001, or against all corporate executives, especially those who make a living on Wall Street, and all government bureaucrats for what is now happening in our economy. Can you see how collective guilt only serves to exacerbate what may be an already bad situation by making it worse? Can you also see how our motivation to forgive or not forgive is tied to collective guilt in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways?

Importantly, when we go beyond ourselves --whether to forgiveness, unselfishness, thoughtfulness, generosity, and understanding toward others --we enter into the spiritual realm of meaning. By giving beyond ourselves, we make our own lives richer. This is a truth long understood at the heart of all meaningful spiritual traditions. It's a mystery that can only be experienced. And when we do experience it, we are in the heart of meaning. We are no longer prisoners of our thoughts. And, remember, forgiveness, in the final analysis, is also good for your health!

[For more information about the Logotherapeutic Principle of Self-Transcendence, that is, "Extend Beyond Yourself," see Chapter 10 of my book, Prisoners of Our Thoughts: Viktor Frankl's Principles for Discovering Meaning in Life and Work]

Liked the post?  Read more from Alex Pattakos--

Our Aggression, Addiction, and Depression

The New Meaning of Retirement

Author of the Month--Alex Pattakos

We’ve all been there. It usually occurs at the most inopportune moments and somehow, the room always quiets just before it happens. Not following me? Listen in on a little dialogue I overheard yesterday at the grocery store and you’ll be nodding your head along with the rest of us in no time.

“Mommy?”

“Umm Hmmm?”

“I thought that only men’s should have mustaches, but that lady right there has a one too – and she also has lots and lots of black hairs sticking out of her chin! How come is that?”

Ah, children. The picture of innocence. The hope for tomorrow. The cause of our heartburn. If your children haven't popped off with one of these embarrassing moments, then they haven't learned to talk yet. This week, we're going to take a look at how to handle these moments so that you don't end up making things even worse.

Back to the store... As the mother wheeled around with her eyes as wide as saucers, she actually bumped carts with the poor woman in need of a wax. Cue the awkward silence and the hasty getaway. She snatched her child and whisked him over to aisle 2 where she thought she was out of earshot. Then she went ballistic.

Everyone from paper goods to canned fruit could hear her angry rebuke, “Jason! You don’t say things like that! You have absolutely no self control! You are always doing things like this – just like the fat man at the movies last night. Yes, I saw her mustache! I know, it was there – you’re just not supposed to say those things out loud! Do you have any idea how you’ve embarrassed me!?!?!?”

I am not going to lie… I could totally identify with this mother’s misguided attempts to remedy the situation. You would think that my ScreamFree Radar would be off the chart, but something in me felt that familiar sting and heat of embarrassment climbing up the back of my neck. I have been in situations where my child has said or done something egregiously inappropriate. And I have heard the nagging, whispering voices telling me that I must be a bad parent because of that.

It’s this last part that gets us into trouble. When we listen to those voices and we take things personally, we lose the ability to act with principle. And that’s what happened to this mom. Here’s the truth of the matter:

Many of believe that we are responsible for the actions and behavior of our children. This leads us to be defensive and guarded, and it actually hinders the process of our children learning from their mistakes.

If Jason’s mom had been able to feel the embarrassment of the moment and yet maintain her composure, it could have been a much better scene. She could have said to the mustachioed madam, “Well, that’s embarrassing. I hope you weren’t hurt by that remark.” And then, at a later time when she had the benefit of perspective, she could have given Jason a primer about tact. But at that moment, she was unable to do that. She was so busy feeling the shame for Jason and worrying about her own humiliation that she didn’t have the bandwidth to think twice about how her actions were wreaking even more havoc. Yes, what Jason said was rude. Yes, it should be addressed. But it doesn’t point to a flaw in his character or in her parenting skills. It doesn’t mean that he is hard hearted and mean-spirited. It doesn’t mean that mom has failed as a parent.

For the most part, kids are just naturally curious and they do embarrassing things. They want to know about how things work and why people look different. There’s nothing at all wrong with that. The more we can normalize their questions and position ourselves as a resource to answer them early and often, the better off we’ll be. But what typically happens is that we make bigger fools of ourselves thanks to our lack of poise than they could ever make of us.

I know it’s frustrating. There is nothing you can do to guarantee that your child won’t say something inappropriate. But you can control how you respond. If you can learn to separate yourself from your child’s comments, and realize that his awkward question isn’t an indictment of your personal character (or his), you’ll be in a good position to deal with it positively.

Learning to be responsible to your child for your behavior rather than responsible for your child and what they say is the key. In the pause that this new belief will allow, watch the anxiety slide away from you. Then ask yourself, “How do I want to respond to this? How would I want to be treated if I were on the other end of this exchange?” Those are pretty good questions to ask yourself now, before the heat of the moment arrives. Because as any parent can tell you, you will find yourself in this situation. There will be plenty of times that we have to do a little “cleanup on aisle 2” and that’s ok. Life with kids isn’t always clean and neat. In fact, sometimes it can get a little hairy.

Editor’s note: For the record, the kid was right. Only men should have mustaches.

Carpooling With Barack Obama

Eye contact, my kingdom for some eye contact

The first Presidential debate is in the can. What did we see? What did THEY see?

Much has already been said about, Barack Obama referring to John McCain by his first name, repeatedly saying: "John is right," and John McCain referring to his opponent as Senator Obama. People have thought Obama may have been disrespectful while McCain was being belittling bordering on contemptuous.

As a communications and emotional intelligence expert, I'll throw a couple more observations into the mix. Just consider them as additional data points.

As I watched the interchange between Obama and McCain, I was having some deja vus about my experiences in head-to-head confrontations from my professional life.

John McCain rarely made eye contact with Barack Obama during the first presidential debate. Being an interventionist and former trainer of FBI and police hostage negotiators, I have been in many confrontations. I never break eye contact and have come to conclude that those who will not make eye contact with me have something to hide or at least more to hide than me.

What frees me to make eye contact is that my total focus is on improving the situation for the people I am with (that comes mainly from my training as a medical doctor). Don't get me wrong. I am passionate about my hopefully informed opinions, but being right has never been more important than making the situation better.

Over time I have observed that those who don't make eye contact with me are more concerned with being right and winning than making the situation better. I think they look away, because when I look at them from my vantage point there are three things present that cause them to be nervous:

1. They know they care much more about winning and being right than solving or improving a situation.
2. I know they care much more about winning and being right than solving or improving a situation.
3. They know that I know they care more about winning and being right than solving or improving a situation.

Two more observations about the debate. Obama on several occasions stopped needing to make his point and deferred to Jim Lehrer to move the debate ahead. Also when Obama was directed to speak directly to McCain, he did. McCain never did that.

After noticing that a couple more things occurred to me:

1. It demonstrated Obama's commitment to the process and moving if forward more than being right or having the last word in any conversation. It wasn't a sign of weakness, but a more circumspect view of keeping a process moving ahead vs. having it be derailed by ego.
2. It demonstrated that Obama is coachable and seems to have an internal monitor to keep him on track with what is important, which is not to be confused with being wishy-washy or not steadfast.

Like you, I look forward to the Vice Presidential debates. And like you, I look forward to our electing a President who is focused on improving your lot and mine and improving the way America is viewed by the world.

Who Will Be Our Visionary Leader?

Yin, Yang, Yikes, and Yuck!  May The Final Campaign Begin!

What do Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Mike Huckabee have in common? Yes, they were the final contenders for the biggest job in the world as part of the 2008 US presidential election, but did you know they are also firstborn children? This is not a coincidence, and in fact, 8 of the 11 presidential contenders are firstborn children. You may be thinking, wait a minute. I know that John McCain and Mike Huckabee have older sisters. Yes, this is true, but they are the firstborn sons of their family, and they both carry firstborn characteristics. 

Think of the governor of your state, the mayor of your town, the president of your school board, and the head of the company you work for. Chances are they are all firstborn children. Firstborns were born to win. Clearly the natural movers, shakers, and leaders of this world, as firstborns, they’re equipped with the motivation to accomplish anything they set their minds to.

In The Firstborn Advantage, I illustrate how few things shape your life as much as your birth order. It’s a misconception to think that children who grow up in the same family grow up in the same environment. They don’t at all. The parents are the same, the house is the same, and the neighborhood and schools may be the same, but the relationships within the family are entirely different. 

Just because you may be the first child born in a family, doesn’t necessarily make you have the characteristics of a firstborn. Birth order deals not only with the original position of the child, but also with the functional position of the child. Certain variables such as large families, male to female ratio, age gaps, blended families, and adoption can come into play as well.

The Firstborn Advantage at Home:

Why does it seem that the firstborns are treated differently than later children? It has a lot to do with the fact that the firstborns are not allowed to be children for very long. Parents have a lot of other expectations for their firstborns. They expect them to set a good example for all the children to follow them. And with such expectations, is it a wonder that many firstborns fail to measure up to the parents’ exacting standards? That is why many firstborn children can become controllers and pleasers, they are often overly perfectionistic, driven, and critical.

The Firstborn Advantage at Work:

In the workplace, firstborns are easy to identify. Firstborn children are the ones continually striving to better themselves. They are the ones always looking for more ways for the company to be efficient and make a greater profit. And they are the ones constantly analyzing and searching to make sense out of things. The middleborns would be the hardest to pin down- mainly because they are always in the middle. They tend to be the mediators, the middle management, and the worker bees. And where can you find the babies of the family? Well that’s easy. They are chatting over coffee in the break room. Yet these are the same babies who can make huge sales simply because of their charming nature. They are great talkers, have high social skills, and very persuasive.

The Firstborn Advantage at School:

Firstborn children also have a natural advantage when it comes to succeeding at school. Researchers now say that the oldest children in the family tend to develop higher IQ’s than their siblings. The firstborn’s parents have always been pushing for them to succeed early in life, which can make them hard-working, overachievers when it comes to their education. But sometimes these traits can make the firstborn seem like a perfect child in an imperfect world.

The Firstborn Advantage in Relationships:

Firstborns generally tend to get along better with people who are older or younger than they are. After all, they spend a lot of time by themselves in the world, bonding with their parents. And then if any siblings come along, they spend a lot of time taking care of them. It’s also not unusual for firstborns to be able to count their good friends on one hand. They prefer quality versus quantity. And when it comes to marriage, nothing spells disaster like two firstborn perfectionists building a life together.

Jillian Bisinger PhotographyJennifer Sey entered her first gymnastics competition when she was 8 years-old and was hooked. She went on to qualify for the elite level—the highest level in U.S. competitive gymnastics—at age 11 and just one year later secured her spot on the National Team. Sey was 16 when she qualified for the World Championships, her gymnastics future bright, but during the competition she suffered a near career-ending injury—a broken femur. Bucking doctors’ predictions, she recovered and returned to the sport to win the 1986 national title. The U.S. Olympic Committee, acknowledging the slim odds of capturing the title after such a disastrous injury, named Sey as their Athlete of the Year in Gymnastics.

There’s a brief mention in the epilogue of my book, Chalked Up (a memoir about my life as a gymnast) regarding my post college drug use. I ‘experimented.’ That’s the term people use when they aren’t addicts, right? I don’t really think ‘experiment’ is the right word. It would imply some sort of tasting to see what would happen, recording the resultant details for scientific purposes.

That’s not what I did. I won’t bore you with the list of mind-altering substances that have graced my bloodstream. Suffice it to say, there was no heroin and no crack. No shooting of anything into the arm. Nothing quite so lurid, though I suspect some people (parents?) reading this might find the implied list…well, gruesome. For me, the inferred list represents the usual litany of party drugs indulged in by a good portion of Gen X-ers. I’d say nearly ¾ of my friends of my age have done the same things if not more. But perhaps birds of a feather stick together and the percentage amongst the broader population of X-ers is far lower. I can’t be sure. I do know, of those I cavorted with, they are all gainfully employed, if not outright successful; most have significant others and children; none have gone to rehab or even needed to; most don’t do any drugs anymore. Maybe the occasional indulgence, once a year at a party.

I would argue that none of us even ran up close to the edge of addiction, though I suppose by some 12-step descriptions we were all in need of some rehabilitation. There were a few outliers, not close friends, who ultimately 12-stepped it; but my close partying friends survived without scars or life interruptions. We had regular jobs, never missed a day of work, were honored with promotions and/or graduate degrees. We maintained relationships – romantic and friendly, we never stole, we never turned tricks, we never lived on the street and begged for money. We never indulged during work hours or even during weekdays. We took drugs with our cocktails and beers on weekends. We sometimes stayed up all night and danced at Raves. We had a lot of fun. It lasted for a few years and I don’t regret it. All of this is not to romanticize drug use. It’s just what happened.

I just finished reading a book called  Beautiful Boy by David Sheff, which lays bare a parent's survival of his son’s meth addiction. The father was liberal as a parent, more of a friend than a dad, some would say, those who are looking for a ‘reason’ for his son’s problems. He took his son to places I often take my kids in San Francisco. Haight Street for records, art houses for films, galleries and museums, sushi restaurants, cafés. They were a sophisticated pair traipsing through San Francisco’s quirky neighborhoods. He confided to his son that he’d experimented with drugs as a young man; he thought, I’m not going to lie to him. I’ll take the mystery out of this whole affair. He assumed his son would give things a whirl; try some pot in high school, maybe a little somethin' else in college.

David’s own drug use perhaps made the whole thing more acceptable when he found pot in Nic's room while his son was still in junior high. The father was alarmed for sure, but allowed himself to be convinced that it was no big deal.
And of course, that was the beginning. Nic went on to smoke pot everyday throughout high school. And try everything else. By the time he graduated from the twelfth grade, he was pretty far gone. When he went to college, his meth addiction blossomed. It’s a typical cautionary tale: a single use of crystal seduced him, he was shooting it in no time, he went on to steal and prostitute himself to get his fix.

I think that this is what people who have never done drugs think happens every time a person tries drugs. It is certainly what the "say no" people/ads etc, would have you believe. But I’ve always believed, because of my own experience, it was possible to try drugs, even do them with some regularity, and not have it become a problem. Not for everyone (some step off that cliff and just fall), but for some. I’ll admit, I’ve even been sort of distrustful of some people who’ve never tried anything. " What squares !" I've thought. Are they afraid to delve into their subconscious minds, confront their demons? Afraid to lose control and have some fun?

But reading Mr. Sheff’s book makes me worried for my youngest son who is only five, but seems to take things very hard. Like Nic, he’s a sensitive kid, loves to draw. He’s an introvert. He’s at risk for never feeling quite like he fits in because he very well may not. Could be a recipe for disaster, as it was with Nic. And we live in San Francisco, less than a half-mile from Haight Street. Scoring is less than a ten-minute walk away.

His saving grace might be that he won’t care whether or not people like him. He seems fairly satisfied with his internal life. He’s the kid at the playground who plays by himself for hours, never needing to engage the other kids in a game.

But I wonder: should I be dishonest with him about my own dabbling with drugs if I want to steer him away from experimenting? If he knows I partook and came out just fine, will that make it easier for him to say yes, when offered pot, acid, booze in the sixth or seventh grade? If he can see that it has had no obvious adverse affect on me, might it seem more acceptable, less dangerous? Maybe he’ll be like poor Nic. He’ll try something once and never look back. Perhaps it really is best if he never even gets a taste.

I’ve made a habit of being honest in my life, with my kids, in my writing. But I’m considering lying about this one fact. Maybe I’ll tell my kids: Nope never did it. And don’t you do it either!
Doesn’t really roll off the tongue. It’s too late, I suppose. It’s in my book. It’s right here. I’ll have to do my best to instill good judgment and a passion for other things requiring sobriety and take comfort in the fact that my kids are not descendants of addicts, so hopefully they don’t have the gene. But things happen. Dangers are everywhere for my children to encounter.

Parenting, as with life, is a harrowing ordeal. While I don’t plan on lighting up with my kids, I will probably admit I tried some stuff ‘back in the day’, once I was old enough to exercise some judgment about its affects. I’ll warn them about the dangers of drugs. And I’ll gauge their moods, their reactions, their general states of mind without any reluctance in asking, “ Are you okay? ”

The world is a minefield and our kids are their own people. Just as I’ve learned that my gymnastics was my own choice – no one could have made me starve myself and work on half healed bones – my kids will make their own choices. My job as a parent is to equip them to survive those choices and come out better and stronger on the other end. 

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