Skip to main content

Parenting Perspective and Associated Wisdom

By Stephen C. Schultz



The air was cool and heavy. The smell of stagnant water and the sounds of creatures that inhabit it echoed through the night in an orchestra of unfamiliar and hauntingly eerie sounds. My phone buzzed and I instinctively looked at the number. I stood and excused myself from the others around the table and stepped closer to the water’s edge, acutely aware that I may become a late night snack for an aggressive alligator whose zip code is Tampa Florida.


The number was my wife’s. I answered with a simple “Hello”. I felt there must be something wrong. It is unusual for me to get many calls from my wife when I am away on business. Especially when there is a time zone difference and there is a good chance I will be involved in meetings or business dinners. She is fiercely independent, smarter than me and capable beyond measure. So, when she does call, I am confident it’s not going to be small talk.


She mentioned that my daughter Emma was at volleyball practice and started having some seizure clusters. They were headed to the emergency room to make sure they are controlled and able to monitor Emma for any further complications. These are always complicated and heart wrenching situations. My daughter simply wants to be a “Normal” teenager doing normal teenage things. It’s difficult on parents too. Having raised three other children who are now married, independently responsible young adults, it easy to say…”We didn’t sign up for this.” But, the truth is, we really did. Parenting brings with it some incredibly joyful moments. It also brings some incredibly stressful and heart breaking moments. The hope is that the joyful times outweigh the heart breaking times!

Below I have posted a few of the most viewed articles on my blog. I hope you enjoy them and that they are presented in a way that is helpful and enlightening.

The Roller Coaster of Life

Navigating Life’s Pathways with Gratitude

An Open Letter to Parents Researching RedCliff Ascent

Navigating the Highway of Healthy Communication

Lessons I Learned from a Childhood Experience with Bullying

A Diagnosis is Not a Label. Building Resilience 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lessons I learned from a childhood experience with bullying

By Stephen C. Schultz The dew around the window was starting to bead up. In a classic case of chaos theory, the little beads of water gave way to gravity and randomly bounced and bumped their way to the window sill like a steal marble in a pinball game. There was a small pool of water in the cracked and peeling beige paint. I sat facing the window, staring at the small engraved stone nestled in the flower beds. There weren’t many flowers at this time of year. Mostly rhododendrons and Oregon grapes reaching skyward from the damp bark mulch that covered the planter area.   The month of January in Eugene Oregon was filled with days and days of mist and fog.   In fact, pretty much from October through June was filled with fog, rain, mist, showers, freezing rain and occasionally snow. The local weathermen didn’t bother with predictions about the chance of precipitation; they took pride in developing new adjectives to describe the type of precipitation and how much you can expect.
10 comments
Read more

Perfectly Wicked - A new take on an old fairy tale!

Guest Blogger Amanda Schultz Age 15 There she was…hair as black as night, lips as red as blood, skin as white as snow. Standing by the window, washing dishes, whistling while she worked. Snow White. I shudder with disgust every time I hear her name. What kind of a name is that anyway? “Snow White”. Gahhh, it’s a name that practically begs to be made fun of. Yet, there she goes, frolicking around like she owns the Enchanted Forest. No. I’m the Queen. I’m in charge. My magic mirror was mistaken. I’m the Fairest of them all, not that sorry excuse for a princess. One bite from my poison apple and that air-head will be so ugly not even her mother could love her. And I will be the Fairest once again! I suppose that I should rewind a little bit. It wasn’t always a competition between Snow White and me. In fact, back in the day, we had a nice little system going on. I would rule the kingdom and practice my magic, while Snow did the dishes and tended the garden. She stayed out of my w
11 comments
Read more

"Sugar and Spice" - A Child's Kindness

By Stephen C. Schultz I recall a childhood rhyme that went something like this; “…sugar and spice and everything nice…that’s what little girls are made of!” As the father of three daughters and one son, there is no doubt about the truthfulness of that saying. I was in San Diego a couple of weeks ago with my family. We were down at Seaport Village right on the bay having lunch. It was a beautiful day, sun shining, light breeze and we were eating on an outside deck. We were engaged in a conversation about what we wanted to do later that day when I noticed my youngest daughter, a fifth grader, was focused on something else. So, I turned to see what she was gazing at. She was following the movements of a transient man who had walked up onto the deck and was systematically searching the garbage cans for food. He was looking in each receptacle and reaching in to move the contents around. At one can, his hand came out with a partially eaten sandwich of some kind. He reached back
8 comments
Read more