personal development

How a book can start a conversation

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment
Selfie of me (a white woman in a teal t-shirt) holding up the book A Day With No Words in front of a bookshelf

As I finished reading this beautiful book with my younger son, we read the section in the back where the author (Fidgets and Fries) describes how it’s based on her relationship with her nonspeaking autistic son, although he’s older now than the kid in the book. I mentioned that she’s autistic as well, as is her younger son.

“What’s autistic again?” asked my son. “I forgot.”

So I explained to him how it’s a set of ways some people’s brains are different than the average, including differences in communication, reading social cues, interests, sensory perception, and sometimes coordination. (We have multiple neurodivergences in our family, so he’s familiar with the idea of people’s brains being different from the average.)

I then paused and thought about how to phrase what I was going to say next. “I think I might be autistic too. It’s sometimes hard to tell when you’re an adult and have learned some of those skills.” He nodded, not particularly surprised that my brain (or anyone’s in our family) doesn’t work like the average person’s.

Thank you to Tiffany Hammond for writing such a beautiful book that offers both important representation and the opportunity to start and continue important conversations about the beautiful diversity of all of our brains.

When a lifetime feels like a few days

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment
Image of the Baby Yoda / Grogu Tamagotchi (not ours, as we have managed to lose the actual Tamagotchi somewhere in the house and the bunny chewed on the ears of the case so badly we had to throw out the little case - <sigh>)

“Baby Yoda left,” my older son told me as I was tucking him in. He was referring to our Baby Yoda Tamagotchi, which eventually leaves with the Mandalorian if you take good care of him.

“Oh?” I said.

“Yeah, I looked to see how Baby Yoda was feeling and he was gone. And I was like, Oh, that’s how he’s feeling,” he said.

“Mmmm, well, you know something?” I whispered to him. “That’s how it feels to me with you.”

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What now keeps me up at night as a mom

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment
Photo of an alarm clock in the dark with the time 10:26 AM, 57% humidity and 71 F

My eyes closed, nearly drifting off to sleep, I startle, awakened by a creaking noise. Is it one of the kids’ doors? Is one of them up, perhaps to go to the bathroom? Listening closer, room still dark, I strain to hear. The noise occurs again, but I can locate it just outside our window. “It’s the blueberry bushes, scratching the house,” I reassure myself. But some part of me doesn’t accept that answer and keeps listening anyway – just in case.

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Showing ourselves the grace we show our kids

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment
Shannon (a white woman in a teal scarf) looking up at the camera with my younger son (a white boy) sitting next to me playing a Nintendo Switch on a blue couch

“I’m sorry – what was your name again?” I asked the man sitting next to me at the community meeting.

“Luis,” he replied, then gestured. “Remember, I asked you about hosting the neighborhood pantry?”

“Oh, right!” I recalled. “I’m sorry – I’m really bad at both faces and names.”

I’ve had some variation on this conversation dozens, if not hundreds, of times.

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Respecting all types of family time

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment
Photo of two white boys cuddled together on a giant bean bag, both playing separate Nintendo Switches

“Nothing is wasted in nature,” I whispered to myself as I dumped moldy strawberries in our composter.

I despise wasting food. There are so many things wrapped up in the production of our food – from how farm workers are treated to the amount of fertilizer used – that throwing it away feels a bit like sacrilege. But we bought far too much for our Christmas fruit salad and the extra got shoved back in the fridge with the other holiday leftovers. So into the composter it had to go.

I at least had the solace that this food wouldn’t be wasted – it would break down into good compost to feed our garden next fall. Just like the fallen leaves in the forest feed the insects and fungus, which in turn feed the roots of the trees and other plants.

In fact, this is idea that nothing is wasted in nature is a mantra I’ve been trying to adopt in life far beyond our composter.

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When everything and nothing has changed in being a parent

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment
Photo of a Chinese-style lantern of an alligator next to a tree wrapped in purple Christmas lights at night

An empty changing table. But in my mind, my memory, it wasn’t empty. There was a child on it, an excitable, squirmy three year old who was potty training – slowly. A shock of recognition went through me – he was that young last time we were here, wasn’t he? Had it been that long? Yes, it had.

I was standing in the bathroom of a favorite cafe – a place I hadn’t been since COVID started. We were on our way to the Zoolights event at the National Zoo – an event they hadn’t held since COVID started. And when COVID started, my kid was a toddler and now he’s a kid. Not even a “little” kid – just a kid. It was strange how time had jumped like nothing at all.

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Holding our feelings as we want our kids to hold theirs

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment
A photo of a Chinese-lantern style owl

Many of us tell our kids that all feelings are okay, it’s how you act on them that affects people. But how often do we apply that to ourselves?

When we attended Zoolights at the Smithsonian Zoo, I was a little disappointed that they got rid of most of their traditional string light animals and replaced them with the Chinese lantern-style animals. At first, I shoved down the disappointment and thought “just enjoy it, Shannon.” But then I realized “no, I can be disappointed. It’s okay to be disappointed.” And accepting that freed up the headspace to actually enjoy what they had.

Holding those contrasting things in tension – that you can be disappointed and enjoy what’s there instead or knowing that our kids are tiring and we love them dearly – is really difficult for us as humans. Our brains want to simplify and eliminate ambiguity. But it’s a really valuable skill for parenting – which is full of ambiguity – and life.

On holding expectations loosely

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment
Photo of a model train going past a model of a farm in Mali made of plant parts

Sometimes, plans don’t work the way they should the first time. But that doesn’t mean they will never work, just that you need to adjust. As someone who gets stuck on expectations, this can be really hard. But it’s almost always worth it to figure out how to make it work.

Every year, we do an activity Advent calendar. For the past several years, COVID has prevented us from doing many of the activities we’ve done in the past, including the train display at the U.S. Botanical Garden. I found out that they finally relaunched it this year, outdoors. But the one day we could do it overlapped with a really important meeting of one of my older son’s extracurricular activities. So that was a no-go. But we were able to go after Christmas – not ideal, but better than nothing. And so we went the week of Christmas break, which worked out beautifully.

This lesson *may* just apply to far more than planning activities. When we hold on our expectations too tightly – whether to who our children are or what we do with them – we miss out on what is possible. As hard as it is to come to terms with what is not, it’s so much better to embrace what is.

What a Swing Reminded Me About Growing Up

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment
Text: What a Swing Reminded Me About Growing Up; Photo: Two white boys swinging on a swing set at a park, with trees and grass in front of them

As I pumped my legs and leaned back in the swing, I noticed my younger son swinging next to me, in parallel, our swings moving in time together.

A memory of swinging as a kid flashed across my mind – the idea that if you swing in sync with someone else, it meant you would get married. I smiled. That saying was nonsense of course, mere playground silliness. But to see this being, the child who I remember being so small, swinging on his own, next to me, reminded me of our deep connection to one another.

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