The time given us

I hope that you are well and that your loved ones are healthy, too.

I am meeting with patients and families via tele-health during this public healthcare situation and plan to keep doing so moving forward. I am using Doxy.me (secure portal) for most folks and recently upgraded bandwidth at home to accommodate working remotely. I’m also open to choosing a platform and format for how we conduct our sessions during this time period.

We will get through this together.

Meeting with patients and their families has been a balm and a blessing during this time, and I will do what I can with you to bring order and calm to whatever place you are at right now. This will involve creativity and flexibility to meet with each other digitally until further notice, and I believe that we can do this effectively and efficiently if we keep working at it together.

Beyond the work changes, my family is going through many of the same challenges others are going through now: children and parents home all day, everyday; working and schooling at the same time, often in the same space; adjusting to a new normal; and, coping with the loss of social activities, celebrations, and milestones we were working towards and looking forward to.

I am in this with all of you.

I am recommending a few things during this time to help us all get through:

I made my own AUggie named “Little B” to keep me company in my home office in the attic.

1. Be kind to yourself

2. Practice gratitude

3. Find rhythm in routines (see image of our dining room/school work space)

4. Get outside often

5. Read something fun (see quote below)

6. Connect with others in your community

For me, an example of #6 is continuing to support AutismUp in my role as Board Member. This means participating in virtual Board Meetings, reading the daily content in @Home with AutismUp they are sending to members and anyone who signs up for the emails, and even participating and sharing in efforts to keep everyone connected.

I see people rising to the challenge of the healthcare situation, and I am amazed at how well everyone is adjusting to this new version of everyday. I encourage you to do less, well and to be patient with the things you cannot hurry and gentle with things that do not move.

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

We're Hiring!

On January 2 we moved into our new space that has the room to grow!

The second therapy office is furnished and ready to be used!

I have been blessed to have a full and thriving practice. I am so grateful for the community referrals that keep coming. While I am humbled by the outreach, I am overwhelmed by the unmet need in our community. So I am going to do my part to change that.

I am seeking a licensed mental health therapist with passion and a sense of humor to join me in serving this amazing community. I am looking for someone to start from day one helping all of those patients patiently waiting on a wait list.

Here is the link to the job posting, or you can inquire directly at apply@bryanharrisonphd.com

Stay tuned - I cannot wait to find the right person and introduce them to all of you!

Visible Voices Vote

My Better Half shared this article with me on November 6, 2018 (Election Day), and I want to pass it along to others while trying to touch on some of the issues and resources in this article.

I really appreciate the idea and process of supporting all persons with making informed choices and to do so in a way that respects their autonomy as humans and their rights as citizens.

The idea of a social story and anticipatory guidance feels so smart and kind for most adults who are voting for the first time. I think many young adults could benefit from this resource and, as such, I consider it a gift from this mother to have created it for her son and share it.

As I read and re-read the resources in this article, I delved deeper into the Bazelon Center site.

It’s eye-opening and mind-blowing how variable and fraught with ambiguity the law seems to be on the matter of whether individuals with disabilities and mental health concerns can vote. It reminds me, in many ways, of the bar we set before people wishing to become a US citizen.

More specifically, my work often involves talking with families about the topic of guardianship for their children as they transition from adolescence to adulthood. This article gave me cause for pause and added to my understanding about how guardianship determinations could impact a person’s ability to vote later in life or in another state if they so choose to move.

In closing, I would like to encourage folks to share this Know Your Rights resource on voting.

"The Shitty Stop Saloon"

Most guys talk about a man cave as a place to escape and relax while watching sports. When you have two children in diapers at the same time, you manage to get creative about what constitutes a man cave. And then a third one comes along, and your remember the joy of it.

In the unfinished basement of an 86 year old house, there’s a high efficiency washing machine with my name on it (figuratively, of course). There’s two or three sacks of “used” cloth diapers gathered about this marvel of modern technology and gloves reminiscent of Breaking Bad.

On Wednesday and Sunday nights, I trod down the steps to tackle all manner of excrement from cloth diapers and two twin cat litter pans beneath our wooden stairs. Before I started, I'd pop open a beer, plug my iPhone into a stereo I saved and retro-fitted from my middle school years (yep, old), and set it to play what My Better Half lovingly refers to as “my old fart music” (she’s right). I throw three days worth of cloth diapers in the basin and get down to scrubbing.

So here at the Shitty Stop Saloon, I take 30 minutes of musical silence twice a week and find comfort in the ritual of dirty work that remains a part of staying committed to cloth diapering.

After four years of this lovely routine, two children potty trained, we decided to do it again (and by “we,” I mean My Better Half). Our third child arrived in May of 2017, and I’ve started to realize how much I love the ritual of cleaning as way to care for and think of our children. It’s odd in the smelliest sense (pun intended!) to appreciate the value of an awful task, but it helps me absorb the awful with greater appreciation for how important each job/role is in our life.

Baby #1, 2011

Baby #2, 2014

Baby #3, 2017

Baby #3, 2018

Now in an even older house, we purchased a high efficiency laundry machines (this time the largest size they have for residential homes) as a Christmas present to ourselves and set to the work of making “The Shitty Stop Saloon Part Deuce” (get it? poop - #2).

Much like the first, I have the same stereo, plastic gloves (new gloves every month but same old style), and stacks of the same diapers that have covered the butts of all three of our children. However, technology and time have afforded us some upgrades like a curated play list, windows to the outside to air out the funk, and a steam setting that really blasts out the ick. In honor of the new space, my Better Half and two big kids made a sign to decorate the cave.

You’ll find me here every Wednesday and Sunday night cleaning the diapers for their next wear. Hopefully I only have one more year of this before potty training. Here’s hoping (not predicting) a less smelly future.

Full name added online only. We couldn’t bring ourselves to write expletives over the kids’ art. Parent-life.

Get Your Sleep On

Above all else, they must sleep. They have to sleep. The theories for why we need to sleep are varied, but they all converge on the brutal necessity that we need consistent sleep routines.

According to the Gospel written by St. Matthew, Christ fasted for forty days in the wilderness before being tempted by the devil. But lo, nowhere does it say that Christ went without sleep during these forty days. So then, even God in the Incarnate Form seems to have needed sleep.

The Sleeping Gypsy by Henri Rousseau, 1897, on display at MoMA

There is a lot of controversy and debate about how to help babies sleep, so I will steer clear of this topic and direct folks to consider this resource for infant sleep guidance and references.

The things I would be willing to do to help my children sleep are too endless to count. Sleep is so incredibly important and necessary for adaptive daily functioning that I often do everything I can in my personal and professional life to steer others toward the best possible sleep time.

I want to share with you a blog I stumbled upon a few months ago that does a fantastic job synthesizing and distilling the clinical research related to the importance of sleep routines. This website by Craig Canapari, MD from Yale is a quick, personable, and approachable read.

I appreciate his website for a variety of reasons, but here are the main ones:

• He's able to take and integrate multiple perspectives in his writing and recommendations.

• It's pretty transparent that he is open to diverse parenting-styles and family dynamics.

• He writes with an eye for the research and ear for what parents might use in their homes.

I loved his post on harnessing sleep rhythms for better sleep routines.

I also strongly recommend this post as we creep up on daylight saving time (November 4).

Some quick thought nuggets regarding sleep for children and adults alike:

• Knowing thyself and your daily rhythms. Do you know when you generally become most tired or drowsy? Do you know the same for your child? Track it!

• Viewing technology prior to sleep onset is prohibitive for a variety of reasons. I strongly encourage families, if and where they can, to set clear limits on when technology goes away for the evening and where this technology is stored/kept safe over night.

• Finding a routine that works for you/your kids is key. Rather than trying to make your family or child conform to other people's presentation of their own perfection, look for what works for you and your family and then find a way to stick to it most of the time. Consistency is the critical part.

If it were not already obvious, I am pretty passionate about this topic. One of my first blog posts provided advice and tips about "Bedtime Routines". The following post was "Product Review: Teach Me Time Clock," which we use in our house to help manage our children's nightly slumber times [Bonus: the price has come down since we first purchased it in 2014]. As I shared in my last post “Third Time’s The Charm” our youngest has needed our help throughout his whole life (all 17 months and counting) to achieve consistent, sleep-through-the-night sleep. I use these resources and suggestions in my personal life every evening, along with a prayer for a good night’s sleep.