Parenting Resources, Disability Research

I've just finished reading The Self-Esteem Trap: Raising Confident Kids in an Age of Self-Importance, by Polly Young-Eisendrath. (2008) Little, Brown & Co.

Perusing the bibliography and notes, I looked into the Arkansas Center for Effective Parenting (http://parenting-ed.org/default.asp). This website led me down a long path, exploring various handouts about parenting.

I also found The National Center for the Dissemination of Disability Research, which has all kinds of information on just what it describes.

I am beginning to take part in a Mind-Body Skills Group presented by the University of Arizona College of Medicine, Department of Psychology. It's all part of my self-improvement, self-educating efforts, which may help me find some worthwhile distraction from all my woes of the past few years. Perhaps it will help me reestablish some sense of purpose, so that I can get anchored into "real life" at some point.

In calm, idle moments, I have finally begun to ponder the significance of my experiences with illness and single parenting and disability and custody battles and failure and all that, hoping to get my words around these things to preserve some insight for myself, and perhaps for others. Perhaps I'll get around to posting some of these thoughts on the blog.

Sometimes I think about this blog and my purposes for starting it, and I realize it goes neglected far too long if I am to make it into a relevant outlet for my insights and inquiries. But it takes its place among the lowest items on my priority list.

In talking with the physiologist at my physical therapist's office, I realized that I've been immersed in day-to-day survival more than what I once enjoyed as authentic, if sometimes frantic, living. I don't have anything to look forward to, and I've been set adrift in my life in a way I never was before when I was busy busy busy doing my work and scholarship and recreation, then parenting and householding. Perhaps it's time to get out the paper and write about short term, long term and life goals.

Anyway, maybe I'm back online, but maybe not. In the meantime, happy February... we're already well on our way into 2009. Astounding.