A positive COVID test brought our boy home from boarding school last weekend.Rather than quarantine at school in a designated isolation area for five days, Beckett, 14, wanted to come home and “serve my time” – as he put it — in his own room with his family.Fortunately, he was asymptomatic when I picked him… Read more »

All seems to be going well one month into my older son’s boarding school experience.As for Pam and me, we are adjusting to our new normal. Weird is the only way I can describe life nowadays. I miss Beckett, 14, but it’s different than I thought I would feel. I am not sad. It’s just… Read more »

The relief I feel after a successful school drop off in the morning is hard to explain.For parents with neurotypical kids – I have one, so I know – the run to school is just a part of the day, most likely on the way to work, the gym or elsewhere. It’s an errand in… Read more »

The general sights and sounds of Surfers Healing every August are what makes it so special, but it’s the dozens of small interactions taking place throughout the day that tell the story.My favorite thing each year during Surfers Healing – a traveling camp featuring experienced surfers taking children on the Autism spectrum surfing — is… Read more »

It was a week.Over the course of 48 hours, we took our 14-year-old son Beckett to boarding school in Virginia to start his freshman year in high school and spent an inspirational day on the beach with our 12-year-old Carson for Surfers Healing.For the last several months, we talked of this week often, knowing it… Read more »

(Editor’s Note: This article was reprinted from October of 2020, as the writer is on vacation.)Last week, we packed up the family and headed south for a week to our favorite regional destination – Emerald Isle, N.C.This has become a tradition for my family as well as two friends’ families.Over the years, our group has… Read more »

Life does not always pan out as envisioned. It’s how we pivot and handle the unexpected situations that defines us. These are words of advice I have expressed to myself repeatedly of late.When I started writing this column 14 years ago, Beckett was two months old. Carson, 12, would come along about 17 months later,… Read more »

A casual conversation (more like a commiseration about life with teens) with a friend got me thinking about the topic of self-doubt.With two adult kids and two teens, I value his insights. He said, “I think self-doubt is born when you become a parent. You just have to trust your gut.”He clearly has given this… Read more »

Summer school wrapped up this week for Carson.For weeks, we have referred to Summer Academy as “camp” around Carson, but the reality is it’s school. It’s held at school and involves classes, speech therapy and reading intervention for him, but there’s some fun mixed in as well as weekly field trips.It would have been understandable… Read more »

If my house is like most, there are lots of looks exchanged between parents over the antics and comments from the teen of the house.I did not receive the letter that follows from my 14-year-old son, but for a few brief minutes last weekend when I came across it online, I pretended I did because… Read more »