Category Archives: Health

Articles related to health are in this category. Articles may not be authored by a staff member of whynotfathers.com. Credit will be given where credit is due. If you see an article, that isn’t properly referenced, please send our admin an email with a link to the article, and the name of the original author.

Mental Health – a personal struggle.

I have been struggling for a while.  It seems like some days are very dark. Snappy and snarky comebacks are my friend regardless of the context of the conversation.  So I approached my doctor about it. I talked to her about: Insomnia – the lack of ability to sleep. Loneliness. – feeling alone, yet needing to be alone and preferring the isolation that comes with being a disabled stay-at-home dad even though I spend a lot of time advocating for others and supporting families. Anxiety. – I don’t know how to describe the overwhelming panic, the racing heart, the rapid thoughts and their impact on life. Fear. – of my son. and that he might attack me with a shovel again. Memory issues. – forgetting things, remembering things that didn’t happen…  conversation issues. So I am not crazy. Not in the traditional sense.  I underwent a battery of tests with

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Fifteen Days Post FASD Camp

So fifteen days ago David had the opportunity to attend FASD Camp.  Summer camp. The day I dropped him off, I snapped a selfie of the two of us. Minutes after snapping this photo, he was off meeting new friends with the same disability that he has. The Disability Yes. My son has a disability.  You can’t tell it by looking at him.  That disability is Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD).  It is not the only one he has, but it is the focus of this post. We learned last winter of this camp called fasdcamp.  It is just for kids with FASD. Thus began the process of applying for camp which began before he came home from care in January. In mid-April, we learned that he had been accepted. This was after a rather lengthy telephone conversation with the camp medical director about David’s condition.  See, they want to

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Beginning to Transform Our Parenting Style

Transform Parenthood – the beginning In my last post, I shared the beginning stages of how we transform ourselves as parents. I also talk about the impetus behind the transformation. Like I stated in that post, making the decision to transform  your style as a parent is easy. Following thru is something else entirely. Do What is Right, Not What is Easy. Right for David is being the in the community with his peers. Public school. Mainstream classes. It means trust where none existed before. In addition it means that we need to be accepting of the fact that things will happen. It means holding David accountable while basically ignoring the incident for a minimum of 24 hours, though 48 hours is better. On his first day of school in the new district, David asked for an aide to support him. We told the school staff that there was a

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