When I was a kid, my younger stepsister wet her bed for a few years and I can vividly recall being awakened in the night - first by steppy-sis herself in distress or by  the necessary sheet-changing, and then by the bedwetting alarms our parents experimented with.

What I don’t remember is whether I was supportive or not. I don’t think I ever poked fun at her about the bedwetting, but I know I had it in mind as possible “ammunition” should we get in an argument.

Truth is, bedwetting can be a big worry to a kid. According to this article, only divorce and parental fights cause a kid more stress. Stress in general is bad, but imagine the anxiety a kid must feel before a sleepover, a camping trip, or an overnight stay at grandma’s.

And bedwetting doesn’t only affect the child waking up in a bed puddle. It affects the whole family, and siblings’ response can complicate the issue.

Now multiply all of that stress times half a million. Because that’s how many Canadian children 5 years of age or older wet their bed. A handful of families have been generous and open enough to share with us their bedwetting trials and tribulations as well as the emotional impact:

- From MM in Ontario: “It makes him self-conscious and he wonders why he’s different from other kids.”

- From LB in New Brunswick: “I took my son to the doctor at beginning to make sure there was no problem with his bladder. I find it emotional and I feel powerless.”

Read other parents’ stories or submit your own tinkle-tale here.

Tickle torture. That’s what I kept reminiscing about after watching the recently-released film version of the children’s book classic “Where the Wild Things Are”.

The movie, like the book, features young Max and reflects on that scary precipice of mid-childhood - that point between being a wild little beast who throws a fit to try to get what you want and realizing the repercussions of your emotional outbursts and how your needs coexist with your parents’, your siblings’, your family’s needs. The film managed to be a lovely, touching portrait of one boy’s empathy epiphany and how much we can learn from our own internal “wild things”.

When Max suddenly bites his mother’s arm in a confused emotional moment (anger mixed with fear of being ignored or abandoned as family dynamics change), I remembered the way I used to torture my little sister with tickles when we were kids.

We were good-natured kids, my sister and me, rarely fighting and never hitting each other or anything like that. But tickling would start really innocently. We’d just be playing and I’d poke at her, a small tickle and then we’d both fall into a fit of giggles. Sometimes I’d stop after a few giggles, but there were other times when I’d push it a little too far, and what started as a tickle would become torturous to her. “Stop! Stop!” she’d shout between pained laughs. At least once I remember it all ending in tears.

Reliving those times as an adult watching a movie, I realized how quickly we can slip from being playful to being hurtful. But how can something as simple and innocent as tickling become violent? And is it possible to tickle ourselves? [Read more →]

A diagnosis of arthritis can bring with it many emotions. Grief and a sense of personal loss may be the most often experienced.

There is a sense of loss as one immediately begins to imagine the progress of the illness to the point where they will not be able to function as they always have. Perhaps there will be loss of mobility. Hands won’t be able to do fine work one has always enjoyed such as painting, needlework, keyboarding and so on. Maybe there will be fear of a general loss of mobility making it hard to do housework, to exercise, to just do daily personal care.

It all boils down to an overriding sense of loss of self. The idea of being hindered from living life as they always have leaves a person feeling that parts of themselves are being excised away. For a while all one sees is this new illness they have been diagnosed with and it looms larger than life. It overshadows everything they can’t see how life will be within the cloud of this new condition.

I understand this completely. When I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, there was a period where it was all I could see. I lost myself and my daily life in my struggle to accept my illness.

Happily this does not last forever. You fight the idea, you grieve, you might feel cheated and depressed for a while, but eventually you do come out the other side. You realize that you have not lost yourself to anything and accepting your illness does not mean redefining who you are. It is simply a case of adjusting your lifestyle in order to deal with it. This might mean taking medication, changing diet and activity, and remembering to take a positive approach to life.

There are an interesting couple of studies in the upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science about reading or hearing things that upset us. They will certainly affect how I watch the TV news. [Read more →]