My kids love hanging out with Shane and his team from Adamson Lawn Care (www.adamsonlawncare.com)

I recently popped down to my local grocery store with a bottle of wine and farewell card for my favourite cashier, who was working her last shift. Some complications as a result of MS have forced her to retire. Every time I see her, I get a hug as she makes fun of my monstrous grocery bill and comments on how many or how few children I happened to have with me on that particular day.

I find it hard saying goodbye to community helpers. When my mail carrier died a couple of years ago, I was pretty torn up. I got to wondering if everyone gets attached to community helpers the way I do and, wanting to do a temperature check to see if this was “normal”, did some asking around.

From that bit of digging, I now hypothesize that people whose kids have special needs feel particularly connected to community helpers. We become very attached to the various people in the lives/health/development of our children, and perhaps it carries over to community helpers in general.

I’ll never forget how I felt when I found out, a few days before the new school year began, that our school principal was being transferred. This is the kind of news that keeps parents like me up at night. We think about the years spent relationship building, advocating, winning that principal over – all that time, energy and investment, gone. A new principal means having to start all over again.

The same goes for those in the medical profession. When friend and Mabel staffer, Melissa, found out that her daughter’s very first nurse was leaving their hospital, she experienced extreme distress. How can these people just up and move on when we rely on them? There is no such thing as a “simple” transfer in our worlds.

Last month, my son’s young, vibrant and extraordinary speech therapist, Kim Pace, finally lost her incredibly courageous battle against cancer. She leaves behind countless devastated parents of children with special needs.

They say that it takes a village to raise a child. I, for one, appreciate and value every one of those villagers. I will miss Bonnie the cashier and Kim the speech therapist. My village won’t be the same without them.

My father died in December. He had spent the last several years very unwell, and my mother spent a lot of her time taking care of him. That is a difficult situation for any family, but it is even more difficult when the person you are caring for continuously makes choices that contribute to their bad health. And so, although he was a loved man, the result was a team of fairly frustrated family members.

My biggest frustration was trying to understand why he didn’t make choices that would allow him to be involved more fully in the lives of his grandchildren. He adored each and every one of them. Every morning he asked my mother which of his grandbabies was going to visit that day. He had frequent visits from his collection of loving grandkids, who called him The Gaffer. Kids would disappear into his man cave and they’d have the place trashed instantly – toys everywhere, cushions off the couches and the TV channel changed to their station. Every visit was a kid invasion into The Gaffer’s space. Interestingly, he was not at all bothered by the noise or chaos. He was never impatient with them and he certainly never snapped at any child. Visits ended with hugs, kisses and “I love you’s”.

I felt that relationship wasn’t good enough because he didn’t actually DO anything with my children. His illness made it so he couldn’t – that pesky illness that didn’t really have to be there. My dad never read to the children, and certainly never played a board game or did a puzzle with them. He didn’t take them out for walks or do any of the other things I see active grandparents doing with their grandchildren. It made me sad that he was missing out. And, so were my kids.

Apparently, I was wrong. A couple of weeks after his death, my 9-year-old daughter emerged from her bedroom at midnight to share a drawing of him. Included in the illustration were several messages and statements – one for each day since he had died. The most striking message to me was “I loved EVERYTHING about you”.

All that time I thought he wasn’t DOING anything with his grandchildren, he was very actively doing the thing that was most important to them. He was loving them. And it was all they needed.

Rather than "shush" my kid, I just throw another plug in his gob

I’m a little bit nosey and don’t pretend otherwise. On my recent travels to a conference, I injected myself into a couple of situations that were none of my business. I just couldn’t help it.

The first was on my way to the conference. Across the aisle from me sat a mother and her surfer dude teenaged son. He was polite, respectful, handsome – he pretty much had all the qualities I hope my kids have as teenagers. He also happened to be living with Down Syndrome. At one point he was making a few noises. I didn’t take much notice because I’m surrounded by noisy people all the time. Then, from somewhere nearby a random passenger let out the loudest, rudest SHUSH I’ve ever heard. I was angry and determined to find the culprit. I wanted to give the SHUSHER a piece of my mind. All my investigations were pointless – the SHUSHER would not come forward and admit to the SHUSHING.

On the way home came Nosey Parker incident #2. A young dad was sitting behind me and having a cell phone conversation with the mother of his baby. They were discussing her plans for the next day. It sounded like she had a fun event to attend with a group of friends. The dad expressed a bit of concern about taking care of the baby because he was exhausted from his work travels. He did the right thing – told her her to carry on with her plans but that he would find a babysitter for a couple of hours to get some rest before enjoying the rest of the day with his kid. Their phone call ended and a few quick calls to babysitters from the tarmac were made and he had it all sorted out. Happily, he called his baby mama back and explained that all was organized and that he was thrilled that she would have a well deserved day out with her friends. She must have announced that she decided to cancel the plans because he spent the next few minutes saying things like “but you deserve to go out” and “it’s not a hassle at all, I’m looking forward to having the day with my daughter”. Despite begging her to go, she could not be convinced. When he got off the phone, I heard a huge sigh of defeat and frustration.

Clearly, I know nothing about them, their relationship or how they share parental responsibilities. However, I couldn’t stop myself from turning around, admitting to eavesdropping and congratulating him on trying so hard to make it work – for wanting his partner to have a day out with her friends. Sure, I risked having him tell me to mind my own business but it was worth it when I looked at his exhausted big brown eyes and heard his whisper: “Thank you so much”.

It’s tough to know when to inject ourselves into a conversation or situation that we’re not directly involved in. For me, often my gut responds before my brain has the chance to make a decision. The greatest risk for the Nosey Parker is humiliation. For those of us who have experienced enough of that already, it’s not a risk that gets a whole lot of consideration.

Every so often we bark an order at a kid and moments later, regret it. Why do we regret it? Because it was said with no forethought of what a pain it would be to follow through.  The alternative to following through is unbearable – parents transforming into white noise machines repeatedly saying annoying things like:

“I’m giving you ONE more chance”, or:

“OK, now I’ll give you to the count of three”, or even better:

“Well, OK, I’ll let you get away with it this time but this is your last chance”.

I’m not the threatening type (or, I try not to be). Rather than saying “You need to come to the table or else…..(insert irrational consequence here)”, I simply say “You need to come to the table” and then respond to child’s action, or lack of action.

Two occasions come to mind where I ended up putting myself in fairly awkward positions because of a demand or request I put on a kiddo. Interestingly, both occasions have been with the same child.

1)      I ordered child out of swimming pool. Child responded by swimming to middle of pool, flashing a cheeky smile and explaining how exiting the pool was never going to happen.  I entered pool, fully clothed, and dragged said child out of pool. She remained out of pool – for several days – while all the other children enjoyed their summer swims. A friend was over with her kids on the day of the incident and experienced complete shock that I went in the pool fully clothed to get the kid. We brainstormed alternatives and came up empty. The lesson I learned –  it might be worth having a bathing suit on under my clothes at all times in the summer.

2)      Same delightful child was acting like a brat during a soccer game when she was about 6 years old. I kept waiting for the coach to intervene and tell her to smarten up, share the ball, etc. Watching her act out and get away with it sent me into a near rage. Before long, I got the shakes and couldn’t take it any longer. I got up out of my lawn chair, stormed across the soccer field, causing the game to stop, threw my little delinquent over my shoulder, told the coach to get a sub, and hauled my kid off the field. As I walked back to my lawn chair, I could see parents’ mouths hanging open in shock. My daughter was horrified, and the coach didn’t know what to make of me.  Interestingly, I didn’t feel a bit embarrassed about hauling her off the field. It was far more agitating watching her get away with her behaviour.

My experience has been that following through can be extremely painful. The only thing I find more painful, though, is not following through.

Although the reality is that I have six kids, in so many ways (as I’m sure you entrepreneurial types understand), when you create a business – you suddenly become a parent again.

Eight years ago, my business partners and I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl named Mabel. It was a long pregnancy, and the delivery was not easy, but she was born and is living among us. As a newborn, she was feisty and not always on her best behavior. Although we had other children, we were first-time parents to a child like this and there was a big learning curve. But, baby Mabel inspired us, kept us awake at night and worked us pretty darn hard.

When Mabel was first born she lived in my business partner’s basement. As she became a toddler, she required more space so my business partner moved to a bigger house with a bigger basement. Now, she is a cheeky big girl living in a 14,000 square foot facility.

As a baby, she was pretty bossy and kept on top of me and my business partners. She liked to keep us working through the night and clearly loved spending time with us. Now that Mabel is 8 years old she has become even bossier and has over 40 people running around after her at the Mabel’s Labels Headquarters every day.

The Mabelhood Class of 2010

As with our other children – our commitment, loyalty, love and hard work have paid off. We continue to nurture her and help her grow, but are so proud of where she is today.

And there she is – growing up before our very eyes!