Tonight I ran for 1 straight mile for the second time since eleventh grade. My goal is to have run five miles total in 1 mile intervals before we leave for the hospital next week to receive our first born son.

Tonight I realized 2 lessons while running my mile.

1) I ran slowly tonight, much slower than the first mile I ran last Friday. When I hit my finish line I could have continued running but I stopped intentionally. I don’t want my muscles to get to sore and I need to complete my five miles before my son gets here next week. I’ve made a ton of commitments to myself that I have often broke but I refuse to break this commitment. I would rather die than break this commitment. You see I think Exercise has taught me something. It’s taught me that I can easily make bigger and better goal but I need to reach my first goal before making new ones. Don’t go faster Don’t go longer just go, and go and go and go. If you keep going you’ll do it. I only have 3 miles left to run before next Wednesday night when we leave for the hospital.

2) First born son’s have traditionally been a mainstay in history and religion. Tonight 1 week and 3 miles before my son arrives I know why. It wasn’t that men needed a son to give everything to it was that men needed a son to learn how to be a man. You see with daughters you have to be a good man but they will also forgive you for all your faults. Daughters are less likely to make your faults their own. Daughters are all about love and spiritual growth. Son’s are about making sure to keep your word because that is what a man should do. Keep your word to yourself and keep your word to the world. Son’s are about making sure that you not only set but meet your goals of improvement so they know to do the same. Son’s are about staying physically fit because they’ll expect you to keep up with them. Son’s are about ensuring your relationship with G-d is strong because you won’t always know the answer or do the right thing and you will need strength and forgiveness. Son’s and Daughter’s are about becoming all that you should be so that they KNOW they can become all that they can be.

Lord thank you for my wife and children and please give me the strength to be all that they need and become all I should be. In Your Holy Name, Amen.

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I had seen these video’s recently and was reminded of them today by my Rabbi’s Yom Kippur sermon. I thought they would be great to share here with my readers. Please enjoy! Also note – the website on the top of the video brings you to a sales page for something unrelated so don’t waste your time.

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I haven’t been posting as much as I would like to lately but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy. I’d like to give a brief update of some of the going on’s around here.

1) Metzger Baby #3 is on the way. We expect to have a little boy here no later than Thursday October 8th. We are very excited and had the room completely finished before some flooding made us move some toys into the room while we fix the flood damage.

2) Flood – We did have some minor flood damage but are so very thankful that it wasn’t worse. There are so many people who lost so much and we pray for them daily to recover. We are getting a new roof , thankfully covered by insurance,  and replacing some carpet not covered by insurance.

3) You have seen in some of my recent posts that Haley was called weird at school. We have worked with Haley to write a book. I am now in the process of getting it published. It will likely be self published and available for sale on this web site in the near future.

4) Haley and I filmed an interview about her writing the book and I hope to have the video posted before the baby arrives.  The video is currently in the editing room.

5) Articles for Cerebral Palsy Magazine. I was asked to write an article for the winter edition of Cerebral Palsy Magazine because of my election to East Cobber father of the year. I’m very excited about this honor and have written 2 articles. I’m trying to decided which one I like better. I’ll publish the other article here on the blog once I decide.

6) I have started on another book project. I’m going to be crowed sourcing a book about Dad’s by dad’s. I’m very excited about this book. It will start with a questionnaire that is being developed that I hope to have over 1000 dad’s complete. As the questionnaire is completed stats will be published to this site. One of the questions will be do you want to be interviewed for the book? I’ll set about interviewing all who want to be interviewed and compile the stories into a book. I have no idea how long this project will take but I’d like to have it close to complete by my 35th birthday in May, sooner if possible.

7) I could not tell if my Blog Talk Radio program was very good. I do have some additional guests who would be willing to do interviews but I’m just not sure if I should continue with the program. I’d love to hear some feedback. Please let me know your thoughts.

Finally as I expect to be very busy over the next few weeks until after the baby get’s here I may not have much of a chance to blog. Please be patient with me and continue reading as I will do my best to continue posting on a regular basis as my life normalizes again after the baby arrives.

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A common problem with Cerebral Palsy is visual processing. Visual processing is the process of the brain taking in what it sees and turning that into information the brain can use. Additionally the brain will organize the information as it processes the intake. Haley has a visual processing disorder. It is not sever but she has been tested in a number of various scenarios and definitely had difficulty processing information. When she was younger this manifested itself when she was trying to navigate a room or find a toy. As a six year old in first grade these things are not as hard for her but she still has issues for instance we had a teach conference today and they said she can’t seem to find her snack on a daily basis in her desk. To see inside her desk she has to lean over (concentrating on balance), look into her desk sidways, and process everything. We as parents made a few suggestions to either find a desk where the top opens or use a basket that Haley can look in and see. Truthfully I’m very happy that the teacher and para-pro were so observant to see the difficulty she has been having with this seemingly easy task.

There was a topic my wife had been concerned about. Haley will revers her b’s and d’s and of course with my Dyslexia that can be a concern. I have been less concerned about it because I don’t see her struggling with it she just still get confused and I figured it was age appropriate. The teachers agreed. The bigger problem we all have seen is the difficulty she has with reading “sight words” Sight word are words that need to be memorized. The problem is that when Haley looks at the word she doesn’t always fully process what she is seeing. This is explicitly true at the end of the day when she is tired.

I think I’ve mentioned previously in this blog that Haley is an extremely talented auditory learner. She learned to crawl up the stairs by talking her self through it. Hand, Hand, Knee, Knee, Foot, Foot. Haley already knows all the letter sounds and most the letter combination sounds too but if she doesn’t see the letter because she hasn’t processed whats there she can’t read the words. So the other night I suggested Haley read each letter out loud to us before guessing at the word. As she does this her rate of learning the sight words has increased tremendously and we don’t have her guessing what a word is anymore. Yeah Success! Small steps make big progress over time.

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I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned that I’m a geek on this site other than describing my profession on my about me page, but if I haven’t here it goes. I’m a Grade 1, A Prime, full fledged geek. I love new tech toys, twitter, and the internet. I’ve been a geek for as long as I can remember and I’ll be a geek to the day I die. The funny thing is now it’s cool to be a geek and so now I’m sheek too 8). <---- See told you I was a geek. If your interested in my geekyness read my other blog at MetzgerBusiness.

Well I just saw a new technology that provides gate training to CP patients using a robot. I’m not kidding when I say this, I’ve actually had dreams about a contraptions like this. Here are a few videos that show the machine and explain how it works. This is a fairly new therapy so I don’t have much more information then what is provided in the video. I also want to thank fellow blogger and twitterer @CPparent for bringing this story to my attention.

I’ve also uploaded the product spec page for anyone who is interested in reading the details. You can find it here.

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I was at dinner the other night with friends. We were talking about my web site and I was saying that I’m amazed that I hear from more people each day that are reading it and gaining some benefit from it. We then started talking about some people who have discovered late in life that they have ADD, ADHD or Dyslexia and I made a glib comment that probably came across as judgmental. I mentioned that people with ADD, ADHD or Dyslexia end up in the profession they do often to avoid dealing with their disability.

This is especially true of people who do not discover until late in life that they have a disability. Unfortunately many of the coping skills are not inherent and have to be learned. If an individual was allowed to grow up with out learning the skills or without understanding that there is nothing wrong with them they just have a different way of relating to the world then they tend to withdrawal and choose professions that allow for that withdrawal. Professions are typically chosen that allow the person to act individually, avoid writing, have minimal bureaucratic forms or allow for really individualistic and creative thought. Obviously these types of professions span a vast array of possibilities and provide an incredible amount of opportunities but as an individual with ADD, ADHD or Dyslexia you should be consciously aware that these factors when selecting a job.

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I am completely baffled by my two year old. She is absolutly adorable but she is also my wield thing. She is the type of child who if you tell her “no” will look at you do it again and then smile. If you yell she smiles louder. Seemingly the only solution is to redirect. So my question is “How do I convey when my child is actually doing something wrong?” She doesn’t really care when you take something away. She doesn’t care when your mad, she is more likely to respond with “You look mad” Smile at me until I smile back and say “Daddy happy now?” Since she is only 2 there isn’t too much that she actually does that is bad. We typically are dealing with fighting with her big sister and refusal to let us brush her teeth but I know even my meanest yell doesn’t scare her and the swat on the hand to ensure she doesn’t touch the stove or an outlet hardly got any response at all. I don’t think it would work again. I’m open to ideas?

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I haven’t written about my dyslexia/ADD in quite a while. As anyone who has regularly read this blog knows I tend to write about events that are current and related to my life now (this instant). Well today it’s time to writ about some difficulty I have with writing.

Obviously if you take the time to read this blog you can see that I am very capable of writing and sometime even capable of eloquency as demonstrated in the blog that won me Father of the Year. However this type of writing is free form, narrative, passionate, and streem of consiounious. It works well for this blog and I enjoy it tremoundously. I hope and believe that it benefits the reader.

Unfortunatly this form of writing does not bode well for business. Over the years I’ve managed to squeak by because of ability to verably communicate, think dynamically, negotiate, come up with strategic ideas and help the team come up with solutions, but my written work has always suffered from the way I think. My writing has always reflected my thought process. I was always able to do well when I was simply writing requirements because they are simple sentence structures and I always got group reviews, but as I’ve moved up in organizations and had to build more presentations and comprehensive documents I’ve had a harder time with my written communication. I can build great grand strategic thoughts but when it comes to putting them in a presentation I’ve always had to find someone to help me re-organize and pollish it. I truly believe that this has held me back from becoming a truly young execuative but I don’t want it to hold me back from becoming an execuative permanitaly. As such I’m working with some people who do excelent work to understand the strategies they use to organize and build their best work.

The first step is outlining. This is interesting. Of course we are all taught that we should always outline thoughts, but I’ve always been of the opinion that an outline should take 15 – 30 minutes. As of today I now understand that you can take days to build your outlines and the thought process allows you to organize how you want your ideas organized in the final written presentation.

I have no idea if this strategy will work for me but the people who are the best experts in the world say if you want to do something like someone else does it then you have to model how they do it. So here it goes. I’ll keep you informed. If it works for me hopefully I’ll have documented all the steps and you can model the same behaviors.

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