It Takes a Village to Raise a Writer

Today is an exciting day for me.

I am thrilled and honoured to be one of this year’s inductees into the Peterborough Pathway of Fame.

I am grateful that Peterborough has chosen me—just as I chose Peterborough.

My husband Neil and I made a conscious decision to move to the city back in 1988, when we were expecting our first child. We were attracted to Peterborough because of its high quality of life and because it was reasonably affordable for a young family. That way, our mortgage would be a little less crushing—although, to be fair, it still felt pretty crushing at the time!

Having a bit of financial wiggle room proved to be the game changer for me as a writer. I didn’t have to work full-time at a day job and then try to write books in the evening, after the four kids had gone to bed. I could afford to make writing my day job—to see if I actually had what it takes to establish a career as an author.

As it turns out, that gamble paid off. My books have sold over three-quarters of a million copies to date; and I just started work on a brand new book—Book 26, if anyone is keeping track.

But here’s the thing: I worry about the up-and-coming generation of writers. Will they have the same opportunity to pursue their writing dreams here in Peterborough, just as I did?

The math doesn’t seem to add up.

According to The Writers’ Union of Canada—Canadian’s national association for published authors—a typical Canadian author makes just less than $10,000 a year. That’s roughly 75 percent less than it was two decades ago, back when my very first book was being published. It’s never been easy to make a living as a writer in Canada, but in recent years it has become a whole lot harder.

And given that houses in Peterborough are getting more expensive, not less (an average home in the city now sells for well over a half-million dollars), I’m worried that the up-and-coming generation of Canadian writers simply won’t be able to afford to make Peterborough their home, like I did. It’s pretty clear that those sky-high housing prices pose an existential threat to the local arts community.

And so today I want to urge everyone in Peterborough who cares about the arts to understand the need to invest in arts funding and to ensure an adequate supply of artist-friendly housing (in other words, housing that artists can actually afford to live in). The City of Peterborough’s 2012 Municipal Cultural Plan noted that investment in arts, culture, and heritage yields an 18-to-one return on investment. That means that every dollar that a municipality invests in arts, culture, or heritage attracts roughly $18 dollars in added investment. And that’s just considering the impact of the arts in terms of dollars and cents. It’s impossible to calculate what the arts actually contribute to our collective quality of life.

So that, in a nutshell, is my hope for Peterborough—the community where I chose to raise my family and where I had the privilege of being able to establish my career as a writer.

I hope that Peterborough will acknowledge and celebrate its arts community in the very same way that I am being celebrated today.

I may be the writer whose name is being added to the Pathway of Fame, but it truly takes a village to raise a writer.

Thank you for being my village and for continuing to be the village for other writers.

Ann Douglas is the author of numerous books about pregnancy and parenting. She is also the weekend parenting columnist for CBC Radio. She wrote this speech for week’s Peterborough Pathway of Fame ceremony—an event that ended up having to be postponed due to rising COVID-19 numbers. The organizers hope to hold an in-person celebration when that becomes possible again.

How to Help Kids Manage Feelings of Disappointment

Spring is usually a season of happy anticipation for kids—a time to celebrate the return of the warmer weather and to start making plans for summer. That’s how things play out in normal times—but it’s already becoming pretty clear that kids are going to be asked to do a lot of things differently this year; and that they might even have to miss out on certain types of spring and summer experiences entirely as we continue to practice physical distancing.

It’s tough enough to deal with these kinds of disappointments when you’re a grownup.

It can be even harder when you’re a kid.

Here are some tips on helping kids cope with feelings of disappointment and even sadness about what simply might not be possible this year.

Acknowledge and accept your child’s feelings

This is hard to do as a parent, because it means accepting that your child is in pain: acknowledging all those painful emotions and giving her permission to talk through her feelings with you. It’s also incredibly important. Your child needs to know that you are strong enough to handle any emotions she might care to share with you, no matter how big or how messy. And if you end up shedding a few tears together—well, that’s okay! Your heart will probably break a little as you listen to your child—but it will be breaking in a good kind of way: the way that leaves you feeling more connected than ever to your child.

What I’m talking about is responding with empathy (attempting to see the situation from your child’s point of view) and then validating your child’s emotions (letting your child know that her feelings make sense).

When you’re able to respond in this way, you encourage your child to sit with these uncomfortable emotions as opposed to trying to run from them or pretend they don’t exist.

That’s so much healthier for your child.

Then, once she’s had a chance to express her feelings of anger, sadness, and disappointment, she will be able to start coming up with creative ways of dealing with the situation—of finding a way to make a bad situation a little less terrible.

Recognize that some kids will have a harder time coping with disappointment than others

Learning how to manage disappointment is a skill—and a skill that doesn’t come naturally or easily to every child. The way we develop a social-emotional skill like this is through practice; and with the support of another person.

The most important thing you can do right now is to be that strong, caring person for your child: to help her to work through these feelings of disappointment and to help her to recognize the importance of turning to other people for support in times of struggle. Because even the most crushing of disappointments becomes a little more bearable if you can ask someone else for help in shouldering that burden.

Understand what allows children to be resilient

Most of us do manage to recover from even the most crushing of disappointments. (Scientists have discovered that most of us have a baseline level of happiness that we return to relatively quickly after experiencing something really great or truly terrible—and, yes, it works both ways.) But in terms of what allows children to be resilient, it’s all about relationships. Children learn how to be resilient as a result of being in a caring relationship with a resilient adult. And if that resilient adult feels supported by the broader community—well, that’s where the resiliency magic really kicks in!

It can be helpful to give kids a peek behind the curtain: to share some of the strategies you are using to manage your own feelings of disappointment and to find ways to bounce back from those disappointments. In addition to modelling your own resilience and coping skills in real time, it can also be useful to share stories about times you yourself were faced with a particularly crushing disappointment, back when you were a kid. The fact that you’re still standing here today will be living proof that it’s possible to weather these kinds of disappointments, no matter how terrible they feel at the time.

Kids need to know that they can learn to manage their feelings of disappointment—and that the process does get easier over time and with practice. And when you witness their resilience, be sure to shine a spotlight on it. Encourage them to notice and celebrate their growing ability to cope with life’s curveballs. Because that’s definitely worth celebrating.

Ann Douglas is the weekend parenting columnist for CBC Radio and the author of numerous books about parenting.

Ann Douglas is the weekend parenting columnist for CBC Radio and the author of numerous books about parenting, including, most recently, Happy Parents, Happy Kids and Parenting Through the Storm. In recent weeks, she has been hosting a series of online events on parenting in the midst of a pandemic. She has also launched two new video series: A Postcard from Ann Douglas and We Got This! Parent Support During COVID-19 with child psychiatrist Dr. Jean Clinton.

Lessons Learned from a House Fire: On Taming Your Anxiety and Coping When Life is Uncertain

On Father’s Day 2015, we experienced a house fire. Everything in our lives changed in an instant. We found ourselves forced to come to terms with a rapidly shifting reality and to move forward without any sense of when things might begin to return to something even remotely resembling normal.

On the day of the fire — when the house was still smouldering.

Sound familiar? I’ll bet it does—because the situation that we’re dealing with right now is, in fact, remarkably similar.

We’re being forced to adjust to a rapidly changing world and to cope with the uncertainty that comes from not knowing what the future may hold for ourselves, the people we care about, the wider community, and the rest of the world.

It’s a lot.

After spending much of the past week trying to manage my own initially sky-high levels of anxiety, I started to look for ways to try to make things better (or at least a little less awful) for other people. Because I’m a writer, I landed on the idea of sharing stories about what I’ve learned about coming through times of struggle. (Spoiler alert: I’ve been through a lot and I’ve managed to come out the other side.)

I’ll be continuing to share other stories during the days and weeks ahead, but in this initial post, I’m going to highlight the specific strategies that proved to be most helpful to my family in allowing us to cope during an extremely scary and uncertain time. In other words, here’s the best advice from my family to yours on getting through the days and weeks to come.

Accept the fact that things are going to be uncertain for a while.

Uncertainly is one of my least favourite things. I really, really hate it. I find it incredibly difficult to cope with uncertainty and I’m pretty sure you do, too. I desperately want answers to questions that are unanswerable right now—or at least in any honest and meaningful way. How long will the current social distancing measures be required? What will be the final toll of this pandemic? What will our lives and communities look like when we come out the other side? At this point, the answer to most of those questions is that we simply don’t know and we probably won’t know for a while. Accepting that is an important first step.

Acknowledge and accept all your emotions.

Give yourself permission to feel all the feelings. Trying to talk yourself out of your feelings or trying to ignore those feelings doesn’t magically make those feelings go away. It simply drives those emotions underground or causes the emotion to get expressed in other ways that could make life so much harder for you.

Seek support from others.

You don’t have handle this on your own. As humans, we’re wired to turn to one another for support. So seek support from others and be willing to offer support to others. When your emotional well is empty, seek replenishment. When you feel like you have an abundance of emotional energy, dip into that well and use it to replenish others.

Pare down your worry list to the bare essentials.

Some things are worth worrying about right now; other things are not. Try to maximize your emotional bandwidth by zeroing in on what matters most in this moment and what is actually within your control right now. Try to put the rest of your worries on the back burner.

Take a gratitude inventory.

Take stock of the good things in your life: the things you can feel grateful for right now. Yes, things are incredibly stressful right now—and, yes, there’s also a lot to feel grateful about. This isn’t just a feel-good exercise, by the way. There is a huge (and growing) body of research to demonstrate the benefits of activating your sense of gratitude. As I explain in my most recent book Happy Parents, Happy Kids:

“People who experience gratitude more often are less anxious and less depressed. They sleep better at night. They have better social and emotional skills and healthier relationships, at least in part because they’re more likely to do kind things for other people when they feel grateful for the kind things other people have done for them. They feel an increased sense of meaning and purpose in their lives. And they find it easier to bounce back from life’s curveballs. Gratitude acts as a buffer against negative events and stressful experiences by encouraging you to treat difficult experiences as opportunities for growth.”

So there’s that….

Identify the strategies you’ve used to weather other challenging situations in the past.

Unless you’ve led a truly charmed life, you’ve no doubt encountered some challenges and figured out a way to work through them. Maybe you’re a great problem solver—someone who is able to look at a problem that has other people completely baffled and zero in on a really creative solution. Maybe you’re the kind of person who is able to radiate a sense of calm in a moment when other people are coming completely unglued! (I long for that superpower.) Maybe you’re good at reaching out for support and offering support to others.

When people sing your praises, what kinds of things do they say about you? What kinds of strengths do they spotlight? How might you leverage those strengths during this time of struggle?

Focus on finding meaning in this moment.

Look for opportunities to make things better for other people—people who may be having a much tougher time than you. Challenge yourself to find all kinds of creative ways of contributing to the common good. The more we can invest in our collective humanity, the stronger and healthier our world will be when we emerge from this difficult time. We have an unprecedented opportunity to plant the seeds for a happy, healthier, more just, and more compassionate world. Let’s do our best to start spreading those seeds.

After the house was repaired (Fall 2015).

* * *

So there you have it: some advice from my family to yours. I’m going to continue to write about getting through times of struggle during the days and weeks ahead. If you’d like to be notified of future posts, just sign up for one of my three newsletters (or all three, if you’d like). Or follow me on social media (Twitter | Facebook | Instagram).

And if there is something in particular you’d like me to write about, please leave me a note in the comments section below. (Yesterday’s post about sleep strategies was the direct result of requests I received via social media. I’m happy to continue to create content in response to what the community needs right now.)

How to Help Yourself and Your Kids Get the Sleep You Need Right Now

Some practical advice on getting the sleep you need during an extraordinarily worrisome time and on helping your kids to do the same. This material was adapted from my most recent book, Happy Parents, Happy Kids.

It’s an inconvenient truth: our bodies need sleep. No matter how desperately we try, we can’t wish that fact away. It’s particularly important to stay on top of sleep when we’re carrying a heavy stress burden, as all of us are right now. Bottom line? Missing out on sleep will only make an already tough situation even tougher.

Here’s why:

When we’re sleep-deprived our emotions are more volatile. Not only do we have more difficulty managing our emotions when we’re sleep-deprived, but those emotions tend to skew negative. The parts of the brain that are associated with the processing of fear are 60 per cent more reactive, which means that we’re more likely to feel anxious or angry.

We feel like we’re running on empty. Less sleep means less energy and less staying power. That crushing feeling of fatigue makes life so much harder. Is it any wonder that so many of us try to compensate for our lack of sleep by boosting our energy in other less helpful ways, like ramping ourselves up with caffeine and diving into a sea of carbs?

We’re more distracted. When we’re sleep-deprived, it’s harder to focus. Not only does our motivation take a hit: we’re also less alert, which increases our risk of injury. That risk increases exponentially depending on how much sleep you’ve missed. You’re 4.3 times more likely to have a car accident if you’ve had five hours of sleep or less, and if you’ve had four hours or less, that risk factor skyrockets to a mind-blowing 11.5 times.

Our health may take a hit, too. Lack of sleep affects the immune system, meaning that you’re more likely to get sick and it will take you longer to recover.

The good news is that there are things we can do to help ourselves and our kids get the sleep that we need right now.

We can…..

Make sleep a priority. Treat it as a necessity, not a frill. Recognize it for what it is: the glue that holds everything else together. Yes, life is uncertain and unpredictable right now, but that doesn’t mean we should overlook the importance of sleep.

Practice good sleep hygiene. This means creating a sleep environment that is sleep-enhancing—think cool, quiet, and dark—and developing bedtime habits that encourage, rather than discourage, sleep, such as avoiding melatonin-suppressing blue light from screens, not eating too close to bedtime, limiting caffeine intake during the day, and avoiding alcohol at bedtime because it results in poorer quality, less restorative sleep. It also means maintaining consistent sleep patterns from day to day: getting out of bed at roughly the same time each morning and resisting the temptation to nap indiscriminately throughout the day—unless, of course, you’re the parent of a brand new baby, in which case indiscriminate napping is definitely encouraged.

Help your body to feel sleepy at just the right time. Be sure to get exposure to daylight first thing in the morning so that your circadian rhythms stay on track, get adequate physical activity during the day so that your body is physically tired at bedtime, minimize caffeine intake so your body is actually ready to wind down when your head hits the pillow, avoid screens in the hour or two before you go to bed (or use screen settings and apps to limit your exposure to blue light), and skip that sleep-disrupting nightcap.

In addition to taking care of these basics, there are a few additional tricks you can try if you find yourself struggling to get or stay asleep.

First, take a hot bath an hour or two before you want to head to bed. Taking a hot bath causes your blood vessels to dilate, causing heat to be radiated away from your body core. This, in turn, causes your core body temperature to drop, cueing sensations of sleepiness.

Second, dump your worries. Writing a detailed to-do list before you head off to bed isn’t just an effective way to clear your brain of worries at bedtime; it’s also a proven way to help yourself fall asleep more quickly, according to research conducted at Baylor University. So, get those worries out of your head—and out of your bed—and onto a piece of paper.

Third, choose bedtime reading that will leave you feeling less anxious, not more anxious, once your head hits the pillow. Think soothing bedtime stories, not the breaking news headlines. And if your mind is still racing, experiment with techniques like progressive muscle relaxation, positive visualization, and listening to sleep stories and/or relaxing music to gently guide your restless brain in the direction of sleep.

Finally, try not to fixate on all the sleep you’re not getting. If you wake up at three in the morning and you’re having a hard time getting back to sleep, try to resist the temptation to mentally calculate the number of hours remaining until you have to drag yourself out of bed and to start obsessing about that. Replace what sleep scientists refer to as negative sleep thoughts—“I can’t believe I’m still awake! I’m going to be exhausted tomorrow!”—with more positive sleep thoughts—“I may not be able to get back to sleep right away, but I can lie here and rest and think calming thoughts, even if I’m not fully asleep.” You’ll find it easier to do this if you remind yourself that there are things you can do to boost your energy and improve your ability to cope even if you don’t manage to get as much sleep as you’d like. Eating a protein-rich breakfast will help you feel more alert. The quick energy blast from a bowl of carbs might be tempting, but it won’t deliver the energy staying power that protein can provide. Fitting in some light to moderate physical activity will not only give you energy during the day, it will also contribute to better sleep the next night. It’s a total win-win.

Ann Douglas is the author of numerous books about pregnancy and parenting including, most recently, Happy Parents, Happy Kids and Parenting Through the Storm. She is also the weekend parenting columnist for CBC Radio.

The Joy of Random Occasions

I’m a big fan of random occasions as opposed to “official” holidays that tend to be steeped in all kinds of expectations.

If I surprise you with a gift, it’s likely going to be to mark one of these non-occasions: and it’s probably going to be something creative or quirky as opposed to something practical or anything even remotely resembling one-size-fits-all.

One of my favourite spots for scooping up these kinds of treasures is Watson & Lou: an indie arts store in downtown Peterborough that also happens to be a passionate champion for local artists. Here are just a few of the treasures I spotted the last time I visited their store, along with a few notes about who in your life might like to be on the receiving end of just such a gift….

Note: This is not a sponsored blog post. It’s a from-the-heart fan girl tribute for an indie retailer I just happen to adore. I initially drafted the post a few weeks back, right before the world turned upside down. I thought about holding off on publishing it until things go back to normal (whatever that means), but I decided to go ahead and publish it now. Watson & Lou announced today that it will continue to offer online shopping during the weeks ahead and that it’s also adding local delivery (with a cool fundraising element) as an option. So while you can’t visit the store right now, you can still bring a little Watson & Lou magic into your life — magic that’s needed more than ever.

For your friend who appreciates whimsical, homemade gifts: a gift tag* to dress up that delicious batch of tea biscuits you just whipped up. (Yum!)

Watson and Lou: Beth Callon of Flowers to the People (Peterborough) and Rachel Dyck of The Critter Co. (Peterborough), $3-12.
* Technically, it’s a vinyl sticker, but I think it would make an awesome reusable gift tag.

For your friend the artist — who often isn’t paid even a fraction of what she is worth, but who contributes so much to the world.

Watson and Lou: Jackie Lee Art (Toronto), $12.

For your friend the journalist, who performs heroic acts of public service by upholding the facts in a time of fake news.

Watson and Lou: H. Elizabeth Laneville of Pastel Polly (Peterborough), $15.

For your BFF — or your BFF’s child — or some other random little person in your life: a stuffed mini-goddess.

Watson & Lou: Mini Goddesses by Sierra Carreau (Peterborough), $35-53.

For your friend the activist, who would love to have some help washing all those revolutionary dishes.

Watson & Lou: Anna Eidt of Lou Brown Vintage (Peterborough), $32.

For that friend who would benefit from a visual reminder of the pep talk you give her each time the two of you get together.

Watson & Lou: Jeffrey Macklin of Jackson Creek Press (Peterborough), $60.

For that friend who is going places — and who needs a cool bag to carry with her.

Watson and Lou: Emerance Baker of Stoney Lake Textiles (Duoro-Dummer), $85.

So there you have it: just a few of the one-of-a-kind gift ideas that caught my eye while I was hanging out at Watson & Lou on a blustery February day. Their stock is constantly changing, so the item I fell in love with may have disappeared by the time you browse the website. But don’t despair! It will no doubt have been replaced by something just as fabulous.