gracefuljourney

Crystal ... We ask the HALT questions here also .. but I added two questions which I find especially beneficial with the teenagers ... are they embarrassed or depressed ... which makes the anacrynum HALTED.

I need to add stessed in there as well ... we had a situation at Christmas. The day after Christmas, we were returning from a visit with my in laws ... we had already had a full week of family and celebrations with out of sync schedules and different foods ... we were all tired ... it was just a month since my daddy had died ... and we are two hours from home and the van died. It was COLD and we had to walk to hang out in a Pizza Hut until AAA could tow our car and our neighbor could drive and pick us up. (Thank goodness that he had a large enough van to transport us!). AAA tried to insist that we had to stay with the vehicle (needless to say we have cancelled our service with them), my husband spent almost two hours on the phone with their representative ... and I sat back and watched my children react to the culmination of stress. It made me keenly aware of how people communicate their emotions. I did kindly remind them not to disturb the people around them but they were consistently loud, boisterous, inappropriate joking, etc. ... I finally came to a point of realizing that if everyone there just knew what we were going through at that time, I am sure they would all have understood.

We have had some good conversations about that night and about how we were all handling our stress (when my husband wasn't on the phone with AAA, he was playing Galaga!). We have talked about being aware of these stressful situations and looking for healthy ways to get through them. It was a learning experience for all of us.