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How I Became the Easy Parent

Here’s a side of my recovery that the kids enjoy: I’m more of a push-over than I used to be.

Mood music for this post: “Mama Weer All Crazee Now” by The Runaways:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RTipAZuMRI&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

Back when my OCD was out of control, I craved order. When you have kids, order is impossible.

I was very big on sticking to routines. Brushing teeth and getting in pajamas by 6:30. Bed by 7:30. If it went later than that, I freaked out. That was my time to collapse on the couch in front of the TV.

I’m not sure when this stopped being important to me, but it did. Maybe it’s the Prozac. Maybe it’s the mental coping tools I use. Whatever the case, the chances of my kids running wild and burning the house down are greater than they were, say, six years ago.

I knew I had reached a turning point a couple years ago when one of the kids’ friends, Wolfgang, slept over. Right at the time they were supposed to be in bed, I dozed off on Sean’s bed while the three kids ran up and down the stairs chanting like Indians. I woke up an hour later to find them doing the same thing they were doing when I nodded off.

Then there was the time Sam and Grace White came over for a couple hours. I had to give Sam a time-out on the couch for reasons I can’t remember. I forgot about him and 20 minutes later he was staring at me with his lopsided grin.

“What?” I asked.

“Mr. Brenner (pronounced Bwenna),” Sam said. “Can I get up now?”

I used to panic when I had to get the kids ready for school and drive them there. It always came down to how I’d do my work and that, too.

Now it’s no big deal.

Go figure.

I think part of this is that my concept of rest and relaxation have changed. Having rigid control over what the kids do and when they do it is no longer as important as it used to be. I’m just happy to be spending time with them and just being together.

It’s one of the strange things that happened to me on the way to recovery: I started finding peace and relaxation in the very things that used to fill me with fear and spark anxiety attacks. [SeeFear Factor] Not the kid duties, but everything else in life that made me want to rush the kids to bed so I could enter my mental coma.

It used to be that relaxing meant holing myself up in the bedroom watching endless episodes of Star Trek. I watched a lot of the news, too, which instead of relaxing me would send my brain into an endless spin of worry about things happening at the far corners of the world.

Lying on the couch all weekend — sleeping for a lot of it — was relaxation.

Then Sunday night would arrive and I’d go into a deep depression about the tasks that awaited me the next day at work.

Before Sean and Duncan, the above was pretty much all I ever did.

Now the idea of doing nothing — even when I can — is repulsive to me.

I didn’t spend all that time on recovery so I could go lie on the couch. And besides, there’s never anything good on TV, anyway.

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Hiding in Movies

The author used to pretend he was a character from movies and TV shows. Then he realized his own life was much more interesting.

I used to channel my OCD on movies and TV shows with larger-than-life heroes and villains. Star Wars. Superman. Star Trek. It beat the hell out of real life.

I guess it started when I was around 8 and first starting to get really sick from Crohn’s Disease. I had just gotten out of the hospital in December 1978 when “Superman: The Movie” first came out. It was the best possible escape from reality I could have found at the time.

I saw it repeatedly — first in the theaters and then whenever it was on TV. One afternoon, when it was set to premier on HBO, a coastal storm knocked out the power and deprived me of the movie. I went absolutely nuts.

It was the same thing with the Star Wars movies. Pretending I was a Jedi or crackerjack X-wing pilot was much more satisfying than being the fat, sick child whose home life was high tension as my parents’ marriage disintegrated in violent fashion.

Even as a young adult it was better to live in the world of make-believe than to accept life as it truly was. A lightsaber really would have come in handy. So would the power to choke people and control their actions just by telling The Force it’s what you wanted.

Then there was Star Trek. This was the obsession of my 20s, particularly the Next Generation. As a young pup working my way up the newsroom ladder under intense deadlines that in hindsight really weren’t all that intense, I would act like a young lieutenant on the bridge of the Enterprise, saving the day while the Romulans were firing away at the ship.

Remember the Star Trek juror, the woman who insisted on appearing for jury duty in a Starfleet uniform? When a colleague jokingly called me the Star Trek juror, I was genuinely insulted. True story.

At some point in my recovery, I stopped wanting to be people inside the movie screen. I’m not sure when.

I think to some extent we all tend to fantasize that we’re some larger-than-life movie or TV character. That’s why we get hooked on shows like Lost and Battlestar Gallactica. We’re suckers for the notion that you can be part of some huge destiny, just as Starbuck from Gallactica was destined to lead her people to Earth after the Cylons wiped out the 12 Colonies.

If you don’t follow the plot I just described, it doesn’t matter. It’s just a TV show plot, anyway.

As I found recovery and truly started to bring my OCD under control, I realized my own life as a husband, father, recovering addict and writer is much more interesting than Jedi battles and stopping a falling helicopter with your bare hands.

I still watch these shows from time to time. But it’s different. I put the films on, get a kick out of the action and appreciate the writing and character development, then when it’s over I move on.

I loved the 2009 Star Trek film. The casting was brilliant and the relentless pace was satisfying. But I didn’t find myself thinking the movie over in my head in an endless loop like I used to.

After all, I had a more interesting and meaningful reality to get back to.

I’m not a hero and I have no special powers. I’m not famous, either.

But I do just fine with what I have.

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The Brenners Invade The White House

The author on returning from a journey that would have been impossible a few years ago.

It’s 5:30 a.m. and I’m running on less than four hours of sleep, so excuse any typos that follow…

I’m back in my “sunrise chair” the morning after returning from one hell of a road trip that included a private tour of the White House West Wing, a stay at buddy Alex Howard’s place and a stay with our wonderful Maryland relatives, Charron, Steve, Stevie and Maggie.

There’s a lot about the trip I’m still stunned about. I’m still in awe of the fact that I got to poke my head in the Oval Office and Cabinet Room and that I got a quick peek inside the Situation Room when a staffer was leaving the main room (the Situation Room is actually made up of several rooms).

I’m very thankful for Howard Schmidt for giving us the tour and for Alex for letting the whole family stay in his cramped but very cool townhouse on Capitol Hill.

I’m also thankful for the level of recovery I’ve achieved, because without it I never could have done the trip, especially with the whole family on an 8-hour drive down and a longer, 12-hour drive home Sunday (lots of traffic).
I’ll be honest and tell you I wasn’t perfect this trip. Friday morning we got a late start to the day and I found myself in an OCD-enhanced mood dive. It was a classic control freak out: I wanted to show Erin and the boys EVERYTHING. But with two small kids with shorter legs than their Dad, you can’t do that. And for a few hours Friday afternoon, as we walked from the Lincoln monument to the Museum of Natural History, I was in that brain-clouding mood I used to live with 24 hours a day.
But it was still a good day, and an even better night. Being in the West Wing of The White House, where every president of the last century has toiled away (some for the good, others for the not-so-good), was just magical for a history nerd like me. And I’m grateful my wife and children got to see it all.
It was a joy the next day to spend time with our Corthell cousins on the Maryland coast: Charron, Maggie, Steve and Stevie. Such a wonderful family. Charron took us to a maritime habitat that included time out on the water and inside a really cool lighthouse.
I especially enjoyed watching Maggie and Duncan bond during the boat ride.
So why wouldn’t this trip have been possible a few years ago? For starters, driving ANYWHERE outside the comfortable confines of the north-of-Boston area used to send me into panic. My fear and anxiety extended to a terror over getting lost. Even getting lost in Boston was cause for fear.
This trip, I did the whole drive down and back with none of that. I even enjoyed the journey.
I also wouldn’t have had the guts a few years ago to inquire about a White House tour. Too much work and I’d have to actually talk to someone with a big title. That would have been too intimidating.
I also would have been afraid to take the time off from work, since being a people pleaser was more important than living back then.
My 12-Step recovery program helped a lot. It kept me from wasting time and energy on binge eating and so I got to experience more from the journey. My Faith also helped, because I know now that the key to everything is to Let Go and Let God. I worked my tools, and everything was fine.
Not perfect. I feel like an idiot for taking that mood swing Friday afternoon. I also realize now more than ever that I’m addicted to computer screens. Erin decreed that we leave the laptops behind and I’m glad we did. But man was it hard to not run to a computer and upload those White House pics right after taking them. That’s something I still have to work on.
But then I knew I was still a work in progress. I always will be.
But I’m a grateful, lucky work in progress.
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The Fear of Current Events

Digging through storage boxes the other day, I found old, 20-plus-year-old copies of Time Magazine, Newsweek, Mother Jones and a host of others. There had to be four years of them, well over 200 volumes.

And so I was reminded — again — of all the fear I used to carry around.

As I’ve written before, fear and anxiety were byproducts of my particular brand of OCD, just like my addictions were a byproduct.

The fear meant a lot of things. Working myself into a stupor over the safety of my wife and children. An obsession with cleanliness, which was interesting since depression always meant my personal hygiene took a dive.

It also meant a fear of world events. When that Nostradamus movie “The Man Who Saw Tomorrow” came out on HBO in the early 1980s, I was terrified by the “future” scenes, especially the one where New York and Paris are destroyed in nuclear attacks.

Later, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, I thought the scene from above was playing out and it left me in a huge depression, one where I stayed in my basement with the lights off.

Similar emotions took hold on Sept. 11, 2001. Of course, those emotions took hold on everyone that day.

Most recently, in 2005, I had a long panic streak over the bird flu in Asia, which was predicted to be the next great pandemic, as deadly as the one in 1918-19.

I would read every magazine and every website tracking all these world events as if my personal safety depended on it. If a hurricane was spinning in the Atlantic, I would watch with deepening worry as it edged closer to the U.S.

When did all this stop? It’s hard to pin an exact date or year on it.

I only know it stopped.

One day the anxiety attacks stopped. Then I started to crave all the experiences I once feared. Not the terror attacks, plane crashes and pandemics, mind you, but the traveling, the public speaking and more intensified writing. One day I started craving those things with the same vigor with which I craved all the junk I polluted myself with.

Therapy — years of it — and Prozac definitely played a role. So did my deepening Faith.

Whatever it was, I’m glad it happened.

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Parental Overload: No Big Deal

Nothing like a week of screaming kids to realize OCD aint what it used to be.

Mood music for this post: “Mama Weer all Crazee Now” by The Runaways:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0nKcHaQowY&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

A week like the one I’ve just had would have been impossible just a couple years ago.

The kids were on school vacation, the same week as Sean’s 9th birthday and some very big security events in Boston. I did a lot of speeding back and forth between the Seaport Hotel and home for a kids’ birthday party, daycare duty, an evening trip to the N.E. Aquarium, etc.

Funny thing is, everything was fine. It was a fantastic week, actually.

Not even the house full of third graders rampaging through every room was enough to take me down. I enjoyed it.

I managed to bust out 11 articles and podcasts during the week, despite all the mayhem. It was fun. Hopefully, some security folks get something out of them.

Yesterday I mixed work with parenting and took Sean and Duncan to the Security B-Sides event in Boston. The venue was perfect for them:

Security BSides Boston by jack_a_daniel.

The security crowd seemed to enjoy their company. No one seemed to mind as Sean shoved Lego toys in their faces and gave detailed descriptions of each one. Heck, a couple of people came with more Legos for Sean, knowing he’d be there.

Thanks to Twitter and Facebook, the kids are something close to famous among my business associates.

As for me: No anxiety attacks. No fear or panic about getting articles written. And no worries as to what other people think.

Nothing more to say about it, really.

Just a few words to drive home my surprise and gratitude for this turn of events.

Happy Sunday.

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MomDay Monday – School Daze

Every school has its issues.

Issues with teachers. Issues with other parents. Miscommunication. Problems with other students.

Every school.

There’s no getting around it. We’re all human. We all have failings. And a school is, after all, made up of us imperfect humans.

But at what point does a school have so many issues it becomes dysfunctional?

Is it when the faculty talks out of turn to your child about their parents’ divorce?

Or perhaps it’s when other parents refuse to accept that their child is the school bully & consistently puts the blame for their child’s behavior on the very kids he’s bullying.

Is it when there are arbitrary punishments meted out at whim? One day a behavior is punishable by making the child sit out of recess. The next day, the same behavior is overlooked. One day, uniform infractions are barely mentioned. The next day, a student loses privileges for wearing the wrong uniform piece.

Perhaps….

But I believe it’s when a school & its principal are so afraid of criticism that they close off lines of communication to keep others from hearing it.

I believe it’s when a principal is more concerned with who saw a comment on the school Facebook page than she is with addressing the issues brought to her attention.

I believe it is when a student receives retaliation for the actions of their parent.

And I believe it is when anti-bullying rallies are held for the students but parents & staff are seemingly the biggest offenders.

The Kids attend a private, Catholic school. They have been there since they were each 3 years old, starting in the youngest Pre-K group. They have known their classmates for most of their lives & we have made good friends with some of the families of these kids. When The Ex & I decided to divorce, we quietly told The Kids’ teachers so they were aware of the situation at home & on the lookout for any kind of behavioral issues that might occur because of it. This school had an opportunity to show The Kids an example of what it means to be a Christian & support my children during a particularly tough time.

They failed.

Within weeks, it seemed as if everyone knew what was happening in our family. The rumor mill was in full force until people I hardly knew & rarely spoke to had an opinion on my divorce & The Kids’ reaction to it. I had been blind to the dysfunction in the past, believing my kids were in the best possible place for the best possible education. There were two things I hoped to keep consistent throughout the divorce as the kids lives were being uprooted. Their school & their house. I was determined to keep them in that school & in the house they had been in for the past 4 years even if it meant having to ask my dad for money. But little by little, my eyes were opened & I saw that there were issues with this school far beyond anything I ever realized. There certainly have been people on the faculty as well as other parents who have been more than supportive & I can’t thank those people enough for the kindness & support they’ve shown, especially to The Kids. But they have unfortunately been too few & too far between. It is school dysfunction at its best. Or worst.

I’ve stopped my insistence that The Kids stay in that school. It’s part of my letting go. And it’s okay. I am aware that any school will have issues, dysfunction, intolerant people & parents who violate the school drop off & pick up rules. At this point, I’m willing to take my chances.

But I’m keeping the house.

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Happy Birthday, My Sweet Boy

Mood music for this post: “Beautiful Boy” by John Lennon:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uldu_1-JCJE&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

You entered the world on Earth Day, nine years ago. Nine years. Wow.

You were graced with a beautiful Mom and a Dad with just a few kinks in him. I would always try to hide my OCD, depression and addictive behavior from you, but I wasn’t always good at that. You didn’t seem to mind. In fact, you helped me get well.

We named you Sean Michael Brenner.

The first name is for Sean Marley and the middle name is for Michael Brenner, the uncle who left this world nearly 20 years before you were born. Sean Marley took his place as an older brother, but he died in 1996. You were destined to inherit both names.

You were a shock to my system at first. Your very presence messed with all my OCD triggers, particularly those involving neatness and controlling the clock, though I only had the illusion that I could do the latter.

But you grew on me quick.

We watched a lot of Sesame Street together. When I worked the night shift at The Eagle-Tribune, I put you in the stroller most mornings and took you on a 3-mile walk.

You gave me a fresh appreciation for all things Dr. Seuss. You introduced me to Thomas the Tank Engine, who would soon become an obsession for you. You still have most of the engines ever made, along with miles of wooden track. The living room used to be so covered with Thomas toys that one could hardly walk in there.

A couple years after you were born Duncan entered the world. You have been the perfect big brother for him since day one.

Sure, you guys fight. But all brothers do. It always passes after a few minutes, and sometimes the dialogue makes me laugh.

Like when Duncan exploded at you for calling him cupcake.

Or the many times you two fought over who would get to use the computer first.

It always passes, and then you do things like read him chapters from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” every night.

That’s quite a big brother. Duncan’s lucky, and he knows it.

In the last couple years, you’ve shown a mind-blowing ability for reading, art and writing.

You also have an amazing talent for drawing sea creatures and cutting them out. The proof is all over my office.

You have your obsessions, just like me. Right now it’s Legos. I promise to keep an eye on you and teach you the things I’ve learned to keep the obsessions from getting the better of us.

Tonight, for your birthday, we’re going to the N.E. Aquarium, one of your favorite places on Earth. Tomorrow we’ll have the birthday party with your school chums, then the family party is Sunday.

A week of celebrations? You are worth it.

Happy Birthday, my sweet boy.

Your Dad loves you.

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Happy and Productive in the Debris Field

The author used to come unglued around chaos. Now it floats past him.

Mood music for this post: “Sons and Daughters” by The Decemberists:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5H8DwJI0uA&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

Looking at the week ahead, it’s amazing I’m not hiding in a foxhole right now.

I’m working from home the first part of the week while the kids are on vacation. Call it half a vacation, though I’m tackling a full plate of work each day.

Sean’s birthday is this week, so the house needs a scrubbing before party guests arrive Thursday.

I have a conference in Boston to cover the latter half of the week into the weekend.

And oh yeah — with two vacationing kids comes a lot of clutter.

I’ve always hated clutter. It’s one of the biggest OCD triggers I have. And you can’t have kids around without accepting a certain degree of clutter. There’s no eating without dumping stuff on the floor. There’s no Lego activities without getting Legos everywhere.

But something strange has happened in more recent years. I’ve found that these things don’t rattle me the way they used to.

I chalk it up to all the progress I’ve made managing my OCD and putting down the worst of my addictions.

Now I can peacefully co-exist among the chaos and clutter. If I have work, I can do it  and do it well sitting among the debris, like I did yesterday when Duncan decided to make a blanket/pillow fort right where I was writing a couple CSO articles:

Hell, I even helped him build the thing.

Then I sat in my half-covered chair and got working. And guess what? I got plenty done.

I feel better about zigzagging from the conference to Haverhill for birthday activities because I’ve already written and posted four stories and two podcasts about things that will be going on at the event.

It’s all good.

One more thing about the clutter, though: If you know someone with OCD that’s not under control, keep them as far away from chaos as possible.

For the chaotic mind, clutter is the worst.

It amplifies the crazy in your head.

That I can now exist in the clutter is pretty wild when I stop to think about it.

Oddly enough, I’ve probably swung a bit too far to the other side of the spectrum.

My wife pointed out to be recently that I’m more of a slob since cleaning up my act.

Sounds weird, doesn’t it?


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Sticking it to Kids Who Are Different

The author on why the school sports mentality is leaving kids who are “different” in the dust.

Mood music for this post: “Mandocello” by Cheap Trick:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kH6H8wzfl4&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how schools tend to deal with kids who are different. Kids like the one I used to be.

The school we send our kids to, a private Parochial school, is wonderful on many levels. My favorite thing about it is the other families who send their kids there. Many people who have become dear friends. Most importantly, the kids are getting a daily dose of God there, which is something Erin and I care deeply about.

But I see something there that bothers me. But it’s something that’s a problem in a lot of schools.

It’s the sports mentality. The idea that the ONLY way to measure a kid’s potential is by how he or she does in sports.

My children are not much into sports. Both are more focused on art, science (especially Sean) and music (Duncan’s passion).

Some might call that different. And because sports is such a huge deal in their school, I don’t think their talents are being put to the test as they should be.

There’s practically no music program to speak of. Sure, someone comes in to teach the kids songs and put on a musical performance each spring (though that teacher was cut loose for this year because of budget woes), but there’s nothing more than that. This is where Duncan misses out.

Last year, Erin pitched the idea of a “Mad Scientist” program for kids who love science. The program would cost the school nothing and the principal expressed interest. But then it went nowhere. Kids like Sean lose out on this one.

But the sports. Oh, how the school is passionate about its sports. The teams win big. And that is encouraged at all costs, even if it means only a quarter of the kids on a team get to play while those who “aren’t good enough” spend all their time on the bench.

The goal is to win. If you’re not good enough to make that happen, you take a seat. Not the best way to challenge kids to reach their full potential, even if their potential doesn’t look like much to judgmental, competitive eyes.

This isn’t just a problem where my kids go to school. Everywhere you look, it’s all about the sports. The football team. The softball team. The hockey team. The basketball team.

Sure, sports are important. Sports bring out the best in many children, and can be as important an outlet for troubled kids as music was and still is for me.

The problem is that sports isn’t for everyone. And a kid should never be set adrift because sports isn’t their outlet. Yet that’s what happens.

I feel strongly about this because as a troubled child, I was often dismissed by educators as a troublemaker who was on the road to nowhere.

Some wonderful teachers did note my affinity for art and encouraged me on that score. And for a kid going through a lot, that encouragement kept me going.

But in junior and high school, the sports thing kept me in a box. I sucked at every sport out there. I was different. And so I was tossed into the group of so-called C-students, the ones who had a tendency to come up short and some of whom were trouble.

Other talents, like writing, lay dormant until after high school. Giving a kid guidance on writing is never done with the same zeal as encouraging kids with sports.

Now for what really burns me: A lot of children with mental disorders — I was one of them — tend to get dumped into the troublemaker bucket. Talents that can help them build character and find direction are not nurtured. Being good at a sport is really their only hope.

I call that failing kids who are different.

Educators should focus like a laser beam on those differences; not as a problem to complain about, but as something to cherish.

It’s those differences that make each kid special and beautiful, even if it means they have trouble focusing or sitting still in their chair. Or sucks at sports.

That’s one of the things I like about the Montessori concept. I’m going to borrow this description from Wikipedia, because it works in this case:

The Montessori method is an educational approach to children based on the research and experiences of Italian physician and educator Maria Montessoriwhich happened in the process of her experimental observation of young children given freedom in an environment prepared with materials designed for their self-directed learning activity.

The method itself aims to duplicate this experimental observation of children to bring about, sustain and support their true natural way of being. It arose essentially from Dr. Montessori’s discovery of what she referred to as “the child’s true normal nature.”

Applying this method involves the teacher in viewing the child as having an inner natural guidance for his or her own perfect self-directed development. The role of the teacher (sometimes called director, directress, or guide) is therefore to watch over the environment to remove any obstacles that would interfere with this natural development. The teacher’s role of observation sometimes includes experimental interactions with children, commonly referred to as “lessons,” to resolve misbehavior or to show how to use the various self-teaching materials that are provided in the environment for the children’s free use.

I don’t think this is a perfect concept. I think kids also need to be taught boundaries and to play by a certain level of rules, and the Montessori concept unfiltered can be a problem in that regard.

But boy, it sure is good for the kids who are different. Not bad, not even troubled. Just different.

This post will piss some people off. I don’t care.

No education is perfect. No teacher or principal is perfect. Nor should we expect them to be. At my kids’ school there’s an abundance of love for every kid, and I adore many of the teachers there.

Most of them are doing their best with dwindling resources.

But as a kid whose path was littered with minefields, I know that the cookie-cutter approach to education leaves a lot of good kids in the dust.

Sports should never be the be all end all in determining a child’s power to shine.

If the sports is all a school cares about, it will ultimately fail.

God made us all complex and loves us all, even though we don’t fit nice and tidy into perfect little boxes.

We could learn a thing or two from that.

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Like Father, Like Son

The author finds that OCD behavior runs strong among the men in his family.

It’s been said that certain crosses run in the family. Addictive behavior. Depression.

Yesterday my father had three long stents inserted into his leg. Apparently the entire leg was full of blockages. He eats compulsively, and this contributes to the problem. In 1998 he had quadruple bypass surgery, but the bad eating continued.

He’s always been able to bolt down the food. That trait was passed down to my brain, where it mixed with OCD, depression and other nasty byproducts.

I put my binge-eating addiction down well over a year ago and embraced a 12-Step program through OA, just like you do if you’re kicking alcohol or narcotics.

But OA isn’t my father’s style. Never has been. Never will be.

I’d like to think I’m doing better than my father when it comes to taking care of myself. I kicked binge eating and alcohol, am maintaining a 65-pound weight loss without doing all the stupid things I used to do to stay thin.

But I’m no dummy. I know this family inheritance is still with me.

With addictive personalities, it’s always something. I’m completely addicted to caffeine, including Red Bull. Yesterday I drank two of them in the afternoon, after a morning of swilling the coffee. Then there’s the fact that I like cigars.

I don’t fret about it much because it beats the hell out of the addictions I put down; the ones that had made my life completely unmanageable and hurt the people around me in a variety of ways. And any addict will tell you it’s always going to be a struggle where you put down one thing and pick up another so you don’t go back to that first item. That’s a cross we bear for life, and the goal is to keep working to be better than the demons.

I also know there will come a time where I have to put away the cigars and cut back on the caffeine.

My life is Blessed beyond belief. It took many years to beat down the compulsive eating addiction. Longer still because it’s harder to acknowledge a food addiction than it is to come clean about something like alcoholism. No disrespect toward my friends who are recovering from alcoholism. I love them and am proud of what they’ve accomplished. I’m just saying that in our culture, some addictions are more glamorous than others. Binge eating is anything but glamorous.

Of course, any addict knows that their behavior is never glamorous behind closed doors, whatever the poison. Locked up alone with the demon, it’s a world of filth, shame and sickness.

I can’t say that my father has an addictive personality. I’m not in a position to judge him. I only know that he can put away the food, and the results have been bad.

He’s been through a lot in his life and still managed to be a kind, generous soul. I hope he sticks around for many years to come. But it’s not up to me.

I’ve noticed something else recently: Sean, my oldest child, is displaying OCD characteristics. When the boy gets into something, be it a computer game or Legos — especially Legos — he goes in deep and lets the activity consume him. In other words, he approaches these things compulsively.

The good news is that he’s otherwise much healthier than I was at his age. And he’s smarter than I ever was.

He also has another powerful advantage I didn’t have.

I’ve been far down the road he’s traveling and picked up a lot of coping skills along the way. Those skills have made all the difference.

And I can pass them on to him.

This makes me happier than you could possibly imagine.