Avoiding Overshadowing

Whenever a member of a family has some kind of chronic issue, the difficulty becomes keeping that issue from becoming the family focus.

In other words, you have to be intentional about not only making sure that the condition doesn't become the center of your lives, but you also have to make sure that other family members get their fair share of nurture and care and value.

In our household, where everybody has something going on (and often multiple somethings) it can become a tremendous ring around the rosy ensuring that everybody is equally tended.  Adored Wife and Social Hurricane have the most obvious (and most severe) constant challenges; Graphics Magician is entering the rocky-for-the-whole-human-race period of adolescence with a few quirks that are uniquely his own, and Basement Artist would probably stay in her introverted socially anxious corner of the house if she didn't have the strength of character to reach out despite her inclinations and if we didn't make an effort to intentionally involve her in our lives.

I, of course, am fairly low-maintenance, in an introverted, emotionally crippled, midlife crisis, periodically depressed, pessimistic, frustrated kind of way.

It'd be very easy to have the whole household revolve around Adored Wife or Social Hurricane, and there have been crisis times when they have needed the lion's share of attention.  That's fine, crisis time are going to happen (even though we've had seasons when the "crisis times" have lasted for several weeks.)  But as a day to day guideline, we HAVE to make sure that one family member's needs don't become the be-all and end-all of what our family is about.  (May I say that Adored Wife is actually much more intentional and organized about making sure this happens than I am?)

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.