In a couple of days, we are heading to western NC for a church retreat. This is a trip we have made almost every year since 2012. We have made lots of great family memories.
And, I wouldn’t say that traveling 3 hours with our crew is the easiest thing in the world. We travel with a van full of people who struggle with anxiety and social difficulty, and who have all manner of sensory sensitivities and varying levels of resilience in different areas. Matthew, for example, is pretty resilient with most things. Let him get syrup on his hands, though, and he suddenly functions like a grossed out 5 year old.
When we would head out to Blowing Rock for the retreat, I would always do the Dad Bathroom Double Check (™ pending) (kidding) (I didn’t actually file a ™ ). “Did you pee?” “Yes” “Are you sure, I don’t want to stop 30 minutes into this trip so you can go.” “We said yes, OMG!” “Fine.” Guess what we were doing 30 minutes into the trip. If you guessed peeing you are either a parent or used to be mean to your parents by peeing 30 minutes into the trip.
At that point, the trip is perilously perched. The tension (whether it is around peeing or snacks or seating arrangements or ‘how come he got a bigger snack than me?’ or any of the other pitfalls of traveling with a whole lot of neurodivergent kids) could fade. You hope it fades. You take steps to help it fade. Parents intervene in sibling conflict. Parents remind each other to remain calm. Kids bite their tongues to keep from making things worse. Those trips remain generally pleasant.
We have had some unpleasant trips too. Ones with arguments about slights both perceived and real. Trips where one or more siblings wouldn’t talk to one or more other siblings. One memorable trip where Justin had a full blown, full on meltdown for the 3 full hours it took to drive from Blowing Rock to Chapel Hill.
The truth is that every day, from the time we get up, at our house things feel… tenuous. In some ways the tension is not dissimilar from combat, in the sense that there is always a threat that something could happen. In Iraq, we called them “blue sky” attacks. You are just hanging out, chilling. Blue skies. Then all hell breaks loose and your chill, blue sky day isn’t chill at all.
Living in a house full of autism, ADHD and PTSD is kind of like that. Everything is great until it isn’t. I might have a bad reaction to something I read on the news. Barb might be stressed by work. Justin could be overwhelmed by sounds, Liz could be agitated that someone talked to her while her headphones were in. The spark is inconsequential. It is the full on wildfire that results from the spark that’s the problem.
What happens after the spark is what happens when any relationship gets sideways. All of the things we struggle with start to bump against the stuff other people struggle with. And we all struggle with the same things - fears of inadequacy and imposter syndrome, anger and anxiety, attachment distress and loneliness. So the spark finds tinder. And the tinder ignites the stores of struggle we have been holding on to.
We all have some experience with “blue sky” tension. And when the tension finally sparks and everyone gets dysregulated, we almost always default to prosecuting each other:
“You will NOT talk to me like that.”
“If you hadn’t waited until the last second to get ready, none of this would have happened.”
“You always overreact when things go off schedule.”
“Pee? Really? 30 minutes into the trip. Sounds familiar. Almost like I said it.”
Now notice what we are doing when we say these things are some version of it. We are treating a systemic failure as a personal character flaw. Instead of diagnosing what might be broken in our operational environment, we look for a scapegoat. It’s YOUR fault. YOU did it. And the moment people sense they are being put on trial, defensive shields go up. Defensiveness (which shows up looking like fear / anxiety) breeds counter-accusations, counter-accusations breed counter-attacks, constant attacks cause withdrawal, and at the end of all this discord the root problem remains, entirely unsolved, and waits quietly camouflaged to detonate the exact same way in a few days.
One of my very favorite things about the military is the After Action Review (AAR), a tool used by the military to help improve performance over time. Whether you just completed a convoy through Anbar province, engaged in a complex live-fire training exercise, jumped on red and ended up on the wrong drop zone or spent twelve miserable hours stuck in the mud digging out a five-ton truck that found itself in a ditch, the end state is the same. You assemble the unit, pull out a notebook, and talk about what just happened.
The AAR is built around four simple questions:
What was supposed to happen?
What actually happened?
Why did it happen?
What do we do differently next time?
When conducting the AAR, rank comes off. The AAR is not considered to be an interrogation or a trial. The purpose is not to assess individual culpability, demand apologies, or to make someone feel small. That said, the primary goal of the AAR is to understand - as objectively as possible - what went wrong and how everyone can improve and get smarter, safer, and more capable of surviving the next mission.
Running an AAR in a household requires creativity, patience and discipline. It can devolve into caricature. It can also be a tool to help everyone understand what went wrong and helps you to better understand one another. It can be an engine for empathy.
To make the AAR work as a tool of genuine care and connection, three rules of engagement are essential:
1. Wait for Storm to Calm
Never attempt an AAR while the nervous system is still redlining. If someone is in tears, clenching their jaw, or breathing heavily, their brain is in survival mode. They cannot process analytical feedback. The best response in the immediate heat of conflict is de-escalation and co-regulation. You do not debrief on Friday at 6:00 PM when tempers are flaring; you debrief on Saturday over coffee when everyone has eaten and slept.
Also, wondering what de-escalation and co-regulation look like? Watch this masterclass from Ted Lasso. Watch the way Ted notices Alice getting increasingly upset. He is paying attention. When he finds her crying and upset, he doesn’t try and talk her out of it. He doesn’t ask dumb questions. In fact, he says nothing. He just controls his own reactions a STAYS WITH HER until she feels better. Do this. And THEN talk about what happened.
2. Check Your Own Equipment First
The fastest way to invite honesty from others is to lead with your own missteps and mistakes. Be fearless in challenging your own actions and ideas: “Looking back at yesterday, I pushed too hard on getting those errands done when it was obvious people were tired. I prioritized a checklist over asking what everyone actually needed. That was on me.” When you voluntarily model self-examination without collapsing into self-pity, you make it safe for everyone else in the room to work past their own insecurities and share as well.
3. Focus on the Next Adjustment
An AAR that only catalogues past mistakes is just a polite autopsy. The entire exercise exists to answer question number four: What do we do differently next time? The answers to this question can be both positive (what went well that we can build on?) or more challenging (what are the mistakes that need to be corrected before we do this again?).
In all my adventures I have found that life requires resilience, vigilance, physical endurance, and moral courage. And I also believe that we develop all that strength in order to find and share tenderness, equanimity, and generosity of spirit. We carry heavy rucks full of tools that enable us to protect things that are gentle, vulnerable, and kind.
So when a hard day happens, you have a choice. You can let the fallout splinter your family into isolated corners of shame and resentment, letting the tension spark into a full blown wildfire, or you can sit down together, pull out the map of what went wrong, and study it with compassion.
The hard days will keep coming. The car will break down, chronic symptoms will flare, schedules will collapse under their own weight, and people will lose their patience. Probably me first. That is simply the reality of living in an unpredictable world.
You cannot control whether your plans survive contact with reality. But you can always control how you repair and restore when the smoke clears. Sit down together. Ask questions. Forgo blame. And walk out the door together tomorrow morning just a little bit smarter than you were yesterday, with a little better understanding of what the people you love are carrying.
Our family is not perfect. We won’t be perfect. When we head to Blowing Rock there will be tension in the car. 30 minutes in, we’ll stop to pee despite the many reassurances before we left home that everyone went to the bathroom. That’s just how it goes.
And we’ll repair. We’ll keep trying.
We will keep pounding the rock. And I hope you will as well.
And my earnest prayer is that whatever comes for you the next couple of weeks, that at the end of it all you will find answers, restoration, and repair.
May it ever be so.