Take a Deep Breath
Raising a Resilient Young Adult
In Step is celebrating its 20th birthday this year! Yippee! Wahoo!! Yeah!!
Thank you for allowing me that splurge of emotion. As I get older, I find myself employing diverse tactics to ward off each birthday. But not this year. In Step’s 20th Birthday is a welcome marking of time. We are celebrating an organization of clinicians and administrative staff whose major mission has been to provide services to thousands of families in our community over the last 20 years.
In honor of In Step’s 20th birthday, I’ve decided to share with you a top 10 list of my own. This is how I know our age has caught up with us.
- Back then, communication and conversation actually meant speaking with a real person.
- When In Step was born, Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” was the song of the year. I recently asked my daughter if she knew “Gangsta’s Paradise.” She thought it was a trick question.
- In 1995, I clocked my drive from Reston to Fairfax at five minutes…during rush hour.
- Back then, “free range parenting” meant you owned a chicken farm.
- In 1995 I was a towering 5’2’’. Now I am 5’1 ¾’’ (tops). That explains why I haven’t been invited to join America’s Next Top Model.
- In 1995, I was carded when I ordered a glass of wine with dinner. Now, I am so confident and worldly they don’t need to ask.
- Social IQ used to be an “Excellent grade on Cooperates Well With Others”, but couldn’t be measured precisely. Now, each of us has an exact and measurable social IQ: our number of Instagram likes.
- Recently, I ran into one of my first Stepping Stones kids at the grocery school. He’s married with four perfectly behaved socially adept children who waited for a pause in the conversation to speak.
- Twenty years ago, we saw children named Luke and Matthew and Jennifer. Now, we see children named Prudence, Constance, Temperance, Chastity and Max.
- Twenty years ago, a Clinton was running for President.
Of all these changes, however, the best legacy is the invisible one: the change within kids and parents in the people we’ve worked with over In Step’s lifespan. I would easily trade one quarter of an inch of my precious 5’1 ¾’’ to do it all again, without even stopping to think.
Best Wishes,
Cathi