Our last family picture on Ivy & Hunter's last day with us.

Well the time came this past weekend. Our two dogs, my wife’s and my first “children”, graduated to the dog park in the sky. Ivy (16 year old Blue Merle Australian Shepherd) and Hunter (14 year old Black Chow Shepherd mix) lived long, relatively healthy lives, and in the end we felt that we had to assist them along their journey to allow them to leave with dignity and not wanting them to unduly suffer. Both Ivy and Hunter were adopted after an early life of abuse. Ivy sprung back very well, after she adjusted to her new family. From the day we found her in the shelter on my 30^th birthday, and she jumped up on me and then my wife and wrapped her front legs around each of us, she was full of life and spunk. Hunter always had a tougher time escaping his early childhood trauma, and he was full of craftiness, often trying to see what he could get away with. In many ways, I looked at them both as if they were traumatized kids, who needed our patience, structure and love, and overall, they did very well with this approach. Ivy and Hunter both gave us so much in their unique ways, and even though Hunter could bring me to the brink of rage with his defiance and manipulative nature, we loved him just the same, and I learned to have more patience. I used to take them to the office, and Ivy had the incredible sense to know when a client was in emotional pain, and even in a deep sleep she would awaken and jump up next to them and look right through them, telling their soul it was going to be okay. They taught my wife and I that we could be parents to a human child, and helped us to become the parents that we are today. They cared for our daughter as if she was their own, and their patience with Grace, as she was growing, was admirable for any older sibling. Grace reached into Hunter’s heart in a way that no child ever had, and while he felt afraid of so many other children, he warmed up to Grace like holding a hot cocoa on a wintery night. She would dress him up, and he would take it, as well as many pictures we will smile at forever. Ivy on the other hand was Grace’s older sister, who let her know the limits and kept her in line. She tolerated Grace’s attempts to love her in her sometimes rough and tumble way, but had her line of dignity that Grace could not cross. We had let Grace know over the past six months that the dogs were getting older and knew that the day was coming when we would have to likely make this decision. After losing both grandfathers this year, we did not know how Grace would handle it. When we told her of our decision the night before we made arrangements, she cried like we had not heard her cry before, and just like a 6 year-old can do, she was asking for another dog in the same sentence she was saying that they were her best friends ever. It was okay and good for her to grieve. Death is one of the lessons a child may be fortunate enough to understand in an environment of trust and love, and we wanted her to know that her feelings were her own through this, and she has handled this Gracefully. What I told Grace when she asked about getting another dog, was that when we lose a person or a pet, we need to give our heart time to heal so that we don’t try to fill that empty space with something or someone else. This is a powerful life lesson. I told her to let her feelings be known and honor the memory of her dogs, and one day it would be time to get another dog. We would all know when. We all feel that we are better people because of Ivy and Hunter, and even their death happened for us, not to us. Their last day was filled with quality time, play with their doggie friends, a Frosty Paws ice cream party and cooked meat for dinner. When it came time, our Veterinarian came to our house. I did not want the dogs’ last moments to be feeling fear and unfamiliarity. Grace chose to be a part of the process, and we had discussed the process numerous times, and she helped where she could, to gain some power over her feelings of helplessness, handling the situation Gracefully and respectfully. A child’s view of death is often channeled through the parent, and we want to Grace to not fear it, but instead see it as a part of life. Death does not have to be morbid or scary. It is a transition – another life lesson. My wife held Ivy when she went to sleep, and I held Hunter. It wasn’t until the next day until it really hit me what it may have meant to Hunter for me to be holding him as he looked in my eyes when he went to sleep, “Here is my caretaker who raised me, loved me, fed me and gave me limits when I needed them, and in my last moments of life, he is holding me and loving me as much as I loved him – a much different reality than I came into this world with.” Well maybe he didn’t think that. “Maybe he was just thinking, this was a really fun day. I wonder what we are going to do tomorrow.” But I think that is what his eyes were saying. Hunter, I say this to you, “I hope we helped you to heal your soul in this life from what happened when you were young and helpless.” To Ivy, “Thank you for reaching into the hearts of so many and finding their smile.” You will both always be in our hearts… indelibly. Respectfully, Dr. E…

Have you noticed the moving target? Over the past decades, Corporate America has put their crosshairs on younger and younger kids. Advertising dollars are looking to gain lifetime consumers and brand loyalty, soon, out of the crib, by marketing everything from make-up to clothing to electronics and the latest move by Skechers to focus their Shape-Ups shoes for girls. Perhaps companies feel that if Joe Camel got in on the game, “shouldn’t we get our piece? It should be okay for us, shouldn’t it? After all we are not selling cigarettes?”

Advertising Gone Wild

I think we have to be careful to jump to too many conclusions that many ad campaigns gone awry are exploitative from the start. There are many good intentioned people who work for Corporate America who want to make this world a better place for our kids. They often believe that what they are selling would be great for kids, and while some have valid points and misguided intentions, others have gotten lost on the way to their year-end bonuses. “Lets help our girls look fitter, slimmer, feel good about the way they look… because looking good in our culture is the most important thing. Right? It is for the Kardashians, isn’t it?” Their intentions do not always add up to a good outcome, and sometimes it is downright exploitative, intended or not.

This blog is not just about Skechers. It is about a consumer-based culture that has been changing in a dangerous direction. This trend toward marketing more adult products to kids is in full swing and shows no signs of slowing down. “In a down market, expand your customer base. Isn’t that good economics? Kids will be our consumers one day so why not start them out now?”

Stimulus Overload

As I have discussed before, our kids and we are inundated with thousands of images everyday selling everything but our collective soul, and even that may be up for sale soon. Our boundaries are getting blurrier and blurrier as to what is healthy for our kids, and ourselves, and we can barely see our moral compass before our eyes. This is not about a conservative movement to control what our kids see and do, and it is not a liberal agenda to destroy a corporate culture. It is a concerted effort to point out that we are taking our kids’ childhood away with our own blind ambition. In this situation with Skechers, I can see that they may not have intended to create such a negative buzz, but just like the Elmo/Katy Perry debacle, those in the position to make decisions were numb to the deeper issues and the result reflected their own dysfunction and/ours.

The Balancing Act

Our kids require limits and balance and so do we. They deserve a childhood that brings them the joy of time spent together – one that offers freedom from addictions to toys, phones, televisions and computers. They deserve our time, patience and love, not our credit cards and wallets.

We are their eyes when they are learning to see. We are their ears when they seeking sound, and we are their voice, when they cannot speak. It is up to us to realize that we may have lost our way, and may be guiding them down that path that got us into debt further than any generation before us. That debt is not just financial, it’s emotional, it’s relational, it’s recreational, it’s sleep-deprived, it’s over-scheduled, and it’s farther and farther away from peace than it is war.

The Rear View Mirror

We often complain that being left behind is becoming a reality. Why is that? What changed in the last fifty years? The consumer culture is part of the problem, not the solution. We are looking more at what we can buy, than what we can learn. Furthermore, when companies are confronted about their ads, they claim ignorance. When parents are confronted with their kids’ behaviors and preferences they blame the culture.

We have become a society that blames others instead of taking responsibility for our actions. The less responsibility we take for our actions, the less we can learn. Integrity has to begin at the foundation and continue all the way up to the top floor. Where is ours today? Where is yours?

Parenting 101

People want an answer for how to stop corporate greed and marketing to kids. Don’t buy their products and have the self-discipline to turn the channel or the page. Here are a few more tips to good parenting. Take the time to talk with your kids about what they are exposed to – ask questions, don’t lecture. Give them limits on what they watch and compute and listen to, and how much they watch, compute and listen. Pay attention to what you spend your money on and theirs; don’t look to pacify them. Give your kids hugs and kisses, not Hershey’s Kisses and a happy meal. Take them outside and play with them, don’t just send them outside. Put your phone down, get off of your couch, turn off your I-pod, and be an example. Play games with your kids. Read to them. Don’t expect the school to teach them. Don’t complain about why our world is the way it is and why our kids are behaving as they are; do something about it. Be part of the action that will help your children and you get healthy, emotionally, relationally , recreationally, academically, socially, spiritually… Even Joe Camel wearing his Skechers won’t be able to touch that.

Respectfully,

Dr. E…

www.DrEPresents.com

I grew up with a dad who worked a lot. His work was important to him, but it wasn’t until later that I truly realized why. As I kid, I wanted him to play with me, be at my baseball games, soccer games, scouting events, and while he made some of them, his attention to his work seemed to take precedence. I remember that when we did play pool together, he would beat me again and again, and was amazed that I would come back for more. But what he taught me was that he didn’t play down to me, he challenged me to play better, and when I did beat him, I knew I got his best.

When I was 8, my brother died, and while this was painful to experience as a child, I now, as a father, can more dearly understand how difficult this must have been for him. My Father tried to revive him when he found him on the floor, and his best efforts could not bring him back to life. It was in this time, as I reflect back, that my dad was selfless in times that required strength. My parents’ priority was to make sure that we, as a family stuck together, and while they both mourned the loss of their child in somewhat silence, in a time when expression of emotion was not the norm, they continued to support their children the best they knew how. As a family, we stayed together, and I remember that my Dad worked hard to make that following Christmas memorable. I think what my parents learned from the loss of their son was that life was precious and time together was important.

I remember my Dad and I usually making an annual trek to a Browns or Indians game when I was growing up, especially the Monday Night game against the Cowboys. Man was it cold. I grew up wanting more from my Dad, without understanding him and how he showed love. I didn’t appreciate his hard work and his humility. I now do. It was important for him to find me jobs at his office. That was how he connected with me. I was often known as the boss’ son, and while there were a few times I let him down, he never made it more about him, but I knew his expectations.

In my high school and college years, I had a few run-ins with my Dad, but instead of pushing me away, yelling or becoming aggressive, we had the brief, but serious talk, and he never held things over my head. He understood my humanness.

The summer before I was getting ready to graduate from college, he would call me from work and ask me to meet him for lunch. I would, and we would talk. He would listen, and he said he was sorry. He said that he knew he worked too much, and buried himself in his work after my brother died. He didn’t want his grief to be our grief. He believed his job was to be strong.

When my Dad was running a company outside of Detroit (while my parents still lived in Cleveland), I just graduated from college on my way to Grad school. He asked me to work for him to design and build the landscaping around their major rebuild of the company grounds. We spent the summer driving to and from work together (Dad, the left lane is for people who like to drive faster than the speed limit). Even when he asked me to do this, I didn’t realize how much he believed in me. We had some of the best talks driving to and from work and to and from Detroit to Cleveland for the weekends. What he also told me about why he worked so much then was that he felt it was his job to make sure that we had the ability to do the things as kids so that we could have a better life, and he was felt fortunate that he loved what he did.

And when my wife and I moved into our first house, with the help of my parents, he came to help landscape our yard with me. That is when my Dad realized I was an adult when I said, “Dad there are 50,000 ways to plant a rose, and it will still grow. Trust that you taught me well.” While I added an expletive to my comment, he stopped, listened, filtered and trusted my judgment.

And when my first business failed, and I was under a mountain of debt and stress, he came to help me dig myself out (pun intended). When I broke down during a hard day and went back to his temporary office and apologized for letting him down, all he said was, “Are you kidding me? I wish I had the courage to take the risk to do what you did.”

What my Dad learned from working too much was how to be a better grandfather and how to be a better father to us in our adult years. I am inspired by his ability to take responsibility for his mistakes and perhaps the highest compliment he paid me was telling me that I taught him how to hug and that I taught him more about emotion than anyone ever had.

He is loved by ALL of his grandkids, whether he is Big Daddy, Be-Paw, or Grandpa Buddy. He is known for his sense of humor, and the time and patience he takes with them to teach them about the simplest things in life. I loved watching him with my daughter, as he listened intently. Whether it is blowing bubbles, swimming in the pool, making funny faces, or finding fun in just about anything, he spent the time with his grand kids that they will remember for a lifetime. I feel proud that my daughter will remember her Big Daddy, and she got to read him Nursery Rhymes tonight on the phone.

You see, my Dad’s health has taken a turn for the worse in the past few days, and I am heading to Tucson tomorrow to hopefully get there in time. I pray for the weather and flight schedules to cooperate. For 13 years he has honorably and resiliently lived with cancer, not complaining much through the surgeries or the chemo – just showing a desire to live, not selfishly out of fear of death, but to share and create more memories for all of us, and to be a best friend to his wife. Through example, both of my parents taught us that we could find and marry our best friends. And I thank you both for loving my wife, as you love your own daughters. He has defied death, to champion life, and his strength makes me want to be a better man and to give to my generation and the next.

What I want you to know Dad is that you taught more than you knew, and even more, you had the courage to allow me to be your teacher. I thought for so long that I had created my equity-based approach to the world from understanding a control-based society, but now realize that my parents fostered an environment that allowed me to explore and respected my value. For giving me the permission of self-discovery, I thank you both.

I know that I am very fortunate to have a Father with integrity, who valued hard work, honesty, and who loved us the best way he knew how. I have come to appreciate the greatness of my Dad not just by seeing who he is and who he has become, but by working with so many people in my work who did not have a Father like mine. He is human and he knows it, and he accepted our humanness. I am sorry that it took me this long to truly understand him and how proud he felt of all of us, but I know it now.

Dad, I want to tell you that I love you more than you may ever know, and I am glad I got to tell you, in your living years. I feel proud to call you Big Daddy, and I speak for all of us when I say that you leave this world in a better place than it was when you got here, and we will carry the best of what you taught us into our futures. I hope that one day the world knows how great my Dad is, but I know it is enough for him that his family knows.

Respectfully,

Your son, Erik Anthony Fisher, aka Dr. E…

I would not call myself old-fashioned, nor would those who know me, but I feel that our culture’s attitudes and behaviors about sex are out of control, and we seem to be more and more desensitized the more we are exposed to this. I will say that I believe that human body is a work of art and should be appreciated. I am not in favor censorship. I am in favor of good taste and mutually respectful behavior that models and emulates a respect for ourselves, each other and our bodies.

Many of you may have heard the song Your Body Is A Wonderland by John Mayer, which I am sure has inspired many a couple to be moved to an amorous exchange, to put it lightly. However, in our culture I feel very concerned by the trends that we are seeing with our teens and young adults. What I feel that I have observed is that too many people, young and old, are treating their bodies like amusement parks, letting almost anyone take a ride who in interested. What I feel that we are losing is our self-respect, blurring our boudaries and don’t understand what love and intimacy truly is.

We are humans that seek pleasure, and many a medical scientist and/or fan of Sigmund Freud would state that seeking pleasure is part of our hard wiring. We can look back to our roots as animals and find neurochemical reasons why we would seek pleasure. I also look at us from an intelligent design view and can see why sex would be made to feel pleasurable.

In future installments of this series, I will discuss our concept of love, our blurred boundaries and societal issues, as well as a few other tidbits. I hope you will become a part of this discussion as I continue this series.

Respectfully,

Dr. E…