For most dads, when our first child is born, a switch flips inside our brains which alerts us that we're now responsible for protecting another human... and we'll go to extremes to fulfill that responsibility. But how do we protect our kids from an intangible, invisible threat that upends our daily routines and challenges our stability? Kevin Sturtevant shares the story of his six-year-old son Sam's high risk infancy and dangerous vulnerability to viruses like Covid-19, and what his family is doing to stay safe during an uncertain time.
For most dads, when our first child is born, a switch flips inside our brains which alerts us that we're now responsible for protecting another human... and we'll go to extremes to fulfill that responsibility. But how do we protect our kids from an intangible, invisible threat that upends our daily routines and challenges our stability? Kevin Sturtevant shares the story of his six-year-old son Sam's high risk infancy and dangerous vulnerability to viruses like Covid-19, and what his family is doing to stay safe during an uncertain time.
Episode 13 finds Adam in self-isolation, recording at a makeshift work station in his daughters' basement playroom. At two weeks in, social distancing and isolation is starting to become the "new normal", and Modern Dadhood will adapt. Adam chats with childhood friend Kevin Sturtevant, a father of two, from Kevin's family's home in rural Maine. Kevin, his wife Moe, and the kids have wisely vacated their apartment in Portland to isolate and spend time in nature in an effort to keep immunocompromised Sam shielded from the Coronavirus. We discuss topics including:
• Being a stay-at-home dad for several years
• Vaccination awareness
• Having your own identity outside of "dad"
• The feeling of helplessness in protecting your kid from an infections disease
• How to explain Coronavirus to your child
• Modeling strength, stability, and honesty
• Finding the positives and becoming better parents during a pandemic
From the recent Modern Dadhood archives, the boys discuss the irrational "NO!" in another installment of "So That's a Thing Now!"
Not to fret, Marc's now setup with a mic at home and Squadcast will enable the dads to return to their typical asinine banter.
Links:
Boston Children's Hospital: Saving Sam
Red Vault Audio
Caspar Babypants
Spencer Albee
Bubby Lewis
Adam:
Hey, dads and moms. Welcome to Modern Dadhood. This is an ongoing conversation about the joys, challenges and general insanity of being a dad in this moment. This particular moment for the record is a pretty damn weird one. My name is Adam Flaherty. I'm a father of two daughters, six and three. I'm all alone today. No Marc here across from me. If you're listening to this episode when it's new, we're about a week into what folks are calling social distancing due to the coronavirus. If coronavirus is old news to you, then you've seen into the future and hopefully we all come out safe on the other end of this thing that was totally unexpected and none of us were really prepared for.
We have this shared Google Doc for the podcast where we're always putting down ideas for fatherhood-related topics, guests we'd like to invite, really any ideas for content or subject matter to consider for the show. Very early on, one of the topics that I wanted to cover was the instinct that we have as fathers to protect our kids. Now, I was originally thinking about that in terms of protecting them from bullies, harmful things on the internet or physical pain. But this worldwide pandemic has adjusted my perspective a bit in regards to protecting my kids and it feels timely to have a conversation with my friend Kevin Sturtevant about how his family's carrying on through the weird, weird, current state of things and about how since long before the coronavirus was even in our vocabulary, Kevin's had to be extremely diligent about protecting his son, Sam, from viruses.
Kevin Sturtevant and his wife Moe have been personal friends of mine since elementary school really, right?
Kevin:
Yeah.
Adam:
It feels like 100 years ago.
Kevin:
I remember distinctly third grade.
Adam:
How have you guys been?
Kevin:
We've been managing, man. We're good. We're making the most of things right now. It's a little bit different, but we're good now.
Adam:
Yeah, it's a really crazy and surreal thing to be living through.
Kevin:
Surreal is the word.
Adam:
You and I had our first kids around the same time. Sam was born just a few months before my daughter. We haven't gotten our families together in a while, but I do love seeing pictures of Sam pop up on social media now and then. It seems like he's really thriving. But in the beginning you guys went through some really hard and really traumatic stuff as parents. Can you give our listeners sort of a condensed version of what happened when Sam was born and how it affected your lives?
Kevin:
Yeah, absolutely. He was born with basically a virus. It was called enterovirus. A couple of other kids at that time had it, but it was pretty damaging to a young neonate. He was probably born with it. Then very quickly thereafter kind of went downhill, pretty far downhill. We were told, "We have reached the limits of extraordinary care," and then went to bed. It was an incredible journey. It involved an organ transplant. His liver had failed. He needed a new liver and that was clear.
Kevin:
We went down to Boston Children's. They were fantastic. He was listed. He received the transplant. That was at 30 days old. He was among the smallest that they've ever transplanted. We're extraordinarily lucky to have found a hospital at that time, had the medical care that we had to get us there. It was a real threading of the needle that he is still here. Now he's six and he is strong, full weight. He's in shape. He loves riding his bike. He's doing great.
Adam:
How's he been liking kindergarten before all of this shit hit the fan?
Kevin:
Yeah, Sam's adjustment to kindergarten was pretty good. I think it was pretty smooth. We were ready for some bumps. Socially, we didn't know what was going to happen with, I hesitate to call it academics, but how it was going to work out, what sort of impediments he was going to encounter because he's on immune suppression medication. It's sort of something that he takes every day, twice a day. He's more at risk than most kids. That said, he's in the same classes doing the same stuff. They encouraged us not to let him play football, but that was a pretty easy tell.
Adam:
I think they're encouraging everybody to not play football anymore with all the concussions and stuff.
Kevin:
Yeah. We were very lucky. It was a struggle, but we're here now. I keep saying that, but that's the feeling.
Adam:
Because of his condition, you've always had to keep him a little bit shielded from things. You didn't put him into a big daycare facility and things like that when he was young, right?
Kevin:
Yeah, we're always the people who are asking what your rates of vaccination are at the daycare level. I stayed home for two years with him. As a dad, that was a pretty formative experience. Boom, we had a kid. Then it was like, "Okay, well we're both home for a while. Eventually someone has to go back to work." I was the good pick to stay home. It was an experience, but it was sort of a privilege too.
Adam:
How is the work going for you now? You were teaching. You were doing carpentry and now you're starting a cider facility.
Kevin:
Tada. Work has been a variable product for me. I wanted to teach freshman English for a long time. I did that for 10 years and then pushed back into carpentry and maxed out there for myself. Not in skills, but in just interest and moved on to trying this new venture. It's been an accommodating path I think. Even as a teacher, I have done a lot of teaching online and staying home. My career path has been an accommodating path for a parent I would say.
Adam:
Are you getting to spend as much time with both of your kids as you'd like to?
Kevin:
100%.
Adam:
At least for the last few days.
Kevin:
Besides the last few days, yes. I think so. Having a young kid is we like to take running starts at it. I think my wife and I do. You get into it and we find ourselves getting a little frustrated not being the parent we want to be, needing to tap out. That's what I mean by running start. The next person comes running in excited to do the job in a productive way that we know is best for our kids and sometimes one of us doesn't have the energy so the other one steps in. I think I have enough contact where I sometimes tap out.
Adam:
It's definitely important to still have your own identity outside of being a parent. I'm sure that the stay-at-home thing for the first couple of years really sort of drove that notion home.
Kevin:
It was really difficult, actually. I had a tricky time with it. It was not as easy as I had hoped. I was kind of hoping it would take some of my focus off of me as an individual. It kind of did, but it's just really complicated it. It wasn't quite the relief that I was expecting in one specific way, but it gave me something else to care a lot about. That's been a better upshot than I could have imagined.
Adam:
Back to what's going on right now in the world, we're all doing this social distancing thing. We're isolating to whatever degree we can or we feel comfortable. But from all of the data that's being shared, the most vulnerable people in our population are older people and people who have compromised immune systems like Sam. With him being immunocompromised, I imagine that must be extremely stressful for you guys. Does it bring you back to when things were so touch and go early on?
Kevin:
Yes, it does. It's something that we've sort of periodically revisited though, the fear. It ebbs and flows. The other shoe dropping is something that my wife and I always talk about. It's always over our head. When someone asks, "How you're doing? We're like, "Great," but what we really mean is, "I'm super nervous about my kid." It's something that we've gotten used to where it's a functional thing that we just know about it and we have each other to base ourselves on in that way. We balance each other out where one person gets super-upset or concerned. That's a great opportunity for me or for my wife to come up and say, "You know what? It's really not quite like that. We're okay." That's a trusted voice. It would be difficult to do alone because it is such a head game that I feel like a lot of people are noticing this now probably for the first time. But really what you're feeling is how immunosuppressed people feel all the time. It's more severe now. I don't want to make that analogy quite as tight, but there's some of it in there. For us now, yeah, it's concerning. It was concerning for us enough that we pulled Sam out of school early. We bought a bunch of food and went to the country early. My wife stopped working in the office early. Still even without some idea of how it could get into our house, there's a nervousness for sure.
Adam:
There's just this feeling of helplessness. It's like this invisible... I don't know, this invisible force that you just feel is coming towards you. It's like, how the hell do you protect them from something that you can't even see?
Kevin:
They can see it in your face.
Adam:
That's true.
Kevin:
This is something that Mo and I have noticed. We really are careful about our expression and especially in this moment where the kids know what's up. They heard it. They know it's called the coronavirus. They don't know what it means. How are your girls coping with it?
Adam:
My older daughter is six, same age as Sam. We're talking to her about it. I mean, we talked to both of them about it, but I think just like you said, we're trying to model calmness and rationality around it. I don't know. I think it's okay to express fear. I don't have a problem with our girls seeing us be a little bit vulnerable and feel nervous about something. But I think it's our job as parents to also assure them that we're all going to get through this together.
Kevin:
Yep. It's an absence that we're kind of used to in a way. Anyone who's had a conversation about death with their kid is sort of familiar with what you talk about and maybe what you don't. As far as stress coming in from outside, we see ourselves as a regulator as if on an oxygen tank, bad analogy. But, there's a lot of pressure outside. We're going to let some through, but an amount that we are noticing and keeping track of.
Adam:
How are you managing your stress and sort of keeping your mental health in check as as a dad during this time?
Kevin:
Yeah, it's challenging. I'm not going to ... now is an unprecedented time. When you have family members who are in the medical profession who will tell you to put your oxygen mask on first as a parent in order to better serve your children. What do you need to do to be the best parent to your kids? Do you need to go do 100 pushups? Do you need to go for a run? Do you need to make sure that you run every day or whatever it is? For me, I've found, much to my amazement, that running works. Never thought that I would be a runner, but it's something that allows me to think. It allows me to get over the emotional reaction to things and get down to a couple of different ways of thinking about it. Time to myself is important. I'm an only child. I feel that still. I still feel, especially these days where we're all inside and we're edu-parenting and all that, it's important I think to get out, get some space to yourself, burn that energy off. I've often said that you've got to walk the dog. You've got to take yourself out for a walk once in while and prepare to be the best parent you can for your kid who doesn't have a choice on how you behave.
Adam:
Yeah, that's very true. That's very true. They're just witnessing how you guys are handling it and processing it and continuing to live your life.
Kevin:
One of the other things that came out of Sam's liver transplant was a pretty ripping case of PTSD for me. What triggers me is seeing other kids in distress. If I see a kid being pushed down the street at 11:30 intown Portland in a stroller, my immediate thought is, "What the hell is happening? Why is the kid outside right now? It's 11:30 at night. There's a whole bunch wrong right now for that kid." I just spiral.
Adam:
Spiral how?
Kevin:
I just keep thinking about that kid. I keep imagining things that I don't know.
Adam:
This PTSD has given you this sort of inherent instinct to protect other kids as well?
Kevin:
Yeah, a wild, "I'm going to jump out of the car and go interrogate that person." I think about it constantly.
Adam:
It's heavy stuff. When I think about protecting my girls in general, not from this specifically, but my instinct is anger. If something comes between me and my girls, if something's threatening their wellbeing, I get pissed off about it. I snap into papa bear mode. Are you dealing with any of that?
Kevin:
If I knew what to fight, if I knew what to be mad at. Vaccines are an issue. Our government is an issue, unpleased, I'll put it that way. But that doesn't really help me to be a dad. I'm definitely dealing with it. I don't know. How do you balance those two things? I think it's natural to get mad, right?
Adam:
I mean, I get very mad about the government right now. God forbid anything happens to anybody that I care about over the next however many weeks or months. Yeah. I think that I'll have a lot of anger and resentment towards the government. It's just tough to sort of feel helpless to this and just know that we don't know how long it's going to be, but we just got to ride it out.
Adam:
Aside from the obvious things that we can do to sanitize, wash our hands, all that stuff, are there extra measures that you guys are doing in order to keep Sam healthy, well?
Kevin:
No, getting him outside, playing outside, showing him we love him, using this as an opportunity rather than an obligation. I think everyone's trying to spin it that way because what else can you do? We are very fortunate that we have a chance to get outside in a way that's like. We're at my dad's house, put it that way. We live in town in an apartment. We felt like we wanted to leave there because it's going to be hard to get outside. We can go down in the stream. It's nice because it kind of reminds me of what I did growing up. It's very refreshing in that way. Honestly, I've had trouble being around our kids for long periods of time in the past where I was just, eventually it boils up. I'm just like, "I need to like go outside and walk or something." I'm not exactly wired perfectly to be a stay-at-home dad. I will say that. These days it's a little different. Maybe it's the context. I give the context a lot of credit. I don't know. Does the last few days feel different to you? Because I feel like I'm really more enjoying and engaging. I'm trying to spin it that way. I'm also panicking, but-
Adam:
Yeah, every day I have at least one instance where I try to reflect on the positive stuff that has come from it. I'm getting to spend a lot more time with my kids, which in a normal work week I'm seeing them for an hour before school and a couple of hours after school. We're having good meaningful time where I'm helping them do schoolwork and creative projects and we're getting outside a lot. I'm getting more exercise.
Adam:
I was welcoming of a big change in my routine. I am not glad that this is what caused that, but I'm certainly going to try to find whatever positives I can in such a weird, weird situation. If we can just take all the steps and precautions we can to keep the people who we care about and who are the most vulnerable, safe. Then take whatever positives we can out of the situation, that's probably the best we can do.
Kevin:
I think we can become better parents too. For example, I really sometimes struggle with our daughter who is a lot like me and is extraordinarily strong-willed. She's four. She's basically been the same person her whole life, no surprise. She's probably going to be that way for a while. But I've realized in the past, and this is kind of lead up to this, but it's certainly been punctuated in this experience. At a certain point I realized that if I have a problem with a four year old, I have a problem. This is not her problem. It's not her fault. I'm not doing it right. If we have a conflict, I need to change how I'm acting.
Adam:
Although four is old enough where she's picking up on cues and she knows what buttons to press too, right?
Kevin:
Yeah, but that means I'm giving her buttons.
Adam:
That's totally true. A house should be a button-free environment. That's an environment of trust, right?
Adam:
When the hell did you come across all of this wisdom?
Kevin:
I like bullshit. I think too much.
Adam:
Yeah, but you're totally spot on it. That's absolutely true.
Kevin:
I think the truth is I've had a really hard time. That's the truth. I love my kids as much as you do. I promise. It's been difficult to have a relationship, especially with my daughter that's troublesome, that's tricky. It's not just me. I'm not isolated here, but it wasn't working the way I wanted it to work. It was really affecting my whole life. I'd often said that if I can make this better, everything's better. There's been no small amount of effort going into it, I guess.
Adam:
How do you see the next few weeks or few months going? I mean, nobody really knows, but what do you anticipate happens?
Kevin:
I don't know. It's unknown. I'm trying to know what I know and know what I don't know and just sort of keep what I don't know in a closet. I don't know what it's going to look like. It makes me pretty nervous, but I also know that as a family unit, we work. I'm not the most optimistic person. I'm trying to be in this moment, both for myself, my wife and for my kids. Timelines are tricky. I would say not for months. We knew when we pulled him out of school, we were pretty much pulling them for the year because we have some sense of how infectious disease can work. I mean, it's just sort of a math problem, right? We'll see.
Adam:
It's also tough when you want to be able to get reliable information from the news. Now we're in this position where you almost have to question everything that you read.
Kevin:
Yep, absolutely. But I think from a self-preservation standpoint, you really need to be careful about it. You can just say simultaneously, and here's the rodeo, is that you have to stay simultaneously informed and calm, but it'll pass.
Adam:
Yeah, eventually.
Kevin:
Everything's a metaphor. For me, and this one is like surfing. We all just got rocked by a big wave. We're all just going to come up to the surface in the whitewater and go, "What the hell happened? What's next?" We're going to look up. Maybe we see another breaker, maybe we don't. Everyone's going to have to refind normal. It's not going to be what it was, but that's okay. Maybe it'll be better in some ways. I say that as looking at very much the top half of the glass.
Adam:
I hope you're right. It's good to be optimistic in times like this that are so uncertain. Kevin, best of luck to you and Mo getting through this. We'll be thinking of you guys. Love you guys. We're going to keep Sam in our thoughts and this'll pass.
Kevin:
Thanks, buddy. Same to your family.
Adam:
Dads, I'd love to hear from you. How are you guys weathering the storm? Let me know. Reach out to us at hey, H-E-Y, @moderndadhood.com and let us know how you're holding up. The truth is we really are all in this together.
A little bit of good news for you. As I was assembling this episode, I came across a recurring segment that Marc and I recorded a few weeks ago and didn't have a chance to use. You gets to hear Mark's beautiful voice after all, lucky you. Here's the segment that we call, and I'm going to do my best Bill Curtis voice again, So That's a Thing Now.
You have So That's a Thing Now, right?
Marc:
I do. Yeah, yeah, I do.
Adam:
Yours are always better than mine.
Marc:
Are they?
Adam:
Their funnier.
Marc:
Is it that I'm just more of a raconteur than you?
Adam:
I believe so. I wouldn't even argue it. What's the thing now at the check at home?
Marc:
My kids are getting really good at saying, "No." It's like they say, "No," about something and they don't even mean it. But they're getting good at saying it and so they say it and then like ... I don't know, the meaning behind it, it doesn't even matter. But, the feeling is there and the emotion is there. Then they say it again. You're like, "Do you want to eat?" "No." "Okay. Do you not want to eat?" "No." Then it just compounds and things get to terrible. We spiral out and sometimes there's these awful emotional explosions that happen.
Adam:
I've been there.
Marc:
It's so hard. It's so hard because there are times when it's like, okay, this emotional roller coaster is happening, but also like, it's dinner time and you need to eat. It's really hard to make that happen when you're losing your mind, when everybody's losing their mind. But, there's been that's been happening. One of my kids in particular has been having this problem where just nothing's right. Everything's a, "No," nothing's a, "Yes." He doesn't understand why. By the time it's dinner time, they're physically exhausted. They're mentally just beyond capacity. They're emotionally, they just are off the charts. They're excited to see mom and dad again, but they're tired. They're frustrated. They want to go to bed, but they don't want to go up the stairs and go to bed. They want that. But they don't want the action that's involved, right? Things just start to get like extremely irrational at these moments.
Adam:
This is a very common theme in my house too.
Marc:
I'm sorry to hear it, but I'm also so happy to hear that.
Adam:
Oh, it's maddening.
Marc:
These are these moments where right up until this happens, I'll admit that I start to get really frustrated and I don't know what to do. I totally understand that what's happening in their minds, their brains are just not there yet. They're just not developed yet. Rationality, meeting them with some sort of rational, it's just not going to work. It's not going to work. You just have to humor them or distract them or get through it somehow. Sometimes they get just really frustrated. Especially after I've walked in the door, I've been home 20 minutes, I don't even have my coat off yet. But sometimes when this happens, I'm just like, this is where it's like, "Okay, this is insane." But what happens is this, pick any food item, banana.
Adam:
The boys like cheese.
Marc:
The boys do like cheese.
Adam:
Crackers, animal crackers.
Marc:
... and rice cake. They're into rice cakes big time. We'll use a rice cake as an example. I can't give them a whole rice cake because they're just going to bust it up and they're going to destroy it. Oftentimes what we do is we give them a piece of something.
Adam:
Pieces, yeah. Rice cakes can get soggy whether they're in whole or part. You break them.
Marc:
I give them, "Here's a piece of a rice cake. Enjoy this as a snack for dinner time." He'll melt down because it's not whole, it's broken. Then he'll insist that he gets the other piece as well. You hand it over to him because you're like, "Okay, I'm not going to win this fight." He'll sit there and he'll go, "Back, back."
Adam:
He wants it to be back together.
Marc:
These tears are streaming down his face. It's one of them. I don't think the other ones have actually ever really done this. It's only one of my kids that does this. Tears were streaming down his face. He's beat red. He's slouched in his chair. Sometimes the head is just being thrown back in this very theatrical and he's, "Back, back." He's trying to get this thing to go back together. I'm like, "I have no idea what to do with this."
Adam:
Dude, it's not going back together.
Marc:
I have no idea other than being like, "It doesn't go back."
Adam:
Do you give them a full one? Is that caving?
Marc:
Sometimes we'll give them a full one after that to kind of be like, "Here you go." But the situation is so irrational that he'll be like, "No," and he'll kind of hit that aside. Here's what we've tried to do. Here's a tactic that we've tried to take. It hasn't worked so far. But what we do is we say, "You have to eat it, eat both pieces, chew them up real good and they'll go back together in your tummy."
Adam:
That is a lie in some ways.
Marc:
It's definitely a lie, but kind of not too. I guess the thing is it's not a rational thought, that whole idea of like, "Put them in your mouth, chew them up, swallow them. They'll go back together in your tummy." But it seems to make sense in the moment. There is sometimes when you start to say something like that you kind of get this look on your face like, "I'm going to impart some wisdom. I'm going to do it in a fun-looking way. I'm going to move my hands. I'm going to act and point to parts of your ... I'm going to look at your belly. We're all pointing at your belly now." Sometimes it's enough at least of a distraction.
Adam:
Yes, you're talking about a technique that I use frequently called distraction.
Marc:
It's distraction.
Adam:
It's just about shaking things up to the point where he's forgotten that he was all worked up about it.
Marc:
Yeah, I think that's really it. I think that's really just boils down to let me theatrically say something and get a little over the top with an explanation that makes absolutely no sense to at the very least distract them out of that thing and like, "What are you talking about? What are you getting at? What are you pointing at my belly for?"
Adam:
That's the thing.
Marc:
Yeah.
Adam:
That's the thing. Yeah, that's thing in my house too.
Marc:
"Back, back," very irrational, "I want this banana to go back together." You've torn it into two. "It needs to go back together. I won't eat it until it's back whole."
Adam:
You want to say, "Dude, it doesn't matter."
Dads and moms, you can find us at moderndadhood.com or wherever you listen to your podcasts. We would totally appreciate if you could give us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or anywhere you listen. That goes a long way for us. If you don't want to do that, that's all right too, but we would so appreciate it if you would just help us spread the word to your friends if you are liking Modern Dadhood, any parent friends who you think might also enjoy it. You can reach out and drop us a line anytime at hey@moderndadhood.com. I want to thank Caspar Babypants, Spencer Albee, and Bubby Lewis for the music for our podcast. I want to send a big thank you to Pete Morse at Red Vault Audio for making us sound awesome. Lastly, I want to thank our intern Nic Roes for all the awesome work that he's done helping us promote Modern Dadhood on social media. Actually, I lied. There is one more, it's you. Thank YOU for listening. We really do appreciate it, and stay safe.