Blog challenge prompt: If you are an expert on something, share your knowledge and tips.

My daughter has informed me that I am an expert on dealing with dysfunctional family members, because when sh*t goes south, I’m the one they call.

Mental deficiencies? Yep.

Mental illness? Yep.

Addictions? Yep.

Congenital defects? Yep.

Academic difficulties? Yep.

Physical disabilities? Yep.

If it can go wrong, it is safe to say our family tree has encountered it. And we aren’t the typical family that shoves their skeletons in a closet–we sit them on the front porch and discuss over beverages.

To be fair, I have had training to deal with dysfunction. I was trained back in the day to train other educators in the Mandt system of restraining unruly students, and I have a master’s degree in special education with a concentration in gifted education and behavior disorders. But to also be fair, I went for that particular combination because of my family tree.

We are a family full of smart alecks. We are ornery on a deep level. And we are generally quite intelligent and creative, so if we get bored, things get lively.

We have several volumes on the bookshelf–apparently it is not normal to keep medical encyclopedias and DSM-V dictionaries and medical oddities books with illustrations around for casual browsing. Go figure. The way I see it, my kids need to know what they are witnessing at family reunions, and it keeps awkward questions from getting blurted out. Granted, we do have to have a little pre-reunion run through the photo albums so they know who all of the key characters are. Gotta know who’s who so you don’t tag the wrong person with the wrong disorder. That just mucks up the porch discussion later on.