When Skiing Becomes a Lifeline: Ryan Delena’s Journey

Show Notes

In this episode of the ABC's of Parenting Adult Children podcast, host James Moffitt welcomes Robert C. Delena to discuss the transformative journey of his son, Ryan. The conversation delves into the challenges Ryan faced in therapeutic schools, the impact of skiing on his development, and the importance of finding passion in unconventional paths. Robert shares insights on parenting, challenging traditional methods, and the power of nature in emotional growth.

Keywords

parenting, adult children, unconventional paths, skiing, emotional growth, therapeutic schools, passion, nature, Robert C. Delena, Ryan Delena

Takeaways

• Robert Delena shares his son's journey through therapeutic schools.
• Skiing played a pivotal role in Ryan's emotional development.
• The importance of finding passion in unconventional paths.
• Challenging traditional parenting methods can lead to growth.
• The power of nature in emotional healing.
• Ryan's transformation from a troubled child to a thriving outdoorsman.
• The role of adventure in personal development.
• Insights into embracing creativity and resilience in parenting.
• The impact of skiing on Ryan's life and family.
• Encouragement for parents to explore unique paths for their children.

Sound bites

Transformative power of skiing Challenging traditional parenting Nature's role in healing Ryan's journey to success Passion in unconventional paths Embracing creativity in parenting Skiing changed our lives Adventure and emotional growth Parenting with resilience Exploring unique paths

Chapters

00:00:00 Introduction and Guest Introduction

• 00:00:00 Robert Delena's Background
• 00:00:00 The Boston Marathon Incident
• 00:00:00 Ryan's Challenges and Therapeutic Schools
• 00:00:01 The Impact of Skiing
• 00:00:01 Ryan's Transformation and Current Life
• 00:00:01 Parenting Insights and Advice

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Transcript

James Moffitt (00:01.5)
Hello and welcome to ABC's of parenting adult children podcast. My name is James Moffitt and I'll be your host. we have a special guest today, Robert Delaney. Is that how you say it? Cool. Robert, how are you doing today?

Robert C. Delena (00:11.116)
Yep, you got it, perfect.

I'm doing really well. Thank you so much for having me.

James Moffitt (00:17.36)
Yeah. I appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to be here. Robert, go ahead and introduce yourself to the listening audience, please.

Robert C. Delena (00:24.942)
So my name is Robert Delana. I'm from Sudbury, Massachusetts. I grew up in a town called Revere, Massachusetts. Sudbury is a few minutes west of Boston. I live out here with my wife, Marybeth, and my two children, Ryan, who is 23, and my daughter, Abigail, who is about to turn 22.

James Moffitt (00:43.28)
All right. So you're, you're up there where that Boston marathon was at,

Robert C. Delena (00:47.626)
Yeah, we just had it. It's a good event. Yeah.

James Moffitt (00:49.67)
The, I'm thinking of the infant. I'm thinking about the infamous one where the, had a. Actually, was it a bomb? I guess it was a bomb. Wasn't it.

Robert C. Delena (00:55.916)
Yeah.

Yeah, there were two bombs, two brothers, know, terrorist act set up two separate bombs, a total of four people were killed. And it really was always a great event, special event. you know, just the worst event to attack because most of the people are running for charity. I mean, you have the elite runners who are running to win the race, but most of the event is done in an effort to raise money for different causes. And that's what they chose to attack. it was was really tough on Boston, but the city rallied and

James Moffitt (01:08.54)
That's crazy.

James Moffitt (01:18.982)
Right.

Robert C. Delena (01:27.407)
We had them both, one dead and one in jail in about four days and we pieced things back together. Red Sox won the World Series that year out of nowhere, it was a cathartic year.

James Moffitt (01:27.643)
Right.

James Moffitt (01:37.372)
There you go.

James Moffitt (01:40.87)
So I'm going to read this little paragraph from your profile. it says Robert Delano's journey highlights the transformative power of finding unconventional paths for children facing unique challenges. The episode could delve into how adventurous parenting and challenging the status quo in medical and educational settings can lead to healing and growth. So you wrote a book, right?

Robert C. Delena (02:06.51)
Yep, books called Without Restraint. My son and I wrote it together. we, was published in 2023. It's been out for a couple of years and it's been received well. And it's a pretty uplifting story. And especially my son, because we wrote separately. So you're getting his take on his experience through these really terrible therapeutic schools.

James Moffitt (02:09.126)
Yeah. You have a copy of it. Yeah.

James Moffitt (02:16.922)
I appreciate you sending me a copy of it too.

Robert C. Delena (02:34.894)
medication and isolation and all restraint and all the things that were done to him and how the power of the outdoors, particularly skiing, really changed the course of his life and my life.

James Moffitt (02:45.37)
Right. That's awesome. So, describe, describe some of the challenges that you're, what's your son's name? Ryan described, described some of the challenges that Ryan faces.

Robert C. Delena (02:54.252)
Ryan.

Robert C. Delena (02:59.47)
So really faced, I would say, in the past tense, which is kind of the irony. mean, Ryan was this really complicated little kid who just wouldn't sit still and had a lot of issues, particularly when he went to school. And the schools right away flagged him as being, know, his behavior is being outside the norm. And they encouraged us to push him into a therapeutic school, which was a small private school, which where he would have, you know, more individual attention and all of the things that we, my wife and I thought were good.

James Moffitt (03:02.608)
Face. Okay.

Robert C. Delena (03:27.214)
You know, what they kind of hid the ball from us a little bit, and really they shouldn't have hidden it because we should have seen it coming, was that they were allowed to restrain Ryan when he became dysregulated. Now that to us was described as when a kid's completely out of control or a threat to himself or others, they would put their arms around him. The way it played out, James, was that they were tackling him in the hallway, you five, six times a day, every time he did something that led to a time out that he wouldn't ever sit for.

And so he had all these issues and eventually wound up in a two week stint in a mental hospital with the, we had a doctor that was pushing all kinds of meds on him. And, you know, in the middle of all this, while he's this disaster of a kid and we're restraining him at home because we're advised to do that, randomly took him skiing one day at a local hill near our house. And I wasn't even a skier and I was just desperate for things to do with them, you know, because the home was tough. had a sister who was a couple of months younger and they would get into it all the time.

I take him to the ski hill and I just see a different kid that day and everything changed after that. We started going skiing more often and regularly and we started touring all around New England, places to ski and then all around the country. you know, over a 10 year journey that eventually led to touring the world and culminating in a trip to Antarctica where he and I did a back country expedition on Antarctica, which was pretty amazing. you know, I saw what I call parallel tracks. I had a kid that was in school.

James Moffitt (04:43.626)
wow.

Robert C. Delena (04:51.992)
who was this disaster who wasn't allowed to go to the water fountain without, know, chaperone. And here's this kid who's exploring the planet and really guiding me because he was a much better skier than I was. And he was a better outdoorsman. He researched mountains, he memorized all the trails and he was really responsible for my safety. And I kept going back to the town and saying, I think you're wrong. And my wife and I eventually came to be on the same page about this, that, you know, maybe we were wrong from the start.

misunderstood kid who got into this system. And once we were in the system, it was almost like having a criminal record. We couldn't get him out. And it took 10 years to get him back to public school where he, you know, so the long answer to a short question, but today he's this thriving outdoorsman. He's, he's well known on YouTube. If you look up Ryan Delina, he travels the world and he's been to some amazing places. He lives in a van. He's got a girlfriend. He's independent. He works as a rock climbing guide in Acadia national park, which is in Maine. And he's in a way, a lot of ways.

the most fully formed 24 year old that I know. I mean, he really is this kind of independent spirit and he's happy and he's passionate about what he does. And a lot of ways he's easier to parent than my daughter who is kind of this typical kid who got good grades and thrived in school. But I still look at her and wonder, know, what, she really figured it all out? know, it's just, know exactly what she wants to do when she graduates.

know, what does she want to be? And it's kind of ironic. I worry more about her than I worry about him.

James Moffitt (06:19.717)
Right.

James Moffitt (06:23.576)
So what, what did the medical establishment label him with?

Robert C. Delena (06:28.366)
Great question. So his original diagnosis and the one that I guess technically still holds is pervasive developmental disorder, not otherwise specified. People call it PDD and OS. And if you think about, those words out loud to yourself, know, so it's pervasive, it's developmental, it's a disorder, but we really don't know what it is or why you have it. And it was this catchall category that schools were using and doctors were encouraged to use because it allowed you to get services from the town.

It made the government pay for everything. I remember when I was thinking, and originally, we really didn't care what they called it. Back then, were either on the autism, you were either autistic or you weren't. The spectrum hadn't really been developed where every kid could slot somewhere on this autism spectrum. You kind of on it or you weren't. And Ryan was not autistic because he was so verbal. But was really just his behaviors were, he was emotional. When he didn't get his way, he was loud and he would, you know, he would...

James Moffitt (06:59.397)
Okay.

Robert C. Delena (07:25.378)
do things, he was a risk taker. He would climb on everything. would, never stop moving in the house. You know, he'd be probably in retrospect, this maybe on the ADHD kind of a, would be sort of categorized as that. You know, back then they tried the initial, every day they throw the riddle at you, the first appointment and you know, that didn't really work for him. So when it sped him up, so we were left with our, well, what is he? And then that's how we landed on PDD NOS, which really tells you nothing.

It doesn't hold really today as a label, not something we even think about.

James Moffitt (08:01.082)
I'll get you. So what sparked your decision to challenge expert advice on Ryan's care?

Robert C. Delena (08:06.38)
That's a great question. when I would take him skiing, I think a lot of ways, skiing was this very freeing place for him because I couldn't contain him. It was just too vast and I couldn't catch him because he was better than me. So he had this ability to just explore the mountain on his own. And I was watching this kid make really good decisions. But also in getting to the ski mountain, we had to drive places, we had to fly places, we spent a lot of time together.

just one-on-one on chair lifts in hotels. And I just saw this kid as different than what I was seeing at home. so what originally my thought was, okay, I just have to fill his life with things like skiing and he'll be okay. And then I eventually came to realize the real Ryan was the Ryan I was seeing on the ski hill. I needed to then tell everybody back in the rest of the world that he was fine. And that's why I think it was the experience.

skiing what really led me to see a different kid than everybody else.

James Moffitt (09:09.168)
Hmm, that's interesting.

Well that kind of answered the next question, how did skiing reveal a different side of Ryan's personality? I think you kind of answered that one.

Robert C. Delena (09:17.708)
Yeah, definitely. Well, one thing I will say is it was the one place where in any aspect of his life, whenever he did anything, he was told he couldn't do it. know, Ryan, get off the couch. Ryan, get off the, you know, don't climb the door. Damn, Ryan, you know, don't jump off the deck. Skiing was this place where risk was rewarded as long as it was appropriate. I mean, I didn't want to see him go jumping off cliffs when he wasn't ready, but you know, it's the kind of place where, know, if you push the envelope a little and maybe you went in a trail that you weren't supposed to, or you did jump off something that other people

you know, maybe couldn't do, he was allotted for it. People would clap, know, people would pat him on the head. And I would just see this place where he was allowed to thrive. And so I think that was really what skiing allowed for.

James Moffitt (10:17.926)
You froze up on me.

Robert C. Delena (10:19.178)
Sorry, I was just saying that skiing was really the one place where risk was rewarded. He was allowed to go into the woods or jump off things and maybe push the envelope a little bit in an appropriate way. And he was lauded for that. He wasn't questioned, he wasn't yelled at, he wasn't restrained. If anything, he was complimented for it. So I did see a lot of growth when we were skiing.

James Moffitt (10:42.716)
Okay. How did adventure play a role in Ryan's emotional development?

Robert C. Delena (10:49.25)
No, I think for him, the power of nature. You know, I wasn't an outdoorsman. We weren't people who camped. didn't, you know, I wish I had done the Boy Scouts or something with him. It just wasn't something I grew up with. I don't really like, you know, to be outside and have bugs and I don't know, don't end up in bathrooms. I like hotels, you know, so it was really on me that I wish I had more of that. And I had given him, you know, the chance to, you know, kind of explore the world. But he just.

liked it so much that it started with skiing, but eventually it led to hiking and rock climbing. you know, he was when he first, when he got his license, when he was 16, he started driving to New Hampshire and Vermont and Maine. There's a series of peaks up here in the, there's the white mountains and the green mountains. And there's a hundred, the hundred highest peaks are something that people will climb over a lifetime. Well, Ryan did it in about a summer and a half. He would just get in the car every day and he was on his own, just figuring out where these places were.

and climbing five or six peaks a day. So I think it was a chance for him to reset. He didn't mind the solace of it. He was alone, but he wasn't really alone because there were plants and animals and there was always the history of the region. And I think for him, it checked a lot of boxes. It gave him a chance, I think, to be who he really was. And he's always been a fact acquirer. He loved knowledge. So he would learn everything about...

what the risks were, whether they're bears, whether they're not bears, what kind of plants were there. And I think for him, it was really a growth experience. school was so negative all the time. If you talk to Ryan now, you'd think he has a PhD from Harvard and something, because he's really, really bright. But he acquired all that knowledge on his own through YouTube, through just reading on his own blogs and those kind of...

James Moffitt (12:35.846)
Right.

Robert C. Delena (12:41.986)
things that existed in nature really interested him the most. it just, again, it was another growth opportunity and it was a chance for him to not be in a classroom setting where you have to learn what everybody else is learning, whether you want to or not. He's one of those guys that if he's interested in something, he'll do a 6,000 word blog post on a ski run or a rock climbing run. But in school, if he had to write a paragraph on Thomas Jefferson, it was torture to watch because

James Moffitt (12:45.914)
Right.

Robert C. Delena (13:11.278)
If he just wasn't interested in it, he just couldn't do it. And unfortunately school and a lot of times us in life and work, we set ourselves up in a long laundry list of things every day that we really don't want to do, but we have to do. The way his mind works, just, he won't do those things. He just wants to do the things he's interested in. It's a great way to live. I think we all couldn't live that way because the world would probably break down, but I envy him for it. I wish in a lot of ways that.

James Moffitt (13:11.536)
Right.

James Moffitt (13:39.718)
Sure.

Robert C. Delena (13:40.413)
I live that way.

James Moffitt (13:43.366)
Did you ever have him, his IQ tested?

Robert C. Delena (13:46.01)
Well, not an IQ test per se. mean, when he took the test originally when he was, when they were trying to figure out what was wrong with him, there wasn't educational components in that. And he would score really highly on, you know, sort of verbal reasoning and, you know, quantitative things. was, it was more like the emotional stuff or spatial or, you know, he had some real deficits. His processing speed on some stuff was a little slower, but he was, he was very linear. He has a photographic memory.

So he was one of those kids, just, strengths were so strong and his weaknesses were so pronounced, it created this imbalance all the time, I think. He's not somebody that kind of lands in the middle on anything. He's either really good at things or he was on the weaker side. But I have seen those things that were viewed as deficits before come up. I think as he's gained more confidence in some of this trauma that was just taken from him and he's not worried about the teacher kind of locking him in a room.

James Moffitt (14:23.292)
Right.

Robert C. Delena (14:41.678)
He was, he's slow on, slower on some stuff to learn, but he eventually gets there. So, so he's, he's, he's got an interesting profile and I think that's what made it difficult when he was little to figure out.

James Moffitt (14:53.478)
Did, did Ryan ever transition back into public school?

Robert C. Delena (14:56.994)
Yeah, so it was, it took until junior year of high school. So really I started asking Sudbury to take him back or my wife did as well from the first therapeutic school on, which would have been like fourth grade. They would never agree and instead they would agree to another therapeutic school. So we went to three therapeutic schools. You know, they were slightly better each time, but they still had the ability to restrain or isolate you if they wanted to. So as long as that was hanging over his head, he really couldn't thrive.

They eventually put him in sort of a transition program around freshman, sophomore year. And then finally junior year, they agreed to a 45 day evaluation at the public school. I think they thought he was going to last five minutes and he lasted two years and got a degree, you got his diploma. And he eventually went on to college. went to a, we found an outdoor, never, college I didn't prioritize, you know, I didn't really care because I knew he wanted to be a ski guide and a rock climbing guide and stuff he didn't really need a college degree for. But we found this outdoor education program.

At the time it was a place called Johnson State, eventually became Northern Vermont University. Now it's Vermont State University. It keeps changing names. But there's this program in Vermont with a series of these small colleges. And they have a degree that specializes in the outdoors. And that was a perfect fit for him. It wasn't easy. COVID hit there in the middle of it. So you have this outdoor education program and they're doing it on Zoom, which was terrible and made no sense. for him, it was a disaster.

James Moffitt (16:21.818)
Right.

Robert C. Delena (16:23.84)
It added an extra year. We let him drop out for a while during that just because it was dumb. But he did graduate in five years. Again, the diploma doesn't mean a whole heck of a lot, but I am proud that he was able to tough it out and do it. And really, in a lot of subjects that he didn't really have interest in, but he had to meet requirements and get his degree. So he's done, he's finished, and now he's on to his professional career.

James Moffitt (16:50.812)
That's awesome. I have somebody here that wants to be on the podcast. She's bugging me. She's bugging me. Roxy. Roxy. Roxy, what are you doing? Say hi. Say hi. You want to go outside, don't you? I can't let you outside right now. You got to wait.

Robert C. Delena (16:54.936)
Sure, who's that?

Robert C. Delena (16:59.086)
I got a couple of those. What's going on? How you doing? I can tell. You're a wagon. want to go.

James Moffitt (17:13.04)
Yeah, she's a mess. Yeah, luckily she's not barking. But anyway.

Robert C. Delena (17:14.414)
That's all right.

No, that's why I two more yippy barkers. So I'm praying nobody comes to the door.

James Moffitt (17:24.572)
So the last question is, what advice do you have for parents questioning traditional methods?

Robert C. Delena (17:29.932)
I think the first thing is you know your kid better than anybody else, particularly here in Boston and not to sound arrogant about the region here, but we're surrounded by a lot of top-notch colleges and medical schools. And when we would walk into some of these doctors' offices, and my wife and I are both lawyers by trade, they have a bunch of degrees behind them and we assume they knew more than we did. And it took a few years to figure out that...

they know their little world so well, but doesn't mean your kid fits. And five minutes after you walk out of that office, somebody else walks in and they're not living it every day like you are. And so you know your child better than anybody. I don't care what their expertise is. And second, and this applies to kids with issues, kids without issues. If they have something that they're passionate about, particularly in this world right now where...

They're spending a lot of time in this sort of alternate reality and virtual reality and sort of, you know, they're not really developing the skills that I think we were forced to develop, interpersonal skills and, you know, relationship skills. If they're not motivated by something, you know, they're left with this thing in their hand all day long that entertains them, but really doesn't, you know, force them into situations where they're going to grow. So some sort of passion. I think you have, you know, you can be passionate about work.

You can be passionate about your relationships. You can be passionate about your outside activities, your hobbies. But, you know, my life advice to kids is always, got to get one of those three right. You know, if you really, hopefully you get two or three. Most people don't, but if you can get one of those, at least there's a reason every day to get out of bed. So I think for parents, and it's harder when your kids have issues and those, the world becomes narrower, but even within the most narrow subset, I've seen kids who,

you know, they develop some, you know, weird obsession with something and they love it. And as long as you have that, it gives them a reason every day, you know, to get up. So I think that's it. You know your kid's better than everybody else. Find something that they're passionate about. And it's going to be a series of fits and starts. mean, Ryan talks about it in the book. I was an athlete. played baseball in college. My wife played field hockey in lacrosse. We assumed he was going to be an athlete. We tried every sport under the sun. They always ended in tears.

Robert C. Delena (19:48.814)
One day we end up on a ski hill and our whole lives change after that. And it wasn't the first thing we tried out of the box, believe me. We had a lot of failed attempts to get there.

James Moffitt (19:59.43)
Well, I think it's wonderful that you and your wife stuck with it and started thinking outside of the box and found something that he, Ryan was passionate about and all of that. So I want to read this listener's takeaway. This is listeners will gain insights into embracing creativity and resilience in parenting, encouraging them to explore unique paths and fostering their children's growth. I like that.

Robert C. Delena (20:26.456)
Thank you

James Moffitt (20:27.866)
Yeah, Robert, thank you for being on the podcast and for sharing your story and Ryan's story and your family story. And, I'm hoping that this will, give somebody on the, you know, in our listening audience, hope if they're struggling with this sort of thing as well. So to the listening audience, I want to say thank you for the privilege of your time. Our podcast is hosted on captivate FM, Apple podcasts, Amazon music, I heart radio and public radio.

Robert C. Delena (20:45.397)
No, it's not.

James Moffitt (20:58.2)
I also upload the video portion of this podcast episode to rumble.com R U B L E.com. sure to share our podcast with your second amendment friends, family and coworkers. Wrong, wrong podcast. James be sure to share a podcast with your family and coworkers. Just ignore the second amendment part of that. You can contact us at.

James Moffitt (21:28.38)
parentingadultchildren.org. My website is parentingadultchildren.org. If you go to the website, you'll see the, there's a, tabs at the top. One's about one's contact one's reviews. If you go to the blog, I put a two months worth of releases that are coming like right now still in April and may. So you can see all the different episodes that are going to come out. I release one every Friday morning at 8 AM.

There's a review, tab you can go to the review and you can review any of the, podcast episodes you've listened to. If you're on Apple podcasts, think 88 % of my listening audience uses iPads and iPhones primarily, to listen to Apple podcasts while they're on the go. If you're listening to one of the podcast episodes on your Apple device, you can actually go to that. That, there's a place right there on the, on the podcast episode where you can review it. So if you would do that, I'd appreciate it.

So having said all of that, thank you for tuning in and Robert, thank you for being here and sharing your story and Ryan's story.

Robert C. Delena (22:34.616)
My pleasure, I appreciate the opportunity, I really do.

James Moffitt (22:36.942)
Yeah. And, so I'm going to say bye bye everybody. Have a good day.

Robert C. Delena (22:40.76)
Take care.