A bit of a rant

Beware lovely readers this post is going to get ranty. I apologise in advance because I pride myself on being a blogger with a positive outlook and can usually find something that I’m proud of/ happy about/ amused by that I can share, even when things get challenging. However, even if I dredge the silty bottom of today’s subject matter I cannot think of even one half positive to balance things out. So for one day only I’m just going to vent.

The thing is that our local Speech and Language Therapy (SaLT) Service is turning out to be completely and utterly useless and for the first time in my career I am embarrassed by association.

Little Bear was referred last February. As most of you will know he was experiencing developmental delay caused by neglect with more specific and significant speech and language difficulties on top. His communication difficulties impacted on every area of his life, from his learning to making friends to his behaviour. I felt he had a high requirement for therapy, not least because he had had such poor stimulation for the first 3 years of his life.

We were offered an initial assessment appointment on 4 separate occasions and each time the appointment was cancelled by the SaLT Service. Apparently the therapist had experienced a string of personal problems. I was empathetic, things happen, it can’t always be helped. It wouldn’t have happened where I used to work though: somebody else would have covered for the therapist after the first or second cancellation.

Eventually Little Bear was seen on our 5^th attempt, after 8 months of waiting, back in October.

I don’t think I was ever going to particularly enjoy taking him to his appointment: I’ve been doing Speech Therapy my way for a long time and obviously you do things a certain way because you think that is the best way. I knew a different therapist would do things differently and I would need to sit on my hands and try to distance myself as best I could. I have worked with lots of other therapists though and I know that my way is pretty similar to most other people’s way and I would have been very happy for any of my colleagues to see Little Bear.

I wasn’t totally convinced that the differences I saw in how the therapist ran Little Bear’s initial assessment could be passed off as style differences but I gave her the benefit of the doubt. I noticed that she didn’t take any time to get to know Little Bear or build up any rapport with him. There wasn’t any chat about what he likes or how old he is or where he goes to school, she just spoke with me to do a case history then assessed him very clinically. His behaviour during the session was off the scale compared with what was typical for him at the time.

During the assessment she didn’t transcribe his speech, just making some basic notes. I concluded her memory must be a lot more detailed than mine. She didn’t ask me anything about his social communication or memory skills.

At the end of the initial assessment, the therapist concluded that Little Bear’s expressive language skills were pretty much in line with his age (??!) and that his needs were not that severe. She agreed to put him on the waiting list for therapy though and said an appointment might come through before Christmas if we were lucky. I somehow came away feeling like a neurotic parent who had completely exaggerated my child’s needs.

Little Bear had a huge meltdown on our arrival home and flatly refused to go to school afterwards. He has never done that before or since and I had to carry him there with his dummy and blanket.

Then we waited. And waited some more.

We recently received a letter inviting us for a “follow up” appointment. It was at 8:45 am on the Friday of half term. I certainly wouldn’t have chosen to get both boys out of the house earlier than on a typical school day during their holiday but beggars can’t be choosers. We’d waited a year by now, I was damned if I was going to try to change it.

We arrived 5 minutes early and checked in at Reception. “Do you know which therapist it is?” the receptionist enquired. I didn’t. “It’s just that there are 2 and one is currently stuck in traffic” she explained. I really hoped it wasn’t our one.

It was our one. We duly took a seat and waited. This could have gone either way and we were just lucky that Little Bear was able to tolerate a wait today. I think it helped him that Big Bear was there too.

Little Bear did try to tell me that he was nervous this morning though. Previously you could just spring things on him and he would either go with it or not, depending on what sort of day we were having. He is getting a lot more aware of what’s going on now though and he knew that the ‘talking lady’ would expect something from him. Although he wasn’t able to say “I’m nervous” or “I’m worried”, he tried his best to get the idea across to me without a meltdown. He said “I think I take Phoebe to see the talking lady and he sit on my knee”. Phoebe is his cuddly dog who barks and wags her tail. Ok, I said. “Why? Does Phoebe want to come?”. “Yes, cos it might be scary”. “Might it? I don’t think the talking lady is scary” I tried to reassure. “Yes” he said “speaking might be scary for Phoebe”. Aha. I think perhaps he knows his speech isn’t quite how it should be and he knew that it would be under the spotlight today. We decided that noisy Phoebe might be best left at home but he brought 3 cuddly puppies to sit on his knee because they are “more sensible”!

What a shame to make an anxious child with attention difficulties (who finds sitting still difficult at the best of times) wait in this manner. Why arrange an early appointment if you couldn’t be sure of being there? I was getting cross but again tried to be reasonable. It wasn’t her fault the traffic was bad.

Eventually, the other therapist who was there came out to us. She was starting her own clinic at 9:30am but could squeeze us in. Apparently her colleague lived a fair distance away and was never going to make it.

We walked into the clinic room to find another person in there. She was later introduced as a student though I was not asked to consent to her being there which I know is the standard procedure.

The lady who had stepped in was obviously trying to do us a favour but was clearly flustered and had not read the notes. She started reading them while I was there and began firing questions at me: “how are his vowels?” “Have they improved?” “What about his word retrieval difficulties? Are you still concerned about those?”. As she was using technical language I assumed she knew I was a SaLT. “What is he working on at the moment?” she asked. “Well, we have started doing some work on ‘pl’ and ‘bl’ sounds” I explained. “Why?” she demanded. “Err well, because he was reducing those clusters and it was affecting his intelligibility” I replied. “Oh” she said “seems odd, those sounds are very complicated”. “And because I’m a Speech and Language Therapist” I retorted before I’d really considered whether that was a wise thing to say. I did well and kept the swearing inside my head though.

She proceeded to attempt an assessment with Little Bear. She was clearly in a rush and didn’t bother with any rapport building either. I could have told her, had she asked me anything about his behaviour and how best to manage him, that sitting him next to a big stack of toys would impact negatively on his ability to concentrate.

Once the assessment was over, she said “yes, he does have some speech difficulties I’ll put him on the waiting list for a block of therapy. Is that ok?”. Well no, after a year of waiting and thinking that therapy was starting today, no, that isn’t really ok. On querying whether today was meant to be the start of input, she explained that they have a lot of children waiting and some for quite lengthy periods so they are just seeing everyone to “check in” so “everybody has had something”. I can only think that that terrible piece of clinical decision making is due to having to meet some sort of waiting time target. It makes literally no sense because we still haven’t had anything. We haven’t had one piece of advice or even a strategy to use. Time is being wasted reviewing everyone who is waiting and doing NOTHING with them when they could have used that time more productively to start several children’s therapy. Although assessment is essential from a clinician’s point of view, on its own it does nothing to improve outcomes for children.

The whole experience was painful. We were very quickly dismissed, with minimal attention paid to Little Bear. I think it is just common courtesy to praise a child and let them know that they co-operated well at the end of a session.

I have been quite unsure about writing this post as it feels so wrong criticising fellow professionals. However, the whole experience to date has made me feel like an old person who says “it wasn’t like this in my day” as if things have changed beyond recognition over the past 50 years or so. Yet I am not elderly and I only left the NHS last year. Nevertheless I do not recognise this as the Speech and Language Therapy that I know. Where is the quality? The bit where you care about the children and families you are trying to help? The bit where you are thorough and try to consider all aspects of a child? The bit where you look beyond the snapshot provided by one rushed assessment? The bit where you think about a child’s background and the impact that their communication difficulties are having on their life? The bit where you don’t keep patients waiting, where you manage your diary in a realistic way and you prioritise the children who need you most?

If this is what people’s experience of SaLT is, I’m not surprised that nobody really knows the breadth of what we do and that as a profession we have a bit of an image crisis. I am ashamed to be associated with the type of service that has been provided to us. I know that each individual failure in our case has had a fairly reasonable personal excuse behind it but overall the quality of the service Little Bear has experienced is not excusable.

We have experienced the Audiology Service, Educational Psychology, School, Health Visiting and other medical professionals and I have felt well supported by them all. It does upset me that it is SaLT in particular that is letting us down.

And so we wait again.

 

*Rant over. I promise some positive sentiments next week.

 

Seeing the Educational Psychologist

I recently requested a progress meeting with school to discuss how Little Bear is getting on. I feel lucky that so far the staff have been very approachable and accommodating. We had the meeting and as usual were able to identify progress and also areas that we want to work on. During the meeting Little Bear’s teacher wanted to ask me something: would I consent to him being seen by an Educational Psychologist (EP)?

She explained that the EP had made routine contact with school to check whether they needed to consult regarding any pupils this term. The SENCO had thought of Little Bear. What did I think?

I had a couple of initial thoughts, most of which I kept to myself. Firstly, eek! Out of the whole school of almost 200 pupils Little Bear was the first child that they thought of. In fact, I have since found out that he was the only child. What did that say about the severity of his needs? Those old feelings around whether I really do accept his needs, just as they are, were getting a little airing.

My main thought though was one of cautious gratitude. I couldn’t see any negatives of involving another agency and if anything it could lead to positives such as more tailored input or dare I even think it, funding. My previous experiences of working alongside an EP Service elsewhere were of an extremely stretched and in demand service. Children frequently waited long periods to be seen and schools had to juggle and prioritise the most needy to maximise their allocation of time. Once a school’s EP allowance ran out, children just had to wait, irrespective of their level of need. Given that experience I felt lucky that in his second term at school, Little Bear was already getting an opportunity to be seen, without me even having to ask for it: no battle needed.

I consented straight away then instantly became anxious that the appointment might happen without any of my involvement (not that I’m a control freak!). When I worked as a Speech and Language Therapist (SaLT) in an NHS Department I worked closely with the EP’s. I knew them and they knew me. We had a mutual respect for one another’s work and often spoke regarding specific children. Occasionally we would have some healthy professional debate (AKA a polite argument), usually when I was putting my neck on the line about a child needing a specific provision that nobody wanted to pay for. However, most of the time we worked in partnership to make things happen for children.

It was feeling very strange to be on the other side of this equation. Would I be respected and listened to in my role as parent? Would I be involved at all?

Increasingly I have also found myself taking the role of Little Bear’s SaLT – out of necessity to fill the gaping void left by our local NHS Service. I wondered whether my opinions with my SaLT hat on would be considered or valued when the EP came either.

When I asked Little Bear’s teacher whether we might be able to meet with the EP or be part of the consultation when the time came, she replied with a brisk “I wouldn’t have thought so”, confirming my fear that they thought I didn’t have anything to contribute as a parent or as a professional. Feeling a little disheartened and somewhat undervalued I felt as though I would just have to go with it. I can see how easily you can become disempowered as a parent, particularly one of a child with additional needs.

However, something changed somewhere and a week or so later I got an e-mail inviting me to attend the meeting with the EP. Greatly relieved I then began to wonder what the EP might be like. Although not meaning to stereotype I assumed it would be a middle-aged no-nonsense lady.

This week Grizzly and I have attended the meeting. It turns out that the EP was actually a young man and he was lovely. He was very good at listening to us and tweaking his advice accordingly. He wasn’t in any way judgemental and we did feel like valued members of the meeting. I think that is so important.

We had been told that the EP would have seen Little Bear prior to the meeting and would be feeding back to us. However, in reality it was a consultation meeting and the EP had never met Little Bear. Apparently we would create strategies during the meeting and then reconvene to review them before deciding whether Little Bear would require further assessment or not. I think school might have felt a bit fobbed off by this.

In the meeting, Little Bear’s teacher talked about his educational levels, his behaviour in the classroom (generally a little less challenging than at home) and his attitude to learning. I had expected much of the focus to be on his communication difficulties and ways to manage that within his learning. However, we talked a lot more about his social communication, his ability to identify and regulate his own emotions and ways to develop his skills in these areas. The EP seemed versed in early trauma and attachment and was interested in our perspectives. He was clear on the links between Little Bear’s early life experiences and his approach to learning now. We talked about how he can be oppositional and how the very fact of you wanting him to do something makes him not want to do it. We talked about him not showing his full ability and sometimes making purposeful errors. We talked about Little Bear easily entering fight or flight mode and how that can lead to him lashing out.

Whilst acknowledging and problem-solving these things with us the EP was not alarmist. At the moment the challenges do not seem to be things that we cannot overcome. The strategies seem practical and hopefully fun for Little Bear – including an adapted version of Lego Therapy to help build his resilience and ability to play with his peers with less adult support. We had to adapt it because Little Bear doesn’t always have the resilience for Lego so school have agreed to try it with Duplo instead.

A lot of the strategies were around Emotional Literacy – giving Little Bear a wider emotional vocabulary; helping him to identify his own feelings; giving him strategies to use when regulating himself is difficult. School are going to identify a safe space for him to retreat to when he needs it and will support him in using it appropriately.

We both came away from the meeting feeling pleased.

Another bonus for me was some of the comments the EP made. He said he felt we had “already done a lot of psychological unpicking” and that we understand Little Bear’s needs well. At the end he commented that he had enjoyed listening to our story and was pleased to hear so many positives in our descriptions of Little Bear.

It is very easy to forget how hard we work (I mean all adopters) and how much time and effort we put into trying to understand our children and what makes them tick. It is easy to forget that we are experts in them. If I went on Mastermind and my specialist subject was Little Bear, the only other person in the world who could beat me would be Grizzly. Nobody knows him like we do. It is hugely beneficial and confidence-boosting for that to be acknowledged by a Professional person working with your child.

I also found it surprisingly emotional to tell our story (the EP knew nothing more than Little Bear’s name so we had to fill him in on his background and progress to date) and to hear Grizzly sharing parts of our story. In the day to day craziness of our lives, it’s so easy to forget the highs and lows of the rollercoaster ride we’ve been on. At one point we spoke about how Little Bear used to bang his head and I had honestly forgotten that he used to do that. I felt proud of us as a couple for having tackled so many things in such a joined up way. As a parent it is easy to fall into a mode of constant self-deprecation but occasionally you have to allow yourself some credit. Perhaps we are doing an okay job after all.

At the end of the meeting we booked in a review date. The EP said he felt he knew Little Bear quite well now and didn’t feel the need to actually see him. Grizzly said he felt an observation would be useful and so did Little Bear’s teacher. She commented that in all her years of teaching, she had never taught a child quite like Little Bear! And I don’t think she meant because of his background as she has 4 other adopted children in her current class, irrespective of any who have gone before. I do know what she means; he is a complicated little chap.

So observation is going to happen and the EP is going to attempt some 1:1 assessment. Oh how we laughed when he said he would allow 1 hour for that! Little Bear finds 5 minutes of an adult-directed table top activity challenging. I would love to be a fly on the wall. I guess we are going to find out what the poor EP is really made of..

 

 

 

 

 

A Mini Crisis

Well this isn’t quite the blog post I had planned to write this week and it’s also a few days late. As usual life at Bear HQ has not been straightforward but we are all okay now.

On Friday evening Grizzly was meant to be going skiing with work, Big Bear had a play date and Little Bear and I were having a quiet night in. I picked him up from school and nipped into our neighbour’s house to pick up their post. I was just fumbling with our door key when my mobile rang. It was a lady from my Mum-in-Law’s work telling me that she had collapsed and they had called the emergency services. This wasn’t something that had happened before and though my mind was racing I tried to remain calm. I did speak to her on the phone so I knew she was relatively okay but uncharacteristically when I offered to go to her, she did want me to. Obviously I said I would be right there.

What to do with Little Bear I wondered? I briefly considered taking him with me but I had no idea how this was going to pan out and the thought of him in an ambulance or a hospital definitely didn’t conjure up a positive image. I would undoubtedly be more focused on him than Gary (that’s what she is now known as: it’s meant to be Granny but Little Bear couldn’t say it, saying Gary instead and it’s kind of stuck!).

My parents I thought, they always help in a crisis and I could drive past their house on the way to Gary’s work. Shit. No, I couldn’t. They had gone for a day out and it would take too long to wait for them to come back.

Now I was panicking a little bit. Who else did I feel comfortable leaving him with??

I thought about our neighbour across the road. I have looked after her children before and the Bears have played at her house quite a few times. Yes, I would feel ok to leave him there. I rang her but she wasn’t home. Bloody Nora. She did answer her phone though and told me she was at another child from Little Bear’s class’ house, why didn’t I bring him there? Ordinarily, taking your adopted child to a relative stranger’s house and kind of dumping him there is not really a good idea. However, I was pretty much out of options and I really did need to go to Gary. I know the child’s mum a little bit and she seems very nice and my neighbour would be there too so I made a snap decision to do it. I knew my parents would be able to get there soon and that they would then take over.

In my haste I did make sure I took the time to get down to Little Bear’s level and to explain the rather complex plan to him. He surprised me by seeming to fully understand what was happening and by taking it completely in his stride. He was just excited that he was going to play with his friends and didn’t bat an eyelid when I dropped him off.

I got to Gary just in time to see her being wheeled on a stretcher to the waiting ambulance. I don’t think anybody was too sure what was wrong but she certainly couldn’t have got up from the stretcher so a trip to A and E was needed. Somewhere amidst the chaos I managed to alert Grizzly that maybe skiing wasn’t going to happen tonight. Later we realised that Gary should have been going to Grizzly’s Gran’s house that evening and that we had better let her know she wouldn’t be coming, yet somehow without alerting her about the hospital situation as she would be extremely worried. Grizzly’s Gran has not been too well herself and is pretty frail at the moment. Grizzly rang her and discovered that she too was unwell and in pain and needed someone to come. We ended up with my parents looking after the Bears, me with Gary in A and E and Grizzly with his Gran. You couldn’t have made it up.

Once again I was extremely thankful that we are all near to each other and that these situations can be managed with minimal stress.

Thankfully Gary’s condition improved and all the tests came back negative so they let her go in the evening. We decided she should come to our house so we went past hers on the way to get her a couple of things she needed. I think she was getting a little ahead of herself with her recovery and we ended up sitting on the bottom step with the door open for cold air, trying not to repeat the events of the afternoon.

Eventually we were all home and Gary was safely tucked up in bed.

Little Bear woke me crying at 6am. He wasn’t bothered that I was there, he wanted my Mum. He went on to have a difficult day and the worst bedtime we have had in months. There was a lot of hitting, kicking and screaming. Today has been calmer but with moments of aggression and defiance.

I don’t really know whether his behaviour is connected with the other events of the weekend or not. Big Bear isn’t well and Grizzly doesn’t feel brilliant either. It is possible Little Bear is also under the weather. It is also possible that abandoning your adopted child (as necessary as it was) at a near stranger’s house is still not a good idea, no matter how calm he seemed about it at the time.

We have had several chats today about the fact that Little Bear is never going to live anywhere else and will be here FOREVER. He keeps wondering if we might swap him with a different boy we know. We have tried to explain that we love him and as nice as this other boy is, we don’t love him at all, we just like him. It’s hard to know how much he absorbs of this and what his real worry is.

Gary is still not feeling well and is still staying. Little Bear has been pretty understanding about that and has given her lots of cuddles. He has not been rude to her as he can be sometimes which is a relief. Big Bear has spent hours snuggled up on the sofa with her.

In some ways it has been good for both boys as we haven’t been anywhere all weekend and we have had some quality time together; some time just snuggling and lounging and some time playing Lego and doing craft. I think they are at the exhausted-as-it’s-nearly-half-term-stage and we will probably be dragging ourselves through the next week, hopefully without too much regression from the little dude… A girl can hope anyway.

As for Gary, she is seeming lots better but we had another near-relapse earlier on so I don’t think we’ve quite got to the bottom of things yet.

 

 

Injustice

Over the past couple of weeks both Bears have suffered an injustice and I have been coming over all Mama Bear in their defence.

The first to experience a problem was Little Bear. I have mentioned before that there have been some incidents at lunch times at school. I have had several chats with his teacher about it and she has spoken with the dinner ladies about better management strategies and I thought things were sorted. That was until last week, when Big Bear came home from school absolutely furious about what he had witnessed at lunch time.

He told me that he had seen a boy, let’s call him Billy, come over and hit Little Bear. Little Bear had naturally retaliated and hit him back. Billy had started crying and evidently told the dinner lady that Little Bear had hit him. The dinner lady shouted at Little Bear that he was naughty and made him stand by the wall. Big Bear said he had to stand there for the whole of the break time which to him seemed a long time.

Initially it seemed like fairly standard lunchtime stuff but the more I thought about it, the more annoyed I became. Here’s why:

• The dinner lady clearly hadn’t made any attempts to find out the full circumstances and had just assumed that Little Bear would have done it. I suspect she already has him branded as a “naughty child”.
• Billy, despite having started the whole incident, didn’t get into any trouble. I’m not quite sure what sort of message that gives but there isn’t much point in trying to behave yourself if you are just going to get blamed anyway.
• Even if the dinner lady had attempted to find out what happened, I suspect Little Bear wouldn’t have been able to defend himself verbally anyway. I don’t think he could have said that he was hitting it in self-defence. He hasn’t got the language skills and I felt as though he was being scapegoated for that reason.
• Irrespective of his obvious communication difficulties, I also suspect that if a grownup shouts at him that he’s naughty, he will probably assume that they are right. His self-esteem is still too fragile to question that. She was just feeding into his feelings of shame and worthlessness.
• Finally, because of the last two points, had Big Bear not witnessed the whole thing, I’m sure that Little Bear would not have been able to come home and tell me about it. How many times had this happened before I wondered? And very sceptically, did the children know that Little Bear can’t argue his corner but will always react? Could they have purposefully targeted him?

I will give the children the benefit of the doubt, because they are only 4 and 5 and probably wouldn’t be that calculating. However, I did very much need to speak with school about it because if this was happening every day it could be very damaging.

I met with the Head the next morning and thankfully he was as outraged as I was. He said the shouting and standing by the wall was not in-keeping with the school’s behaviour policy and could see why it wouldn’t be the right approach for Little Bear. To give him his due he met with the lunchtime staff the next day and discussed my concerns at their management meeting.

He has also introduced an orange card system for lunchtimes. The first step is to give a child who is misbehaving a verbal warning then if they do something else, they get an orange card. It is a consequence in itself and is passed to their class teacher so they are aware of any incidents that have taken place and can deal with them (hopefully more appropriately) in class if needs be. I have to say I’m still not sure that is the right system for Little Bear but I have to give them credit for trying. It is surely better than standing at a wall.

I also raised concerns about the level of supervision. I know staff can’t have eyes everywhere but perhaps they could focus their attentions on the children who do require more support, especially at unstructured times like breaks. The teacher and TA are now taking turns to go out and observe proceedings for a couple of weeks. Hopefully by the end of it we will have a clearer idea of what is happening outside. I am under no illusion that Little Bear is an angel. I am very aware that he isn’t! However, I do want him to be treated fairly and as he cannot speak up for himself, then I have to.

I sometimes get a bit concerned that I’m e-mailing school every 5 minutes and they will start to dread the sight of me. However, I always try to be friendly and polite and so far, have found that approach to be effective.

However, in the case of the second injustice, the one against Big Bear, I have to admit to uncharacteristically losing my temper and raising my voice a little.

The said incident took place last night.

The boys and I were eating our tea. I had been up and down every 2 minutes for various reasons, including letting the electrician in, so when the doorbell rang again, I asked Big Bear to answer it. It was strange of me to do that because if we don’t know who it is, I usually answer it. However, the door was in my line of sight and I thought it was probably a delivery or someone we knew. I heard Big Bear say “Mum, it’s for you” and in the seconds it took me to reach the door, a lady I had never seen before had come in and shut the door behind her!

As I reached her, she began shouting and pointing at Big Bear. She said “I’m sick of you playing knock and run on my door! You’re scaring my dog. I’ve had ENOUGH”. As he tried to protest, she kept it up, saying that 3 separate people had told her it was him. I began trying to deal with the incident in a calm fashion, assuring her that it certainly wasn’t him. However, she continued to speak to him aggressively.

I think I was a little taken aback to start with and Big Bear looked absolutely terrified. I then realised that actually I was pretty annoyed for the following reasons:

• I knew she thought he was lying but I was 100% certain it wasn’t him as I don’t let him play out unsupervised. At 7 years old I think he’s too young. If he ever plays on the street, it is outside of our house and Grizzly or I are always there.
• Secondly, he had not left the house since returning from school and had been within my vision the whole time.
• Thirdly, of all the children to pick on, I couldn’t believe she had picked Big Bear. He is so well-mannered and kind and would never purposefully do anything to upset anybody. How anyone could have told her it was him I had no idea. She must have somehow got crossed wires.

At that point I thought, why on earth have I let a stranger come into the house and shout at my child?! Big Bear, trying to placate as always, then tried to say that he would find out who had done it and would knock on her door to tell her. She began again, saying “I don’t want you knocking on my door ever again!”I did then become a little angry and told her that I did not appreciate her coming in and shouting at him in the way she was and that I could categorically tell her he had not done anything. As I became a little shouty and pointy, I think she may have realised she had over stepped the mark and started saying how nice our extension is.

It was a very strange experience and whilst it was taking place I was dimly aware that Little Bear had taken full advantage of my diverted attention by sneaking upstairs and rifling through the electrician’s toolboxes. As I said to Grizzly later, holding the fort at our house is a very varied and challenging role! You never quite know what might happen next.

Grizzly was absolutely furious about the whole event and when he came home from work was all for going round to have a word with said lady. I was a little fearful of how that might turn out but he reassured me that he wouldn’t shout or swear, he would just tell her that her behaviour was unacceptable and that she owes us both an apology. I guess she’s lucky we are calm and reasonable people because I have no doubt that some people would have physically removed her from their home.

Just as I couldn’t allow an injustice to happen against either Bear, Grizzly couldn’t allow one against me or Big Bear either. He had said word and although she denied shouting or coming in I think his chat (and all 6 feet 4 of him) probably had some impact.

I read a blog post recently (I’m really sorry, I can’t remember who to credit with it) about belonging and how to help a child feel that they belong in your family. I agreed with what it said but I think I would also add “knowing that your family have your back”. We are a very solid team of 4 and none of us are able to stand by and allow any injustice against any of the others. There is more than one occasion when Little Bear has fought Big Bear’s corner too but we are still working on a verbal, rather than physical solution!

I am also looking forward to a (hopefully) peaceful weekend.