DLD & Education

Today there has been a web chat run by @DLDandMe all about the impact having a language disorder has on a child’s education. It is part of their wider work to raise awareness of Developmental Language Disorder  (DLD) and to spread the word to a broader audience, about what DLD is, how to recognise it etc. I joined in a little, although late, but I thought it might be useful to share more detail about this topic, from our own personal experience.

As most readers already know, I am both a speech and language therapist and Mum to our seven year old son – LB – who has DLD. There is a complication to our story, which is that LB experienced early neglect and didn’t come into our lives until he was three and half. It is pretty impossible to pick apart the different impacts of neglect and DLD, with both having made their mark. However, it was clear from fairly early on that the communication difficulties LB experienced were more significant than delay alone and where progress was quite quick in some areas, speech and language has always proved more challenging for him. As much as possible in this post, I’m going to focus on the specific ways DLD has affected LB’s educational progress, notwithstanding the separate effects trauma has had.

LB’s DLD impacted on all areas of his communication development when we first met him – including his ability to understand language (comprehension), his auditory memory, his ability to use words and make sentences (expressive language), his ability to listen and pay attention, his ability to speak clearly and his social communication. When I talk about his presentation back then, in workshops and the like, I can see that it shocks people. And it was shocking, because LB’s language system just couldn’t do what he needed it to – not one part of the complicated whole functioned as it should have. He was very much trapped inside of himself and he wasn’t left with many options other than to express himself through his behaviour.

In the early stages of his pre-school education, this impacted him in a myriad different ways. He was certainly delayed in learning concept words such as his colours, size words, same/different etc. which meant he just couldn’t follow much of the teaching or express answers to what nursery staff would likely consider easy or every day questions. That said, with specific teaching of one concept at a time and plenty of reinforcement in everyday activities and play, LB was able to close the gap pretty quickly. It isn’t that LB can’t learn, because he has developed phenomenally quickly, it’s just that he couldn’t pick these concepts up from the ether, as children with typical language skills would. He required specific teaching, repetition and showing, to get them to stick.

Obviously, struggling with comprehension made it even harder for LB to learn new things. There must have been much of what went on in Nursery that he couldn’t follow. This no doubt exacerbated his difficulties with listening and attention, because it is extremely hard work for anybody to focus on language they don’t comprehend. Imagine having to listen to French or Urdu or Finnish or any other language you aren’t familiar with, for large swathes of each day. It would be exhausting and it wouldn’t take long until you stopped listening. Therefore, in some ways, LB’s DLD exacerbated his DLD. He certainly coped better on a 1:1 and thankfully we were able to provide him with this because I was on adoption leave and he just went to pre-school for a few sessions (and now he has TA support). Keeping distraction levels down and matching our language to the level LB could cope with, was imperative. It meant we could keep language accessible for him most of the time and choose which concepts or structures we wanted to stretch him with. I guess this is where my professional background came in – I suspect creating these ideal learning conditions would be much more difficult for a child whose parents are new to the idea of DLD and whose pre-school setting don’t get it.

Certainly as LB’s comprehension developed, so too did his ability to learn. I know it sounds a bit ridiculous but he did appear to be growing cleverer. I maintain that had he have had a cognitive assessment at the beginning, and one a couple of years later, he would have climbed the percentiles. This is because learning and education is generally acquired through the currency of language. As he acquired more words, he knew what more things were. He was able to express how things work. He was able to enquire and find more information out. The more language you have, the better you become at gaining it. Initially, we just couldn’t have talked about complex ideas such as electricity or natural disasters or endangered animals or health conditions. LB didn’t have the vocabulary to access a discussion or explanation about such things so he essentially wasn’t able to learn about them. It was only when he had gained sufficient depth and breadth of vocabulary and could listen to and follow longer structures, that he was able to develop his knowledge of the world around him. And when this did happen, it was amazing to witness the world opening up to him.

Vocabulary acquisition was a huge ongoing challenge for LB (and me) for a long time. Initially, even though we used lots and lots of modelling strategies, he didn’t seem to be growing a larger vocabulary. Again, like with other aspects of his language system, the more he heard a word used and the more times he managed to store a new one, the better his language processing system got. He has certainly got quicker at acquiring new words, even if this continues to be hard for him. Evidently LB’s language processing system (the bit of our brains that hears words, de-codes them, decides what sounds are in them, and their meaning, and stores them in an organised way, ready to be spoken) was not well-developed. It was laborious for him to use it, meaning that getting his vocabulary as big as he needed it to be must have been an exhausting task for him.

Where LB would once have needed to hear a word used around him for several months, with a high level of repetition, before being able to store and use it, he can now store a new word almost immediately. This has had a huge impact on his ability to be able to keep up with the curriculum. Each new topic brings a cornucopia of new words, which children are expected to immediately absorb in order to follow teaching. If you can’t understand the new words, it’s extremely difficult to follow the new lessons.

Although speedier, LB’s processing system remains inaccurate – he struggles to de-code words so that, without help, he might store ‘Corvette’ as “courgette” or ‘submarine’ as “subramine”. He is aware of this so often requests help – just having someone break a word down into bite-size syllables is a huge help to him and allows him to store a new word correctly. At school he has word webs for new words and is building up a personalised dictionary with his TA.

Despite all the hurdles, LB’s comprehension skills have caught up. He seems able to access the vast majority of teaching in his year 2 classroom without too much difficulty. He does cope better with multi-sensory teaching and visual supports (such as narrative grids, Mind Maps etc.), not least because they help to hold his attention. When LB is tired, his skills in this area do diminish a little and he might need a bit more repetition but overall I think his progress underlines what the right speech and language therapy input can achieve for children with DLD.

LB’s difficulties with auditory memory have impacted in several ways – most notably on his ability to blend sounds together and to learn listed information. Literacy acquisition was always going to be a challenge for LB, as his speech continued to be unintelligible well into year 1, with vowel distortions, and his sound awareness skills (identifying the first sound in words, rhyme, syllables etc) were poor. Even the pre-reading task of describing what’s happening in a picture was ridiculously difficult, because LB didn’t have the sentence structures or vocabulary he needed in his expressive language – something else we taught specifically.

We worked hard on sound awareness in a stepwise manner – identifying the first sound of short words then longer words, then the last sound of short words etc., alongside attending speech and language therapy. Again, I feel that good phonological awareness skills are something LB wouldn’t have been able to acquire organically, but he was very much capable of achieving on a 1:1 basis with a personalised approach.

We stumbled at the point of blending sounds together – a critical final step before literacy could be gained. The difficulty it turned out, after a bit of ‘diagnostic therapy’ (again, thank goodness for my career) was the blasted auditory memory which was struggling to hold three sounds, let alone stick them together. Once more, practise paid off and eventually LB could blend. Which, having already learned his letter shapes – pretty easily, it was a visual task – meant he could read. Progress has been steady since that point, with him progressing through the reading levels as you’d expect. In my opinion, a good phonics approach is essential for a child with DLD. It was a challenge to establish that strong foundation but once it was in place, it served LB well. He is not yet meeting the expectations of the curriculum but his reading is good; he understands text and he can apply his phonic skills to decipher most words. Crucially, he loves books and listening to stories. Keeping things as fun and engaging as possible is another essential tool in encouraging a child with DLD.

However, LB is not yet ready to apply his phonic skills to writing, finding this laborious. The addition of SPAG requirements such as including a noun phrase, or adverbial, pretty much renders writing the very worst aspect of school life for LB and, in my humble opinion, totally takes the fun and imagination out of it for all children.

It is hard to get LB’s teachers to understand just how many demands writing places on the language system of child with DLD. My hunch is that when his reading skills are better still and he’s had more specific phonics teaching, his ability to spell will improve. I suspect that expressing himself on paper, with appropriate grammar, will always have its challenges.

The other area auditory memory difficulties have impacted is LB’s ability to learn listed or sequential information such as the days of the weeks, months and, perhaps most crucially, how to count. Learning the numbers to ten proved extraordinarily challenging for LB so that when he started school, aged 4 and half, he couldn’t count to three in the correct order. The knock on effect of this was that Maths was pretty much impossible. How can you do sums when you haven’t the basic language for it? When “4” or “732” are just as meaningless and unquantifiable? This certainly held LB back and for the first year, perhaps two, of his education, his literacy skills appeared better than his numeracy ones, which lagged significantly behind. However, all the repetition and visual representation eventually paid off and LB learned to count to 10. And then 20. Very soon after that, probably because he could use his logic and ability to see patterns, he could get to 100. Once he had the language, Maths wasn’t so hard at all. In fact, it looks as though LB will meet the expected levels of the National Curriculum for the first time this year, which is no mean feat, given his starting point. Now that he has the language, even the reasoning SATS paper is accessible to him, despite the problems being presented in word form.

Having DLD has made every aspect of LB’s education more challenging for him. However, with the right support, LB has proved over and over again, what children with DLD can achieve and how crucial getting that support in place is. Language underlies all learning and we ignore that at the peril of children with DLD.

 

 

Advertisement

The Virtual World & Me

Well, things have turned a little unpleasant of late, in the Twittersphere, let’s just say that. Despite my better judgement, the unpleasantness has temporarily silenced me and called into question the wisdom of blogging at all. I say ‘against my better judgement’ because haters gonna hate, it comes with the territory, and I don’t want to be someone that easily cowed. However, I am human and fallible and, it turns out, impacted by unpleasantness whether I want to be or not. I’m just as vulnerable to over-sensitivity as anybody else. In fact, within the current context of multiple writing rejections, perhaps even more so than usual.

This has all led to feelings of being conflicted about blogging and my use of social media. Should I be doing those things? Why? Why not? Do these things have a purpose or are they merely a reflection of narcissism?

Sometimes it is good to stop and re-think and I’m grateful for the reminder to do so.

My pause has taught me several things.

Firstly, Twitter (my main social media platform), plays a more important role in my life than I would have thought feasible or healthy. When I back away from it, I’m left with a hole in my support network. I want to explore this a bit because I am fortunate enough to have a very supportive network of living, breathing, touchable humans around me, so why do I need virtual ones as well? This thought has led to me analysing my network, who it is made up of and what role they play in supporting me. I’ve realised that I have a range of friends/ family and they support me in different ways.

I have the friend who is always there at drop off in the morning, has observed my difficulties at this very specific moment in time (as well as at other times) and empathises with the challenges. I have the friend working with many children whose backgrounds involve trauma. She is extremely knowledgeable and truly trauma informed and we have many an in-depth discussion about Little Bear, but also about work and families and cake. I have the friend I’ve known since high school, who reads my stuff and champions my writing and fills my brain with filth. I have the friends who are always on the end of Whatsapp no matter what we want to discuss. They are the completely un-shockable ones who are as happy talking parenting as they are strange gynaecological issues or niche celebrity crushes. There is the friend who is my longest friend from way back when who I don’t see often and who lives an entirely different lifestyle to my own but with whom I have long, deep and meaningfuls on the rare but brilliant occasions we get to see each other. There is the friend I have from University who is also on the end of Whatsapp or Twitter or a text and knows exactly what I need to hear when I’m fed up or self-doubting, but who is equally happy having a detailed conversation about The Voice or football or shopping. I name but a few (please don’t feel unloved if I haven’t mentioned you).

There are, of course, also my parents and Gary (my mum in law but forever more known as Gary because Little Bear couldn’t say granny) and my brother, who know and take a keen interest, in all the ins and outs of our day to day lives/ challenges/ high points and low points.

All of these people play vital roles in my life and also our lives. Not one of them is an adoptive parent or adoptee and I don’t need them to be. They still support us in multitudinous ways.

I should also point out that none of these relationships are one-sided. I hope that I am also there for all of them, in all the different ways they need me to be. Some of these ways are related to parenting, some of them are not.

I know that I’m very lucky to have this varied band of supporters in my corner. However, I still find myself reaching out to a band of strangers on social media. The main thing I have in common with virtual friends is that the majority of us are adoptive parents and there is undeniably something to be said for talking with people who just get it; no explanations. They just get it because they are living very similar daily experiences to us. It’s natural that a group of people with so much in common will gravitate towards one another – it isn’t exclusive or cliquey, it’s about commonality – a commonality that people often can’t find in their ‘real lives’. It’s a commonality I also feel with other parents of children with additional needs, adopted or not. Similarly, I have many online friends who are speech and language therapists because I too, am a speech and language therapist. I also have online friends who are writers, because I too am trying to make my way in that career.

Though I talk to different groups about different things, when I blog, it’s for anybody who is interested. Consequently, there are now speech therapists who are much more trauma informed and adopters who have heard of Developmental Language Disorder . That has to be a good thing. Social media has allowed a cross-pollination of knowledge and experience we couldn’t have achieved otherwise.

The links I have made with all sorts of different people on social media have been my richest source of CPD for a long time, if ever. I know more about stammering, attachment, adoptee voice, inequality of PAS, the impact of austerity, homelessness, issues around leaving care, what makes a good flash fiction, how to query literary agents, which Netflix series everyone is watching and about a gazillion other things, than I ever would have without Twitter. At its best, Twitter is a rich tapestry of information and knowledge.

Up until recently, groups of like-minded individuals have found safe corners of the tapestry in which to meet, chat, and in the case of the adoption community, hold one another if necessary. I know that sounds weird and like a virtual hug from a virtual stranger wouldn’t do anything for anybody, but I know that it has been a lifeline for some. Earlier this week, due to the unpleasantness, I was feeling fed up and more than a little over Twitter and took the uncomfortable step of admitting as much. Many of those virtual strangers reached out to me, with kind words, reassurance and encouragement. They’ve got me, in the way my physical support network also have. Those people are not holograms inside a computer cable. They are real people, with real friend networks, real hobbies, real challenges and real care for others. And as weird as people might think it is, I need them. We need each other.

There are those who will argue that you can’t be friends with people you’ve never met. You can and I am. And just as I hope to be there for my physical support network, I also try to be there for my virtual one. Isn’t that what friendship is: still being there when the shit’s getting thrown? Brushing each other off, making each other laugh, answering those pleas from the darkness?

There will undoubtedly be those who say that adopters only care about other adopters. I wish I didn’t have to say this, but I will: I love my disparate Twitter friends, of whom there are adoptees, birth parents, adopters, foster carers, grandparents caring for grandchildren, social workers, teachers, psychologists, authors, accountants, musicians… (insert any role you can think of), of all genders, nationalities, colours, creeds, sexual persuasions. I will happily engage with anybody who behaves respectfully towards myself and others. I will offer a listening ear; a virtual hug.

Sometimes, the people who need those things most are unfortunately unable to reach out for them in a respectful way. That saddens me and I wish them well down the virtual waves and hope they find what they need somewhere out there.

The messages of loveliness restored my faith in what I’m doing in the virtual world. I’m not wandering around, lost. I’m learning, connecting, sharing. I’m becoming informed and informing others. I’m hanging out with my friends.

As for the blogging, there will be people who like it and want to read it. There will be those who learn from it, feel challenged by it, feel reassured or heard by it. There will be those who are disinterested or opposed to it. I would suggest they don’t read it. There will be those who wouldn’t miss it if it was gone and those who would.

I know I need it and that might be a selfish thing, but where some people talk or cry or box or run, I write. That’s what I do. It helps me sort out my head, organise my thoughts, get objectivity. It helps me be a better parent.

There will be those who say I shouldn’t write about my son, but, ultimately, that is between me and him. He knows I write, and as much as he is able to understand consenting to it, he does. Where I can include his voice, I do. I also write about my other son and my husband. Today I wrote all about my friends. I would argue the consent issues are universal, across all people, and I would never disparage those whom I love.

I use what small voice I have to spread the word about DLD, the impact of trauma, cuts to speech and language therapy services, how to improve parent relationships with schools and little talked about issues like PMS or continence. I try to use my (teeny) platform for something constructive.

I heard Mary Portas speak this week too. She talked about how we never hear people being honest about their vulnerabilities, especially with regards parenting, and how this impacts upon the cultures we create – both inside and outside of the business world. She’s right. We often think everyone else has it all sewn up because being honest about finding aspects of parenting difficult is hard and taboo. If I can make one parent, adoptive or otherwise, feel able to ask for help, take advice or just feel heard, then the blogging is worth it. Does that involve putting myself and my own vulnerabilities out there? Yes. A writer’s greater source is themselves and their own life and experience. Is that hard? Yes, sometimes it is.

As I’m learning with most things in life, nothing is wholly good or wholly bad. Blogging is the same. It has huge plus points but does it also have risks? Yes, of course it does. I’m more than aware of them. But, as with everything, you weigh it all up and you do what you see fit. Of course I exercise caution, of course I double and triple check my words for appropriateness and future readability, of course I keep my children at the centre of everything I do. Then, I make sure we are wrapped in the arms of our support network – physical and virtual – and try to remember that everything else is extraneous.

 

 

 

A Therapeutic Week

It’s funny how you can have periods of time where everything feels difficult or like you aren’t making headway, then several positive things happen at once, making you feel as though you are taking a bigger than average leap forward.

A big positive last week, came in the form of a meeting I had with Little Bear’s teacher. We needed to update his SEN targets, both because they were due but also as part of our funding application. The teacher could have just written them by himself and wafted them under my nose to sign. However, he didn’t, inviting me to meet with him and write the targets together. We pored over the recent psychology report (see The Right Eyes ), agreeing how to group the advice into targets and how to apply the advice, in real terms, in the classroom. It felt truly collaborative, as though my knowledge as a parent was respected and even, dare I say it, valued.

Part of the reason I sound a bit disbelieving about this is not only because this level of collaboration is so tricky to attain but also because this is the same teacher I wrote Dear Teacher about, earlier in the year. I put our improved relationship down to perseverance on my part, an open mind and willingness to listen on his and probably a few of the things I wrote about in Stop. Collaborate & Listen.  It’s reassuring that these things do (can?) pay off in the end.

Irrespective of what has gone into achieving it, the outcome for Little Bear is surely more favourable, now that we are all working to the same advice? As most of the advice is around emotional, behavioural and sensory supports, the final targets did have a very therapeutic feel about them. And it’s reassuring that he’s getting a lot of that sort of support all day at school as well as at home.

The meeting also led to a second therapeutic development: a sensory/calm box. It was one of the recommendations from the psychologist, although she said ‘sensory box’ and I slightly took it in my own direction. I maintain that Little Bear’s sensory presentation is complex and often when he appears to need more movement, he actually needs help to calm. So far, this is something we have struggled with and I have found difficult to get right for him. Little Bear’s TA is very good at knowing when he needs a movement break and taking him outside to bounce a basketball or have a little kick about. However, it’s the times when he needs some comfort/ soothing to calm that we all struggle with. This is where I saw the sensory box coming in and half-inched it as more of a ‘soothing box’. We have managed to establish, after longer than you might think, that Little Bear finds fluffy things soothing so I mainly went for tactile items in the box – things to squeeze, stroke etc. I did add a kaleidoscope for a bit of calm visual distraction and also some photos of us in case he needed the reassurance of seeing us during the school day. Here’s the box before Little Bear decorated it and we added the personal bits:

 

I found that The Works was a great shop to go to for little squeezy things and much cheaper than if you look for ‘sensory toys’ on Amazon. I also got the wooden box from there, which is the ideal size and personalise-able – something Little Bear really enjoyed.

Early feedback suggests the box does offer him comfort at school, which I’m really pleased about – could that be another sensory hole plugged? There have been some issues with him not wanting his access to it to end, but hopefully they will be solved with a bit more structure and a sand timer.

A fluffy beanbag, a fluffy blanket and jackets/zippers with fluffy linings inside have all brought comfort at home over recent months so maybe we have finally hit on the right modality for soothing? I hope so. It certainly feels more effective than letting him run wild and over-stimulating himself.

The third and final therapeutic development has come in the form of massage. I’m not too sure how this came about, although I know someone has mentioned it to me previously as a good approach but I can’t exactly remember who. Somehow, Little Bear has started asking for a massage at bedtime. It has felt like an exercise in trust, communication and consent, as well as an intrinsically soothing exercise. I’m careful to ensure Little Bear is in control of the massage and that I listen carefully to him and heed his requests. He has got quite specific in expressing what he wants e.g. ‘rub my leg but not the back of my knee’, ‘more firmly please – not as hard as this but harder than this,’ (while poking my arm to show me). It feels imperative that I adhere to his boundaries in this way – not just because I clearly should respect anybody in that way, but to strengthen our bond, and as a reference point for his own behaviour e.g. when he’s holding onto my hair and refusing to let go, I can say, ‘when I give you a massage and you say, that’s enough, or not my toes, I always stop. When I ask you to let go of my hair, you should listen to me, like I listen to you’. It has also given the opportunity for me to clarify the rules on ‘private places’ i.e. ‘no, I won’t massage there, it’s a private place, nobody is allowed to touch you there’.

And even more than all that, it feels like we’re doing something fundamental: repairing gaps in Little Bear’s development.

Although Little Bear has always been affectionate, this feels different – as though he is allowing himself to be vulnerable. It has made me think about the early months when he pushed us away at bedtime, not wanting goodnight cuddles or kisses. I remember trying to respond playfully – pretending I had lost him in the bed, patting the bedsheets to try to find him. I’d mainly pat the bed but occasionally get his feet and pretend I thought they were his head. He found this funny and over time, would ask me to play the game until we eventually, after a long time, got to the point of me patting his head or chest and eventually planting a sneaky kiss. The contrast between that – me earning his trust one baby step at a time – and him asking for a massage, feels vast.

I’m reminded that we’ve come a long way – we really have.

3 in 1

Have you seen those multi-tools you can buy? The ones that look like a pen knife but when you open them up, they’ve in fact got a pull-out spanner, a pen, a bottle opener, a screwdriver and a corkscrew somehow stashed within them? You buy one tool but you actually get five. Very nifty.

I feel as though these tools are a metaphor for adopting Little Bear: he looks like one child but I’m pretty sure he’s comprised of at least three.

Sometimes it feels more like a whole band of delinquent imps, but I digress.

There’s the Little Bear who is a complete and utter joy to be around. He’s cute, funny and gentle. He’s considerate – he wants to help you and he’s concerned if you’re hurt or upset. In fact, he will be prepared to defend you to the hilt if he perceives some wrong doing towards a loved one: there’s the time he punched a girl in the face because she picked on his brother; the time he pottered down the hall with his dummy and blanket, to give a neighbouring child a stern telling off at the front door, as they had, again, been mean to his brother. That stern word reduced a child three years older than him to tears. It was impressive, I have to say, and totally belied the image conjured up by the dummy and blankie. There wasn’t any malice on either occasion – just a pure sense of love for his brother and a strong sense of injustice. If you had to pick teams, you’d want that Little Bear on yours.

And he’ll tell you how much he loves you. He’ll weave his little arms around your neck and in your hair and he’ll press his face to yours and he’ll say you’re the best mummy in the world, that he loves you to all the planets and back again. That he loves you a googolplex. That he’s never leaving you and even when he gets married, he’s going to live at home with his wife.

That Little Bear is also thirsty for knowledge. He listens intently. He learns at an impressive rate and dedicates himself to improving – thinking about how to get on the next reading level; if he can fill up another Maths book; how to get his mouth around that multi-syllabic word that is proving a challenge. He’s receptive to direction and can show a good level of resilience.

He’s smiley and affectionate. We can take him pretty much anywhere. And when we do, he will doubtless find a person with a dog, approach them slowly, saying, “Please can I stroke your dog?” He’ll pet the dog and the dog will love it. He will thank the owner extremely politely and you will see them thinking what a cute child he is, how well-mannered he is, how unusual it is for a child to ask before touching the dog. You can see him restoring their faith in children.

Then you wake up in the morning and he’s all but disappeared. In his place is another Little Bear who is unpredictable. He’s a bit like the one I just described above one minute, and then the next he isn’t. Sometimes he wants to please you and sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes he listens and sometimes he won’t. Sometimes he’s kind and gentle and occasionally he will whack you with a toy sword for absolutely no reason. This one can be skittish. He might sit down for a while and play Lego but when it’s dinner time he will hop and climb and do roly-polies on the bench. You can enjoy your time with this one but then you might ask him to do something that doesn’t suit, such as get out of the bath or stop playing football or to turn off his iPad, and he will become miraculously deaf.

This Little Bear is the one who might do something shockingly unpredictable from time to time, such as dip his hands in the toilet or lick the bottom of his shoe or maybe, the cat. One minute you feel like smothering him in kisses and the next like tearing out your own hair. We do meet him quite often. You’d probably describe him as ‘spirited’. He’s loud, incredibly so – in fact you wonder if this one is a child within a child, like Russian doll children, with a combined lung capacity and double-energy to match. This one talks incessantly – literally from waking until sleep – and especially when you are trying to concentrate on driving everyone home alive or conducting an important phone call.

Then he’s a dog. A puppy. And he wants you to give birth to him. Then he’s a gorilla. Then he won’t answer to his actual name because, as he’s just tried to establish, he’s actually called ‘Woof’ and he’s a different species and no, clearly he can’t understand the language you’re speaking to him in because he’s a DOG. Idiot!

And you get to the end of the day and you’re tired, but in a you’ve wrangled a mischievous pixie kind of way, not a you just can’t do this anymore kind of way, and you giggle at his antics and think how cute he is and feel quite ready to do it all again tomorrow, despite the challenges.

But that Little Bear has disappeared. The minute you wake, you sense there’s a problem. Ideally you would reach for your flak jacket and tin helmet before going downstairs, because you already know you will need them. There is a sense of mania permeating the walls. He’s speaking too loud, too fast and with a lot of non-speech noises thrown in. You know he must eat breakfast and that might lead to the return of one of the other Little Bears.

But he won’t. ‘Would you like toast?’ is met with ‘I hate you’ and ‘shut-up’. He flatly refuses to come to the table. Seconds later he is scooting around the living room, on an actual scooter, not wearing an actual helmet, a pre-requisite rule of scooter-riding that he knows only too well. The scooter riding and the circles are winding him up further. You suggest he gets off the scooter but he won’t. He starts to crash it into the furniture. If you somehow manage to get the scooter out of the situation, he finds a ball to kick at the patio door or a toy knife to saw the table with. You mostly end up sitting him in front of the TV because safe containment seems wise. You check back, at regular intervals, but he mostly still hates you, still wants you to stop talking, doesn’t agree with any of your wonderings about the situation and may or may not threaten to head butt you.

Sometimes, foolishly, you wonder if a change of scenery might help. You let him choose, to help with buy-in. Sometimes, things are ok when you get to wherever it is but then other times you might ask him to come back and he will look you directly in the eye and stride in the opposite direction. You might calmly explain that walking along the curb-edge is not wise because a car might clip you and he will look you in the eye and fully step onto the road. You will ask him to come into the ladies toilet because he’s too young to go into the men’s alone and he will purposefully walk into the men’s. You will attempt to intercept him, because what could possibly go awry in the men’s toilets feels frightening and, because he isn’t listening to you being rational, you will make the men’s toilets sound scarier and more dangerous than it likely is and he, because he feels pumped and indestructible, will tell you that he can take these weirdos down and that you are in fact an idiot and the worst parent in the world and you never, ever, even attempt to keep him safe.

You may then lose your shit with him, because you are frightened that you actually can’t keep him safe if he won’t do anything that you say. Your brain starts to fear several aspects of the future: how can this Little Bear ever cope in a mainstream high school? How will he fair in the real world where there are very real rules that really do have to be adhered to because otherwise the Police get involved?

When he’s calmer, you attempt to explain this to him. He says he will punch the Police in the balls. And you think, shit, he might. Then you explain how prison works, not to scare him, but to explain that there are consequences to such actions and he says, ‘I’d like to go there and fight the prisoners and kill them,’ and you think several more unrepeatable swear words.

This Little Bear is pretty unreachable. You can try being supremely therapeutic, you can try being very firm, you can try reasoning. But, generally, nothing works. You mainly need to resort to survival – getting everyone to the end of the day, with all their limbs still attached and without having said anything you will live to regret.

Little Bear will say many things he may later regret. This Little Bear will even needle his biggest hero: his brother. He will say he’s going to kill his cat or his future wife (after asking her out first). Big Bear will understandably run of patience with this constant commentary in his ear and will shut himself in his bedroom. Little Bear will not be able to leave him alone, will not heed your instructions to do so, and will wonder why you are getting increasingly exasperated.

This Little Bear will say you’ve hurt him when you haven’t, call you all the bad names he can muster up and, if you intervene physically, to stop him absconding say, he may very well dig his nails into you or bite or hit you.

When this Little Bear visits you are very grateful for bedtime. Parenting has not been a joyous experience and you find yourself really hoping tomorrow will not be like that and that the apocalyptic future you are now imagining will not come to fruition. You wonder if you should start researching alternative high school provisions. You wished you drank and could seek solace in alcohol. Or even chocolate. But you don’t have either so you chomp aggressively on an innocent carrot.

You know, rationally, that Little Bear is not in fact three children in one; he’s one child who is differentially impacted by trauma. You also know that the harder your parenting day is, the more turmoil he’s experiencing and the more empathy he requires. You would also defy any therapeutic parenting expert to spend that sort of day with him and not lose their cool. That Little Bear would laugh in the face of PACE. Or probably punch it in the balls.

You remind yourself about the first Little Bear I mentioned. You struggle to compute that he is the same child as the last one. How could he be? They seem so polarised that you start forgetting the first one exists.

Then you wake and he’s back. A little curly head rests itself on your chest and a voice asks for a cuddle. And you forget about the last one.

Until he visits again.