I’m in Charge. No, I’m in charge.

This sounds like the start of a slapstick comedy scene – to me, to you etc. But, to be honest, the constant need LB has to try to dominate others is not that funny. I’ve been pondering this behaviour and I can’t decide whether it is another form of the control I wrote about here: Control or something slightly different.

We have always had to be firm and consistent on boundaries. I have always assumed this was to do with making LB feel safe and that his thorough testing of them was to ensure they would remain immovable. I explored the theory behind that in the post mentioned above. But, recently, I’ve found myself wondering if there is more to it – a desire to actually be in charge perhaps?

This week we have been decorating LB’s bedroom. We have never done that before, not even prior to him first arriving because, due to various pressures from social services, his adoption happened much faster than expected and there wasn’t time. BB’s nursery was still nicely decorated and so we added some pictures and things we knew LB would like and he has been sleeping in there ever since. Anyway, he’s seven now and definitely outgrown the elephant and giraffe wallpaper. I have really wanted to make his room his own for him for a while now, but have to admit that things like him damaging his bed have made me drag my feet, as well as knowing that he would want to ‘help’ me.

Anyway, we’ve had a relatively more settled period of behaviour and Grizzly has been off this week so it seemed like the best time. Which is how I ended up shut in a small room with LB, a large tin of blue paint, a roller and some paint brushes for three hours (not to mention considerable PMS). Having anticipated the potential issues, I had got organised in advance and was clear on the boundaries from the outset: painting apprentices must listen and follow painting instructions; should painting apprentices not do so, painting must cease. I was clear that I was the painting boss and this was necessary so as not to paint anything we shouldn’t and also, because, well, grown-ups are kind of meant to be in charge.

Initially, things went well. LB stopped wielding the large screwdriver for opening the tin when asked to do so and proceeded painting in a sensible manner. Things went pretty well. However, as time went on, LB made more attempts to bend the rules, or explore the boundaries, I’m not sure which. He had full use of a paint tray, roller and brush that were just for him. I had one triangle shaped brush for painting edges. A couple of times he asked for my brush and I explained it was just for me – he had everything he needed already. He found this hard to accept and soon, the lure of my brush became more tempting than the painting itself. I decided to use that lure to my advantage – the online shop was arriving during said painting episode and I thought if I let him care-take my brush while I sorted the shopping, there’d be less chance of him doing anything opportunistic or plain ridiculous while I wasn’t supervising. This worked well but because I’d slightly changed the rule and allowed him to borrow the brush, instead of being pleased and getting back to work, he escalated his attempts to get my brush. Perhaps I should have kept an immovable brush-boundary in place so he knew where he was but that seemed a bit ridiculous and petty. I’m not so precious about my nice triangular brush that I can’t let a child borrow it. However, evidently in doing so, I had either made him feel vulnerable that I might not have been quite as in charge as he first thought or given him a glimpse of becoming top-painter. Who knows. Soon the requests to borrow the brush again were coming thick and fast. I allowed it because I had to roller too and we were both working to the same end. Then he became unwilling to return the brush to me when I needed it, which was swiftly followed by him claiming the brush was his, had always been his, had been purchased with money he’d earned himself and I could not have it back because he was now, in fact, in charge. That’s how quickly and easily a task like painting can spiral out of control.

Used as I am to these situations, I calmly reminded him I was chief painter, painting apprentices have to do what they’re told or painting ends. He rather glumly admitted defeat and returned the brush.

This did not end the battle though, oh no. It just made him wilier in his attempts to gain control. It led to this:

LB: Mum, can we play a game while we’re painting?

Me: Of course. What would you like to play?

LB: Ok, pretend I’m the Captain…

Ha! Clearly he thinks I was born yesterday. I knew full-well where this was going.

Me: Well, we can pretend you’re the Captain if you like, but I’m still in charge of the painting because in real life, I’m the grown up and it’s my job to be in charge of big jobs like painting.

LB: *Groans, momentarily thwarted*

LB: Ok, I’ll be the Captain but you can be the Boss.

Me: Okey-doke.

We pretend play for a bit.

Me: Could you pass me the roller for a minute please?

LB: Call me Captain

Me: What?

LB: I’m only doing it if you call me Captain.

Me, internally rolling my eyes: Could you pass me the roller please, Captain?

LB: No, I’m in charge of the roller, its mine. I’m the Captain.

If I could roll my eyes on screen I would. The whole thing went fine because I didn’t allow any of these scenarios to escalate but it was a case of constantly managing the situation and constantly having to re-iterate my authority. I’m pretty sure this isn’t ‘normal’ parenting. It feels a bit mad and unnecessary to be locked in battle over painting some walls but I feel I can’t renege all control because what would happen then? It’d be Lord of The Flies all over again but with a triangular paint brush instead of a conch. As it was, he’d already asked me if paint was edible so goodness knows what he’d get up to if left in charge.

It’s possible to argue this was a new bedroom specific scenario – that as LB hadn’t had a new room before it was raising all sorts of memories for him about previous different rooms and moving homes and wobbling his sense of permanency. It’s possible to argue it was an unusual/different scenario which was throwing him out of his comfort zone.

But…

I’m not sure. We have these mini-power battles all the time. Yesterday, LB moved back into his bedroom and, I’m assuming because he likes it so much, decided people couldn’t enter unless they paid him a fee. When I say people, I mean me, the person who facilitated the whole thing. And I don’t mean pretend-play pay, I mean actually pay with actual money. Obviously that isn’t something one can get into but rather than accept this, LB starts to escalate the situation by threatening people with what he’ll do if they don’t pay or taking money from their purse/wallet. “It’s my bedroom. I’m in charge. I decide who comes in. I decide how much they pay.”

Gary came to babysit and he let her in, with only a minor fee skirmish but tried to control where she sat, commanding her to “sit” on the floor, rather like you would a badly behaved dog and banished her from the bed.

Perhaps some of it is a social skills/empathy thing – he can’t quite connect the fact of him being rude to people making them want to stay out, not in.

I guess it’s fair enough that he wants to be in charge of his bedroom, as he’s proud of it and it is his. But these type of scenarios tend to escalate – he’d be ‘in charge’ of the bathroom next as its next door and, given a week, he’d be running the whole upstairs and charging people to sleep in their own rooms.

I guess we are still struggling a bit with the balance between appropriate autonomy and him accepting that as parents, we are in charge. I hope our calm but firm reminders are the right way of managing this. I certainly don’t feel that allowing him to command adults onto the floor is appropriate, nor allowing bedroom entrance fees, nor over-throwing of painting bosses. Conversely, it doesn’t feel right to ban him from new rooms or helping with painting either. I like to think we’re guiding him through these scenarios within appropriately slightly rubberised boundaries – he can deviate a little but if he deviates too far, the boundaries ping him back into place again. There has to be some deviation, surely? A blanket rule for not using other people’s brushes seems a bit extreme, yet I’m quite convinced that without boundaries, there’d be a rapid spiralling into chaos.

I don’t really know whether this is a trauma thing or an LB thing – I’d love to know if you experience similar. I do know that it keeps us on our toes and adds an extra layer to the most seemingly-benign of scenarios.

As for the thought of the teenage years when authority is naturally challenged…

Eek.

Advertisement

Pets, Children & Why We’re Not Getting a Dog

We keep thinking about getting a dog. We have favourite dog breeds and have even thought about dog names. We are not getting one though, unless I actually want to have a nervous breakdown, which I don’t, so we are not getting one. Not in the foreseeable future anyhow.

It is not as though we haven’t got any pets. We have two cats, outside fish, inside fish and up until fairly recently we had three hens (they got old, don’t worry, it isn’t a grizzly fox story).

The cats are good pets for Little Bear. The cats are quite straightforward with clear boundaries; if they are happy they show you with purring, if they’re not they show you with a scratch. They literally never get over-excited, I don’t think cats can be bothered, and if Little Bear is too rough or over-exuberant with them, they either walk away or give him a nip. Obviously I don’t want him to be nipped or scratched but it is a natural consequence of not treating the cat properly and has led to him being very gentle with them. He has learned that if he is nice to the cats, they will reward him with cuddles and sleep on his bed. Whenever that happens I always tell Little Bear how much they love him, otherwise they wouldn’t want to be in his bedroom or on his bed and that makes him feel good.

Little Bear has started to get involved with feeding them and knows when they’re hungry. He is also good at keeping them company on the way to the vets. He is less pleased when the little cat goes on a killing spree and brings all sorts of half-maimed creatures into the house but he has helped to catch a live mouse on more than one occasion and has also tidied up dead birds (I don’t make him do that, obviously, but he likes to help). The cats have taught both boys a lot about life, nature and responsibility.

The fish are quite entertaining to look at but I have to admit they are the least exciting of all our pets for children. Little Bear enjoyed building the pond though and enjoyed keeping it ice-free over the cold spell we just had. He likes to feed the inside and outside fish and helps to clean out the tank. Pets definitely provide opportunities for helping and feeling successful.

Our hens have been our most fear-inducing pets, though only ever in other people’s children, not in our own. It has always been a bit of a surprise to folk when they have come across them in our back garden as we live in a typical cul-de-sac, with a not-very-big garden and you don’t really expect to find them there. We have fenced off part of the garden at the side and the hens are generally free range in that bit. Children have to go in there to get to the trampoline though which is what causes the consternation.

We already had the hens when Little Bear came home and he was pretty interested in them from the beginning. I have some lovely photos of him holding one of them and also him inside the hen house with them all outside! I was pretty impressed with him that at the age of three he was brave enough to get hold off one (they were friendly but you did risk a whip from a wing if you didn’t hold them firmly enough). The look on his little face of pride and happiness is just lovely.

Little Bear has learned quite a lot from the hens. When he first arrived I don’t think he’d ever seen an egg before and he certainly didn’t know that hens lay them. The first time he was left alone with the freshly laid eggs, he threw them all on the ground and trampled them. I often talk about the incident in my workshops and I genuinely think it was because he didn’t understand the context. He didn’t understand that the hens had laid the eggs, that we could take them inside and cook them or that we could eat them. I think he just thought “they look interesting” and explored them on a sensory level.

Funnily enough Little Bear is a good little helper in the kitchen these days and whenever we are baking or making pancakes, he is always in charge of the egg part.

Little Bear has always enjoyed a practical task and would often help Grizzly to hose out the hen house or to re-fill the feed or water or just give the hens some treats. Our last hen, Yoko, recently became poorly and it was obvious she was going to die. It was during the Beast From The East so we brought her inside and she sat in a washing up bowl by the back door for several days while we gave her ‘end of life care’ (the poor thing had lost her ability to move about). Both boys were good at sitting with her and stroking her. Big Bear even suggested she might want to watch You-Tube on his I Pad!

I think that having her inside and letting her go naturally was helpful for the boys who could get a bit used to what was happening and were not shocked when she did die (though the three of us did stand there for quite some time staring at her, trying to decide whether she was breathing or not. It’s harder to tell than you’d think!).

Having pets has certainly brought another dimension to our lives and I do think the boys have gained from it. They have developed empathy, caring and the practical ability to look after something.

I could see us with a dog: I could see the boys would get a lot from one too. Only we just can’t get one. It’s a bad idea.

Little Bear LOVES dogs. I don’t think I’ve ever met a child who loves dogs quite as much as him. When he was smaller he would just run at them, whether he knew them or not and would be desperate to get his hands on them. We have had A LOT of chats about not knowing whether dogs are friendly or not and that you must ask their owner first before you can touch them. Little Bear has learned the rule well but it has not stopped him from gate-crashing stranger’s picnics to make a furry friend or trying to wrestle a lead from someone so he can walk their dog. Once, we were in the country park near to home and I happened to turn around just at the instant Little Bear had over exuberantly scooped up a Dachshund and was dangling it face first above the ground, the poor thing no doubt scared out of its wits. Another time we met a Chow Chow on the high street and within three seconds of being acquainted with it, Little Bear popped his hand in its mouth, probably as he was intrigued by its dark tongue. Dark tongue or no, you can’t go round sticking your hand into random dog’s mouths.

My brother has a dog. She is only about a year old, massive and EXTREMELY bouncy. She is a Tigger of a dog. She is very friendly and has no malice in her whatsoever. She never growls and loves the children. However, and it’s a big however, she has some issues with regulation. She basically can’t regulate herself and hence can be poor at listening, unruly and very, very excitable.

Before we go to see the dog, Little Bear and I always have a little chat. I remind him that if he runs and jumps at her, she will jump up at him. I remind him that if he wants her to be calm, he needs to be quiet and calm and move about slowly. Little Bear knows all this and can tell me the rules. I believe he has every intention of sticking to them.

When we arrive, the dog will be beside herself because some new people have appeared and not only that but some of them are tiny people and that’s way more exciting. Her tail will be wagging with such vigour that she’s knocking things over and she will be being held by her grown-ups to stop her from jumping at everyone’s faces. As she is considerably bigger than Little Bear on her hind legs there is a very real possibility that she will knock him flying. Little Bear doesn’t mind one jot and is just as keen to get to her. What usually ensues is a tangle of human and dog, lots of licks and possibly an accidental scratch.

Already, Little Bear has forgotten the rules. Then mayhem breaks out. The more times the dog licks him or stands on him or knocks him over, the more excited Little Bear gets. The more excited and loud and fast Little Bear gets, the more excited the dog gets so the more she leaps about like a lamb and the more Little Bear laughs and falls over, the more the dog tries to bury under him and the more it tickles and the more he laughs. The dog and the boy reach fever pitch within the first 5 minutes of meeting each other.

Now, if that lasted for half an hour and then everybody calmed down I could deal with it. But it doesn’t. You wouldn’t think it humanly possibly but Little Bear at least, remains at fever pitch the entire time he is with the dog. We once managed 24 whole hours at my brother’s house before Grizzly and I couldn’t bear the dysregulation any longer. People say, “but they’d get used to each other, they’d calm down after a bit” but they wouldn’t. Little Bear doesn’t get any calmer and Grizzly and I find it really hard because what everyone is seeing is Little Bear at his worst. He is completely out of control. He has lost his ability to listen and he cannot be controlled either by us or by himself. He is as dysregulated as he can get. It means that when we try to get everyone to sit quietly and watch TV or let the dog have a nap, Little Bear is not physically capable at that moment in time of leaving her alone or of being quiet or of sitting still. It means he seems very disobedient and is constantly told off.

Having written about Interoception recently, I do wonder if that is the root cause. I read that part of being under-responsive to interoceptive feedback is that you don’t know when you’re getting over-excited or when you need a break. Little Bear certainly doesn’t when he is with the dog and last time, he was absolutely exhausted when we got him home, having come down from his adrenaline-fuelled high.

Obviously if we did get a dog Little Bear would love it but you can see why it feels risky. We would do our research and get a calm breed but a puppy is a puppy and all will be excitable to some degree. We wouldn’t be able to rely on Little Bear sticking to any sort of rule about leaving the dog alone for five minutes or not playing with it roughly and I do wonder how on earth we’d be able to train it properly in those circumstances. The very worst outcome for Little Bear would be us getting a dog then having to send it back, something we are, for obvious reasons, keen to avoid.

It feels a little mean, saying our child can’t have the thing he would love most in the world but until his regulation is improved, it’s too risky. I know there is a lot written about the benefits of dogs for adopted children but I wondered whether anyone else experiences the issues we do?

I think we’ll stick to cats and hens for now. Easter is just around the corner, the perfect time to welcome some new chicks…

 

Birth Parents

It is letterbox time again, here at Bear HQ which has got me thinking about Little Bear’s birth parents, Sian and Joseph. I have to confess that I am feeling quite discombobulated about the whole thing. I am confused about how I feel about them, how I should feel about them and what I should do going forwards. Brace yourselves readers while I blog it out.

So, last year’s Letterbox was, in my opinion, a bit of a cock up. You can read about it here: Letterbox Update In short, I suspect that the letter I wrote languished upon a disorganised Social Worker’s desk for the best part of 7 months before even an attempt was made to get it to its rightful destination. At the time I was upset about it because I felt it wasn’t fair for Sian and Joseph. If I was them and the only contact I had with the child I had given birth to was an annual letter, I would really want my letter. I would want it when I knew it was due. No doubt they drew all sorts of conclusions as to why we hadn’t bothered to send it.

Sian and Joseph didn’t reply to the letter, which I felt was a bit strange as they both attended court and showed signs of wanting to do the best they could in the current circumstances for Little Bear. Several months after his birthday we did receive some birthday cards from them (which no doubt had been sent at the right time but had also languished in the mountainous pile of paperwork on the desk). In the card Sian had written that she was sorry for not replying to our letter, she just didn’t have the words.

I felt sad once again reading that statement. Of course she doesn’t have the words, she is probably heart-broken; she is potentially never going to see her youngest child again. For me, rightly or wrongly, that sentence says “help me”. It says, “I have no idea how to go about writing this letter, though I do really want to”. And, if as I suspect, Sian also has speech and language difficulties like Little Bear, not only will she be struggling metaphorically to find the words but literally too.

In order to try to right the wrongs of last year and get us back on track this year, I contacted said disorganised Social Worker before our Letterbox was due. I suggested (again) that Sian and Joseph might need some help with Letterbox. I also asked how they are and how Little Bear’s birth siblings are.

Now this is where things get murky and I get very confused. I know that they can’t tell us much about how things are as it would be a breach of confidentiality. Obviously I am not asking them to do that. I am not asking for Joseph and Sian’s place of employment, inside leg measurement or bank details. All I really want to know is are they vaguely ok? Are they dead? Are they in prison? Are they homeless? Are they rampaging around the country trying to locate Little Bear? I just feel that it would be useful, as an adopter, to have a vague sense of whether they are functioning in their lives or not. I would also like to know whether they pose any danger to Little Bear or us or not. I have no real sense of this due to the paucity of information in my possession.

I suppose I have half an eye on the future, when Little Bear might decide he wants to track them down. I need a sense of who exactly these people are. They could make attempts to find him before then. But would they? I have literally no idea.

Anyway, so I posed the ‘how are they?’ question. The Social Worker (who gives Social Workers in general a bad name) initially ignored my question. I had asked it on the phone several months ago and now again by e-mail. She eventually did respond to my e-mail but not the part about Sian and Joseph. So I asked again. This time she said that she was going to ask their Social Worker to contact them to ask if they can share more information with us. This was not what I envisaged happening.

If I were them I might well tell Social Services to F off. It makes us seem like really nosy so and sos and they must wonder what on earth we want to know and why. It also makes me wonder if what I am asking for is out of the ordinary. Am I living in some sort of dream world where I don’t actually need to know this information? A basic, “yes they’re fine, nothing has really changed” or “they are having a difficult time at the moment” or “I don’t think they’ve really accepted the adoption” or “they seem to have moved on with their lives” would have sufficed.

I can’t help thinking that I’ve annoyed said Social Worker with my persistent questions and that she is being purposefully obstructive. I definitely think that Social Services would have much preferred it if we had just adopted a child from their LA care and run off into the sunset, never to bother them again.

Not able to keep my mouth shut, I also persevered on the point about supporting Sian and Joseph with Letterbox. Apparently if they want some support they can come to the Post Adoption Support Team and ask for it. I find the idea of them actually doing that completely unrealistic. Why would they come, cap in hand, to the very people who removed their children, to ask for help? Surely the days of them feeling that Social Services can help them are long gone? I have been living a delusional fantasy that there might be some sort of follow up or after-care for people who have lost their children. Surely it would be more beneficial for society to try to support birth parents, help them to grieve, help them with moving on whilst trying to keep them on the straight and narrow? Surely losing your children is a big precipitating factor for other issues such as mental health difficulties or drug or alcohol addiction?

However, recent thinking has left me reflective. Evidently my utopian view of social work is unrealistic in the context of austerity and cuts to services. I don’t suppose social workers do have time to be keeping track of where birth parents have got to and what they are up to at the moment. I guess they do have to prioritise families that still have children in them. And the question that burns most on my lips: why am I taking the birth parents side in all this anyway?

I think that had Sian and Joseph physically or sexually abused Little Bear I would be a lot clearer on my feelings towards them. I wouldn’t have the same sense of loyalty and I certainly wouldn’t feel sorry for them. I don’t mean to belittle the neglect that they did inflict on Little Bear, because I know only too well the long term and pernicious consequences of it. However, I do think it is possible to unknowingly or accidentally neglect someone in a way that you certainly couldn’t accidentally sexually abuse someone. It is not Sian’s fault that she herself had a shitty upbringing and is not equipped with the skills to parent. I keep coming back to the fact that it is a very unfortunate set of circumstances and foolishly or not, I do feel sorry for them. I feel a perverse moral duty to do the right thing by them, despite the fact that they have caused my son’s developmental trauma.

I suppose, on a human level, I know they must be suffering and I don’t want that for anyone. And also, despite anything that happens, we are already inextricably linked by the fact that their son is our son.

I do wonder whether I might not have such a rose-tinted view if I was furnished with a little bit more information though. After all, people do not have their children removed from their care for just a little bit of carelessness.

The thing is where do we go now? We have always said that we would be open to the idea of meeting Sian and Joseph but if we can’t even get Letterbox sorted it is hard to see how we might be able to work towards that. Is my pro-active (if perfect world) approach to the Social Worker causing us more problems? Is her communication with Sian and Joseph impacting on their opinion and willingness to work with us? Are we ever going to move forwards?

I’m starting to think that I’m wasting my energy. Perhaps I should just send our Letterbox contribution off into the deep blue yonder and think no more about it?

This is about Little Bear though. What is best for him? That is the crux of my thinking and is so difficult to answer because I just don’t think I have enough information to say. At the very least I want to be able to tell him that we tried and, to the consternation of a certain social worker, I can honestly say that we have.

In the unlikely event that we ever get an answer to our questions I will let you know.

 

*Please don’t think that my rant-y-ness over this Social Worker indicates any sort of anti-social work stance. I know many fabulous ones and we have been extremely well supported at this end. I am just particularly irked by this one.