This Year, Last Year

One of the many benefits of blogging for me is that it keeps a record of how things have been for us at different points in the year. Now that I am in my third year (how did that happen?) there is quite a lot to look back on and patterns are starting to emerge. This time last year I wrote Sometimes it’s hard and you can tell from the title alone that we were having a tricky patch. This year we are also having a tricky patch. It is particularly noticeable because the first chunk of 2018 has probably been the calmest and most settled time we’ve had yet as a family of four and the contrast with Little Bear’s current behaviour is pretty stark. It is obvious from the timings and recurrence that Transition is the culprit.

Having a record of last year has allowed me to consider what has changed, both in terms of Little Bear himself and also our ability to cope with the tricky patch.

Last year I got called to speak with the Judo teacher because Little Bear had punched somebody. This year, he wanted to do the course again and I signed him up. The first two sessions were fine but on the third session, when Little Bear’s transition wobble was going full-throttle, he didn’t go. I was in the playground to pick up his brother and instead of staying in school to go to Judo Little Bear came out to me. I reminded him it was judo but his little lip started to wobble and he said he didn’t want to go. He couldn’t tell me why so I went over to ask his teacher how his day had been. His PE teacher told me that Little Bear had been fine all afternoon but somebody had just said something to him in circle time that had upset him and it was as though he couldn’t handle any more and had just exploded. Ah. I was faced with the choice of making him go because we’d paid for it and when you make commitments, you have to stick to them and all that or just taking him home.

I just took him home. He couldn’t tell me in so many words but I felt as though he was trying to communicate that he just couldn’t cope with Judo that day. Perhaps if I had have sent him, he might have punched somebody again. Although he still isn’t able to say as much, this year he was self-aware enough to get himself out of the situation and I’m more tuned into what he can/cannot cope with.

Last year, the village fete was blooming hard work. Little Bear disappeared from view several times and I ended up having to make him hold my hand the whole time, despite him thinking it was a terrible idea. We had to leave early and I didn’t enjoy the experience one bit.

This year, instead of labouring under the false hope that I might have fun at the fete, I resigned myself to the fact that it was going to have its challenges. I spent the day before the fete on my own, doing what I fancied, ensuring my resilience bucket was as full as it could be. Consequently I approached the day with a different mind-set. When the challenges inevitably came, I was prepared for them and ready to react therapeutically. Little Bear coped pretty well this time; so long as I followed his lead and let him choose which activities we did. It was fun watching him in the teacups and smashing crockery. There were flashpoints. He told me he hated me several times and didn’t really follow any instructions but I knew going into it that he wasn’t in a good place emotionally and also that the event itself was on the challenging end of things for him so instead of getting exasperated with him, I was mostly able to lower the demands and empathise with the tricky bits.

Last year, when I received Little Bear’s report, I was a bit upset about it (see Reports). It wasn’t the fact he hadn’t met expectations that bothered me but that the way it was communicated felt negative. I was disappointed at the time that Little Bear’s amazing progress wasn’t really reflected by his report. This year, I had learned from last and anticipated the report being a bit of a damp squib. Little Bear still has a row of red lights but I feel very differently.

I suspect that last year I was at a bit of a low ebb. The fact that we were in a tricky patch was getting on top of me and I wasn’t as tuned into self-care and how to make it work for me as I am now. This year I have been able to mentally set aside the negative reporting and listen to the words coming out of his teacher’s mouth. Little Bear has continued to do amazingly, especially considering the School Worries we had earlier in the year. His teacher tells me he is agonisingly close to expected levels now. He was just 4 marks away from passing the Year 1 phonics screen and it is mainly the fact he struggles to work independently that prevents her saying he is at the expected levels. He can meet many of the requirements if he has a trusted adult by his side to provide reassurance and focus. Genuinely, I’m not bothered by the levels. The fact that we are talking about him nearing them and having moved out of the lower group he was working in because he has overtaken those children is frankly incredible. To go from being over 2 and half years behind in everything on starting pre-school to almost catching up at the end of year 1 is truly remarkable and there is absolutely nothing about that to be sad about.

Last year I ended up taking both boys to the drop-in parents evening to discuss reports. I vowed at the time never to do that again, due to Little Bear’s rather out of control behaviour at it and I haven’t. This year I ensured I had help with the boys and went on my own. Last year I had somehow felt blamed for Little Bear’s behaviour and went away feeling quite misunderstood as a parent (who was trying her best and working her socks off yet nobody seemed to think so). This year, when I stood talking with Little Bear’s teacher about all he has achieved I felt very different. Somehow, despite a fair few challenges, meetings and not always seeing eye to eye, his teacher and I have managed to develop a really solid and friendly working relationship. I have a lot of respect for her and the fact she has got to know Little Bear so well and is so tuned in to helping him. She has been willing to listen to us and include us as part of the team and that has been crucial in making me feel better. I know that she values our input as parents and respects our knowledge/approaches, both through including us as she has and directly through the things she says. It has been lovely to get that affirmation (the feeling is mutual) though it makes me a little anxious to leave her. I can only hope that the next teacher will continue where she has left off.

As we navigate this tricky period, I can still see Little Bear’s progress, despite the regression we are currently in. The behaviour is as challenging and my therapeutic parenting skills as challenged but there is certainly more insight on all sides. We have been able to identify that this is a tricky phase quickly and have known what to do to ease it, even if that means more TV dinners, compromising on routines and shutting our ears to name calling. Little Bear has been able to point us in the right direction some of the time and talk a little about his fears with moving on. Slowly, slowly.

Writing this I do think the biggest change over the past 12 months is our ability to handle the tricky bits – to make space in our lives and brains to accommodate them and to care for ourselves well enough so that we can ride them out with patience and care. Having had a good spell and now not such a good spell, I look back to the times that were just one massive tricky spell with no let up and I wonder how on earth we managed it. It’s no wonder I lost my temper now and again.

These days I reward myself for staying calm – a TV programme I like here, five minutes sitting in the sun there, a spot of comfort-shopping here. It really helps. It also helps to know it is just a phase and hopefully, soon enough, the gorgeous little dude will be back to his usual self.

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Regression

“Get off me” he says, shrugging away from my touch, his body becoming stiff and unyielding. I’m struggling to engage with him in any meaningful way. He’s either zoned out on the IPad or running around slightly manically outside. His concentration span is pretty much zero and despite trying, I can’t get him to sit down and play with anything. He is wetting several times per day. Meal times are equally as challenging. He is struggling to stay seated for more than a minute or two and unless the food is spooned into his mouth he won’t eat. There is little to no conversation; my attempts are met with noises or just ignored. It is hard to find the bond between us. Last night, at bedtime, he looked into my eyes and pinched my face as hard as he could. This evening, before tea, he refused to follow any instructions and when we insisted, there was a punch. He would not sit at the table and when physically stopped from climbing on the back of the bench and pulling on the radio, he said we had hurt him. An angry face, a tense body, a fist raised in threat. A darkness; a distance.

 

“I love you forever” he says, snuggling closer, pulling my arm tighter round him. We sit for a long time, watching the film. Occasionally he leans his cheek against mine or shifts his position a bit so we can cuddle more comfortably. He jumps up. “Pause it Mum” he says, “I need a wee”. We chat about the film and what we might do later. We joke and he laughs a lot. His laugh makes me laugh. At teatime he feeds himself. The next day we go for a bike ride. He rides on the road for some of it and listens to every single instruction given, including ‘turn left’ or ‘turn right’. When we say ‘stop’, he stops. It’s a fairly high risk activity and we trust him to do it sensibly. We have a lovely time. When we get back, he changes his clothes as he’s asked and we sit down to play a building game. We imagine, we build, we chat. We have fun. As I’m getting tea ready, he plays with Grizzly. They play a game with challenges in it – he writes words down, he does simple number puzzles – in between throwing a ball about. There is a lot of laughter. Relaxed body, happy face, relaxed atmosphere. A warmth; a closeness; an enjoyment in being together.

 

It sounds like a description of two different children, but it isn’t. They are both Little Bear. You’d be forgiven for thinking they were two different people though, even in the flesh, the contrast being as stark as it is. The first paragraph is a presentation of Little Bear during a regression, the second how he presents normally. I would say the child I’m describing in the second paragraph is with us the majority of the time, upwards of 80% of the time. But the child in the first paragraph does appear sometimes, usually quite out of the blue. It can be a bit shocking when that happens because we are so accustomed to the second presentation that we almost forget that the first one is a possibility. On the other side of the coin, when we are in a regression, it can be hard to imagine how we will get back to the second paragraph. Is that even possible? Have we imagined that life is usually like that? Where has the close bond with our lovely little boy gone? And most concerning, how is it possible to feel this distant from your own child? What does it mean for the future? As well as several other concerns that can easily spiral from there.

I know from experience that there is no need to be quite that dramatic because we have consistently passed through regressions and back to paragraph two on countless occasions. However, when you are in it and it’s happening, it can be pretty wearing. It can be easy to doubt what you are doing and your ability to navigate the challenges in the best possible way. At those points I generally have to remind myself that although we no longer know the child in the first paragraph very well, we did used to. It was the child in paragraph one who moved in two and a bit years ago and he was the child we lived with day in day out for months and months while he slowly flourished into the child in paragraph two. We do know what to do. We can reach him, despite him seeming unreachable at points.

The regression I’ve described above is quite a severe one by current standards. Usually we can hover about somewhere in a grey area between the two descriptions. It could just be that Little Bear really struggles with toileting for a while or we have a phase of needing to feed him or he loses the ability to sit and read to us. Sometimes it is several of those things and before Christmas it was all of the things, exactly as I have described.

We are versed enough in Little Bear’s behaviour that we can identify a regression pretty quickly now. We also know that something will have triggered it but as I wrote about in Adoptive Parent: Behaviour Detective it can be extremely difficult to figure out what the cause is. The behaviour described above was present for three or four days, getting progressively worse, after we returned from Lapland. I had blogged last week about our trip to Lapland in A Magical Adventure? and was starting to feel stupid that I had been so positive about it when actually the fallout was just happening afterwards. I remembered about when we had A Mini Crisis and Little Bear had seemed completely fine at the time but had spent the rest of the weekend at melting point. Come to think of it, he is pretty good at adapting to situations when they happen but can become discombobulated afterwards. Had Lapland been too much?

Grizzly and I had a chat, as we always do when things seem to be going awry. Could it be Lapland? Could it be the change to routine of the holidays? Could he still be feeling unwell? What could it be and what would we do?

The problem was solved surprisingly quickly for us on the very next morning by Little Bear himself. It was Christmas Day and of course Santa had been and left full stockings. Little Bear wandered into our bedroom, stocking in hand, with a massive grin on his face and none of the darkness of the previous evening. “I didn’t think Santa would come to me but he did” he beamed and just like that, the gorgeous little man from paragraph two was back (and has stayed).

Whilst I was obviously relieved, my heart did break a little. What had made him think Santa wouldn’t come to him? I know it’s obvious. I know all about how difficult Christmas is for children who have had adverse life experiences; for children who fear they are too bad to warrant gifts. I just hadn’t anticipated it for Little Bear because we have had two previous Christmases with him, which he has coped exceptionally well with. It sounds a little ridiculous now, but he hadn’t said anything. He hadn’t given any indication that he was worried about Santa. He had shown us, through his behaviour and we did know there was something amiss but my detective skills had let me down somewhat.

We don’t do any of the Elf on the Shelf malarkey or in any way push the whole you only get presents if you are good thing but I suppose now that he’s at school and his comprehension skills are much improved, Little Bear is more affected by outside influences. Thinking about it, the big guy himself in Lapland had asked the boys if they had been good and I had cringed at the time (but drawn the line at correcting Actual Santa!).

Little Bear has such a complex tangle in his brain and evidently he still struggles to express his thoughts and fears with words. It is at these times that a regression tends to happen, or when he is poorly, and I guess for now, we will need to continue to ride them out, firm in the belief that we will return to paragraph two sooner or later. We have to remind ourselves to be patient, consistent and as nurturing as possible when the regression is happening. It is essential that we wonder and try to see the world through Little Bear’s eyes in order to possibly figure out what might be behind it. Realistically we need to accept that we won’t always be able to detect the trigger. We might never figure it out. It might not be something that can be consciously identified anyway. But we must ask the questions, and endeavour to stay in paragraph two, because regressions aren’t fun for anybody, least of all Little Bear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pretend I’m In Your Tummy, Mummy

Most children go through a phase of imaginative play when they are developing. They pretend, they act and they direct you to take your role in the game. They often play the same game over and over.

I can remember when Big Bear was about 3 or 4 he constantly wanted me to “make the man talk”. It was usually a Lego man and there would be some sort of scenario panning out in which I would be tasked with a specific role. Often he would tell me what words I should say and would be quick to correct me if I was getting it wrong. There was one particular game that involved a Lego man waiting on a platform for a train. Every time the train got to the station I would try to put my man on. “No” Big Bear would say, “Wait for the next one”. The next one would come and the same thing would happen. It was a game that required a lot of patience!

There was also a lot of dressing up pretending to be Batman or a fireman or a doctor. I think sometimes he pretended to be a cat.

This was Big Bear, still living with the family he was born into, following typical patterns of development.

Recently, I have discovered that this type of play with Little Bear is not quite the same. There are similarities but trauma has added an extra layer of complexity. This is a familiar conversation at the moment:

Little Bear: Pretend I’m in your tummy, Mummy

Me: Ok (cuddling him on my knee)

Me: Ooh, I wonder what my baby is going to look like. I can’t wait to meet them.

LB: I’m out now.

Me: Oh look, he’s gorgeous. Look at those eyes! He looks like a …Little Bear. I’ll call him Little Bear (In reality I say his actual name – I don’t really pretend he is a bear!) I’ll look after you and keep you safe forever.

If I don’t do the naming part he whispers to me “tell me I look like a Little Bear”.

LB: Pretend I’m a dog

Me: Have I just given birth to a dog?!

LB: Yes, you are a mummy dog

Me: Oh right

LB: No! You’re a dog! You can’t talk, you have to bark!

And so the confusing tale continues. Little Bear keeps replaying the part where I meet him for the first time. I don’t know if this is because I keep telling him how much I want him and how I’ll keep him safe forever in an attempt to be therapeutic or if in fact he keeps coming back to it because I haven’t yet said what he needs to hear. Your guess is as good as mine.

I think it is fairly obvious that the game has to do with seeking a sense of belonging, of claiming (and being claimed)* and is due to him wishing he had come out of my tummy as his brother did.

Interestingly there is another version of the game that involves me pretending he is a puppy who has got lost. I have to pretend I am following his footprints and discover him buried in a heap of snow. He pretends he is lost from his owner and that I rescue him, taking him home to warm up and have some food. Does this symbolise me back in my role as adoptive parent, I wonder? Coming in where someone else has left off? I’m intrigued that he would see that as a rescue.

Sometimes, once I have rescued him from the snow, he talks about his mum and dad coming in and finding him again. I always wonder if he means his birth parents but when I enquire who he means, he says Grizzly and me. By this stage I’m fully confused as to my role in the whole thing and whether I’m quite possibly just overthinking it.

Little Bear is definitely at the stage where fantasy and reality are fully entwined and he switches from one idea to another moment by moment. One minute I’m rescuing a puppy, the next he is a gorilla. On one occasion the baby I had given birth to was in fact an egg and I was a hen. It’s pretty difficult to keep up. I suspect the games are an amalgam of several ideas floating around his head at any one time.

A couple of times, over recent days, the games have taken a darker turn. I rescue the cold puppy, who initially seems to want some love and cuddles but who then suddenly switches to wanting to bite me. This could just be the new version of the game but as I am permanently in analyse everything and look for hidden meanings mode, I can’t help but wonder if this is like reliving the early days of our adoption. We chose Little Bear, we were excited for our future with him but when he came home he hit, bit, scratched, kicked and threw things and was generally distressed. Little Bear was 3 and a half at the time and likely remembers it. Is he double-checking my response? Do I still want to rescue the puppy if it turns out to be aggressive? Will I still take it home and love it?

I know that I might be over-analysing but I am careful with my response just in case. “Don’t worry little puppy” I reassure, “I think you are a bit frightened at the moment. I think that might be why you tried to bite me. I won’t hurt you. You are safe”.

In the game, this seems to calm the puppy.

Little Bear has instigated similar games before; right from when he arrived he wanted me to pretend he was a baby. I would lay a large blanket out on the floor and he would lie in it and get me to swaddle him. I had to be careful in the early days because it was easy to cross an invisible line into ‘too much to deal with’ territory. He would let me coddle him a bit – stroke him and coo over him like a baby but often I would unwittingly overstep the ever moving mark and be rewarded with a bite or hit. It always felt like it happened when he had allowed himself to let go for a moment and then accidentally let me in a bit too much, so that it had felt emotionally weird or frightening and he needed to back off again.

It has changed over time. I have had to persevere despite the re-buffs and he has evidently slowly become more comfortable to the point where he seeks a lot of physical comfort now. I rarely feel that the line is even there.

I find it interesting that over two years in, these acted games still feature and new ones are still appearing. I wonder if he wanted to play these recent ones before but his language skills wouldn’t allow him. Or whether he is only now reaching the appropriate developmental level. Or whether it is because he has a better understanding of his life story now. Or whether he is still seeking something I am not giving…

When I used to make the man talk for Big Bear I didn’t have all these extra things to think about. It really was about a pretend man getting onto (or at least trying to get on to) a pretend train. No hidden meanings. Little Bear’s play, on the other hand, is laced with them.

I am probably different too though – far more aware that there might be hidden meanings and far more attuned to looking for them.

What I want Little Bear to realise is that it doesn’t matter to me whose tummy he grew in, I love him just the same. But I guess they are only words to him; he needs to truly believe it and feel it within himself.

I guess we will be pretending he is in my tummy for a while longer yet.

 

*There is definitely a claiming element to it, not just biology, as Little Bear has also pretended to be in Big Bear’s tummy. Big Bear, being Big Bear, took it fully in his stride and ‘gave birth’ to Little Bear on the kitchen bench (!), before rocking him on his knee, cradled like a baby. I have no idea how an 8 year old came to be so instinctively therapeutic but he’s a natural.

** I’m very lucky to have two such lovely boys.