Each Other

I have written previously about the need to look after ourselves when parenting a child with SEMH, or trauma and attachment needs ( Self-kindness, Self-Care, Parental Mental Health) . Recently, on a much needed date with my husband, I realised I’ve written little about the need to also look after your relationship.

Modern life is pretty challenging. It’s busy, people work hard, hours are long and the bombardment from e-mail and social media is constant. Long-term relationships are tricky enough within the context of passing like ships in the night, or when one or both of you are glued to a screen, without the additional challenges brought to the table by a small person constantly screaming your names at the top of their capacious lungs. Sometimes, it all just gets a bit much.

I think within a stressful life (late home/work pressure/deadlines/personnel challenges/financial concerns etc. etc.), it is all too easy to turn tensions inwards – to become tetchy or short with your partner; to not give them the time to offload their stresses; to consider your path difficult enough without whatever they have going on too. Add into that mix the usual concerns about running a home, running cars, remembering birthdays, booking holidays etc. and things can start to fray. Add the parenting of any child into the mix and there is immediately a whole other layer of logistics, concern and juggling. When the parenting of any of the children is relentless, difficult, keep-you-up-at-night-worrying, unremitting in its challenge to your emotions; you can quickly approach the ledge between stress and the end of your tether.

Now, some people are not doing this crazy parenting thing from within a relationship. Some are doing it alone, and as usual, I salute them. I’m sorry, if that’s you, this post won’t really be relevant, by my goodness I do take my hat off to you.

I wrote – a long time ago now – about My partner in adoption . And I fully stand by what I said. Grizzly really is a crucial cog in the survival of this machine. He is often not here for weekday bedtimes and sometimes he goes away for a couple of days at a time. He’s often out the house for longer than twelve hours and obviously he can’t be at home every day of school holidays. But those things don’t really matter, because if I Whatsapp him to say I’m being driven insane or one of them has done X or I’ve been called into school again because of such and such a thing or one of them is fully doing my head in or one of them did x AGAIN and I honestly can’t understand what possessed them, he will unconditionally understand. I can say far worse. I can voice the deepest, darkest, most unpalatable thoughts I might have about parenting at any given time and he will not judge me. The things you can’t say out loud, to anyone, I can say to him. And him to me.

I can’t really overstate the importance of that in maintaining ones sanity.

Despite his hefty workload, Grizzly does school-drops offs and pick-ups where he can. He prioritises school meetings. He is more than happy to take the kids off my hands at a weekend to give me a break. He doesn’t necessarily wait for me to ask – sometimes he’ll say I Iook tired before spiriting them off somewhere. He’s a good egg.

Earlier in our parenting career, I’m not sure we had that many breaks. BB was a terrible sleeper which made it difficult, then LB struggled to be left/ made life for whoever was looking after him very difficult and consequently we felt a weighty guilt about escaping.

More recently, I think my attitude has changed. I’ve come to realise that aspects of our parenting life are arduous and unrelenting and anyone would get tired. I’ve written before about how self-care and self-kindness are important, not just for your own wellbeing but because they inadvertently make you a better parent too. When you’re worn down and shattered, you haven’t the same resilience to deal with difficult behaviours, or to be calm no matter what, or as therapeutic as you’d like. Keeping yourself topped up makes sense for all involved. And now I’m given to thinking that your relationship deserves that TLC as well.

I don’t want the long hours and the daily irritations to erode our relationship. I don’t want those issues to turn inwards because we’re too tired or too stretched or too distracted. This family requires a well-oiled parenting team to function the best it can. Perhaps I mean it deserves one. Either way, it does mean that Grizzly and I need to ring-fence regular time that is just for us.

I think you don’t always realise you aren’t connecting the best you can until you go out, have fun, relax, and remember what your relationship was all about in the first place. We’re pretty good at keeping the lines of communication open in our daily lives, but inevitably, when everyone is tired after a long day, no one is particularly keen to discuss the relative merits of this home-improvement project over another or how big birthdays almost a year away should be celebrated or to go into anything but necessary detail. It is only when we go away and are not rushing back for pick-ups that these conversations tend to happen.

Not only that, but although our family time is fun and raucous and a little crazy, I probably wouldn’t describe it as relaxing. There is very rarely a moments’ peace. Any adult chat is constantly interrupted by an urgent, loud, attachment-needing voice. Even if we are engaged in something supposedly fun, like a game, we still need to heavily manage the situation to make sure everybody copes. Which does tend to reduce the fun element. We both find early mornings quite intense, woken as we are most days by the heart-rate raising noises of dysregulation and potential imminent meltdown.

One night away every couple of months is a surprisingly welcome balm. Fun can be had without worrying how others will cope. Conversations go uninterrupted. Meals can be long and relaxed. We don’t even drink. It is not as though we want a night on the tiles and a child-free hangover. It is just so refreshing to have a little space to be us.

We haven’t been as good as we should have been about booking such things in – it is another thing to add to the long old to-do list after all – but as we are just back from a mini-break, I have renewed enthusiasm for making it happen. Not just because it’s lovely but because I can finally see the necessity of it. I used to feel tremendous guilt for leaving the children, even for a short time, as though I were shirking my responsibilities. I also worried about the grandparents, who could be having a testing time. But now, I see that we need it. I need it, Grizzly needs it and as a parenting-team, we need it. The children didn’t even miss us this time, so I suspect they needed it too. We forget that the getting fed up of each other thing works both ways – a night with grandparents in charge is probably a lot more fun than usual.

We have happened on an ideal scenario for minimising fallout too. We now take the children to school on a Thursday, then go off on our travels, returning for Friday pick-up. This way, grandparents are only on duty for an evening and overnight and can lie down with a cup of tea at 8:45 am the next morning if they feel the need, duties already complete. I think it gives us longer than the brisk 24 hours we’d allow ourselves on a weekend and the children don’t notice we’re gone in the same way, as we’re here for Saturday and Sunday. It works for us, anyway.

Now to get the next one in the diary. I’m finding that having something to look forward to helps with trickier days too.

 

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Parental Mental Health

Thursday 10^th October is World Mental Health Day – a chance for everyone to focus on mental wellness, ways to support mental health difficulties and suicide prevention. I wanted to contribute by writing about a niche, slightly neglected corner of mental health: how do you keep yourself well when you are caring for someone else with mental health struggles? Specifically, how do you keep yourself well when your child has social, emotional or mental health needs?

As a parent myself, of a child with SEMH needs, I am all too aware of the toll it can take. No doubt people will accuse me of selfishly focussing on myself and my own needs when it is my child who is in real turmoil, but to them, I say this: when you are parenting a child with such needs, there is barely a waking minute that passes without you puzzling over how they’re feeling, why they’re feeling like that, what you can do to make things easier for them. You can tie yourself in knots wondering how certain situations might affect them and what measures you can put in place to reduce their anxiety or make things easier. You rake over previous situations wondering what you could have done differently, what else they might have needed, what underlying worries or upsets might have been driving certain behaviours. You write social stories, make visual supports, meet with teachers, buy sensory equipment. You read books, blogs, articles to inform yourself; to check you haven’t missed anything. You consider them and their needs in every plan you make.

I’m not saying any praise or accolade is required for that – it isn’t, it’s just you doing your parenting best like everybody else – but it is all consuming and somewhat exhausting.

The very nature of SEMH difficulties means that children who experience them will now and again (or often) present with behaviour that is difficult for people around them. Again, that might sound selfish, but I just mean it factually. It’s the nature of the SEMH beast. And no matter how good you are at looking beyond it, analysing it, understanding it, trying to support it, the fact of the matter is that some of the behaviour you live with is difficult.

In trying to support my child in the best way for him, I sometimes have to dig so deep into my emotional reserve that I know I’ve gone beyond what is actually there. Sometimes the effort required not to rise to provocation, not to shout, not to fully (or even partially) lose my shit, not to enter my own fight/flight state and to instead respond therapeutically and calmly, feels like a superhuman request. I am not superhuman. But sometimes I feel I’ve plumbed superhuman depths and that can’t be good for you. I often feel depleted after particularly tricky situations and that is probably because I am. I’ve used everything I’ve got and more.

This is where concerning ourselves with parental mental health is absolutely not selfish and should be a priority for all. If I am depleted, how can I provide all the things my child needs? How can I analyse and look beyond and generate solutions? I can barely get off the sofa.

This is why caring for carers is absolutely something that should be talked about.

For me, there are three main safeguards: self-care, self-kindness and external support. I have written about self-care before ( Self-Care ) and I generally consider it to be all the boring stuff that you should do to look after yourself and stay well. That is just my personal interpretation – some people include all the self-kindness stuff in there too but in my mind there is a distinction. For me, self-care is things like eating properly (which isn’t fun because I don’t eat sugar or bad carbs like bread but I know that I stay healthier this way), getting enough sleep (despite being a natural night-owl), getting enough fresh air and exercise. I don’t necessarily enjoy self-care but it is all about things I’ve learned from experience that I need to do or not do in order to function the best I can.

Self-kindness  is much more fun. I view it as little treats to yourself that give you a boost and help to fill up your emotional reserves. It can be anything – sometimes the thought of getting into fresh pyjamas and watching Location, Location, Location is enough to help me through a day; at other times it’s some uninterrupted writing time, or being alone for a bit, or chatting to a friend, or now and again, I do need an actual treat.

Though self-kindness is more enjoyable and has the potential to vastly improve your mood quickly, I continue to struggle with allowing myself to have it. I can’t be the only one. We do seem to live in particularly trying times – with the threat of Brexit, political instability and, even more horrifyingly, climate change hanging over us. There is a general atmosphere of unrest and unpleasantness (just dip your toe into social media to see what I mean) and no doubt all these things are contributing to a country-wide dip in mental wellness. I can’t be the only one who thinks about using some retail therapy for self-kindness reasons then gets the guilt that I might be unwittingly ruining the planet. One purchase can lead to a spiralling concern about use of water to farm cotton, tonnes of clothes entering landfill and a general worry about human over-consumption. Whilst I clearly should be concerned about my carbon footprint (and I am), I am finding that my ways of practising self-kindness are dwindling in parallel.

I don’t drink, I don’t eat sugar, now I can’t really shop. But I’m still plumbing those emotional reserves and that need for a boost continues to gape. I suspect it is about turning away from having to have things and finding more wholesome ways of filling reserves. Writing is a salve, as is cutting myself enough slack to actually relax without constantly clambering around my to-do list. I’ve realised that buying books is pretty wholesome – even a hardback is a fraction of the price of a new top and unless we buy them, authors can’t make a living – so it’s a multi-faceted win (assuming it’s made from sustainably sourced paper. See? I have self-kindness with a side-scoop of guilt problems). Enid, our puppy, arrives soon and I’m hoping that her furry little face will be a salve in itself.

There are no clear answers, and what each individual needs will be different, but my point is that self-kindness is essential. We must let ourselves have it and find the things that work.

Lastly, parents of children with SEMH needs will require outside support in one form or another. It is too big and too hard to deal with single-handedly. Whenever Grizzly and I have one of our frank chats about how we’re feeling, it is never long before one of us wonders aloud how on earth single parents do it. If I couldn’t air my deepest darkest thoughts without needing to censor them or without fear of judgement, I suspect I would implode. Everybody needs that outlet.

We are lucky that outside of our family of four, we have a wider family of grandparents and aunties/uncles and close friends who get it. They are an informed bunch who listen and are willing to help with the analysing of behaviour and application of strategies as needed. They are happy to give us a break. I’m not sure we take that option enough, because life is a little manic and it requires forward-thinking, but it helps to know the option is there. We are also fortunate enough to have the support of school. I had a meeting with them recently and realised that despite the myriad ups and downs we’ve had with them (and the odd specific person I find it hard to engage with) they are genuinely caring and they do want us all to be ok. I feel comfortable speaking honestly with them too and just that ability to voice your worries and challenges outside of your four walls is invaluable.

Unfortunately, not all parents of children with SEMH needs have this emotional scaffold around them and I can only imagine how lonely a place that is. It must be particularly hard for those who don’t know others in similar positions – there is a very real risk they would consider themselves the only ones in their particular predicament, further compounding worries and stresses over whether they or their parenting may be to blame.

I hope that by being open about the challenges of SEMH parenting it will reassure other parents they are certainly not alone as well as raising awareness for any wider family members or professionals working with such families. For me, the key thing is to ask parents if they’re ok and to give them the time to talk if they are not. Be prepared for tears. Most of the time, it is just an outlet that’s needed, not necessarily a raft of solutions, because those parents are likely to have already tried most things you can think of.

Families of children with SEMH difficulties will have found themselves in all manner of weird and not-so-wonderful situations – please don’t judge them. It is safe arenas in which they can be honest that they so desperately need.

Parents can be made to feel guilty for talking openly about their worries and challenges – as though they are in some way disloyal to their child in doing so – however the real risk of encouraging them to put up and shut-up is that it might well push them to breaking point; a point at which they are no longer able to adequately meet their child’s needs.

As a parent, it is scary to admit that things are hard and that scenarios are arising where you don’t know what to do. Parents already fear they are failing, they do not need their suspicions to be compounded by bad listeners, naysayers and judgmental attitudes. Unless you have over-plumbed your emotional depths caring for someone, you cannot begin to imagine what it’s like.

Actually, I think there is a fourth thing that is needed, as well as self-care, self-kindness and support: niceness. It seems like an outmoded concept these days – it’s faded into obscurity along with other seemingly bland concepts such as beige clothing and magnolia paint. But I really miss it. I think we’re all unknowingly really missing it. Politicians could do with re-inventing it for sure. Since when did it become normal to shout and yell and name-call and judge and troll and alienate and oppose and incite? Just be nice. That would improve everyone’s mental health. Some kind words, a smile, a hug or an “I hear you” can go a long way to improving a day.

Let’s look after one another; we’re all just trying our best.

 

Self-kindness

I’m sitting here, a la Carrie Bradshaw, nibbling the end of a pencil and staring whimsically out of the window. Well, at the shelves above my desk anyway. This is not going to be one of those factually-correct-I-read-a-book-first kind of blog posts. This is going to be one where you have to try to follow me on a wandering journey of my deepest thoughts. Let’s hope it all makes sense once I’ve blurted it onto the page.

I wrote a blog, a while ago now, about Self-Care . I was saying how I was quite late to the concept, having previously been something of a sceptic, but was now fully bought in and getting better at meeting my own self-care needs. Since then, I’ve become further tuned-in and I’m not bad at it really. I’m certainly losing my shit less, so something must be working.

More recently, having had a fairly trying start to 2019, I’ve been pondering the idea that maybe self-care is not enough. I know, controversial.

The topics of my blog posts are pretty revealing as to how things are with us. This is how 2019 has gone so far: Conversations (about the time the Ed Psych was so bad he gave me a Migraine); Childhood Challenging, Violent & Aggressive Behaviour (CCVAB) ; Promises, Promises (as in Little Bear couldn’t keep them); Holi-yay or Holi-nay? (about the unforgettable trip to Finland when we all became ill and I spent three days trapped in a cabin) and then Demand Avoidance . Just a few little challenges during the first quarter.

Now, I need to make it clear that I am not suggesting my life is in some way harder than anyone else’s or that I need anyone to feel sorry for me, because clearly neither is true and I’m really not down with competing about one’s stresses: we’re all in this crazy life thing together. I have to refer to myself and my own experience to illustrate my points though, because I just don’t know anyone else’s inner cogitations quite so intimately as my own. I have a very nice life and am indeed very lucky in many ways, so this is not whatsoever about complaining.

Still, the facts are the facts, and there are points in all of our lives when we feel a little challenged in one way or another.

As we’ve established, it is essential to care for oneself all the time, but particularly at these challenging times, so that we are physically and emotionally well enough to deal with them. I’m cool with that. It’s just that sometimes, self-care can be more of a chore than a joy.

At the moment, I’m doing an elimination diet and it’s pretty hard-core. The reasons for me doing it are health and wellness-based and therefore put a nice juicy tick in the self-care box. One has to try to keep oneself physically well – I think that’s a generally agreed upon wisdom. All good. Well, sort of.

I was already a teetotal vegetarian. That is quite a lot of abstinence already, but nothing I found hard. Add to the banned list: sugar of any kind, fruit, gluten, yeast and anything fermented, and things suddenly step up a few gears. I spent the first days wandering around wailing there was literally nothing I could eat. As long as it contains a vegetable, I’m pretty much sorted with my options now and it is do-able day to day.

However, say I have the kind of day where Little Bear won’t do anything I ask him or I have a difficult meeting or the travel company refuse to compensate us properly, where is the chocolate? There isn’t any, I can’t have it. Ditto a takeaway or a large bowl of pasta. I’ve realised that, like many people I think, I used food as a way of showering myself with a little extra kindness. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that ordinarily because there are days when we need that something to ease the stress; that way of soothing ourselves or giving ourselves a little pat on the back for having survived.

If I can’t do that with chocolate – which I won’t because I’m stubborn and there is no point in undoing all my hard work – how can I?

I suspect my second go-to vice is shopping. Again, I think a bit of that is ok. A pretty top or a new pair of Doc Martens really can go a long way to lifting a mood, I find. However, there are obvious drawbacks – bankruptcy – and, like chocolate, shopping can often come with a side-scoop of guilt. Did I actually need that item? How will I fit it in my already bulging wardrobe? What about the environmental impact? Have I contributed to the premature demise of the planet? That type of thing.

All this considering of alternative methods of treating myself – because I do think we all have a need for it – has got me analysing how I treat myself in general and to be honest, it’s a bit weird. I’ve discovered that I’m quite strict with myself. For example, I have a sizeable to-read pile and a few bits of crafts and a half-finished painting knocking about the house, but it is rare that I allow myself to engage with those things. I’m quite hung up on wasting time and seem to be clear in my unconscious thinking about which activities are a good use of time and which are more wasteful. I seem to have inadvertently fenced relaxing activities such as reading/drawing/crafting into the time-wasting field, which when I think about it consciously, I don’t agree with. However, I find myself telling me that I can’t do x or y fun/relaxing thing until I’ve achieved certain ‘useful’ things from my to-do list.

To some extent this is just good time management. I work on my own, at home, and am trying to break into a very competitive career (writing). I can’t just relax all day because nothing would ever get done. However, as is becoming more apparent as I write, I’m pretty self-disciplined and conscientious so in all likelihood, shizzle will get done. And when I’m asking these things of myself – to submit my manuscript here or there or write this or that piece – I’m not taking into account the other things I’ve done already. It’s as though I mentally wipe-out having done the washing/ the shopping/ the morning routine (which can be pretty challenging)/the school run (which can be very challenging)/ the meeting/ the organising. I’m not counting these things as useful, despite them being essential, and my to-do list is full of other things that aren’t those things.

That’s a bit weird. Though I doubt I’m alone.

My friend pointed out to me that in my weird mental token system of making myself earn the nice activities, I’m not allocating myself any tokens for tricky things like a difficult school run. Why not, she asked? Err… I don’t know. It was obvious when she said it, that there would be absolutely nothing wrong with coming home from a tricky drop-off and reading a book or watching an episode of something and having a cup of tea. In fact, it would probably be a welcome act of self-kindness. I never do it though, mentally shelving the drop-off debacle and getting straight to the to-do list.

I’m glad she pointed it out because now I’m more aware of it and now I can’t eat chocolate and I might break the bank if I do too much more shopping, these are the sorts of ways I can show myself some kindness.

I’ve been consciously practising it over the past week or so and it’s been enlightening. I’ve found myself shivering but not getting myself a cardigan or pair of socks. Why? I am allowed to be warm. I’ve found myself thinking it might be nice to lie down for a minute but staying resolutely upright. Why? Other people would just lie down – try it. I’ve tried it. I even had a power nap in the sun one day. It was just as lovely as it sounds. Grizzly was extremely shocked at my behaviour which just goes to illustrate how unlikely it was to happen before.

Instead of walking past my to-read pile, or thinking how nice it would be to read a book one time, or delaying my enjoyment by faffing about on Twitter (why?), I have been actually just reading the books. It isn’t rocket science, I know, but it has required a consciousness (or permission?) on my part that I evidently wasn’t employing before. Ditto, doing some drawing. Instead of thinking it would be nice to braid my hair one nebulous day in the future, I just did it.

I wonder if I have been considering these things selfish previously, but the more I consider them, within the context of my life, the more I realise they don’t negatively impact anybody when I do them but they do negatively impact me when I don’t. If I am harbouring resentment that I don’t get to do the things I enjoy (even though the only person preventing me is me), surely that impacts upon my happiness in a wider sense? If I’m not as cheerful as I can be, that isn’t great for my friends and family.

I have to confess that my little self-kindness experiment has been very enjoyable and there is undoubtedly an extra spring in my step that wasn’t there before. I can wholeheartedly recommend being a little nicer to yourself. And it’s good to know that I can still treat myself without a grain of sugar or spending a penny.

Life is short. Get the things done, move the career on, don’t wait for tomorrow or the next day. But in so doing, don’t skip the bits you enjoy. You deserve enjoyment and happiness just as much as anybody else.

 

 

 

Demand Avoidance

I have been pondering this blog for a while and, ironically, avoiding it. There are a few reasons why: it requires research which takes time; I may have had more than my fill, of late, of demand avoidance and I’m not sure how kind it is to myself to spend even more time thinking and writing about it. But hey ho, here I am writing about it because there’s no time like the present and it will, at least, feel current and relevant.

I thought this would end up as a compare and contrast between PDA – Pathological Demand Avoidance – and demand avoidance as part of an attachment profile and potentially some mention of ODD (Oppositional Defiance Disorder), with me arguing that although Little Bear is pretty demand avoidant, I don’t believe he has PDA. However, after reviewing the literature, I feel comfortable to say that PDA and demand avoidance with a trauma history are different conditions and I do think this is acknowledged by some knowledgeable professionals, even if not widely (See this piece of research PDA and differential diagnosis ). I should point out that PDA is not officially recognised as a condition in the DSM or ICD diagnostic manuals but there is a growing belief that it does accurately describe the needs of a specific group of individuals (See PDA Society for more info).

Assuming it does exist, I think what would be really useful would be a Coventry Grid type document (comes up on Google if you are interested)  that drew out the differences between demand avoidance in PDA versus demand avoidance in a trauma background. The difficulty is that this is extremely difficult to draw out. One key factors seem to be the case history – are there trauma/neglect/attachment issues in a child’s background or not? Parents of children who match the diagnosis of PDA are rightly worried about it being branded an attachment disorder because there is a direct insinuation that they have neglected or abused their children. I can see how this could be problematic. However, I do think that where there is identified trauma in a child’s background, such as in Little Bear’s, this should immediately bring into question a diagnosis of PDA. Similarly, I would also say that trauma in a child’s background should bring into question an Autism diagnosis. I’m not saying that an adopted child couldn’t have PDA or Autism: a small percentage could. However, I am saying that where there is trauma in a child’s background, the impact of this should be considered first and foremost.

The second key factor appears to be whether a child who is demand avoidant matches the criteria for Autism. If they do, they are more likely to fit the PDA profile. However, there is also literature out there to contradict this – see Gillberg Research .

I can’t really work out where ODD fits in, because Little Bear appears to fit the profile for that too (ODD is recognised and does have DSM & ICD criteria) but my hunch, again, is that it wouldn’t be right to diagnose him with it.

The group I am interested in are those such as Little Bear, who do not meet the criteria for Autism and do have trauma in their background and are markedly demand avoidant. What is going on with their demand avoidance and how should it best be managed?

A useful place to start seems to be the Extreme Demand Avoidance Questionnaire (EDA-Q) – a questionnaire which has been designed for research purposes and is not diagnostic, but could be useful in picking apart the nature of behaviours we experience. You can find it here: EDA-Q

I have filled it in for Little Bear. As you can see, he scores 38 points which doesn’t reach the threshold for a PDA diagnosis (the threshold is 50 or over) , though it does say that those scoring lower may still meet the criteria as individuals can be impacted differently. I’m a little unclear as to how this type of decision would be informed. Either way, I don’t think he has PDA, yet he certainly does have a higher than average propensity towards demand avoidance. For context, Big Bear scored 6 on the same questionnaire.

These are the descriptors in which he scored the most highly:

• Is driven by the need to be in charge
• If pressurised to do something, s/he may have a ‘meltdown’ (e.g. scream, tantrum, hit or kick).
• Has difficulty complying with demands unless they are carefully presented.
• Has bouts of extreme emotional responses to small events (e.g. crying/giggling, becoming furious).

I have previously written about his need for Control which fits in with the first and second point. In reference to the third bullet point, sometimes demands that are made in a reverse psychology kind of way (‘I bet you can’t do x or y’ or ‘I really hope you aren’t going to eat my apple’), or a challenge kind of way (‘I’ll time you to do x’) go better than a straight forward ‘do it, or else’ kind of way. The fact that I have thought of alternative ways to phrase demands suggests this is something we have to do quite often. In reference to the fourth point, at the moment, something as small as asking Little Bear to go to the toilet and then, God forbid, actually wash his hands afterwards, is enough to unleash fury.

It is also interesting which statements he didn’t score on. I am assuming that in order to gain a high enough score to meet diagnostic levels for PDA, a child would generally score highly across all descriptors. Could it be the areas where children without PDA don’t score that are important diagnostic indicators for differential diagnosis?

Little Bear didn’t score on the following:

• Finds everyday pressures (e.g. having to go on a school trip/ visit dentist) intolerably stressful.
• Takes on roles or characters (from TV/real life) and ‘acts them out’.
• Makes an effort to maintain his/her reputation with peers.
• Prefers to interact with others in an adopted role, or communicate through props/toys.
• S/he was passive and difficult to engage as an infant.

I’m not sure if it’s just the examples used in the point about finding everyday pressures intolerable, but Little Bear loves a school trip and his behaviour was exemplary the last time we went to the dentist so I’ve scored it as zero. I would say that he can find new situations or places anxiety provoking and that might lead to more dyregulation. However, I wouldn’t say that necessarily correlates with greater demand avoidance in those situations. It might, or it might not – I suspect it is more complex than just where we are at the time.

If the descriptor were to mean every day, seemingly inconsequential demands, such as eating, toileting or getting dressed, I would have scored it much higher.

The bits about taking on a role or communicating through props don’t resonate here. Little Bear has good imaginative skills and sometimes there are difficulties separating Fantasy versus Reality but I wouldn’t say he uses them as a means of communication or specifically to avoid demands. I think this is where social mimicry as part of an Autism diagnosis comes into play.

In terms of how Little Bear presents himself to his peers, he certainly doesn’t try to comply with them but not us. I would say he takes a blanket approach to demand avoidance and if anything, there is a slight bias towards doing what familiar adults say. The less attached he is to a person, the less likely he is to co-operate with them, be they child or adult.

In all honesty, I don’t know if he was passive as an infant, as we didn’t know him then, but I cannot for one minute believe that he was!

The other items on the questionnaire that I have scored as ‘somewhat true’ or ‘mostly true’ are mainly not scored more highly because the behaviours come and go or because they used to be a problem but we have seen improvements. I have read that children with PDA can fluctuate in their demand avoidance – becoming much more co-operative when they are comfortable and relaxed. I would say this is true for Little Bear too. If he’s struggling in general, the demand avoidance will be much more pronounced. It is to the point where we have had months of co-operation – where I could just say, “Please put your shoes on”, as I would to any other child and Little Bear would do it with a smile – and then times like we are currently experiencing where every tiny request feels like a battle and can all too easily lead to escalation.

I have gone on the hunt for information about demand avoidance in developmental trauma to explain why this would happen but it’s thin on the ground. The Beacon House information about trauma does say this:

• Boundary setting can trigger a big reaction or noncompliance in child (where there are Attachment insecurities)
• Prolonged meltdowns over small things (as a part of difficulties with Emotional Regulation)
• Rule breaking at school
• Unresponsive to day to day requests (often seen as non-compliance) (as a part of Behavioural Dysregulation)

I guess those things sort of add up to the levels of demand avoidance that we see but I’d be really interested in knowing how other children who have experienced developmental trauma score on the EDA-Q and how their scores are distributed across the descriptors. I can’t help feeling we don’t have enough information about this and at the moment and it would be difficult for clinicians to make informed differential diagnoses between PDA or ODD and demand avoidance caused by developmental trauma.

If anyone knows of any other sources of information I’ve missed, please get in touch.

The one thing that I can unequivocally say is that parenting a child with demand avoidance is a little tricky (I’m totally under-egging it) and that finding ways to manage and manage it, has us scratching our heads. I am very much still working on it but here are some things that sometimes work at our house:

• Know your own triggers. It is very, very difficult to be calm when a child won’t do anything you say. I having to be conscious of the fact that this could cause me to snap and that I need to very deliberately react in a different way. I find this is much easier to do if you plan your response in advance, rather than just reacting when you are taken by surprise.
• At the moment, the plan which feels most effective is not shouting and moving away from, not towards Little Bear. He needs the space and I am less likely to react negatively a bit further back, busying myself with something else. This more casual approach seems to help things simmer down. Little Bear tried to saw the table with a dinner knife the other day, in a bid to avoid eating his tea, but I barely turned around. I did calmly tell him that it was his choice whether he carried on doing it or not, but if he did, I would take the money from his pocket money to fix it. It wasn’t in a threat way – just a pointing out a logical consequence way to help him with his decision.
• Self-care. I know people mock the concept but maintaining patience and calm in the face of zero co-operation is exhausting. We must look after ourselves (I’m talking to myself as much as anyone after a friend gave me a stern telling off!)
• Allow much longer to get ready to go somewhere than you’d think necessary. This allows your small person to spend time avoiding and doing everything but getting ready while you gently steer them through the necessary tasks. Time pressure won’t help anyone.
• Reduce the demands. There are certain tasks that have to be done but can you help by dressing or feeding or helping in another way? Other tasks, which are not essential, could be omitted for that day.
• Often it is verbal demands that Little Bear can’t tolerate. Sometimes we manage to acknowledge this in advance of what is likely to be a tricky situation for him e.g. bedtime and are able to collaborate on a solution. We’ve found that things like having all the equipment Little Bear needs for a task laid out for him e.g. toothpaste already on the brush, pyjamas laid on the floor etc. means he can complete the whole routine himself without us needing to make any verbal demands. Visual supports like a tick chart or timetable can also work.
• As mentioned above, careful wording of a command can help e.g. reverse psychology or a challenge. Unfortunately two good choices no longer works for us, because Little Bear has figured out he can just agree to neither.

 

I should point out that underlying the demand avoidance is likely to be anxiety of some kind – whether it be a fear of losing control or some other internal precipitant – so we should be mindful of this and manage the behaviour as kindly as we can.

I have to be honest and say that I am a little torn over demand avoidant behaviour. Half of me is extremely therapeutic about it and willing to be patient and accommodating. The other half of me thinks that one cannot successfully navigate life never doing what one is asked (employers and the Police certainly aren’t too keen on it) so perhaps there is some mileage in being encouraged to push through the difficulty barrier of wanting to avoid demands. I insisted, the other day, that Little Bear did carry out his reading before he went on an exciting day out. I insisted very quietly and patiently and had been specific on how many pages I expected (hardly any) but such was the strength of his need to avoid the demand that he would have given up his day out just to avoid the reading. We persevered and when he finally did the reading, we were able to praise him and make a big fuss for pushing through something we knew he was finding difficult. He was pleased with himself and had a lovely day out.

Isn’t this how resilience is built? By people believing you can do things you think you can’t and supporting you to achieve them anyway? Life for Little Bear is going to be extremely difficult if he can’t cope with the smallest of demands so I don’t see that lowering our expectations to zero will be of much long term use to him. I suppose, like everything, it’s a fine balance between being therapeutic and building life skills and we continue to hobble along the line.

 

National Adoption Week 2018

Next week is National Adoption Week – a big push from the industry to raise awareness of adoption and to encourage would-be adopters to pursue it. This year the theme is ‘the adopter’ – who makes a good adopter and, from my perspective, what support do people need to succeed as adopters?

This is the third National Adoption Week since I’ve been blogging and it’s tricky to have a fresh perspective each time (the first year I blogged every day and last year I wrote The Little Things ) so this time I’ve asked the boys for some help.

Me: What should I say to people who might want to adopt a child?

Little Bear: Do it!

Big Bear: Do it because you’ll help save lives of children. You might regret it for a bit but it gets better and better and better.

Me: Is it something everyone should do?

Little Bear: Yes, because if they’ve not got good parents, they have to send them to good parents.

Big Bear: No, because you might be too busy or dangerous people shouldn’t be allowed. Parents need to be approved as good. It depends on their environment and home. They need to respect the child’s values.

Me: Is there anybody who shouldn’t be allowed to adopt?

Little Bear: Named a lot of people we know! I think this question was too abstract.

Big Bear: They can’t judge a child on colour or how they look. You need training. It doesn’t matter about shape or size. You really just need to be able to protect a child.

I think you can tell Big Bear has been learning about values and diversity at school. Or perhaps he has a future in politics.

Me: Have you got any advice for people who adopt children?

Little Bear: You should be nice and take care of them.

Me: Was there anything we did that you didn’t like? That we should have done differently?

Little Bear: You guys were really bossy but now you’re just perfect.

I suspended the interview at this point to smother him in kisses and tell him he is perfect too.

Big Bear: You can’t give children everything they want, just what they need. Help them. Support them. Ask if there is anything wrong. Don’t be violent to your child. Take it easy to start with. Don’t talk about horrible stuff.

Little Bear: Yeah, don’t let them see scary things.

*

Between them, I think the Bears have raised some salient points. Firstly, adoption is not for everybody, they’re right about that. Adoption is life-changing. I don’t see the point of lying to people in an attempt to snare them, only for them to find out the realities when it is too late. Adoption is challenging in all regards – emotionally, practically, financially. It is rarely a fairy tale. Adoption requires you to open your lives, not just to a traumatised child, but to the wider birth family who inevitably come with them. If you think they don’t come with them or that a child can just forget their past once they’re with you, adoption is not for you. If you do not believe in attachment theory or the impact of developmental trauma on the infant brain, adoption is not for you. If you believe that a child’s needs can be resolved by love alone, adoption is probably not for you.

However, if you are prepared to educate yourself in ACEs, trauma and therapeutic parenting, and you are willing to put yourself in the shoes of your child and are prepared to try your best to look at the world from their point of view, you might find out how amazing adoption can be. Adopters need resilience, a willingness to learn, a preparedness to fight for their child if circumstances require it, an open mind and an open heart. An ability to persevere helps and so does keeping going, no matter what. If you have not yet turned away or come out in a cold sweat, maybe you could do it?

I think there are some members of the adoption industry who are unwilling to tell this truth through fear of the damage it will do to recruitment of adopters. My view is increasingly that if people are put off by a few truths, they are unlikely to be cut out for adopting. We need people to go in with their eyes open, because discovering you can’t do it or it isn’t quite what you thought it would be once you’re already in, causes irreparable damage to all parties.

I don’t mean to point fingers – to some extent there will always be unknowns. There is the unavoidable disparity between understanding something in theory and experiencing it in practise. There is the unpredictable impact of moving a child from foster care to their forever home and all the additional losses that come with that. There is the unavoidable risk of relying solely on the information that is provided to you.

Risk cannot be fully mitigated in adoption.

However, I truly believe there will always be people who are willing to take these risks; people who won’t see the risks but the possibilities. Those people, they are the ones who are needed.

Everything in life is a risk isn’t it? Conceiving and given birth is riddled with risk but we tend to err on the positive when we talk about those. Riding motorbikes is risky. Buying shares is risky. Extreme sports are risky. Debts are risky. Crossing the road is not without risk.

We decide where to put our risk; when to roll our dice. We choose which risks are the ones we want to take. Which ones feel like calculated risks and which are a risk too far. I am one of the most risk-averse people you could meet. I wouldn’t roll my dice on debt or drugs or bungee-jumping or extreme-anything. In truth I’m hyper-aware of risk, worrying far too much about terrorism, planes falling out of the sky or getting squished on the motorway. But I took the risk of adoption. I informed myself so it was a calculated risk. I embraced everything about the idea of it, risks and all, because, for me, I believed it would be worth it. I believed it would be more than its risk. And it has been. So much more.

Adoption has been life-changing for us, in every way. Big Bear has become a brother through adoption. He has grown stronger and more self-assured because of adoption. He was always going to be a kind and empathetic young man but adoption has made him even more aware of others – the ways in which they might struggle, the ways in which he has the power to change outcomes for them through his words and actions and the ways other people’s lives might differ from ours. He’s very emotionally astute for a nine year old and I think adoption has played its role in that.

For Grizzly and I there is the obvious impact: we have gained another son. A son who drives us up the wall at times, who has found buttons we didn’t even know we had and pushed them, then pushed them again. A son whom we love entirely, just as he is. A son who we are immensely proud of and who brings each one of us joy, every single day. A son who is the funniest, kindest, most determined young man you could wish for.

Adoption has completed our family. It has brought our parents another grandchild; my brother another nephew.

For me, adoption has taken my career in new directions. It has led me to writing.

And as for Little Bear himself, it’s kind of hard to quantify. I don’t want to perpetuate the myth that adopters are like superheroes, saving children from a lesser life. There are no capes or bulging thigh muscles here and we don’t wear our pants on top of our clothes too often. There is no heroism in losing your temper or the natural mess of our daily lives. But it is possible to think about Little Bear’s starting point and the ways in which being adopted have undeniably changed his trajectory. He has gone from being a three and a half year old functioning at a 16 month level to a keen, enquiring and capable 6 year old. He has gone from attending a special educational needs nursery to literacy, passing through and leaving behind the lowest group in his mainstream class. Expectations for his future have gone from zero/ worrying to certainty he will succeed in a field of his choosing.

Adoption means Little Bear aches for his birth siblings. It means he has a lot of questions and we don’t always have the answers. It means he sometimes feels different and wonders where he belongs.

Adoption has given Little Bear stability, safety, self-belief and certainty. It’s given him a forever home and a family who will fight wolves empty-handed for him, if necessary.

Adoption has been life-changing for us all.

I can’t tell you to do it and I can’t tell you not to do it. It’s your risk.

If you think you can do it, do your research. Know the type of risk you are considering; arm yourself with knowledge.

I can tell you this: you cannot do it alone. You can be a single adopter, of course, but you need your people for the days when you don’t feel well or when your little darling has driven you three times around the bend. You need an adoption agency with proper, robust, actual post-adoption support for the times when only a reassuring, experienced professional will cut it. You need to acquaint yourself with self-care; what works for you, how much and how you will know when you need it, because adoption relies fully on you being okay.

Adoption is not the right route to parenthood for everybody. But if you like your risks with a high likelihood of progress, satisfaction and pride, it could well be the route for you.

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.

Self-Care

For some reason I have been a bit reluctant to write about self-care, perhaps because it is well-documented already? I don’t know. Maybe because I haven’t always been brilliant at it and I have had to work at seeing the importance of it (for me). I suppose it can seem like quite an abstract, self-indulgent concept.

More recently the penny has finally dropped. Self-care is essential. It is not a pleasant add-on or luxury. It is crucial to our good mental health and to us being able to manage the myriad demands thrown at us in our day to day lives. I think when I spotted ‘Looking after yourself’ as one of the blocks in Kim Golding’s House Model of Parenting (an essential block, without which the house would fall down and upon which many other vital blocks sit) I got the message.

Self-care is a subject fairly widely bandied around by adopters (with good reason) but I truly believe it is a necessity for everyone. We are all busy, under pressure and juggling many-a-ball. If we are not mentally and emotionally well, we can’t function to the best of our abilities. We can’t support those around us who need us and we leave ourselves open to illness.

With my professional hat on I have been working with a young person who is currently under a lot of exam stress. A diligent and bright pupil, they are working extremely hard, leaving little to no time for rest and relaxation. As a consequence their stammer has worsened significantly. My main therapy has been around teaching the need for self-care, much to their surprise.

We are not designed to be under permanent stress, though modern life does tend to lead to it. We know, because of our children and how they have been impacted by their adverse starts in life that Cortisol (the stress hormone) wreaks havoc. A quick Google indicates it can impact on blood sugar levels, cause weight gain, suppress the immune system, affect the gut, damage the heart and even impact on fertility. Cortisol is meant for special occasions when we really need it, it is not something our bodies should be flooded with all the time.

We can juggle all the balls, work hard, play hard, look after others and achieve all we want to but, crucially, only if we look after ourselves. If we don’t make time for self-care activities, take the breaks, listen to our inner wellbeing voice, the consequences can be dire. A close friend experienced just what can happen when you forget yourself. I’ll let her tell you, in her own words:

“Self-care is life-saving. I do not say this lightly. Around ten years ago I had a very severe mental health crisis, resulting in me being in hospital for 7 weeks. It was horrible. It was caused by depression and exacerbated by me not taking care of myself. Forgetting myself. Putting everyone above myself. I worked solidly, because I felt so sad. If I was at work I was busy, if I was busy I wasn’t thinking. There is only so long you can do that, and then you crash. I crashed. When I was well again I had to make dramatic changes to my life, and the major one was how to actually look after myself.

The most life changing aspect of self-care for me has been learning to say no. Knowing my own limitations and not being afraid to voice them. You are not a bad person because you put yourself first. If you cannot take care of you, you can’t take care of anyone else.

Also, keeping lines of communication open. Keep talking to those around you, even when it’s a difficult conversation. Silence is a killer. When I was ill I was the most scared I have ever been, and had to have hideous conversations with people, which ultimately led to me getting the help I needed. It’s ok not to be ok. There is something incredibly freeing about being so open and honest. It was so hard to talk, but ultimately has only improved my relationships with everyone around me.

Baby steps. Find what makes you happy. Do it a lot. It sounds simple but life is hectic. Work, family, kids, school runs. But you know what, that ironing pile will still be there tomorrow. The house looks like a bomb hit it but you’ve kept your kids alive and fed and so now you are going to watch strictly come dancing and admire the, erm, dancing skills of Gorka, and just relax. There will be time for the ironing. It is not tonight. Equally, if ironing is your happy place, then good luck to you!”

I’m very proud of my friend for being brave enough to write this for me and letting me share it. Having visited her on the mental health ward, hidden away down the interminably long corridor, I can vouch that it is not a place you would want to end up (though my friend did feel safe there for which I am grateful).

Self-care is life-saving. It is essential. But how the bloody hell do you do it? If it was that easy and straightforward, people up and down the country wouldn’t be ending up in crisis. I suspect the first challenge of self-care is knowing what you need. After that, you need to value yourself enough to allow yourself to have it and then actively make it happen.

Grizzly has recently moved to a more senior post which is highly stressful with long hours and quite a bit of travel. He shoulders a lot of responsibility at work. Thankfully, this was acknowledged during his induction and he was warned of the need to manage his timetable proactively to ensure it contains time for self-care. It is an ongoing challenge for him, as there are only so many hours in the day, but he is good at knowing what he needs at least (half the battle) and as long as he can run several times per week all is well. Running is not a negotiable activity: it is an essential part of his week.

Whilst running works its magic for Grizzly, I personally can’t think of a less desirable way to spend my down time.

Thinking about what works for me has been enlightening. I think it has taken me quite a long time to figure it out. However, it turns out that I’m a right unsociable so and so and find nothing more restorative than a day alone. Interestingly I don’t tend to stay at home for a self-care day (probably because it is good to escape the washing pile). I tend to find a coffee shop, sit with my back to the other customers (I know, miserable!) and read, write or draw, while consuming a massive cup of tea. I’ll generally write a blog post – in itself an act of self-care it turns out. Sometimes it isn’t just that I want to write but that I need to, just as Grizzly physically needs to run.

Blogging has certainly helped with keeping my adopter/ parenting worries in check – it gets them out of my head but doesn’t involve the discomfort of having to actually explain them to someone face to face (though I do a bit of that too).

The main self-care challenge for me has been identifying when I need it. Sometimes I can do a million and one things at the same time and be fine. At other times, one small thing can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. I have had to listen harder to the little voice inside that tells you when everything is getting a bit much. It turns out it is much better to heed the whisper than to allow things to get on top of you, as you will undoubtedly snap and lose your temper with the children. I don’t like to shout at them so I have had to get better at identifying the times I might (otherwise you get the joy of dealing with the guilt afterwards). I have to be particularly mindful of my hormonal state (see PMS and Adoption) and be a little kinder to myself at those points.

I think Mum’s in particular (sorry Dad’s and everyone else, I’m allowed a sweeping statement once in a while) are adept at ‘getting on with it’ – pushing through the home and childcare duties, work and the never-ending to-do list whether they feel like it or not. Things would quite possibly collapse around you if you didn’t. However, there is a skill in knowing when pushing through is ok and when you are rapidly closing in on your limit. I’m still working on it but after a busy few weeks of going from work to sorting out the builders who have been re-doing our bathroom to the children (especially Little Bear’s growing Christmas-related mania) to making Christmas decorations and selling them at craft fayres to Christmas shopping to planning & liaising over our next project (a pod in the garden since you ask) as well as a few other things, today’s yoga class felt like one ask too many. I usually love yoga but after a lot of rushing about and being in specific places at specific times, my little inner voice was asking in a stage whisper for a day off. There are times when I would have just made myself go anyway, ignoring that little voice, but I feel so much better for having listened. A whole day off, being unsociable, having some peace. Just what my inner wellbeing guru ordered.

As well as the crucial self-care we all need, there are also acts of self-kindness: finding ways to spoil yourself a little; ways to make life easier; adding things in just because you like them or they make you happy. Here are some of the things that work for me:

• Wandering around my garden. It is not a big garden but I love looking at how my plants are growing, watering them in the summer and generally enjoying my little bit of outside.
• I also like going to look at the fish in our tiny pond. I have no idea why that is so relaxing but it is.
• I seem to be getting quite into the indoor gardening too. I also wander about the house tending my indoor charges.
• I feel particularly happy when the sun shines in on the melon seedlings and I think they might just grow some melons.
• Shopping. Sometimes you just need to buy yourself a little gift. I have to be careful though, shopping can lead to guilt.
• A little taste of something carbohydrate-y as I’m not really eating them at the moment but a girl needs a treat every now and again.
• All snuggles with my boys are lovely. Giving up on all jobs and lying on the sofa for a whole afternoon of snuggly TV can be just what the doctor ordered.
• Any sort of gift that arrives in subscription form. My friend got me a Papergang subscription from @Ohhdeer so beautiful stationery landed on the mat every month. It was amazing.
• A good book on the rare occasions I manage to read one. The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan is a very wholesome and uplifting read.
• A good rummage in a charity shop, especially if there are retro coffee pots to be found.
• Low-maintenance hosting. I rarely bother killing myself preparing a fancy meal to impress people with. You are just as likely to get a takeaway here but I will sit and chat and pay you my full attention. I’d rather give my energy to you than to the cooking.
• Ditto children’s lunches. No slaving over packed lunches every night – school dinners all the way.
• A cheeky lunch out with Grizzly when he is working from home – dating without the need for babysitting.
• When all else fails, putting on my fluffy onesie, lying on the sofa and watching an episode of First Dates.

 

I wonder what other people do to be kind to themselves? Feel free to share.

 

 

 

The Building Work is Finished!

Here’s the thing: I can’t think about sensible, important things all the time. It’s tiring. I don’t watch the News because it’s frankly terrifying, though these days you can’t really escape international acts of terror or crazy world leaders or snap elections even if you try. I usually focus my brain space on important things happening closer to home: my family, the children’s education, any adoption-related issues we are having etc. But even then it can be hard work analysing and cogitating and wondering all the time. If I’m honest, and at the risk of sounding shallow, sometimes I just want to think about making things look nice…

I love colour and pattern and genuinely believe that if I wear things and surround myself with things that I enjoy the look of, I will feel happier. It’s not a vanity thing; it’s a creativity thing I think, especially as I’m not bothered what other people think of my choices. As long as me and the other Bears like it we’re all good. I think that thinking of outfits and decorating choices is probably actually a form of self-care for me.

This week has been a bit topsy-turvy as everyone has been feeling poorly and my brain just fancies a bit of making-things-look-nice self-care, so what better time to share the pictures of our FINALLY completed building work?

We have been working on the house pretty much constantly since last summer. You can read about the first phase of building, when we cut a bit off our L-shaped living room and knocked the kitchen wall down to make an open plan family room here: July at Adoption: The Bear Facts. This work left us with a brilliant family friendly living/ dining/ kitchen space at the back of the house. It also left us with a weird miniscule room at the front of the house that wasn’t in any way practical or useable. It was mainly used for storing bits of furniture and tons of boxes of books. We applied for planning permission to extend out the front of the house to fill in the space between the tiny front room and our porch which used to jut further out.

Building work on the second phase started in October/November and has really only just been fully completed. Although the work to make the family room was more major and affected our living areas more, it only took 6 weeks from the beginning to being completely done and it was fairly stress free. The second phase has in comparison felt like it has taken FOREVER and been a marathon. Towards the end of the project, I was feeling quite stressed and wrote about it in Juggling. It is therefore a massive relief that we are done.

For those of you out there who also love looking at stuff here is what it looks like now:

The tiny front room has become a second living room and office area. All the books are out of their boxes and happily residing on shelves. I am VERY excited that I now have an ‘office’ (what I actually mean by that is ‘a place to keep my extensive stationery collection’!). I also love having more shelves that I can display my collections on and fiddle with and make look nice. So far I have mainly only managed to LOOK at my office and definitely need more time to be in it, working.

As part of the work we also decided to fill in our open porch. This has made our hall bigger and meant we had to re-decorate it. I was pleased about that because we could finally get rid of the tester patches I had painted all over the place in a fit of foolhardiness several years ago. Everywhere is now quite grey but is very much brightened up by our new mustard front door.

We used the space from the porch to create a cupboard. That sounds ridiculously dull but it has changed my life because we no longer walk straight into a wall draped with hundreds of coats and there is no need for shoes to be scattered ALL over the house. I did also paint the cupboard fuchsia pink and put yellow hooks up so it is a very happy cupboard.

 The last few weeks have involved a huge spring clean and sort out while we have been trying to move everything back around the house again from the places we had been temporarily storing it in. I am still striving for whole-house order and tidiness but I’m not sure it will ever be achieved in a house full of boys. Apart from that, there is one last job to be done. We need a new carpet for the stairs… Obviously I have set my heart on a bright patterned one to lift the grey walls and it sadly doesn’t seem to exist. Well, it does, in the form of the most expensive carpet in the shop that unfortunately does not have any redeeming features such as being impervious to dirt. If anyone knows where to get a manmade pink spotty carpet that will not break the bank I will love you forever*.

 

 

*By the way I totally realise that this is a “first world problem” and that there are far more important things that I should probably be concerning myself with, but it would look fabulous.

 

 

A Grown-up Weekend Away

I can’t honestly remember the last time Grizzly and I went away for a night without children. Certainly not once in the 17 months Little Bear has been with us and I think we had only been away a handful of times before that. Grizzly is away fairly frequently with work (though I’m not sure that really counts) and I have had one night away for a friend’s wedding reception.

The main reason we haven’t been away before now is because asking the grandparents to have our boys feels like a big ask. We know they don’t mind but we also know how much energy is required to look after them and keep them entertained. Little Bear’s behaviour can be unpredictable and if he’s having a bad day he can be really challenging to manage. Also, Little Bear tends to test the boundaries more with the grandparents so there is every likelihood that his behaviour could escalate when he is with them. Having never been away we also didn’t know how he would cope without us being there and whether that in itself might cause some issues.

However, recently I’ve been craving a night off. I have friends who do it all the time and I was getting a bit envious of the peace and quiet and lie-in they would be having. I find first thing in the morning the most challenging part of the day with the boys. I’m not a morning person and ideally need 5 minutes to lie in bed quietly before I get up and face the world. However, Little Bear always wakes me before my alarm and always with incessant chatter. He begins work on trying to get me out of bed immediately and if that doesn’t work makes other insistent demands such as asking me to get something or make something speak. I try all the tricks to get him to entertain himself for a few minutes or just lie quietly with me but I know that in reality he will keep this up, without pausing for breath, until I get up and feed him. Though I love him dearly the thought of one day off, one morning without the incessant chatter, was becoming increasingly appealing.

My birthday is in January and I made my wish to Grizzly that all I really wanted was 1 night off. Grizzly didn’t mention anything until a couple of weeks ago when he let slip that he had booked a hotel and started to make arrangements for the boys and that we would be away on the day of my birthday.

It was difficult to know what the best arrangements for the Bears would be. We plumped for splitting them up – Grizzly’s Mum would have Little Bear and my parents would have Big Bear. Big Bear would have a sleepover and Little Bear could stay at home where everything is more familiar. This should lessen the load for the grandparents though I was worried that Little Bear might be very unsettled by being away from us and from Big Bear. I felt he might pine for Big Bear but nobody lives far from anybody else so the grandparents could bring them back together if needs be.

I was also concerned that the boys might be upset that I was choosing to spend my birthday away from them. With that in mind we decided that we wouldn’t stay out long on the Sunday and would come back in time to have a bit of a party afternoon together.

My plan for the week leading up to the Big Weekend was to make the most of getting ready. I wanted to spend time trying on outfits, getting my nails done, having long pampering shower etc. It sounded idyllic and I’m sure it would have been had things gone to plan.

The week started ok. Both boys returned to school after the holidays and though I had a cold and felt under the weather I spent a productive day ticking things off my to-do list. On Tuesday I lost my temper with Little Bear before school as we were in a rush and he wouldn’t co-operate. I then went to meet a friend and the 5 minute journey took me 50 minutes. When I got home I attempted to wrangle with our intermittent internet connection to do an online shop when the phone rang. It was school. Big Bear had been sick could I come and get him?

As soon as I saw him I knew there was nothing wrong with him (daft look on his face) but it was the Head sending him home and as we went out the door he reminded me of the 48 hour rule. Bloody brilliant. I’m totally down with the rule but not when your child scoffs all their meals and is clearly fine.

On Wednesday I had to clear the front room ready for the builders. Later on, Big Bear and I walked the long way round to pick Little Bear up from school. The cat decided to follow us. At the furthest point from home she decided to stop following us. Figuring that her cat skills would lead her home we eventually carried on to school. What ensued was a missing cat situation and several hours of increasing concern, especially as the weather was awful. Grizzly and Big Bear finally found her much later, exactly where we had last seen her: clearly she has no cat skills at all.

On Thursday the shower broke.

What on earth was going on?! Would we even get away for the weekend at this rate? There certainly wasn’t going to be much pampering or trying on of clothes.

By the time I had packed for myself and Big Bear, got his football things ready and organised Little Bear for the party he was going to, made lunch for a friend and dinner for my brother, I was wondering how I would sustain enough energy for the weekend.

Saturday morning began badly because Big Bear’s football match was cancelled which apparently meant his weekend was ruined before it had even begun.

We were finally organised and child free by about 11 am on Saturday. I have to say that it was brilliant. We couldn’t really believe we were actually out together, on our own and we could do anything we wanted. We definitely made the most of it, including staying out past midnight. That last statement shows how little I get out!! I won’t bore you with the details, have a photo montage instead:

I loved every single second of it. I don’t think you realise how much you need some grown up time until you get it. I missed the boys though and enjoyed picking them some little treats and looked forward to seeing them in the afternoon.

Big Bear had been absolutely fine all weekend but his greeting to me was “the weekend has been awful!” He was fairly miserable all afternoon and unusually prickly with his brother. Little Bear had coped really well and behaved well too. Seeing us again seemed to unlock something though and he seemed a little overwhelmed. He was clingy and emotional for the rest of the day.

It wasn’t exactly the party atmosphere we had planned! I think perhaps that had been the wrong plan and maybe they just needed some closeness and 1:1 time with us.

Their reaction reminded me why we needed a break in the first place. We adore them but parenting is hard core and requires a significant commitment of physical, emotional and psychological energy. I don’t think I’ll wait another 2 years for a night off. Now, where’s my diary…

 

Resilience

Amongst adopters it is a well-known fact that Adoptive Parenting or Therapeutic Parenting requires a truck load of resilience. You need to be at the peak of your game, have a full quota of patience and the ability to dig deep to overcome whatever challenges might be thrown at you on any given day. I would argue that any parenting requires resilience, but adopted charges do tend to need the supercharged version.

It is unfortunate therefore, that, being human and in this case a woman, I cannot maintain this level of resilience. It’s my hormones’ fault. There are certain days within my monthly cycle that I am a little less than serene. For ‘less than serene’ read ‘completely ragey’. Think furious before you’ve even got up. Think highly irritable to the point of being annoyed by your husband’s breathing. Think too hot, too achey, too hungry. Think totally uncomfortable for no obvious reason and mega grumpy. Think extremely short-tempered and pretty much devoid of resilience. This is how I feel when alone so interacting with others in a civilised manner is pretty difficult. It’s an actual affliction and very much not my usual character.

The way forward on such days is to take things as easy as possible – let Little Bear run off steam in the park, let him play on the Ipad more than I really think is appropriate, let him watch a lot of TV, or even better, let somebody else look after him. And make sure I eat plenty.

However, a BIG problem arises if I’m having an aforementioned bad day, I’m on parenting duty and Little Bear is experiencing poor resilience too….

Little Bear had generally low resilience when we first met him. If he couldn’t do a task IMMEDIATELY he became furious and would not try again. I can remember trying to engage him with Duplo but because he couldn’t get the man to sit in the bus in the first second of trying, the Duplo was kicked/ thrown and that was the end of that. Over time, his general level of resilience has developed though and he can now persevere pretty well with toys and tasks such as dressing. However, a bit like me, the stars need to be in alignment and various factors need to be in place for Little Bear to have his full quota of resilience:

• He needs to have had a good 12 hours sleep
• He needs to have eaten well. A hungry bear is a grumpy bear, a full of sugar bear is a wild bear
• He needs to have had his daily movement. A constipated bear is also a grumpy bear.
• He needs to have had enough exercise and sensory input, without having been tipped into over-stimulated territory
• He needs to be feeling well and not under the weather.

Too great a variance in any of these factors = poor resilience. Mostly we know him well enough now that we can tweak things for him to keep everything at an optimum level. However, sometimes circumstances are out of our control.

One day last week, Little Bear just could not get to sleep. The reason became apparent when, at 8pm, a good hour after he should have been asleep, he needed a poo (I’m sorry for the oversharing but you know people poo. And they have monthly cycles). Evidently the change to bowel routine affected his ability to get to sleep afterwards and it was far too late for him when he did eventually settle.

The next morning I woke having one of THOSE days and over-tired, over hungry and bowel all to pot, Little Bear was too. DISASTER.

Evidently, because he was feeling rubbish, Little Bear upped the ante with his behaviour, forgot how to listen and didn’t do anything he was told. In my delicate state I had no patience whatsoever and was quick to rebuke, slow to employ therapeutic strategies and lost my temper several times (something which I can usually go weeks without doing). Little Bear had very low resilience and could not cope with being told off (especially in a shouty way) so his behaviour spiralled.

Somehow we made it to the end of the day without me causing him any physical harm and although when I tried to repair the situation at bedtime by stroking his head, he told me to “get off” I was mainly just relieved that the day was finally over.

Later on, I washed my hair, put on fresh pyjamas, made a cup of tea, watched house programmes and ate an elicit Yorkie (I usually try to avoid sugar to improve the hormone situation but desperate times call for chocolate) and thankfully began to feel more like my usual self.

Resilience is paramount in everything running smoothly. That’s why Self Care is so crucial to us and developing our children’s resilience is such an important part of preparing them for real life. Parenting with resilience at a low ebb is painful, unpleasant and guilt-inducing. I don’t recommend it.

Thankfully I am lucky to have a fabulous husband and support network who will unquestioningly give me a break if I ask. I am also thankful that days such as these are few and far between and getting fewer as I become more experienced at remaining calm no matter what – this is definitely a skill and one that can be honed with practise. But you do need a full quota of resilience behind you. And we need to allow ourselves the acceptance that there will be days when we get it wrong, when our parenting is less than good enough, when we do shout and do not act Nurtured Heart at all. We are human. And tomorrow is another day.