trap door

So, I've told me parents about the business I am setting up. Today, driving us to the supermarket, I told mum that I thought now was time for me to do it because I was getting bored. I said that I knew it would take a while to build-up, but that I was really excited about it. Then I mentioned that I'd even considered going back into an office job because I was so bored, but found I couldn't stand the thought of it.

"Well, something will turn up." she said, inexplicably.

"Well, something has,' I reminded her, slightly puzzled. 'The business.'

"Oh yes," she said, weakly.

That's my mother. Where there should be a solid ground of support, there's actually a trap door, and I seem to fall through it quite a lot.

a kind of normality

We spent two weeks getting to know the kids in their foster home before we brought them home to live with us. On both Saturday nights the foster carers invited us over for food and to watch the X Factor with them. With the X Factor starting up again last night I was doing some reflecting.

In the foster home, the kids watched the X Factor programme intently, sitting quietly on the sofas and chairs amongst all the adults and the foster carers' two children. When we brought them home, husband and I tried to continue the routine, however with us by that time in the evening the children WERE GOING BONKERS. Through gritted teeth we let them stay up to watch the X Factor beyond their usual bedtime routine, but they were exhausting, uninterested and uncontrollable. I was in tears by the time we got them to bed on many a Saturday night.

The next year, one year of placement not yet completed, husband and I were now in control. Both children were allowed to stay up an hour later to watch the programme, but the moment they started to seem disinterested, they were sent to bed. Many tears, but this time from the children, who clearly wanted to stay up late but couldn't control themselves.

This year, both children snuggled up to me on the sofa under blankets, in their pjs, and watched it with me properly. Although levels of chattering got dangerously high at points, I was able to keep regulating both children and they stayed to the end and went to bed with no trouble.

Progress!

Today, I have been able to get on with various household tasks too and the children have played well together, with only minor scuffles, without needing my direct attention. This is incredible progress. For the first year at least they needed me to supervise them all the time.

We are settling down into a normal family life. During the adoption progress you're taught that it takes about two years for the trauma to your life and to the children's life to heal, and for normality to set in. I don't know that these kids will ever fully heal from what they have been through - they are forever changed from who they could have been because of how they were treated by their birth family - but if we could get a kind of normality, that will do us very well. Very well indeed.

housewife and mother

My thinking went a bit weird a while back, only I didn't notice it for a while. I'd be watching women on TV, presenters, characters in dramas, actresses and so on, and I'd always be thinking the same thing - she's got children, so how come she's got a job? I did think it about men too sometimes, but far less vociferously I have to admit.

I took a year's adoption leave when our two were placed with us, then decided not to go to work after that period of time. Though both children were in school, it seemed to me they needed me to take them there and pick them up, and they needed me to be there at holiday time or when they were sick. They were two pretty traumatised kids who needed a very high level of support. My husband works long hours in a job that offers no flexible life/home balance so it was all down to me. I chose to quit my job and be a full-time housewife and mother.

I wasn't making a political statement. It wasn't a judgement on people who did things differently. I just seemed the right thing to do for the sake of two children who had had a shitty start in life. In fact, I might even say I felt quite noble about it.

But then, once, I spent an entire episode of Location, Location, Location wondering how Kirstie Allsopp could be filming up in Northumberland when she had two young children back in London. Now, I figured that Kirstie has a nanny or two to help her out, and maybe her partner was around to do the necessary, so I wasn't thinking her children were neglected. But I was cogitating furiously on Kirstie's choice to enjoy a working life rather than be with her off-spring every second she could.

After that, I realised I was driving myself mad. If I read a newspaper piece or a book written by women all I could think of was whether they had children or not, and if so, how come they were working? Out shopping, driving my car, women everywhere, and there was me wondering if they were mothers, and if they worked, and how much time they spent with their children.

I was going nuts. I had to have a word with myself about this obsessional thinking. And when I did, I realised that I was actually deeply jealous of these women. I was jealous because they had had birth children and therefore this somehow permitted them to have a life outside of the family. It was OK for them to work, their children were mentally healthy and could quite safely spend time with child minders or nannies or in clubs, because they knew only one mother, would only ever know one mother, and all the bonding was done within the first six months of the child's life, leaving the mother free to have her own life with no harm done to anyone.

My thinking seemed to run that as I was an adoptive mother, there were different rules for me. The bonding with my children was going to take years. They had another mother that they could go back to when they got older, so I better well be damn perfect if I wanted them to hang around with me by choice when they turned 21. I had better make my life about them, be in tip top physical and emotional condition for them. Think about them all the time. Sacrifice my life for them.

Yes, my thinking had gone somewhat squiffy. I had gone too far down the line of being sacrificial and self-flagellating.

This is probably because I didn't take to full-time mothering like a rubber ducky to bath water. I might even go so far as to say I hated it at first. Not hard to understand why; two children screaming at me all the time, rejecting everything I did for them, even as they cried for me. But it was more than that. Being a housewife means being responsible for a lot of menial tasks. My mum loved ironing, mopping floors and hoovering. I don't. Yet suddenly all that was the main focus of my day. That and supermarket shopping. I'd gone from doing an important, high-profile well-paid job, communicating with the high offices of this country, to seeing nobody and doing nothing but cleaning, food shopping, and being an emotional punch bag to two very disagreeable house guests.

How I didn't become depressed, I'll never know!

I just know that I made myself be a good housewife and mother through gritted teeth. It took me a whole year to get anywhere near as good at it as I needed to be. It is the most difficult thing I have ever undertaken. All I wanted, during that time, was to go back to work. To not have to shoulder the responsibility of this family all the time. And yet, me being there was what the children needed. I would have been a shitty mother had I have worked because I don't have a lot of energy and the children needed so much from me those first few months. And being able to volunteer in their school, accompany my children's classes on trips, attend special assemblies, and be there when they were sick - it has all been invaluable to this family. I did the right thing.

But when you start to look at other women and feel jealous that they have a career they enjoy, when it's all you can think about and it becomes an obsession? Well, that's when you know you need to have a rethink.

So I've come up with a plan. Literally, a business plan. I'm going to start my own business, working from home*. That way I can still fit my hours around the kids, but I can also shift the focus of my days beyond housework, to something more personally rewarding. I don't think I'd be any happier getting some crappy part-time admin job, which is the alternative, but I think I can be happy doing this.

I think. We never really know do we? Until we try? If the business falls flat on its face I can always go back watching Jeremy Kyle and playing online Bingo all day**. But I am hoping it will get me thinking straight again. It's low financial risk, so not much harm done if it doesn't.

Funny, isn't it? This is a massive thing for every woman who has children and yet it has felt like a very personal battle. Am I disrespecting, even harming, my children and family by channeling some of my attention elsewhere? Am I disrespecting, even harming, myself by focusing so much on my family and children? The answer will be different in every family, the balance found in a different place. But answer and balance there must be, whether the children have been adopted or no.

*Sorry to be so vague. Can't write anything too identifying!

**That's what everyone who's not a parent thinks that full-time mothers do all day. I've learnt there is no point in arguing as they will just carry on believing what they want anyway. Sad, isn't it?

on the other hand...

Things have calmed down since the weekend of tantrums. Son and daughter are in a sports camp all this week and that'll do them no end of good; mixing with other kids and burning off all that youthful energy. Do me good too. I always benefit from time alone plus I get to really make a shift on my huge TO DO list.

I was really worn down when I wrote my last post. Reading it back I've painted such a negative picture of my son that I feel really sorry about it. He really did give me hell this weekend.

But the other side of him is really sweet, and he does try hard to be a part of this family. Despite his frankly quite frightening behaviour, I managed to bond with him fairly early on, which a testament to the real kid inside of him.

Yesterday I was watching some kid's programme with him. Some teenager in some drama was being vile to her mother because she was 'just' a housewife and embarrassingly boring. I said something along the lines of how rude the girl was and my son immediately spoke up and said that I wasn't boring! He told me that I did interesting things and that he liked it that I cooked for everyone and washed his clothes. He was totally genuine, having made the connection between the housewife on the telly and my current housewife status. He really just wanted to make me feel OK and it was lovely. He is lovely.

I firmly believe in the idea that if you have low expectations of children, they will live up to them. I think my son is going to do just fine.

an unhealthy sense of entitlement

I went to a highly rated University and was pretty much the only working class student in my whole department. In my year, there were only three other people who went to a comprehensive school, the rest were privately educated. In the year below me, they had all been privately educated. Every student apart from me had parents who were well off and their background gave them a sense of entitlement that I had NEVER come across before. These kids suffered no doubt that their lives were going to be fantastic. Life was just there for the taking and they knew they would be taking it.

That, we might say, is a healthy sense of entitlement. They weren't necessarily narcissistic or overly competitive - although some undoubtedly were - they had just been brought-up to believe they were deserving of a great life with a fulfilling career.

There is an unhealthy sense of entitlement, though isn't there? We saw it with our MPs the other year. Yes, they were entitled to expenses, but that entitlement had boundaries. It was after all tax payers money they were spending. What made them think anybody but themselves should be paying for their Duck Houses? And the bankers, yes, it's OK to make serious money, but at the expense of the stability of the global economy? And more recently we've seen it with the elite in the fields of media and the police, the you-scratch-my-back-and-I'll-scratch-yours culture, where senior police went to lunch with newspaper executives they were supposed to be investigating. All of 'em getting away with anything they could get away with because they thought it was nothing less than they were entitled to.

We saw it too on the streets of our cities last week. The youth of England rising up not in anger at politicians or in a cry for democracy like their European and Arab counterparts, but in search of free stuff. Thousands of 'em, thinking they could just nick stuff and rob and loot and get away with it. Thinking they were somehow entitled to do what they were doing.

It's made me worried about my son. He has a massive sense of entitlement. If he wants something, he thinks he should have it, and he will tantrum if he doesn't get it. If he wants to do something and is told that he can't, he will tantrum. Every single time. I presume this tactic worked very well for him in his birth home. I can just imagine his birth mother or poor feckless elder sister just giving into his demands for that drink, or that toy, or not having to go to bed just for a quiet life. It doesn't work in this family, but that has not made the slightest difference to him. If he wants something and he's told no, he will scweam and scweam and scweam.

These are not the rages of the child who is struggling with emotions that are too big for him. Although he does have those rages too. These are the tantrums of a toddler who wants to make his mummy give him his sweeties.

I have been trying all this time to teach him more socially acceptable ways to express his disappointment or politer ways to ask for what he wants. I try and defuse his tantrums with humour and wishful thinking. I try not to use the word 'no', being clever and kind when I don't grant him his wish. I try to get him to act like an eight year old rather than a three year old, giving him a chance to see how the world opens up and gives you more the older you get.

None of it has worked and I am getting worried.

It's not just his materialism, although that's bad enough, or the frustration of not being able to do what he wants to do, it's also his opposition to having to do anything he doesn't want to.

The Explosive Child is my bible and it has made a difference to his behaviour. But this weekend things were bad enough for me to realise that my parenting is making all the effort, he isn't making any.

After a day of toddler tantrums I lost it with him on Saturday night. I ended up shouting at him that I had given him a fantastic day, a fantastic holiday, a fantastic life and that I was sick of him screaming and that he was just going to bloody well do what he was told. It seemed to me that he enjoyed my being angry at him. He really let rip. The angrier I got, he met it and upped it a level. I couldn't compete. He is capable of staggering levels of anger, far beyond what I can manage. I broke when he started screaming that I wanted to kill him, that I wanted him dead.

I am left feeling thoroughly ashamed of my loss of temper, but I don't see any shame in him. He got up the next day, business as usual, whilst I could barely function.

I don't think I can change him. I don't feel that I can make him better. I've tried everything for nearly two years and I've not made the slightest dent in his wall of opposition. He wants what he wants and he will fight to the death to get it because he thinks he is entitled.

I am depressed seeing all these images of youths in Adidas tracksuits in the newspapers this weekend, smashing in shops and looting plasma TV screens. I am worried that one day that may well be him.

the right to parent?

Naturally, in the aftermath of the recent disturbances which saw school children on BMX bikes shut down cities, terrorise the MET and make the Government recall parliament, there is much talk of why parents were letting their children go out and do this.

I wanted to just comment on this article from Amelia Gentleman in the Guardian entitled 'Being liberal is fine, but we need to be given back the right to parent'.

Throughout this article runs the common myth that there are only two ways of parenting; authoritarian and liberal. Implicit is the idea that authoritarian parenting is out of fashion, but keeps kids on the right track, whereas liberal parenting is nicer for the kids but means they go off the rails. 'parents have become afraid to discipline their own children,' a youth worker is quoted as saying, the suggestion being that children have gone feral because their parents have been too easy on them.

Actually there are lots of types of parenting and authoritarian and liberal parenting are just opposite ends of one particular spectrum, both of them actually damaging to children. Instead of either of those then, how about good parenting instead?

Yes, good parenting. Not parenting where the child is controlled through fear and humiliation. Not parenting where the child is given no boundaries nor rules and so cannot ever learn to function in society. Good parenting, where the child is given plenty of positive attention every day, natural consequences to their actions, encouragement to make good choices, and good discipline to learn right from wrong.

I don't get why any parent would be 'afraid to discipline' their children unless of course you equate discipline with physical punishment and shouting. A mother interviewed in Gentleman's article says, 'People here will call Social Services if they hear you disciplining your children.'

I find it hard to get my head around that.

Discipline in my house is making a child sit and watch you do an hour's worth of ironing instead of being allowed on the DS, because they deliberately scrumpled up the newly ironed clothes in their drawer. Discipline is making a child practice being quiet in their room instead of being allowed to watch TV because they woke the whole household up at 6am. Discipline is confiscating toys and games that are not being looked after properly, until the child has actively demonstrated that they can take care of their things.

Would Social Services be interested in any of that? I am pretty confidant that they would not.

And yet all that is discipline. It's not smacking and shouting. It is me taking the time and effort to try and teach my children that actions have consequences, for them and the people around them.

And it does take a lot of time and effort. I cannot tell you how many times I have wished that smacking and shouting really helped a child, because it would be so easy to do. So quick and simple and also so gloriously discharging of my own rage.

But I know it doesn't help. I know because I have read the books, I understand the science, I've attended the courses. And I know because my adopted children were smacked and shouted at by their birth parents and that's a big part of the reason they're so screwed up. It still turns my stomach when my kids flinch when I make an unexpected move near them.

I'm hearing on the news that a lot of the kids caught up in these riots are now turning up at Court alone, no parent with them. That's your problem right there. Not that these teenagers have parents who go easy on them. But that they have parents who don't give a shit.

why all this looting and chaos?

When the world's banking elite recently created a meltdown of the global financial system, there were a lot questions asked about how this had been allowed to happen; how were the banks allowed to get away with these immoral, risky borderline criminal acts?

But not many bothered asking why the bankers did it.

I think that's because we all knew why. It wasn't hard to fathom that very rich people had been busy keeping themselves very rich by any means possible.

The world's banking elite took sickening risks with the stability of the world economy to make lots of money. Nobody stopped them and so they carried on taking more and more risk and making more and more money. That's why we've got a financial crisis that's crippling country after country.

These past few days another level of society has gone about wrecking things. This time it's people from the cities going to to shopping centres burning and looting shops. The MET shot someone, this caused some civil unrest, which them turned into a looting free-for-all for every criminal, gang member and thug in the country. These are not political or civil protests. These people are not running at the police or targetting symbols of the government. They are going out into their local high streets and doing a smash and grab on every shop they can get into.

Some people are asking why. Why are these (mainly) young people, teenagers, kids, doing this? Is it mass unemployment? Is it lack of prospects? Is it lack of respect from the Police?

Well, I'll tell you why I think these people are doing this.

They are doing this because criminals, gang members and thugs wanted to loot shops and nobody stopped them.

Now - it would take a lot of time and no one would agree on an answer - we can ask why some people turn into criminals, gang members and thugs in the same way that we can ask why some people turn into CEOs of leading banks.

But let us not ask why criminals, gang members and thugs would want to go out thieving from shops, creating chaos and throwing bricks at the police, because that's obvious isn't it? Thieving, chaos and disrespect for law are pretty much what criminals, gang members and thugs are all about, aren't they?

You might as well ask why leading bankers took breathtaking risks to make lots of money, risking the economy and billions of people's livelihoods and homes across the world. Banks are out to make money. That's what they do. Bankers aren't going to risk making less money on our account, are they?

What England needs to concentrate on right now is how we stop these looters. Oddly enough, a very large police show last night seems to have got things more under control. Perhaps if the Police Chiefs had decided to organise that on the first or second night of the riots, they wouldn't have given the impression to every criminal, gang member and thug in the country that shops were there for the looting.

Society needs the Police in the same way that banks need a financial ombudsman; to protect normal people from those among us who can't control themselves. Twas ever thus, and until we invent a drug that injects a conscience into those who never had the chance to develop one, twill ever be.

We seem ready to accept that the rich can be motivated by greed, but when it comes to other classes we assume that their motivation must come from fear or desperation. That is not so. Some people only exercise restraint in reaction to external influences because they do not have an internal moral code. Fact. Doesn't matter whether they're from Park Lane or Peckham, some people just think they can get what they want and fuck everybody else.

UPDATE

Norm says similar to me here, only better.

holiday!

We've just come back from our self-catering holiday at our usual English sea-side town. It is the fourth time we've taken the kids now and they still love it. Thank goodness.

Holidays are not what they were for me and husband now we have the kids. There's not an awful lot of relaxing for me and he, not much lounging around, reading, or lazy lunches. But! They can still be fun. We enjoy taking them kite flying, kicking a ball around, going down the beach and skimming stones across the sea. There was one beautiful evening when we sat together on the steps leading onto to the beach, eating ice cream, watching the boats sail on the calm sea, and I realised that this was what being a family was all about.

The first time we took the kids on holiday to this place, they were vile. Hate to say that about them, but they were. They were very oppositional, quick to tantrum, and cried a lot. I remember on the first morning saying excitedly to my daughter that we were going for a wander into town to show them around, and her shouting at me I'M NOT GOING UNLESS YOU BUY ME AN ICE CREAM!

Not the stuff of my pre-adoption dreams. I spent every day saying to myself 'they're like this because they're stressed... they're like this because they're stressed... they are like this because they are stressed...' to try and help deal with them sympathetically. I think we managed two, maybe three nights there that first time and considered it a success purely on the grounds that we dealt with their behaviours well.

It's one of the toughest things you have to cope with as an adopter; doing wonderful things for the kids, like taking them on a lovely holiday, and having them spit their trauma at you. Life would be so much easier if they could just say and think:

'Oh adoptive parents, thank you so much for taking me on holiday to a great place and giving me a great time. You're really making up for all the horrible stuff that happened to me before I came to you.'

But they don't.

They are better now, though. Going on holiday doesn't freak them out anymore. They know where we are going and they look forward to it. They even got on well this time with their grandparents, who popped down to join us for a couple of days, when in the past they have gone moody when they've turned up. It was noticeable however that - around grandparents - daughter reverted to her old controlling ways, being quite manipulative and demanding with them. She's obviously learnt boundaries with me and her dad because she doesn't try it on half so much with us anymore!

And that's mostly what we saw during this holiday. A marked difference between how they were and how they are now. Gone were the constant efforts to control everything or ruin things. They were good company on and off, relaxed and funny to be with as children can be. Daughter rarely shed a tear and son only tantrummed at bedtime. Every bedtime, mind, but at least we weren't fighting tantrums all day. I didn't shout or lose my temper the whole holiday - how many other mums get to say that?

Other than son's nocturnal emotional purge, the other remaining problem was the usual nonsense chatter. I don't honestly think we've seen any improvement in this in the 22 months they've been with us. More than once I announced that I was taking no more questions for the next hour, but they just bombard me with nonsense statements and useless pieces of information instead. It does my head in and I'm mindful that we have nearly five weeks of holiday left.