just for one day, or two

Christmas Day was fun times! Children were under strict instructions not to wake us up until 7am, but in a half-asleep state I heard Son get up and when I checked the time it was 7.25am. He had a wee, woke up his Sister, then both of them knocked shyly on the door. I ordered them in and they came in with massive smiles on their faces and came over for a hug and kiss!

And if you're waiting for the sarky bit when I say the hell it happened like that then you'll be disappointed, because I tell the truth! I actually tell the truth!

Then they opened their presents and were truly happy with what they'd got, and Daughter didn't even abandon her own presents to watch what Son had, which is a first! She was as interested in her own presents as she was in her Brothers! Wow!

The day passed with good food, and playing together with this and that and a bit of telly. Daughter did have three panic attacks, but two were minor and the other one (as she came to sit at the table for Christmas dinner) was easily soothed. Son was also a bit rude to Husband, but each time it passed over quickly.

Boxing Day was less shiny & bright. The children were in a niggly, arguey, needy mood and I was not in a great mood either. Not sure why. Husband expecting me to get out of bed to make him breakfast-in-bed didn't set me up in good humour for the day. I don't mind doing breakfast for him when I feel like it, but he's added to the list after the pets and the children, and only then do I get to do something for me. Sucks. And v rude to expect it rather than wait to be asked.

And Daughter peed me off because she ASKED me to do her toast (rather than pick herself a rusk out of the cupboard, which would have required no effort on my part) and then didn't eat it, so she got a a 10 minute rant on how rude that was. I know there will never be an answer but why ask for something that you. do. not. want?

I stayed irritated all day, stalked by two unregulated children who wouldn't leave me alone. They even kept staring at me whilst we watched telly, wanting to see my reaction all the time. Talk about hyper-vigilant. By the children's bedtime I hated them both and wanted them gone.

Today we went over to MILs and our family was like a poster advert for adoption. There was no controlling behaviour or bickering from the kids, they were so relaxed, everything was fun. The joy seemed to shine out of Husband's parents' eyes; they never stopped smiling the whole afternoon. Husband was in fine spirits. I really loved the kids today and felt a sense of this is worth it that is very rarely felt. Very rarely. Today my children were happy, entirely,

And so was I.

done!

It struck me today that since October I have been carrying extra duties, beginning with Halloween activities and half-term, then onto Son's birthday and then straight into Christmas. I wish I had more space at this time of year to buy nicer decorations and make cakes and puddings, but despite my best intentions, I don't. I'd have to start Christmas preparations in October, but, as noted, I am already busy.

And this year I've had the added duty of my new business, but it's been nothing but a pleasure so far. I am really chuffed with how it is going and it brings me a lot of satisfaction. I have one job to attend to through until Boxing Day, but then nothing until my next customer in January. I hope I get really busy in 2012.

As Husband takes care of the food over Christmas, as of tonight my work for Christmas Day is now done. Cards, presents, wrapping, visits, laundry, housework. Done.

For me, all there is left to do is try and live in the moment and enjoy my family.

When I was child-free Christmas was a painful time. It was always maybe this time next year... maybe this time next year... maybe this time next year...

Christmas is not always easy for adoptive families, but at least that stressful and burdensome question of who my family will be is answered now and forever. For the children too.

Let it be.

Merry Christmas one and all x

twas the week before Christmas

This week Daughter has decided not to eat or drink. Despite my best efforts to keep things calm and scheduled, it's still a stressful time of year and Daughter not eating or drinking is a way for her to feel more in control.

Both of the children keep complaining of feeling sick. They are fine whilst they are doing something they want to do, but the minute it comes to doing something they'd rather not (in Daughter's case, eat) then out come the tummyaches and the tears.

In a week that has seen me having to get other people to babysit whilst I do a couple of hours work in the morning, this has been somewhat annoying. I understand that me going to work, added to the time of year, has unsettled them, but I really don't think that being taken to McDonalds by the grandparents should be a cause for such upset. Not in a nine and ten year old.

That's the Bullshit was referred to in the previous post.

At the beginning of the week I kept feeling waves of anger at their controlling behaviour. I felt very keenly their need to protest that they couldn't do exactly what they wanted to do, when they wanted to do it, and to punish me for doing what I needed to. It didn't matter so much to them that they had a super week lined up, because getting control over me and my movements meant more.

Luckily for all of us I've been far too busy to vent any vexation and have managed, despite having much on my mind, to bring myself around to accept that this is how things will be this week. I am in control, no matter how much they protest. And if Daughter was physically ill, I wouldn't be angry at her lack of appetite. As it is, it's her precarious mental health that makes her feel compelled to starve herself, and that is just as deserving of my understanding.

When school starts again in January, both kids stress levels will come right down as an old and familiar routine comforts them. I no longer worry we've lost ground. This too will pass.

this house is full of...

twas the week before the week before Christmas

Last week of the school term before Christmas EQUALS stress on a bike.

The kids are harassed by their excitement levels and unsettled by the changes in school routine, whilst I have been madly trying to get 'everything done' before they break up. I have proven this week that I still have the most brilliant organisational skills, with days in my diary being organised by the hour and a tight schedule completely honoured. And through it all the family have been fed and watered, the house kept within acceptable cleanliness limits, the pets well cared for, and my business duties completed. And I still had time to get my nails and eyebrows done for a night out. I'm every woman, I sing, it's all in me.

I even scheduled in the kids trauma leaking. Between the hours of 3.30pm and 5pm deal with highly combustible children who will stab each other in the eye in as soon as look at each other. Between the hours of 7pm and 8pm, deal with rudeness and nasty words from Son.

Anything you want done baby, I'll do it naturally.

Last night - Friday night - I had the pleasure of attending a Murder Mystery meal with four other great women whom I have the honour to call my friends. We didn't solve the murder, but we did have a night off from all of out troubles. I'm not sentimental, as you'll know reader, but I will say that I felt blessed last night. Better friends a woman couldn't hope to have.

Next week, I am, for the first time, juggling childcare with working and so another stage of my life begins because I haven't ever had to do that before.

After that, all I have to do is dare to enjoy Christmas.

goodbye Christopher Hitchens

A great talent and an important voice these last 10 years since September 11th, we have to say goodbye to Christopher Hitchens. Whenever I've read anything of his, he's made me think and made me want to write.

Tribute from his friends here.

"Be brave, say what you believe... dare to stand alone."

in which Mum loses it

One of Son's things is to be passive-aggressive. Given any instruction he will do it slightly wrong, or choose another way to do it, or if he's been asked not to do something, do it one more time. He'll do this at every instruction, but when he's been thwarted in some way he'll go that extra mile. If he's not happy when he gets into the car for instance, he'll shut his door too gently so it's not shut properly, and because of the child-lock he can't open and shut it again himself, meaning I have to get out and do it for him. Ha! Take that Mummy!

Little molecule sized punishments meted out at every turn. Deal with that sort of thing every day, all day, and it starts to feel like your brain is beginning to fry. It's a bit like the consistent low-level mental assault that makes Chinese water torture so effective, where each little drip of passive-aggressiveness pushes you just a tiny little bit further towards insanity.

I deal with it mostly by keeping myself in a good place mentally and ignoring his little assaults. He's just testing the world, seeing how far he can trust it's got better. I mostly ignore what he is doing, don't give him the confrontation he craves, sometimes I even smile at him to say it's OK, you're annoying, but I love you, but sometimes I deal consequences if the behaviour warrants it.

Two days ago however I tried the chase-the-child-up-the-stairs method followed by the scream-at-the-child-to-just-bloody-well-d0-as-he's-told technique.

It didn't work. If my parents had ever lost it with me like I'd lost it with my Son, I'd have been a quivering wreck for days. But Son likes it. Gives him a chance to scream back at me. After shouting at me that NO HE WAS NOT GOING TO DO WHAT HE WAS TOLD I was then called stupid, an idiot and told repeatedly how much he hated me.

I did the only rational thing I could in the circumstances and started calling him an idiot back, and how much I hated him, and how I was going to stop feeding him, and how he was going to spend the rest of his life in his bedroom and he could die there an old man !

Realising that this seemed a bit drastic for taking another photo with the DS when I had told him not to, I burst out laughing. He laughed too and then immediately said he was sorry for taking a photo when I'd told him to stop. We hugged and kissed and told each other that we loved each other. Then we carried on with the afternoon. He seemed fine. I wanted to grab a bottle of gin and run to the shed.

I sat with both kids later on the Rug of Truth and Trust and tried to explain that at this time of year Mummies were very busy with Christmas, and this made them tired and irritable, and it was best not to push them because they might lose their temper. I don't know whether they were listening because at the time Daughter was trying to get Son to tickle her feet so she could "accidentally" kick him in the face.

CAMHS

As you will be aware dear reader, due to some worrying behaviour on the part of our Son, we asked for help and were referred to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service.

The initial meeting we had was with a psychologist who seemed to completely understand and validate our idea that Son was communicating a very damaged part of himself through his behaviours, and that this language was very dark and worrying. He then referred us to the Looked After Children section of CAMHS that also work with adopted children.

We (Husband and I) then had a second meeting with a psychologist who seemed a bit young to me, and who got my back-up by suggesting - just as we were walking out the door - that although I thought there was attachment and trust between me and Son, from Son's point of view this was probably not true.

That pissed me off.

Royally.

I have spent two years doing NOTHING BUT fostering an attachment between me and my two children, and I was not best happy at any suggestion that the lack of attachment to me was the root cause of Son's issues. I'm not the one traumatising this kid, I'm the one trying to heal him.

We had another session this week with the too young psychologist and also a Social Worker.

Yes, a Social Worker. My heart dropped. One of them. One of them that places all the responsibility and blame for everything on the adoptive parents.

But it was OK. They asked Husband and I to talk about us and our adoption journey. I'm not sure if you're supposed to make professionals laugh in a CAMHS session but Husband did. Something about his frankness of his dislike of babies caught them slightly unawares ('they're just really annoying and they can't talk or anything').

As we talked, one issue was coming out, the issue of the children's relationship with Husband. They used to reject him entirely, actually cry and/or tantrum if they had to hold his hand or sit by him. Now it's more like he's second best, he's OK, but not as good as me. Or sometimes it's like they don't see him, don't acknowledge he's there. When they do see him, both children can be very rude to him and are defiant in a more obvious way with him than they are with me.

It has to be said that Husband has shown astonishing patience with this. He's gone back in there, time and time again, to foster a relationship and a good attachment with them. That's not easy when you're dealing with two people with very powerful emotions who are very blatant about their dislike of anything you try to do.

All this wasn't helped by the fact that earlier on in the year Husband had sciatica which floored him for several months, leaving me effectively a single mother and losing him precious bonding time with the kids.

In my opinion, Husband has never quite bounced back from that time. A few weeks ago I had to talk to him about the level of effort he was making with the kids these days, particularly in the evenings. I saw it very much from my point of view however, that in the late evening, when I've been regulating the kids since 3.30pm, I needed him to be present for them so that I could take a break. I felt he was being too absent and everything was on my shoulders.

In the CAMHS session it became clear that this wasn't actually about me, it was about Husband's relationship and his attachment with the kids. He needed to work on that for the kids' sake, not necessarily mine! So, not everything is about me and my needs, who knew?

The Social Worker in particular seemed very keen on Husband having special time with the kids. She suggested that one weekend a month Husband put something in the diary to do with the children that didn't include me. In fact, he was to say quite forcefully to me that, sorry as he was, I was not allowed to come, that he wanted to spend special time with the children.

Reflecting on this driving back home after the session I found it hard to figure out which way I was going as I kept collapsing into fits of laughter.

Husband told to take the kids around Cannon Hill Park for three hours one afternoon and I wasn't allowed to go!

Bwaha hahaha haha ha ha!!!

This was a dream, surely? And I was going to wake up any minute at the beginning of the summer holidays, where day after day after day, for two months, I was the one spending hours of special time with the children because no other bugger was there to do it.

Husband didn't find it quite so funny. He kept saying maybe he could bake cakes with them or something. I said that he should be doing that stuff with them anyway and that the point the Social Worker had made was that he make a special effort and take them out for a treat!

Ha ha!!

Since then I've felt a sense of relief that - just for the moment - no more is required of me. There's nothing else I have to give up, no more time I have to hand over, not another thing to understand and incorporate into my parenting.

Just for once it's him over there, Husband, lovely man, who has to make the effort, who has to take the hit. He is the one who has some work to do.

I dare say this'll change as the sessions go on. The Social Worker seems very keen on giving us parenting strategies and offered hope that these might be enough to turn Son's behaviour around. Trouble is I have parenting strategies coming out of my ears and that's half the problem - at which point do the kids heal enough that I am not employing strategies at the speed of light molecules? Because it's killing me.

in which Son makes an effort

Since Son turned 9 he is making a noticeable effort not to scream and tantrum. He has never made this effort before and it is quite a relief. No matter how difficult his behaviour is, I always try and see the progress he has made.

For instance, this is how supermarket shopping with him used to go:

Son gets hyper somewhere along the first aisle.

Son wants something ridiculous that we are never going to buy.

Son goes into a mood, employs a scowl, then starts threatening to knock things off shelves, open packets, kick things over.

Son starts screaming when back in the car.

Now it goes something like this:

Son gets half way around the supermarket being the most lovely child you could imagine.

Son starts to get a bit hyper and annoying.

Son takes great offence at a refusal to buy him some miscellaneous thing.

Son goes into a mood, employs a scowl, then starts threatening to knock things off shelves, open packets, kick things over.

Son gets into the car and gets over it.

I think you'll agree that is a decent improvement.

On Sunday, we took the kids into the City Centre which is full of Christmas excitement. The first Christmas they were with us we dare not take them anywhere near the place. Waaaay too much going on for them to handle. The second Christmas, Son had a massive tantrum on the way there and Daughter clung to me like she was halfway falling off a cliff. The idea of FairGround rides, hot chocolate drinks and present buying would bring most children joy, but it just terrified the shit out of our kids.

They are now used to the City Centre and have experienced it before at Christmas and so there was little fear-based behaviour this year, but oh boy, was keeping them regulated hard work.

First you have to tell him The Plan. I tell the kids exactly what we are doing in what order, and at which points they are going to be bought food and drink. Then you have to stick to it like you would cling to a raft in a stormy sea.

You have to use the sing-songy voice. The voice that says, I love you, you are safe, all the time. Do this for two and a half hours.

You have to hold their hands no matter how useful it would be to use them to do some shopping, or perhaps scratch your nose every now and again.

You have to be very vigilant and spot things that you can offer them quickly, before they ask, so that they can experience you giving them things of your own free will.

But also you have to constantly find a safe way of declining all the many things they ask for that you are not going to get them, without communicating that this is because YOU MUST HATE THEM!

You have to feed and water them at exactly the right times, and produce emergency toffee from your pocket when it's needed.

You have to hand Husband a couple of positive experiences he can have with the kids, because he's sulking in the background feeling invisible.

If you are going to buy anything for yourself (high risk!) then you have to explain clearly why you need this particular product, and make sure that they are either eating/drinking or just about to be bought something themselves.

You have to act as if their nonsense chatter were songs from Angels, because if you show any irritation, then this means that YOU MUST HATE THEM!

Then you have to get the hell out of there!

I slept for 2 hours when we got back from that shopping trip.

And yet! Although Son came close to going into a mood on two occasions whilst we were out, he didn't. He stopped himself (with a lot of help form me, it has to be said). This is massive progress and Son got lots of praise.

I have been trying to get Son to express his disappointment in more moderate, age-appropriate ways. Giving him alternatives to the mood/tantrum/scream cycle he was so fond of. In particular I get him to observe his Sister's strops, whereby she fully expresses her displeasure at something I have asked her to do, but then gets over it. If we could get him to master his emotions so well, I would be most pleased.

I used his 9th birthday a lot in the lead up to it, so when he came out of a screaming session I would chat to him about how babies and toddlers scream and tantrum, but how would a 9 year old boy deal with that? And he actually seems to have taken it on board!

Although, he did some downstairs last night after being put to bed, telling me he'd wet himself, which is something he's only ever done once before.

Oh well. I have the moon. Best not ask for the stars just yet.