Tell me why

I don’t like Octobers. 

No, seriously, if anything is going to go wrong it will happen in October. I don’t know if this is just for our family or in general, but the shittiest things seem to happen to us in October and have done for decades. I can recall the exact date that I decided this. It was 26th October 2011. I will remember this date indefinitely because not only was it my brother’s birthday (and I had failed abysmally to get his present in the post – it was in fact lost in the back of the car, which I will explain shortly), it was scant weeks after my now husband had come off his motorbike and broken his collar bone, the day after we managed to dive together (actually the last dive I think I have done) and the day I totalled my first car. Which was a shame, because not only did I like that car, but I wrote off several hundred pounds worth of dive computer, the aforementioned present, and almost wrote off said future husband and myself in the process.

It turned out that not only did I have significant internal haemorrhaging (I was the colour of an overripe aubergine for the remainder of winter) several lumps of windscreen were removed from now-husband’s head (they missed one and it’s still there), he broke a thumb and I broke my sternum. 

Whilst stationary in the hospital car park a few days later from having his checkup, someone reversed into his car.

So yeah, I don’t like October. 

This October, we gained and lost two kittens, all have been sick as dogs, the fae has been waking at 2am, the car we have just cost us £700 in diagnostics and new boots, and I still haven’t organised my brother’s birthday present. 

So, seriously, if anything is going to go wrong, it will in October. Next year I’m hibernating until November first. No wait I love Halloween so yeah I’m waking up at midday on the 31st. 

You’re not the only one

I have recently decided that I am going to write a book, dedicated to the memory of my father. On the suggestion of my husband, I am titling it ‘Maybe the psychos were right?’

This has come about by the sheer lack of consideration shown by the average person in a number of situations, and as time goes on I have found myself increasingly less tolerant of it. The most recent example was on a rare occasion that my husband and I managed to get out for a meal, we found our enjoyment spoiled to the point of moving tables by other guests. To set the scene, and why my patience may have been even thinner than it’s usual: our fae had been at home with a DV bug for a number of days, waking me at 2 am and needing pretty much 24/7 care. We had, that weekend, adopted a pair of kittens (that as of today had to be sent back to a rescue centre as a vet informed us that they were too sick to be adopted in the first place) and both myself and my husband were ill. 

To put it in the vernacular, we were not feeling very demure, and you could take your mindfulness and shove it where Sigma don’t shine. So, when a neurospicy adult insisted on playing fucking xmas music on a poorly rendered synth at full volume, it pissed me off. Look, I get that it’s easier to let your kid distract themselves with a hyper fixation but when you allow them to affect everyone in the restaurant, you’re just an ass. We have a child who would love to play on her Ipad during meals, but we have a rule; no tech at the table. She has a close friend who can’t eat without his, they have another friend who can’t stand the sound of chewing and needs to drown it out, and another that needs silence and somehow we can accommodate all of them to eat together. If we had one parent who felt that they had an entitlement to allow this sort of behaviour, then none of us would be able to feed our children. It’s completely unacceptable. If you cannot eat out without the person you are caring for disturbing everyone around you, then you don’t eat out, it’s that simple. 

If they need to make noise, then you sit in the children’s areas where noise is not only expected but encouraged. If they can’t cope with that, it is your responsibility to deal, not to make it everyone else’s problem. 

Frankly, we look after our own child without inconveniencing anyone, and I expect everyone else to do the same. If you can’t, then you need to accept that you need to make other arrangements. I haven’t been on holiday or had an evening meal out in 6 years. I know that my daughter wouldn’t cope. So yes, I practise what I breach. I have also given up my career, freedom and sanity (to be fair that was on its way out anyhow) for her. 

So no, you’re not the only one in the world who needs accommodations, but that doesn’t give you the right to impact those around you. I’m seriously considering ways to incapacitate devices that are at antisocial volumes in future. 

Do we have to have these arguments?

And other stupid things I say. I don’t even know why I say them when the answer is obvious and repetitive. 

I am aware that having a child is like someone holding up a small frustrating mirror displaying your worse qualities and then telling you that you are not allowed to strangle it but the one we have seemed to get a double helping of smart ass and not only our combined stubbornness but also all of her ancestors as well. Trying to put her to bed is a form of mindfulness training that should be banned under the Geneva convention and don’t get me started on brushing her teeth. 

If I have to hear about how ‘spicy’ the mild mint toothpaste is one more time I will scream and I am, to this day I’m not sure what she expected the strawberry one to taste like but apparently it wasn’t strawberries. 

Still reading a bedtime story should be straightforward enough right? Wrong. We have a set of books that, as I imagine most parents do; that we can recite from memory. These range from the ridiculously short (The Flying Bath) to the ridiculously long (I had trouble getting to Solla Sollew) to the plain ridiculous (The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner). We choose the book based on the time we have available and how awake she seems. One of the books starts “It’s morning, everyone’s gone”. I dutifully started my recitation only to be interrupted by a chirrup from the bed of 

“But what if it was afternoon?”. Now that kind of question can really throw one. When I informed her that the book was set in the morning, she huffed and insisted 

“But what if it was afternoon?”

I told her I didn’t know, this family may have been in and therefore the bath couldn’t have gone flying which would have been bad news for the kangaroo, bees, baboon and fish. Also the pig would still need a bath.I then tried to continue. This too wasn’t accepted as it wasn’t a definitive answer. So once again four words into the story

”But what if it was afternoon?” 

At which point, I sighed and read Superworm instead. 

Why do I have to have arguments like this? More importantly does anyone have an answer because I haven’t dared read a book with a definite time frame since. 

Why wont you talk to us?

One of the most frustrating things about raising a fae child is that they will not – or, more accurately, are unable to – communicate accurately with you. 

Last week, I was reevaluating every parenting decision I had ever made to try and determine where I had turned my beautiful sweet natured child into the spoiled brat of a daemon that was coming home from school each night. It was exhausting both myself and my husband, and making me dread having her in the house. She was having tantrums over anything, real or imagined. Seriously, I can deal with things I can reason with even if I can’t see the problem – like for example; at her grandparents house they have three cheese graters of various sizes. Whenever she comes across three of a kind that come in small, medium and large she automatically assumes you have a ‘daddy’ a ‘mummy’ and a ‘baby’. This particular day she had noticed that they also had a nest of three tables, which were dutifully categorized in the same way. The problem came when she wanted to introduce the table family to the cheese grater family only to find ‘mummy’ cheese grater was missing. Well, not missing, but in the dishwasher as someone had inconsiderately used ‘her’ to grate cheese. The audacity. So, she informed her grandparents in no uncertain terms that this was not on and mummy grater needed to be found immediately. She also dictated that she could not be used for grating cheese. When questioned what they should use instead they were told a knife. When asked why they should keep graters they couldn’t use they were told ‘because they’re a family’. Somehow throughout this interaction I managed to keep a straight face, although I may have burst a blood vessel trying not to laugh. She completely baffled two adults with her insistence that this made sense. In her mind it did. It’s a strange form of gaslighting where she tries to convince you that what you know isn’t true is, because she genuinely believes it. 

In the end, she pulled the winning move of turning on the waterworks and her grandpa fetched mummy grater out the dishwasher, hand cleaned her (it?) and handed her across. The tears promptly dried like magic, and I explained that he had just fallen for the oldest trick in the book as she can make herself cry on demand. She will be winning OSCARs one day. At least there was a solution to this particular problem. 

On the other hand, when she was screaming that the elephant had been removed from her bed and what was she going to ride now I was at a loss. Gentle interrogation discovered that the elephant was her grey bedsheet. The only problem being that she doesn’t have a grey bedsheet. It’s blue, it’s always been blue, she’s never had a grey one. So I have no idea how to fix this. Pointing out the her new bedsheet was white and showing her pictures of white elephants was a non-starter, but we did try.

As it turns out, these and all other insanity last week had a very specific cause. On Sunday, she lost a tooth. Apparently it had been loose for a number days and she’d not mentioned it. So the chewing, tantrums and generally awful behavior could have been solved with Calpol.

She has a cold now, but when we are through that I think we will have our lovely little girl back. At least I hope we will. 

The interesting and exhausting start of term

I was hoping that with the recommencement of the school year my daughter would finally settle down. Unfortunately, because of the upheaval in her school life – new class, new teachers, new room etc – she has decided to be a little angel there, and take out all her frustrations on us when she gets out. I know all the psychology behind this. I know that she is masking there, and releasing her pent up emotions in her safe place with safe people. But honestly, that doesn’t make it any easier when, for the tenth time, you tell her to pick up her socks and she throws them at you; or she is crawling in the display racking at the gym because you told her to put her shoes on. 

There is a very fine line between ‘I’m raising a strong independent woman’ to ‘I’m raising a delinquent who is going to end up in prison’. She has been no less than feral when I have collected her from school. She has refused to do anything without fights and tantrums. I am exhausted from it. My husband is tired from it, and she really doesn’t even know why she is doing it. Which tends to make her even more frustrated. Trying to do anything with her after school – even something she wants to do e.g. like tennis or swimming – will have her in tears and launching a sit down protest. 

The sooner she settles into her new school year, the better. If she doesn’t, I’m going to need more antidepressants and time in a room with padded walls. We’re holding on, just, but a lot of the consequences we could put in are more of a punishment for us than her so I’m desperate for her behavior to improve. After all, if I take her out of her sport classes or activities, it’s me who will be looking after a very sulky fae child. She will just scream at me.

So, all in all, here’s to the settling of routine, and – hopefully – taking the damn mask off!

Not fragile like a flower

Fragile like a bomb.

I am so glad that my child is back at school this week. Not because I dislike her or spending time with her. I truly think she is a wonderful person, she has the most wicked sense of humour and an imagination that would put even the most creative of writers to shame. 

But after 6 weeks of being on ‘our time’ even with our adherence to morning and evening routine, and my attempts to keep some semblance of order in between, the last week she has been feral. This holiday we have had more order than any before – with her seeing her PA (I dislike this term because it implies that she is being assisted which she is not, she is being cared for) twice a week, and having football training every Wednesday. So really I only had to occupy her on Tuesdays (where we generally saw her friends) and Thursdays (where we continued to see her grandparents like we would in term time). So, all in all, her weeks had some sort of consistency. I thought this may have been overdoing it, but given that one of her little friends became so anxious by week 4 he was vomiting at the thought of leaving the house, and by week 5 couldn’t transition between the upper and lower floors of his house without an anxiety attack, I feel that it was worth it. 

So on Sunday night, I wrestled an excited fae creature into bed and to sleep with the thought of “we’re there, we made it, school tomorrow!” Only to have the crushing realisation that the school failed to communicate that they were, in fact, having not one but two in-house training days and students didn’t actually return until Wednesday. The lead balloon that set in my stomach at this made sleep impossible that night: the thought of the potential meltdowns and disappointments that would be endured in the morning when I would have to crush her spirit by saying that she had two more days. I know that my husband also had a similar night. 

Come the morning, I explained as clearly as I could that although, yes the school was open, it was only for teachers and kids didn’t go back until midweek, and braced while she processed. To her credit she didn’t meltdown but did look sad. She asked what we were doing that day, and if she could see her friend. To my relief, said friend was available, and despite the rain we spent 4 hours in a park watching them hair round after each other and dodge the geese. It was only that night when she realised that she couldn’t get her feet in the air (she was trying to cartwheel I think) and this was a disaster to end the world. She just about got over this heart wrenching disappointment, only to start her next one because her father wanted to eat dinner at dinner time. The final one was because her bath had bubbles. 

So, it seems she saved up all the meltdowns to have them all once. Wonderful. She did the same on Tuesday when we came to dinner time. I have to clarify that all we had done that day was go shopping, had lunch and spent time with her grandparents. This too was apparently too much and she had another complete emotional disregulation hour. 

So it was with little surprise that come Wednesday morning she told her father, in all seriousness, that it was ‘ok to be shy on the first day’ to which he agreed that it was absolutely ok. She then paused and informed him that she ‘wouldn’t be though’. She skipped into school without a backward glance. 

She is happier, we’ve yet to start sleeping, and I’ve had a migraine for two days as all the springs start to relax. The only benefit is that she loves her school. I don’t know how we would cope if she hated it.

Signs of tiredness

As with all children (I imagine), our fae won’t always recognise that she is tired. She will sometimes accept that she is tired – she is always tired;  she won’t sodding sleep, so it’s always a good bet that she has a sleep debt – but you will always know. 

She has two moods when she is tired. When she is at a point that sleep will come easy and putting her to bed is as simple as pointing out there is a shelf she can place her body on, she will turn into a flaming ball or rage. Seriously, nothing you can do will be right when she is in this mood. Some salient examples:

Two nights ago she was chatting about what to do in the morning. She told me she wanted to go to a specific garden centre called ‘Cherry Hill’. I agreed that this was indeed doable, and we would head there. Ten minutes later she asked what we were doing the next day. I said we were going to Cherry Hill. She threw herself onto the bench kicking and screaming and that she didn’t want to do that, she wanted to walk up a mountain. When I pointed out she said she wanted to go to the garden centre, she paused mid-flail and said “Oh yeah”, giggled once, and went back to her food. I’m not sure what else I was supposed to say at this point, but I’m very sure I was NOT walking up the mountain. 

Last night she looked out the patio doors and started crying, when I asked what was wrong she explained through hiccuping sniffles that there were no daisies in the lawn… Well, no, there aren’t. There never has been. We have dandelions and clover in abundance but strangely no daisies.

She got up, marched outside and screamed at the lawn that it was growing the wrong flowers, that it needed to grow daisies and demanded that I immediately made daisy seeds materialize in front of her. When I failed to do this she went back to crying and wailing. 

And then there’s her other mood. Her second mood is more dangerous: when she is beyond this point, she will become manic. This means you will need at least two hours to get her to sleep (which is more like passing out through exhaustion) and will take you through a foray of bizarre scenarios that you never thought were possible. 

I touched on one of these in ‘Notes to my daughter’ but allow me to introduce you to Daniel. 

Daniel is a rock. He is a very special rock. You see, Daniel was the last in a series of overheated rocks that she found on a walk we went on one evening. Most of these rocks were cured by “cooling” them in the river she promptly dropped them in, but Daniel was more seriously ill. He was diagnosed with a blood illness where ‘his white blood cells have become attackers not protectors’. Basically she decided her rock had leukemia.

Yes, we can point out that this is not possible because 1. It doesn’t have red blood cells, or 2. White blood cells and 3. It’s a rock. But none of this deterred her from bringing Daniel home, placing him in isolation in a water bottle, feeding him ‘medicine’ (sea salt) and then declaring him better a few days later before releasing him back to his friends with a purple “one” drawn on him (some sort of capture, mark, release tracking programme?). Don’t ask me, I just had to help nurse a sick rock. 

I have also had to help bathe her in this condition where I was informed that the bath was a pond, ok… and that she was wearing SCUBA equipment, following so far… and that she is fleeing from a “running pretend shark” (at least it wasn’t real….that went in the sea… and then she needed to get out because she was pond sick)

So there is nothing wrong with her imagination. And she may not always tell you that she’s tired but believe me you will know.  

Overcoming Adversity

My fae has shown great tenacity in the face of setbacks this year. Some are big, some were small, some just plain stupid and pretty much all of her own making. 

The weather: this summer, I think we can all agree, failed to summer! It has been, at best, pathetic. This has not stopped my daughter insisting on playing outside everyday. It doesn’t matter if it’s March and the thermometer hasn’t made it off zero, or it’s August and it’s breaching 30. She WILL go outside. Recently she has learnt (much to my dismay) how to operate our very stiff patio door and so can let herself into the garden. So I now struggle to keep her in the house regardless. So despite me pointing out it had just finished chucking it down, she announced she was going to ride her bike. The bike was wet, so she found a towel (fortunately the one I use for the cat) and dried it. She then found it cold (it was about 10 degrees out) so she came back in and got a hoodie. When she complained of wet feet and it was pointed out she was barefoot, she returned once more and retrieved her shoes. I pointed out this time – when she complained that her shoes were uncomfy – that she might try socks as well and she stomped off to get some. By some miracle, she managed for the first and only time in living memory to put her own socks and shoes on. She also returned in a hat, scarf and gloves. When I suggested a jacket may be more appropriate, I was treated to a scornful look and was told in no uncertain terms that she ‘WAS GOING TO RIDE HER BIKE’ 

This performance took the best of fifteen minutes, she rode her bike for five minutes, and spent 20 minutes dekitting and huffing that I made her put everything away. The important thing was that she got to ride her bike. 

Having a broken arm would have slowed most children down (I think) but my daughter took 5 minutes to dismantle the splint and learnt that the extra rigidity provided the splint was an excellent way of practicing handstands. 

She also didn’t want to give up swimming and was quite content to take the splint off to continue going in the pool. So much for keeping it on at all times. We managed a week and that was a struggle. Three weeks was the total she wore it at all before she ‘lost it’.

So I don’t know if this counts as resourceful, determined or demented but so far nothing has got in her way.

Don’t assume anything

Trying to figure out what the hell to do with my daughter over the summer holiday has had me tearing my hair out. There are things that I dismissed out of hand as being inappropriate because of the duration (7 hour football training), the noise (ten pin bowling), or her capability (she can’t swim). 

This seemed like a reasonable thing to do, as by the end of term she found even an hour of cheerleading too much, and a morning in the park with her friends made her fragile for the rest of the day – fragile like a bomb, not like a flower. One wrong move and she turned into a tantruming, screaming demon. 

We still go to the pool several times a week, but the one we use doesn’t blast music and doesn’t have inflatables or flumes in it. Constant exposure to water with nothing to do but swim has improved her confidence in water, to the point that she is now insisting we need to visit water slides. Wonderful. I have no idea where any are, so I will be spending most the day contacting friends who have grown up in the area I now live, and googling. The aforementioned pool is, unsurprisingly, in a gym complex. Walking out, she saw the ads for the kids club including the football training. Announcing she wants to do that, I clarify that she A. Knows what football is, and B. Understands that this is from 9 am to 4pm…. Well ok. 

So, for the first session I spend the entire time chilling out in the gym pool, spa, workout floor and finally the lounge/cafe/ Diogenes club. I will be honest I spent at least 5 hours in the cafe – expecting to get an announcement to collect her at any moment. When 4pm rolled around I went to collect her, only to be told that she’s had a wonderful time, was only over stimulated once and was an angel the whole time. I walk over to her and she greets me with ‘Hi mama, can we go to the pool?’ So, not really tired out. She’s there again today, and I’m enjoying breakfast in the cafe. It’s a hard life. 

Her Direct Payment worker had her yesterday, and took her bowling. I had put her ear defenders in her bag, but apparently she loved it. I picked her up and she was bubbling about everything. I’m not too sure how long this will continue, and I’m sure at some point she will be over reached, but what I have learnt is that just because it doesn’t make sense to us, doesn’t mean it won’t make sense to them. 

So we’re off to the water flumes tomorrow. Where’d I leave my ear plugs?

Well that escalated quickly part 2

So it’s the end of term today time for an update I guess. So in response to my email to the governors and subsequent meeting lead to a full scale governors investigation. The result of which I got by letter a few weeks later. Of my 7 complaints of neglect and poor communication every one was upheld and found to be true. Every. Single. One. 

The chair of governors must have had some sleepless nights over this and frankly I’m surprised that the head is still in post. The apology I received seemed sincere if, not of consequence but what was is that they have reinstated the communication diary. They are also going to make information more readily available and they are looking at their policies regarding the reporting of injuries. Well for my daughter at least. I think I have become that parent. I didn’t want too and am frustrated that they are not seeing the big picture, I am not fighting for just my child but all the children in the school and it is frustrating that all they seem to want to do is stick their finger in the damn rather than fix the hole.

problems for September I guess. The head was supposed to follow up with me but didn’t so that will be another conversation with governors at a later date but right now 6 weeks away. Time to regroup and deal with the stresses of no formal routine, no regular clubs and no idea what to do. May the wings of fortune be ever in our favor and just remember we will survive this.