Second Interview

So, on Tuesday I had child 4's entrance into school planning meeting. This meeting has been hanging over me the past couple of weeks. I've been really worried that the staff would think that I was some kind of loonie tune mother and that I would do more harm than good for my sons start into school.
So I wore smart clothes, had my folder full of information about attachment along with research examples to back my request and held my head high when I walked in.

The meeting was with child 4's teacher to be, the SenCo and two members of staff from his preschool, his key worker and the assistant manager.
Well, what a fantastic meeting. Everyone was so very supportive, the school have already put in place plans to help child 4 settle in. They are creating a sensory corner in the foundation stage classroom and in a small fenced off part of the playground for during play time and lunch times. Perfect for when child 4 is struggling with his emotions. They are going to ensure that he has a constant staff member to link with and build an attachment too.
His pre-school key worker is going to take child 4 around the school over the next couple of weeks to create a book of where his classroom is, where he will eat his lunch, where the toilets are and so on. All the children who will be moving to school in September will have the opportunity to have lunch in the school hall as a practice before they start. This will be huge as currently there are 16 children who have lunch together, in school it will be 75 children.  The plan is for them to have their own table, near the door for a quick escape if it's too noisy and too chaotic.
Everyone listened to my concerns and the pre schools advice in what behaviours to look out for and how best to manage them. No thinking chairs or reward charts. Distraction, frequent praise, instant and appropriate natural consequences if anything goes wrong with a heavy dose of oxytocin releasing   support. A real understanding that consequences can be given, whilst in the arms of the nearest care giver.
Obviously most of my concerns and therefore discussion was around misbehaviour, anger and the negative stuff, the pre school talked about so much positive stuff it made me feel proud of my little man.
With all this support and obvious love for him, he will have the best start in school I think I could have dreamed of.

I no longer worry or wake in the night worrying about how the school will manage his "red" moments, or that they will undo the good work we have been doing. The school will help him avoid those "red" moments and when they do happen they will help him calm down, help him make amends and help him learn to manage himself in the future. What more can I ask?

Now I can relax and we can just enjoy our last few weeks of this special time before our lives change and we turn the page on a new exciting chapter in our story.

Walking in my shoes

There has been a lot about parenting in the news this week, the 4 year old boy who managed to get into the gorilla enclosure at Cincinnati Zoo and the young 7 year old whose parents left him in woods in Hokkaido Japan. It seems that much of society jump on the judge the parents social media debate.
We only know what the press deem important to share, we, the general public don't know all the facts that led to these two children ending up in a dangerous situations.
Last summer I lost child 4 in a zoo,  I found him happily playing on a climbing frame not far from where I was buying him and his siblings ice creams, he of course, completely oblivious to the gut searing panic that had smashed through me as I hunted for him amongst what felt like thousands of people, I was just buying ice creams, he was with me and then he wasn't.And I am sure that many of us have walked on when our children are tantruming, because they are too tired to walk or their legs don't work anymore. I often sit at the gate at the top of the field on the way home from school waiting for child 4 to give up waiting for me to walk back to him and piggy back him all the way home. It can take a very very long time, but heyho at least the sun is shining at the moment and I can catch up on Twitter and Facebook news whilst I wait.
I know that my examples are not quite what happened in the publicised cases but I can appreciate how easily a parent can take their eye off a young child or have those buttons pushed over and over again that you make a poor parenting choice. We are after all human and with that comes a number of frailties and unfortunately none of us can predict what our children will do day after day, talk about in the next few minutes.

It is this judgment of my parenting, that I have had ticking away at the back of my mind this week. Just before the holidays child 4 was involved in an incident, where a child was very rude to an adult. There were a small group of boys running around, letting off steam after pre-school, child 4 was one of them. One of child 4's little friends came running over to me, to tell me that my young son had been very rude to a mum on the playground and I should tell him off. I went off to find the mum involved to investigate exactly what had happened, to be told that it wasn't child 4 at all! After determining what had happened I headed off to collect him, when this same little boy came up to check that I was going to tell him off. When I explained that lying about some one was unkind and as he was my sons friend I thought it was sad that he wanted to get him in to trouble, he responded with he didn't care and laughed!!

I have always been scared that child 4 is going to be "that child" the one who is always in trouble, the one who is alienated by other parents and children, the one that doesn't get invited to birthday parties or after school teas. As a family we have worked so hard at ensuring that his behaviour doesn't spill out of control when we are out and about. But by doing this, by keeping him close, by pro-actively managing his anger, in a way we have created a mindset in some that he is a problem. He is being alienated because within this little "gang" the other boys are allowed to play in the forest school area unsupervised, it's too dangerous for child 4, there are big sticks, stones and rope all possible weapons if another child presses his buttons and all of this is out of sight of the playground and other adults. People are aware of him because we will remove him from the scene of an altercation that is building, regardless of whether he is actually involved, because he is likely to involve himself. Or we will call to him, to remind him that we are nearby making sure that he is ok.
I cannot change our parenting techniques as that will make things worse, if we are not watchful all manner of things can happen, I have removed big sticks being wielded as an axe or a sword, a threatening tennis racquet being raised to batter someone with, if I had not the child on the receiving end could have been really hurt, it doesn't matter that they were being mean or snatched a toy or pushed child 4 first.
I am sure that some people enjoy causing upset and anguish to others because they are unhappy with their lives or they are jealous of what someone else has, so I guess we need to surround ourselves with people who understand, who help, not who sit idly by judging others for what they do. This is obviously going to be a little tougher than we realised but with the right people with us, we will be ok. I hope that the families in the news this week are surrounded by people who love them and can help support them so that the right outcomes for them all are reached.

Friends and Prosecco

It has been a tough couple of weeks at the  Five Go On An Adventure Towers. Exams have been a common theme leading to a multitude of additional stressors. Child 2s mock GCSE results have been trickling in, none of which have been particularly good, probably because he didn't revise. In his disappointment in himself for letting himself, us and his teachers down he reverted back to his victim mentality saying that he was being bullied, needed to move schools and was threatening suicide. This led child 1 who is now in the middle of AS', so already pretty stressed herself, to melt down because child 2 was ruining her life, she had too much going on for her to put up with his tantrums. Child 3 of course had to jump the band wagon as she was doing year 5 mock SATs, so we had tears and tantrums from her too. Of course this unrest, angry noise, tears and tension meant that child 4 couldn't cope and he reverted back to his fight responses. He was continually on the offensive and I was called into the pre-school to discuss a new issue of biting and agression.
I found myself in a cycle of being on the defensive, dealing with each attention seeking behaviour after the event instead of pro-actively managing them before they blew up in our faces. It takes so much longer to deal with the fallout if you are on the back foot than it does if you notice the signs and can nip it in the bud.
Sometimes having 4 children, birth and adopted mean that I just miss the signs, I am so caught up dealing with one child that I miss the signs of one of the others going into melt down and so the cycle goes on.
My first priority had to be the suicide threats, even if they are not meant we have to follow through, just in case the child involved takes it further to ensure that someone takes note of their distress. School was my first port of call and I have to say that they were brilliant. They arranged a meeting between child 2 and the family support officer, who after talking to him let me know that he had no signs of any metal health issue and definitely wasn't suicidal, it was attention seeking so then she looked at what was causing that. There have been 2 boys causing our oldest son distress with low level name calling and aggravation, this has now been dealt with. A mentoring programme has been put in place with the new school chaplain who is a cool dude with cookies and hot chocolate to help with child 2's self esteem and they have also arranged time with a TA to help teach study skills and revision planning. At home we are supporting with additional tutoring in maths and English. We are also working on responsibility and less screen time. Child 2 takes absolutely no responsibility for his own actions, it is always someone else's fault and so we are continuing with our "robust" parenting. At the end of the day, he is the one who has to take his exams and he has to learn to live with the consequences of his actions. As parents we can only support and be there to help when needed.
The next priority was child 4 and his behaviour spiral, once again the pre-school stepped up they became more vigilant, watching for any issues that could cause child 4 to spiral, preventative mechanisms work brilliantly, distractions or watching for any child instigating difficult situations have resolved the biting and agression, at the nursery at least. Child 1 is still struggling, but she can accept responsibility for her behaviour even if it tends to be after the event, we have had lots of apologies and hugs and child 3, well after I explained to her that her mock SATs were just for her teacher to know what her pupils knew and didn't know and that it really didn't matter if she did badly in every single one, life calmed down. It's weeks like these that I am so grateful to my support network. Friends with birth children who have dealt with exam and revision concerns, friends with children from care who get the worries about attachment behaviours, education staff who have stepped up to support my children, sometimes going above and beyond and family who are just happy to listen and hug.  Without them life could be difficult and dark, instead the last few days have been filled with coffee, long walks, lunch out, pizza and prosecco, group messaging via what's app and lots of laughter. We have shared the trials and tribulations of parenting, growing up and growing older, all of us making life's load a little bit lighter.

Desert Island Discs

On Tuesday I heard some of Radio 4's series "Soul Music" which was about one of my most favourite  Disney songs " Feed the Birds." A song that makes me well up every single time I hear it, I think it's the swell of the orchestra as Mary Poppins sings of the Saints and the Apostles smiling down on each person that spends just tuppence to feed the birds, that triggers some unexplained emotion in me. Julie Andrews of course sings it note perfect but I nearly sobbed when one of its creators Richard Sherman sang it, not quite in tune at a piano. This got me thinking about how music plays such an important part of our lives, a tune brings with it memories temporarily forgotten, back to the here and now, sometimes with such clarity that you are transported back to the moment that indelibly marked itself  on you. Another of my favourite Radio 4 shows is Desert Island Discs, I find it fascinating to hear celebrities speak about the 8 songs they would take to a desert island and why, it gives such a personal insight into them as individuals and can tell the listener a great deal about the type of person they are. 
Since starting our adoption journey I have been fascinated about how we are all shaped and marked by our experiences, even if we cannot articulate the memories we may have, so after two days of thoughts and difficult decision making here are my Desert Island Discs, I wonder what they say about me.
Secretly, I always wanted to be a little bit wild but was too scared. I was and probably still am a little in awe of Blondie and Wendy James of Transvision Vamp. Which to choose? It really had to be Blondie's Heart of Glass, the minute I hear the opening drum beat then the guitar overture, I know exactly which song it is and it takes me back to the time I was moving on from primary school. It takes me back to playing "he on the lines" handstands into bridges on the grassy slopes of the school field and hanging upside down on the bars of the climbing equipment. A time of innocent fun before the trials and trauma of secondary school life. 
When I was 11 years old my Dad picked me up as I walked home from school, he was buzzing with excitement and so was the whole house when I walked through the front door. We had our very first colour TV, not like today's at all, in fact my mum still laughs about how you couldn't see the tennis balls during the Wimbledon Tennis Championships. The first movie we watched that very afternoon was an Elvis Presley one, all I remember was the blue, blue sea and sky. I would guess that it was Blue Hawaii but couldn't promise. We must have watched every Elvis movie, my mum was a huge fan but my most favourite was King Creole, I used to dream of visiting New Orleans and explore the French style side streets and eat the crawfish. That opening scene in moody black and white with Elvis singing "Crawfish" from a wrought iron balcony a foil to the beautiful crawfish seller will   voice and in actual fact Perfect is not a favourite anymore, I prefer her more haunting melodies and lyrics, the one I attempt to sing along to, when it's just me and her is Comedy Waltz, it's my go to song when something has riled me, it's a looking for something funny or good when things aren't kinda song. One that plays in my life more often than I want, yet it makes me smile and helps me move on. It reminds me of my 18th birthday party a time that in many ways life was beginning, a time when the world was my oyster and I could be anything I wanted to be. Wow!
When I was 23 I bought my first house a small terraced ex-council house  Every Friday night my friend Jo came over with a bottle of wine, I would cook us dinner, we would drink the wine, pull on our jeans and cropped tops and with £15 tucked into our back pockets, keys in front left pocket and in my case a pack of 
silk cut in the other back pocket we would stroll the 20 minutes to La Mirage our local nightclub, if we got there before 10pm it was free so we would say hi to the bouncers and buy our first bottle of bud of the evening and would hit the dance floor, beer in one hand, cigarette in the other and then we would dance all night, leaving when the lights started to be turned on. I had an amazing group of girlfriends "the coven" who I holidayed with to Portugal, Corfu and Ayia Napa inCyprus and the song that transports me back to those days of being young, carefree, irresponsible and a little bit drunk is Degrees In Motion - Shine On. Oh the memories. It was at a pit stop in our local on the way to Mirage that I met an old primary school mate, little knowing at the time that he was going to be my husband. Scribbling my number on a strip torn off the top of my cigarette packet was to lead to romance and wedded bliss. We managed our wedding on a shoestring, money that our parents and my aunt gave us. We had a yellow rolls royce, something I had always dreamt of after watching the movie of the same name, a church wedding and the celebration after in the Town Hall. It was market day and the yellow rolls royce dropped us in amongst the flower stalls that were sited outside the entrance. What a stir we caused. The song We chose for our first song was "Make Someone Happy" by Jimmy Durante.
Whilst I was pregnant with our first three children, my husband, a bit of a music snob used to play his favourite tracks to introduce his offspring Ito "real" music, I had no taste you see. Child 1 loved Beck, child 2 Beastie Boys but child 3 showed no exciting moves in my bell you on matter what he played. It was when I, heavily pregnant took a 7 year old child 1 to watch Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty that she finally showed some interest. I was secretly so pleased that one of my children had some old fashioned classical taste. My favourite Tchaikovsky ballet is Swan Lake, particularly the bit that Billy Elliot finished on. I wanted the film to continue into the ballet. There is something so magical about the ballet, you can lose yourself in the mythical world of the fight of good versus evil that always has a happy ending.
I'm Walking on Sunshine, whoa, I'm walking on sunshine whoa - Katrina and the Waves is a tune full of joy for me, it's a does what it says on the tin kinda song. Happy, go lucky and one to dance too.
This one must be one of my all time favourites, it's played at all the events I go to. Christmas Parties, Wedding's, 18th, 21st, 30th 40th etc etc. It just seems to tie in with so many celebrations and makes me wanna dance.
My last choice has to be Silent Night, every year we sing this at the Christmas Eve Vigil Service, it's at every Carol concert and as someone who insists on carols being played throughout advent, along side Phil Spectre, Now Christmas and Frank Sinatra's Christmas Album it is something I hear every year. A reminder of what Christmas is about. It for me slows the fast pace of Christmas down for just a few minutes bringing calm and gentleness to where we are. The story behind it is beautiful, in 1816 a Josef Mohr after seeing reanactment of the Nativity was sitting at the top of a hill over looking Oberndorf and he remembered a poem that he had written and he wanted it put to music but the organ in his church was not working so he asked Franz Gruber to put the words tomusic, Gruber  using a guitar and came up with the melody. A few weeks later a well known organ builder Karl Mauracher arrived in Oberndorf to fix the organ, Gruber tested the organ by playing Silent Night. Mauracher was so impressed that he took a copy back to his alpine Village where two well known families of singers heard it and included the new song into their Christmas season repertoire and now it is sung the world over.

So there we have it an insight in to the workings of my soul, I wonder what my children would chose and what sort of insight that would give me of them - something to consider perhaps a talking point on a long car journey maybe?

PS the book I would take would be L M Montomery's Anne of Green Gables, the whole collection if I could as its my most favourite and my luxury item a never ending bottle of ice cold prosecco.

Tales of the Unexpected

I am rarely able to link my posts with the WASO theme, so this week I was really surprised that I could write about unexpected support.
http://theadoptionsocial.com

Child 4 has been accepted into our local school and I have started planning for his school entrance plan. Oh but how to do this in a positive and constructive way. The older three have attended the school, child 3 will moving into year 6 in September and I am a school governor, so I am well known by the staff. I have always been pretty relaxed with the relationships I have had with the school and have been, for the most part, really happy with how my children have been educated and looked after during their time there.

However, I have always felt that the school have struggled with accepting that child 4 could potentially come with a interesting set of needs. I have lost count of the times when I have tried to talk to them their response has been, "he'll be fine" "he has you now everything will be ok" or "he is a very lucky boy" Everyone of these responses worry me as they all completely ignore the effect that his early life may have had on him. That some how we as a family have some magic wand to wave that will just make everything better.
So, I really don't want to alienate the staff by stomping in with a list of demands or make them feel that I don't trust them to be able to educate him.

With some persuasion I pushed the school into having attachment training, this started very gradually with the teacher and teaching assistants in class 1 first attending a course and then due to their raving about how good it was, a morning session was included in an inservice day for all the staff.
I was amazed and over the moon, when the head on the way back from an academies training session this week, asked about what I thought about the attachment training, I explained that for me it was a pretty basic course, just giving a flavour of attachment but didn't really give specific ways to help, she agreed and asked if I knew of anything else the staff could do. Well, of course I could and emailed her the next day with loads of information (some of which I know I had sent before, but hey sometimes slowly, slowly works)

Our school entrance planning meeting has been set for the first week after half term, the class teacher, the SenCo and child 4's key worker from the nursery will meet with us to discuss his needs. This is brilliant, the nursery are amazing with child 4, they are pro-active in how they avoid melt downs, they have picked up that there are a couple of boys in his peer group who instigate situations and sit back to watch the fall out. The staff now watch for this and deal directly with the instigator, child 4 is often completely unaware of this. The nursery staff don't want any stigma attached to child 4, so they intend coming armed with all their advice to ensure transition goes well and that the school are very aware of how to handle child 4 pro-actively.

Then, I read Al Coates' blog, the bit that really struck me was the reminder that adopted children have "motivated and articulate parents to advocate for them and support them throughout their school lives"* parents like myself who read up on everything to do with attachment, behaviour and all types of support. And not only that, everything that we share "is an opportunity to highlight good practice and broadcast it to new audiences"* which means that when we as adoptive parents share good behaviour support it can affect so many other children that don't have parents in their corner supporting them.
* * http://www.alcoates.co.uk/2016/04/behaviour-management-review.html

So my opening gambit is going to be that my gorgeous, spirited little boy is going to be joining the school and to ensure that he grows into the man he can be, he will need help with being scared, frustrated or out of his element. But, do you know what, he is going to be fine because we will help everyone to recognise the signs of struggling so that they can pro-actively support him, and on those days that being pro-active doesn't work we will just have some quiet calm down time and start again tomorrow.

Thanks to everyone who is there at the end of the phone, everyone who shares a gin and tonic or a bottle of prosecco with me, the head teacher who I think is beginning to get it and Al Coates for giving me the ok to go in to school to share my knowledge.

Contentment

We could hear the river before we saw it, the overflow from the surrounding hills and farmland were making the waters high and frothy, yet really really clear. As always we followed the path along the rivers edge towards Watersmeet where a tea rooms awaited us. We strolled leisurely along watching how the waters changed depending on the landscape. The fast flowing waters crashed against the rocks that have traversed the river over the years, displaced and worn down by the winter storms. These Rapids are interspersed by quiet pools of calm, where the children could paddle in the clear cold water and skim the smooth, flat stones found all along the waters edge. Sometimes the path led us up into the hills still following the meanders of the river just higher giving beautiful views and an opportunity for child 4 to throw the rocks that sit awaiting him, down into the depths, creating huge splashes. Occasionally he would change the trajectory and aim for the hillside opposite where we walked and would dance delightedly when one of his rocks bounced off the green and ricochet into the waters below.

It is these days that are my favourite, our "famous five" days out. Involving picnics of sardine and chilli sandwiches, homemade sausage rolls, grapes, home made flapjacks and cake, Pringles and squeezy yoghurts. Child 4 loves the whole thing from preparing the food, to loading the car to arriving somewhere new. He isn't even that fussed as to where we end up, in fact the more low key the place the less anxious he is. We spent a day at the zoo where he ran from enclosure to enclosure almost worried that he would miss out if he didn't see everything "right now." Once we had visited all the animals he was desperate to see, he calmed down and was happy to meander about. The trips out that were the most successful during the Easter holidays were the ones to the moat to visit and feed the swans and the ducks and then a stroll through the gardens and a play in the park. The other was an overnight with grandparents and cousins to Lynton and Lynmouth, child 4 spent the whole time there throwing sticks and stones into the river.  There was no anxiety, no demands and no tantrums just contentment.

Although it is lovely to spoil the children occasionally with a visit to a zoo or an adventure park, I have found that for child 4 in particular, choosing a place of natural beauty, the woods, a hill to climb, the beach or a river is a calmer, less stressful option.

We need this time, time to decompress, away from school,exams, work and the humdrum of life. Time to be together without the easy distractions of wifi and TV, time to walk together, talk together, just be together. The petty arguments decrease, the tantrums cease and we tolerate each other so much more. This is when I know our family is doing ok and I feel myself relax and just enjoy moments in the here and now, not worrying about what is yet to come. I am content!

So with this in mind I have started to hunt for more outdoor stuff to do. Pinterest helps with scavenger hunts and garden play. I have found a Forest School that we can join and learn from and we are going to take part in the Wildlife Trusts 30 Day Wild Campaign by completing 30 Random Acts of Wildness during June (maybe something for #taspic perhaps?)
http://action.wildlifetrusts.org/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1823&ea.campaign.id=48499

Someone once told me that her mother had always told her when she wished to wish for contentment. What a wonderful gift, to be content and I believe that the natural beauty of the English countryside offers us that. Contentment.

"Tiger mum"

One of my biggest fears has been that I would turn into that parent, yeah you know the one.
The helicopter parent that doesn't allow her child the freedom to have a go at anything, for fear of them getting hurt
the authoritarian parent setting strict behaviour rules with no warmth or thought for how their child thinks and the permissive parent allowing her child to get away with misbehaviour.

I am feeling that the perception of me by others is the worst parts of all three.

In the last two weeks I have had a parent in the playground inform me that my child has just punched and bitten her child, I was watching the altercation between the boys, my son being the much smaller and younger one,  although I am very aware that he is a scrapper, more than capable of giving what he gets when he is pushed, and I know that there was definitely a bit of pushing and shoving but definitely no biting. When I highlighted this the other mothers response was "well, if I was his mother I would want to know"  I wanted to respond with yeah, well you're not, but seriously what is the point child 4 is already getting the reputation in the playground as "that" child by a small group of righteous parents.

When I needed to get him seen at the doctors surgery' following a referral from the 111service, as we couldn't get his temperature down below 39* (keep in mind the febrile convulsion he suffered only 8weeks ago) I was made to feel like I would be wasting the doctors time and that I was just being neurotic and then when we arrived to see the on-call doctor, we were left waiting for 40 mins in the waiting room, until child 4 started fitting on the waiting room floor. The on-call doctor didn't have a clue what to do and I have never been so glad to see a paramedic again in my life.

I know that some of child 4's peers parents think I worry too much, that I keep him too close, that I don't allow him to play unsupervised and out of my eye sight. But I am the one that has to calm him down when things don't go right, when someone is mean in the forest school area, my child doesn't just shove back he uses the huge stick in his hand for maximum retaliation. He has absolutely no fear, so although I let him climb the tree, I need to be sure he won't climb too high, get stuck and panic or just show off and fall. 

Yes I know that all boys do the things he does, but with him, emotionally everything is magnified or just ignored. If he falls over, he does not always cry or ask for help, perhaps he is being brave or perhaps he still believes that he has to deal with pain by himself. Some of his peers have already realised that they can wind him up like a little toy, pushing his buttons until he can't cope and he goes off on one like a whirling dervish, be it being really silly or really angry. The staff at the nursery have picked up on this and proactively watch for this happening, removing the instigators rather than child 4.

Fortunately, I have a couple of really, really good friends, the ones that push a bit when you need sorting out and following this latest hospital trip I needed a fair bit of sorting out. For us this is just the beginning, I have to get out the big guns, strap on the armour around my heart and mind, I need to ignore other parents, I have to learn to speak in a language the professionals understand, whether they be doctors, nurses or teachers. We are responsible for child 4 and we have to be in his corner fighting for him - metaphorically at least. So I have learnt words such as hypothalamus and pulse oximeter, I have dusted off the interview stuff that Sally Donavan helped with care of her book The Unofficial Guide to Adoption and I am preparing myself to be a different type of parent that I have always been.
Keeping in mind that I am being the type of parent that my children need me to be, a parent that walks with them on their journey, holding their hands when the road gets tough, allowing them to make mistakes, to take responsibility and preparing them for when it's is time to fly solo.  Well no one else is going to do it are they?