ME, THE BOY, AND THE MONSTER

We had to have our cat put down yesterday. She was only two years old, so it came as a huge shock to all of us. We are all coping with it in our own ways; Fairy is distracting herself with books and writing stories, I am crying buckets and welded to my duvet, Husband is musing about getting a memorial wind chime for our apple tree. Tickle, however, has been the biggest surprise. Tickle, is demonstrably and unashamedly sad. Tickle doesn’t spend much time interacting with the cats, but I know he does love them, and considers them part of the family - whenever we go on holiday he tells me he misses them, and he’s still not quite sure why they don’t come with us. But that’s not why I am surprised by his grief. I’m surprised because it’s a really big emotion, and he is allowing it to exist in his body without feeling the need to block it out or run away. When we first told him that Etta was poorly and wasn’t going to come home, he did run away. He ran to his bedroom, and shouted, scream...

Thank you to everyone who linked their blog up last time - it was great to catch up with blogs I hadn’t read in a while and also to read some new ones! This link up is a half term special, and it’s open for the whole week. Don’t feel you have to write about half term specifically, but I know in our house holidays are a difficult time and it would be good to hear how other people manage this! I’m trying something new this time and I’ve added a ‘like’ feature - I’ll do a shout out to the ‘top three’ posts with the most likes at the end of the week! See below to add your blog, and CLICK HERE to tweet me that you’ve added it!

This morning, as usual, I was woken up by Tickle shouting at Husband. When I heard Husband start to shout back, I thought I’d better get out of bed. Tickle had thrown a toy at Husband’s face (again) - though thankfully this time it was only a small one and didn’t do any actual damage. Tickle came to sit with me in bed for a bit. He didn’t like this much, which he chose to communicate to me by throwing his glasses on the floor, and then shouting at me because he couldn’t see. I got back in to bed and ignored him until he’d calmed down a bit. We had a chat. We talked about what was worrying him - school, as it turned out, or more specifically, one boy at school who he is worried about. This particular boy actually left school at the end of the summer term, and I’ve spent the last few months trying to help Tickle understand that he isn’t coming back ‘for ever and ever’. However, it seems like it hasn’t quite gone in yet, and he’s still pretty anxious about whether this boy will hurt h...

I recently conducted a small survey to find out how school teachers felt about the issues that looked after and care-experienced children experience in school. I am working on developing some resources to help schools be better equipped to deal with the issues, and I believe if I’m going to have any chance of getting the schools to engage with this, I need to have a good understanding of the issues from their point of view. I know what I  think the problem is, but first I wanted to hear what the teachers themselves had to say. The summary of results is below: What teachers are worrying about: The top three worries from the teachers who responded were behaviour, the difficulties that the children were experiencing, and the lack of support for staff to effectively deal with these. Behaviour  could be broken down in to three categories: - avoidant/withdrawn behaviour, including hiding, running away, refusing to engage with tasks, distraction - oppositional/chall...

This is a bit of an experiment for me, but I have been really missing the blog link ups that used to happen regularly on the Adoption Social, and on Full Time Tired, so I thought I’d see whether I could set one up. I really enjoy reading other blogs about adoption, so it’s very handy to have them all in one place! If this works OK I will see if I can do it regularly... Please enter your adoption blog links below! This list will be open for a week until 20th October.

My alarm is going off at 6.40am. I’m awake enough already to switch it off; not quite awake enough to hit snooze instead. Luckily, I have anticipated this and set a second alarm for 7am, which is when I absolutely HAVE to get up. I think I only woke once last night, to get up for the loo around 2am. I’m not sure if it’s my sleep apnoea or my age, or just stress, but I don’t often manage to get through the night these days. It’s unusual for me not to have woken again around half five, dragged to consciousness by the shouting in the next room. Perhaps Husband has done well at keeping Tickle quiet this morning, or perhaps I’m so tired I just don’t remember. We have been trying out something new lately, trying to teach Tickle that morning really doesn’t start at 4am, that his bedroom light stays off until 6am whether he likes it or not. We’re having mixed success. Well, I say ‘we’, but I really mean Husband, as he is the one who sleeps on a mattress in Tickle’s room. It’s been almost a y...

In recent times, The Monster has not got as much of a hold over Tickle as it once did. It’s definitely i still there, and there are times when I’m pretty sure he’s dissociating and doesn’t know what he’s doing, but on the whole he’s growing much more able to take charge of his feelings, even if it’s only momentarily, and even if he doesn’t quite know what to do with them.  The other day when he was cross, I saw him go to reach for my iPad, but he stopped himself. That’s great, I said. Tickle is in charge, not the Big Feelings.  Tickle was also in charge, so he tells me, this morning when he decided to throw *his* iPad at Husband’s face. He did it on purpose, he said, because he was cross, because he wanted the swimming pool episode of ‘Do You Know’ and it wasn’t on CBeebies. (Husband is ok, though he has a nasty cut just above his eyebrow, which did bleed a fair bit.) I’m just not quite sure where to put this, to be honest. We were talking with our therapist last we...