At our youngest’s request we were back the GP yesterday to see if we could have another ASD assessment. He made a list of the things that he feels warrants a referral back to CAMHS, and we did the same. Sometimes the things you live with every day become so normal you don’t realise how abnormal they are until you write them down. It was quite emotional and upsetting to write such a comprehensive list of how his ‘quirks’ affect our day to day lives, and yet compared to so many, we have very few problems.

Don’t get me wrong, as I have typed so many times before, we are blessed with two amazing children and they make our lives so much more fulfilling and fun than anyone could imagine, but they do have additional needs, and as our youngest ventures further into puberty, he is becoming more and more aware of his differences, and this, in turn, adds to his difficulties interacting with some of his peers and coping with the wider world. When we had a deep heart to heart a few weeks ago (when he asked me if I had already booked a GP appointment, but I hadn’t) he told me he wanted a diagnosis so he could tell people he had high functioning autism (HFA) and therefore a superior brain.  I love the fact that that’s the way he sees it, but don’t think the ones who pick on him will necessarily like that comment……

So, we saw the GP, we gave her our lists, I did most of the talking and she agreed that we need to be referred back to CAMHS, without any of the battling or arguing our case I was expecting.  This is exactly what we were wanting, but a part of me wanted her to tell me I was being an over-protective parent & if I did x, y & z he would suddenly become a social animal with no anxieties……that made yesterday a tough day.  For any parent, some days are amazing, most are ok and some are tough, often for no reason.  Some days we think are going to be horrendous are actually easy and fun, and others we think are going to be a breeze aren’t. Yesterday was just tough – no particular reason except we’re back in the CAMHS system, again, and I’m tired at the thought of going through it all, again.

However, a good night’s sleep makes all the difference, and today has been much better – he’s been at a friend’s for most of the day (although is now ready for home), and our amazing older youngling is having a weekend away in Austria. Flashback 5 years and I couldn’t have imagined this, a travelling, confident young adult. He still has wobbles, but he’s a skware peg in a rownd hole world, so the world will continue to make him wobble. As parents of skware pegs, we need to give them confident, solid foundations so that when the world wobbles them they keep standing, and if they fall, they brush themselves down and pick themselves back up.  If that means going back to CAMHS and getting the help they need with the foundations, then I’m ready, let’s go!

 

I think you can pretty much tell how our lives are going by how much I blog – when things are ticking along I don’t tend to feel the need to write furiously as things are coasting. When things are going amazingly well, or when things feel like we’re wading through treacle, I write (although I may try to start writing a weekly blog…..that’s my plan, but that’s been my plan since I started this 3+ years ago).

Anyway, I am writing today so we much be on an up or a down – and I think in some ways it’s both (hence the title).

We’ve had huge steps forward over the last few weeks – an overnight stay at a hotel with school (might not seem much for some, but it’s massive in this family), eloquent emails to teachers explaining how he feels & why he’s stressed, and another excellent report card. However, I feel this works against us in a way (not that I’d want the grades to drop), but his high marks give the impression that his stress and anxiety don’t impact his learning.  I firmly believe that if the stressors were reduced and the anxiety managed better, his grades could be even higher……but then I feel like I’m sounding like a pushy parent, which I really hope I’m not.  For our eldest, he now has a growing PT business and has found his place. He is happy. After his battle with depression at the end of 2017, this is fabulous. He is happy, driven and focused. He has a plan. He has a place. He’s himself.

But then we’ve had conversations this weekend about him being screened/tested for ASD again – and this time the conversations have been driven by him.  He wants to be screened, he wants a diagnosis, he want a label. Let me make this very clear – this is being driven by him, not us, not school, not family or friends.  I asked why, and he said he is feeling more and more different from most people. He has his group of friends, and he’s happy and relaxed with them, but he is becoming more conscious of how different he feels, and he wants a reason for this. He wants to be able to tell people why he is how he is – he also wants to be able to tell people he has high functioning autism and so a superior brain, but I’m not sure that’s going to help him feel more integrated!!!!

He’s also now worrying about rugby trials – new coaches, new team mates, new routines – and right now he’d rather not go than try. This is because there has been a month break between sessions, so he’s had a month to overthink how different it’s going to be, and now doesn’t want to go back.  This is fine with us, and we don’t mind, except the chance to go again won’t come for another year and I really think he’ll be cross with himself if he doesn’t give it a try. But I can’t make him go. We have a few hours to discuss……

Now it’s my turn, a paragraph of self pity & wallowing, but I need to get it out there. I understand that compared to some people we have it incredibly easy. We have two amazing boys, one with ADHD who is now building his own business, and has worked out how to ‘adult’ & adult well, and I am so proud of him, but he still needs reassurance at times, help with exams and, because of his dyslexia, he also needs help with forms and the like. We have another with ASD traits, clinical anxieties and dyslexia but who is clever enough to know that he is different to many, hence his request for a return trip to the GP. He is managing all the things that normally go on in his head, and now he has the added ‘burden’ of teenage hormones and feelings. Life is tough for him at the moment – as it is for many teens. If he had a physical injury we could contact the rugby team and say he was injured.  To say he’s having a bad week with his mental health issues should have the same weight, but if he was injured he could turn up on crutches (which is what was requested, even if they’re injured they should turn up anyway & learn). His mental health issues means that it’s the turning up that’s the issue.  So we do everything we can. We talk, we listen, we juggle work so that at 13 he’s not on his own at all in the holidays. And some days it feels like we’re doing really well, and others it feels like it’s never going to end. That there is no magic wand to make life easier for my boys.

However, enough of this melodramatic waffle, it is a rollercoaster, and just as we feel we are hitting rock bottom, we climb back up again.  It’s the Easter hols, the GP visit has been booked, the sun is shining, and I am going to pry him away from his electronics and take him out into the sunshine, because, despite what teenagers claim, sunshine isn’t bad for them!!

So, we’re now on the forth week of term, and I’ve just had to send my first email to school – think that might be a bit of a record since our youngest hit double figures 3 years ago. But, on the other hand, we’re not even at the end of January, and I’ve had to send another email in.  Whether the glass is half full or half empty, the glass is in my hand, and it’s definitely not full, and that’s not great.

It’s the usual problem. Our youngest is sensitive, hard working and a stickler for the rules.  If you have to be quiet in a lesson, he expects everyone to be quiet.  Teachers deserve respect, at least until they lose it from you by being a@*%s. You are at school to learn, so you behave in lessons & you learn. However, he is 13 in a class with other 13 year olds. Some are very similar to him, others are full of hormones & are pushing boundaries, challenging teachers & making a nuisance of themselves. Neither type of 13 year old is doing anything unexpected, neither type is doing anything particularly wrong, but neither type gets on well with the other.  If our eldest was in the same class as our youngest, they would hate each other and would moan about each other all the time.

At work, we still get the clowns & the jokers, and the ones who get on with work. We get the ones who follow the rules, the ones who make the rules & the ones who don’t give a damn about the rules. We also get the ones who aren’t aware there are any rules, and don’t really do much at all. We also get bullies and gossipers and the ones who stir up trouble at every opportunity. If there are too many of one type in our place of work, we have choices; we can move department, we can choose to ignore them, we can look for another job and leave.

At school, in years 7-11, it’s a weird cocktail of hormones, opinions, forming characters and boundary pushing. I can remember how horrid it could be at my all-girls school, and I can also remember how hard it can be to teach and control these years (and I’ve only really taught years 10+, those early puberty years have avoided me, so far). Even if our youngest changed schools, he would just meet another group of similar characters. If I home schooled (which he is adamant he doesn’t want), we would avoid this, but then when he goes to college or university and then to work, he will have had limited exposure to ‘difficult’ or ‘challenging’ personalities, and will have no idea how to deal with them.

So, right now I have had a lovely email back from the form teacher, agreeing with what I said, and we will have a meeting before half term to discuss strategies. But, to be honest, I am torn.  These kids who are disruptive are no worse than our eldest probably was, and they are behaving exactly as teens & pre-teens should. Our youngest is also behaving exactly as a teen should – he’s being true to himself, and is pushing his own boundaries in his own way.  What is the solution? Is there a way to keep everyone happy as they find their way through the teenage & puberty minefield? And when is enough enough? When does the angst of other’s behaviour become something that needs action? And what if the actions of our son (getting on with his work, doing well in exams, coping with his learning barriers and being quite anti-social at times) are upsetting one of the other students and making their behaviour worse because they have undiagnosed learning barriers or SENs? Or maybe they have issues at home that are bothering them?  Or they are just finding the changes that are going on their bodies too much to deal with, and so they lash out & cause problems to distract them from the real issues.

I have no idea what the answer is, but I know that we have only just entered this teenage storm – and from experience, I think it’s time to batten down the hatches and hold on tight!!

2017 was a tough year for us, in some ways. Our youngest ended up back a CAMHS with clinical anxiety, and our eldest was diagnosed with depression. In other ways, however, we had a very lucky & good year.  Both the boys were able to talk to us about their issues, and they let us help them to get help.

Mental health issues are huge, and in some ways it’s in the media so much (often with negative headlines from some ‘notable’ newspapers, I think you know which ones I mean) that we almost switch off. We read about another celebrity with depression, another headline about ‘happy pills’ (don’t get me started on that one), more statistics about underfunding in different areas of the NHS………and it almost becomes background noise. And this is so very, very wrong.

Let’s this into perspective. Mental health in men & women is getting worse, and the funds to deal with it are getting lower. There are many possible reasons for this, and a lot of it is to do with societal pressures to tick boxes in a society that is increasingly insular and solitary.  It doesn’t necessarily affect men more than women, but it has a greater effect on men, possibly because there is more stigma attached to it, possibly because there is more societal pressure to ‘man up’, ‘big boys don’t cry’ and ‘not to be a girl’ (GRRRR!!!!!). So, here’s a very frightening statistic for you. Male suicide is the biggest killer of men under 50. Bigger than any cancer, road accidents, motor neuron disease and anything else you can think of. Too many men feel that their pain is so great they cannot carry on.

This cannot carry on.

We need to think of mental health and well-being as, well, just part of health and well-being. I am so proud of the way my children are open & honest about their mental health. They talk about it in the same way they might talk about asthma, if they had it. No stigma, no shame, no boasting, just as part of them.

If you think someone needs to talk, start a conversation. If you haven’t heard from someone for a couple of days, call or text. If you need to talk, tell someone – even message me on here if you need to, just start the ball rolling. You are not alone, you matter, you are enough, you are worthy. Please don’t suffer in silence. Please don’t become another statistic.

xx

 

First of all, Happy New Year. I hope you had a good Christmas and New Year, one that was (relatively) meltdown/shutdown/stress-free.

Our Christmas and New Year were good. Our youngest struggles with school, but then struggles with the lack of routine at the start of the holidays, so the first week was a little tense at times, but the habit & routine of lazy mornings and slow days kicked in, and our new routine was set.

Christmas morning, we have family round, a sort of open house, and then everyone goes home at lunchtime leaving us to an afternoon of peace and quiet, but a house full of people can be stressful to anyone, and our youngest sometimes struggles with the thought of all the visitors. This year was OK, and he coped very well.

Between Christmas and New Year we had lots of walks, conversations and family time (as well as much more screen time than normally happens, but hey, it’s Christmas). New Year’s Eve was quiet, and New Year’s Day was a walk in the Peak District followed by a family lunch.  All good.

And then last night, ‘it’ happened. The shutdown and meltdown that I had been anticipating for 2 weeks. Two weeks of low grade, chronic stress had taken its toll. Now everything was over, he could release the stress, he could finally let it all go, and let it all out. Headaches, feeling hot, nausea & vomiting – all the usual suspects were there, and this was a long one, lasting well over 3 hours from start to finish.  This is all part of his coping mechanisms, something we learned in CAMHS over the summer. His stress goes beyond fight or flight, and he freezes, shuts down a little. When the stressor is over, be that an exam, a stressful lesson or two weeks of festivities, all the pent up stress, worry & anxiety comes out as a physical & physiological meltdown. For us, this is our normal. For you, it might be something completely different.

So, now it’s the morning after the night before, and everything is fine again.  All the stress has been released and he’s back to normal, no remnants of the night before at all. I, however, am exhausted! A night on his floor with the storm raging outside did not allow much sleep at all, but that’s fine. I can catch up later. What matters is that the stress storm has passed, the clouds have parted and we have sunshine again.

 

Yesterday was parents’ evening for our younger Skware Peg. As expected, it was all incredibly positive, and he’s doing very well, at least from school’s point of view. There are still too many anxiety triggers, but that’s yet another blog for another day. Flash back 8 or 9 years to our older Skware Peg, and it was possibly better from a socially adept point of view, but not as good academically. And the teachers who all taught him were asking about him and reminiscing with smiles, and sending him their love & best wishes. Does this mean that we can compare? I’m not sure.

Our eldest is the most amazing young adult. He could be the poster boy for ‘I didn’t do that well at school but look at me now….’. He is growing his own business, and he has an ease and a charm that I am very envious of. Our youngest describes him as a really clever Joey from Friends, and that’s quite a good description. He just has an incredible aura that allows him to coach, motivate, train and inspire people. You could be in education for decades and not have that skill. It is innate, and could never be taught or learned.

Our youngest is completely different. He has a quiet charm, if he likes you, and if he doesn’t, he puts on an emotional mask and all you might get is an eye roll or death stare. He, however, is very academic and just ‘gets’ science, maths and humanities. Although writing or typing things down is hard for him, the process of learning is easy. He already knows what GCSEs, A-levels and even what he wants to read at uni, and where he wants to go.  It doesn’t occur to him that his brain won’t take him there.

In some ways the differences between them are the differences between ADHD & ASD. One is out there, doing, socialising (even when he doesn’t like them), wearing his heart on his sleeve, and everyone wants to be his friend. The other is introvert, almost secretive with an exclusive group of friends (with all the other peers being organised as acquaintances, others and mortal enemies – yes, really), and most of them want to be his friend.  Because they live with each other, and see each other’s strengths, weaknesses and daily struggles, the boys are incredibly close.  If they were at school together in the same year, they would hate each other. They are so different, and yet so incredible similar.

So, full circle – can we compare them? Yes, in a way.  We can compare their compassion (both fabulous), kindness (fab again), we can compare how they both work to overcome their barriers (ticked boxes here too), and how hard they are working to achieve their potential (yep, pretty good here as well). But we can’t compare like for like. Our eldest would hate a career in maths or physics, and our youngest would hate a career in coaching and motivation (Talking to people every day? *insert eye roll here*). What we can do is encourage them to look at their strengths, what makes their souls sing, and support them in every way we can to make sure they are amazing human beings who will make the world a better place. And surely, we should be doing this for all of our children, be they skware pegs, round pegs or nonadecagonal prisms (the joys of having a mathematical child!)!

 

Last Wednesday was quite a day in our house. For the second time in 13 months, we have been discharged from CAMHS. This obviously means that after our discharge last October we have to have another referral (in January), which was very hard at the time (details about that here), but now, almost 11 months later, it was the best thing that could have happened.

Luckily, our referral took us back to the same case worker as before, and he listened to our concerns, got our son to do an anxiety test, and was going to talk to colleagues about the possibility of re-testing for ASD. No joy with ASD, but the test showed that he now had clinical anxieties, and so was eligible for CBT on the NHS, but we would have to wait.

We waited for a little while, but no where near as long as I was fearing, and we started the therapy with the most amazing therapist. She got him straight away, explained everything in scientific detail, and barely raised an eyebrow when he talked about neurotypicals annoying him. The CBT made a fantastic improvement (details here) but there were still missing pieces. He was almost as good as he could be, but I wasn’t ready for him to be discharged. Luckily Super Therapist was also trained in EDMR (details here) and so that followed CBT.

It was a little strange, and I thought I would find it much more distressing than I did. Watching his body language throughout was fascinating from a scientific point of view, and I could certainly draw lots of similarities from my training in animal therapies. He found the sessions very tiring, and after the first two he was incredibly clingy and emotional, and although he slept well, he didn’t feel refreshed when he woke up.   After the final session last week, however, he has been better. Maybe a little more tactile than before, but definitely more confident, more assertive and possibly even less tolerant of those he doesn’t like!!

So, on Wednesday we were discharged from CAMHS. Super Therapist and all the wonderful people who work constantly with tight deadlines and even tighter budgets have worked they magic on our youngest, and, for now, we have no more appointments, no more safety net and it is equally exciting and terrifying. He says he feels more himself, and he can feel a big improvement, but he still doesn’t like school (meeting on Wednesday so expect another blog at the end of the week), doesn’t like most people, and still doesn’t like being social – but that’s fine. We know that he will always be an anxious person, a worrier. We know that he will always have ASD traits. What his therapy has done is allowed him to take control of them, rather than him controlling him.

Super Therapist’s final words to us were that we could always get a referral back, if we need to. Hopefully we won’t, but it does feel more like Au Revoir than Good Bye……..

After having considerable (& quick) success with CBt (Cognitive behavioural therapy, info can be found here), our youngest was finding life easier to cope with.  It was still stressful, it still caused anxieties and people, sights, smells and tastes are all still issues that he has to deal with on a daily basis, but he now has the coping skills to deal with said issues. However, I still felt that there was a piece missing in the jigsaw to make him feel, well, normal isn’t the right word here at all, but I’m not sure what is. There were still things going on in his subconscious that were causing problems, and although CBT had helped a lot, and we know that the sensory issues are something else altogether, my gut feeling was that there was stuff somewhere inside his head, and we had to unlock it and help him deal with it.

Actually, to be completely honest, I knew what it was/is. This was the first ‘issue’ I tried to sort out with him when he was 3.  The issues are all to do with his neonatal, postpartum experience. Although many people say that you can’t remember things from when you were brand new, there are now some people who believe that we have foetal memories. We talk to our babies when they are growing so that they know our voices. I bought a close friend a jingling necklace to wear when she was pregnant as the idea is that the baby will remember the sound when they arrive. We might play music to them, sing to them, even read to them. Our instincts says they hear and remember, and science is catching up with us. A study published 21 years ago says that there is definitely foetal memory (details here), and I am sure (I hope) that there are much more recent studies into this.

So, his birth story is quite straight forward – normal pregnancy, quick labour, and he arrived a day early. So far, so good. When he was just a couple of hours old, however, he went blue and floppy and had to be rushed into the SCBU where he was put on oxygen, he had a glucose drip, and within 24 hours he had an umbilical drip as they couldn’t get enough glucose in quickly enough, and he had to be fed fortified milk through a nose tube.  In total, he spent about 8 days in an incubator, and another 4 days in SCBU before he was discharged to come home, on hydrocortisone liquid every 8 hours, and a referral to an endocrinologist. Every 4 hours while he was in hospital he had to have blood sugar (this is important!). At 6.5 weeks, we then had to go to Sheffield Children’s Hospital for 2 days for controlled withdrawal of his meds. There was no other way to see if he could come off it, whether this was a lifelong condition or a neonatal blip. While he was there, it was 4 hourly blood sugar tests, and then he had to have between 2 & 5 mls of blood taken from a heel prick (there was a medical reason why this couldn’t be from a vein, but the actual amount needed & the reason why are long forgotten). He came off the meds, his blood sugar was stable, and at his 3 month check up, we were discharged completely, and we thought it was all forgotten.

Fast forward 3 years, when he started having dreadful nightmares, with green monsters appearing above his bed. He was adamant, and consistent, when telling us where they came from.  When we had to visit my Dad in hospital at the same sort of time, he announced that this was the hospital where he was born and where he had to stay in a plastic box. And then he told us one day while we were eating dinner, that when he was a baby, a giant used to come and stab his fingers with pencils……and then the penny dropped, and where the monsters were appearing was where hand would go into the incubator. At the time, cranio-sacral therapy was recommended, and we saw a lovely lady who we called the bad dream lady, and 8 sessions with her made the bad dreams go away.  When they came back a year or so later, we went to see her again, she worked her magic, and all was good.

Except, it wasn’t, really. He would occasionally tell me that he remembered that once he cried and I didn’t come. He doesn’t like hospitals at all. He couldn’t sleep through the night on his own until he was 5, and the only way we could get him to sleep through was for me to sleep on his floor, and when things get too much, I still sleep on his floor.

When I mentioned this to his amazing CBT therapist, she suggested that EMDR might help (info here). I read up on it, and it has been used mainly for PTSD so far, but is being increasingly used for non-verbal memories. So, today we had our pre-EMDR session, and it was strange. We both went with him as we are both off this week, and there are bits of the birth story that I couldn’t remember, Our son said ‘I was put on a tray thing, and then lowered into a box’, and apparently that’s exactly what happened, but I hadn’t remembered, and my husband hadn’t said anything.

So on Monday we start EMDR properly. We know that it might make the nightmares come back while the body processes the memories, but the fact that he had a tummy ache going today, knowing what we were going to talk about, and on the way home he was emotionally drained shows that it is still there, like the elephant in the room. I will blog about it, as there must be many skware pegs that have had emotional trauma that still sits in their brain causing minor problems from time to time, but I feel very positive and optimistic that this is the missing piece, the missing link for us.

And that’s a good place to conclude and pull everything together. What works for one person may not work for another, even if their problems seem very similar. Also, mental health help doesn’t come with a one size fits all, or one solution will ‘fix’ you. It might be that 10 sessions of CBT or NLP or whatever else works, or it might be that CBT followed by EMDR with regular top ups or Reiki and aromatherapy are what works for you.  It might be art therapy that keeps you feeling fully functional, or other talking therapies, or it might be being outside with nature (ecotherapy is definitely my personal favourite). The point I am trying to make, is that we are all amazing, unique individuals. How my brain works isn’t necessarily how your brain works, so what helped me isn’t necessarily what will help you (although it’s always good to share what did and didn’t work, as long as we don’t force the matter). What matters is that we do whatever we need to do, and we get whatever help we need to optimise our mental health and well being.

At the moment we are in an (almost) enviable position where we have one child through the hell that is teenage years, and one not quite there, but definitely on the cusp. Most of the parents I talk to and are friends with now have children around our youngest’s age, and, for the majority, it is their eldest or only who share our son’s peer group. I also have friends who have much, much younger children, and who complain about the terrible toddler years. I just smile and nod, knowing that what comes later is much, much tougher.

Our eldest sailed through most of his teenage years. He’s never been an easy child; ADHD and dyslexia ensured lots of tantrums and tears (and that was just us!), but he was & is a joy to be around. I can remember feeling quite smug when other parents of his peers would tell stories of all night drinking sessions, missed curfews, answering back, mystery stains on clothes and so on. Out biggest issue then was the frequent visits to A&E with rugby injuries.

But then came year 11, and we had a very, very tough few months. Various things happened that were beyond our control – exams, family bereavement, peer pressure, hormones – and they all happened at once. I’m not going into details here, but at the time I felt we would never get through it. I couldn’t see how our beautiful boy would find his way back to us. Older parents told us that as long as we could hold on tight through the storm, we would get through, probably stronger than before. They were right. We did, and although there have been inevitable hiccups along the way, we are better than before. It didn’t kill us, but instead made us stronger.

So now we are standing, looking at the teenage storm that is ahead of us once more. Some of our youngest’s peers seem to be in the storm already, others seem quite naive and a way off.  I think we are closer than we might like to think, but I also think it’s going to be a very different teenage storm to last time; not better, not worse, just different.

I now completely believe that we are meant to have the storm. Just like the ‘terrible twos/threes/fours’ are meant to happen as these little people are becoming aware of themselves and their surroundings, so the teenage storm is meant to happen.  I like to think of the teenage brain as a caterpillar turning into a pupa, getting all mushed up, and then emerging at the end as a beautiful butterfly.  They need to push against us, to test boundaries, to see how far they can go and still come back safely. They need to explore new ideas, new music, new ways of living their lives. They also need to explore these new stronger, heavier, hairier bodies and see how to live with them. They are pupating from children to adults. There is now scientific evidence that shows that their brains do go through a form of rewiring as they learn to cope with hormones, feelings and ideas. They have to have the freedom to find out who they are, while still having us as a much hated safety net. We need to say no when we need to say no, but also to tell them that we love them even though they are smelly, grumpy, stroppy individuals. Even if we think that saying ‘I love you’ will be met with a smirk, an expletive or an ‘I hate you’, we still need to say it because they will hear us, and it will filter through.

We also need to be honest, though. With our eldest there were may days when I didn’t particularly like him, and I definitely didn’t like his behaviour, and I told him so. But I also told him that even when I didn’t like him very much, I always loved him completely. When I thought he wouldn’t listen, I wrote notes. When I thought that I would end up losing it with him and bellowing, I also wrote notes. Sometimes he wrote them back, sometimes I found them scrumpled up in the corner of his room.

Parenting is the hardest job in the world, and I think that the more you try and the better you do, the harder it may seem. However, it is the most important job, and the most amazing job. There are so many highs, but there are also lows.

I think that social media and hashtags like #soblessed #happyfamily #altogether and so on make this worse. We see unreal images of perfect children having perfect family time and the we look at the closed bedroom door, and feel that life isn’t available to us. We feel that we are failures because we don’t have the rose tinted, photoshopped social media life of friends or peers. It’s the same with academics. I remember when GCSE results came out and my feed was flooded with congratulation posts, grades and destinations (and it was the same at A-level). I couldn’t compete with that, as the results in our house weren’t that good. So I just posted how proud I was of him, because I was. He had had a hellish year, and we were just beginning to come out of the storm. I didn’t (& still don’t) care about how many GCSEs he got. I just cared about him, where he was, and how he was.

There are some parents I know who are in the storm.  If you read this, and it feels like this is you, whether I know you or not, please get in touch, either on FB or as a comment here. Don’t ever feel ashamed or worried. Most parents will go through what you’re going through right now, and we need to talk about it more instead of hiding behind our social media facades.