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.

Yesterday (10th October) was World Mental Health Day.  We have more things going on at the moment, which I am not ready to blog about yet, that means that this feels more relevant than ever. What I can add is that mental health is as important as physical health. If I had a bad leg that had been bothering me for 4 weeks, you’d notice my limp, and probably hear me moan. If, however, I had been feeling down for 4 weeks and had been struggling to get out of bed in the morning, would you notice? Would you notice me being a little quieter than normal? That I am not quite as chirpy as I can be? Would you ask me if I was OK? Would you press me if I said yes, but you thought I wasn’t being entirely truthful?

If I had a magic wand, I wouldn’t rid the world of mental health issues. Neurodiversity and all the problems and issues that come with it make the world a better place, and if we got rid of the problems that come with it, we’d get run the risk of getting rid of neurodiversity too.

What I would do with my magic wand, is make neurodiversity more acceptable. I would make mental health & well being as important as physical health and well being. Being anxious would be as acceptable as having arthritis, for example. There would be support for any mental health issue. There would be no judgement on parents or partners or carers for ‘letting this happen’, and we would all work together to make sure that the person who has a mental health issue gets all the help they need to get better and back to their own normal, whatever that may be. We would celebrate our differences, so that the child with ASD, that adult with ADHD, the teen with ODD or the older person with OCD is accepted for who they are, and their strengths celebrated, and their weaker areas supported. Society could then become an amazing multi-coloured multi-layered jigsaw where we all fit together, work together and support each other.

My magic wand would give us all a place to feel safe, love and respected regardless of colour, gender, mental health, physical health or anything else that may otherwise divide us. And together, we would be amazing!

#RUOK #ItsOKNotToBeOK

So, at the beginning of the summer we started CBT. I say we as I went into all the sessions (his choice not mine) and we both learnt & benefited. School starts tomorrow, and I have had good nights’ sleep for over a week. He stayed at a friend’s house on Friday with no drama or angst. At the moment he is singing in his bedroom after an hour of baking with me. This is the first last day of the holidays when I haven’t felt like rocking in a corner due to cumulative stress. This is an amazing breakthrough. I get that CBT won’t work for everyone, and I also get that he clicked with his therapist straight away, and she ‘got’ him straight away, explaining the science behind what he thinks & feels, suggesting pod casts and YouTube sites for both of us, and books for me. When the sessions end at the end of September, I’m going to miss them. I have learnt new words  – catastrophising and awfulising – and I also learnt that I do both of these far too much. I also learnt that I know more than I thought I knew, and all of the things and coping mechanisms I have done with him have been right, I just needed to teach him to do them himself. And, obviously, there have been lots of new things that we have both learnt too.

In a month, we will have been discharged from CAMHS (again). Whether we go back again remains to be seen. I would like to think that, at the moment, things are under control and we won’t need to go back at all, and if we do, it won’t be for a while, but I also know and understand that there are no rules to any of this. We will take each day, week, month and term as it comes, and deal with any issues that may come along.

I think the picture below sums up our summer quite well – this is what happens when your clinically anxious son has a summer of CBT……and we haven’t quite hit the teenage hormones yet!!!

Last week, a petition popped up on my social media feed. You can read about it here, and it is a campaign to get mental health on the curriculum for agriculture courses at colleges and universities. Agriculture (and associated industries) has an incredible high suicide rate, and the person who set up the campaign has pointed out that they were taught about health and safety when using machinery, but no one ever taught them anything about keeping their mental well-being healthy.

Surely this should be on every course, not just agriculture courses. I teach teens, and listen to the problems that they face every day. It can be a very different world to the one I grew up in, and we need to put mental health firmly on the agenda, we need to remove stigma, and the language we use every day to make sure we help our teens grow up healthy in every way.

But let’s not forget adults – men are three times more likely to commit suicide than women, it’s the most common cause of death in men, and it’s still a taboo subject. There is an interesting article from Esquire Magazine here, and, as it points out, we are cutting deaths from cancer and other physical diseases, but mental health numbers, and suicides, are rising.

Women aren’t immune either, and there must be hundreds of woman suffering in silence from the effects of mental health issues.

However, controversial bit coming up, we also need to be honest, and change our language. If I have a bad day and am feeling a little low, I am not depressed, I am just feeling a little low. If I have an exam coming up and am worried, this doesn’t mean I am plagued with anxiety (if I have anxiety, I might be, but being worried about an exam is not the same as being overwhelmed by anxiety on a day to day basis).  Just as a cold is not the same as ‘flu, feeling sad after you go back to work after an amazing holiday is not the same as depression.

Nevertheless, if it is us who is struggling and suffering, we need to be brave enough to speak out. If we run a company, we need to support our workers and recognise that there are times when a sick day may be needed to alleviate a mental health issue, and not just physical health issues (like this company have, and it’s gone viral).

We need to put mental health and mental well-being firmly on the agenda. We need to be there for each other, to understand that what may be routine for us is a battle for someone else. We need to be supportive of our friends, colleagues and neighbours. We need to listen, and if it isn’t time to talk, we need to sit with them in the silence and let them know we are there.

 

So, Scottish Higher results were released last week, A-levels this week and GCSEs next week. Tensions are high in so many households, and there are teens wondering and worrying about how the world is going to carry on if they don’t get the magic 5, or the grades needed for uni. We can tell them that whatever happens, the world keeps turning, and the sun still rises and sets, and life carries on, but right now that means nothing. Everything, every possible future, their whole lives depends on what is on that piece of paper. Except, sometimes not getting your magic 5, your predicted grades, or any grades is the best thing that can happen. These are true stories.

Story 1:

A young man of 18 went to get his A-level results so that he could go to the university of his choice and read accounting & finance. He was clever, top sets at GCSEs, so although he had enjoyed a few nights out with friends in the lead up to exams, he felt relatively confident that he’d done OK. And then he opened the envelope, and saw that the predicted grades weren’t there at all. There was no way he was going to get into his first choice (or possibly second choice). Determined to go to university, he got into a college (not uni) to do an HND (equivalent of a FdSc today), and he had the best time, came out with good grades and on graduating, got a job in accounting. Different route, same outcome. Today, he is the managing director of a successful IT company, has worked all over Europe and is now planning his next adventure.

Story 2:

A young teen wanted to do biology GCSE, but was told by her biology teacher that she was not good enough to get good grades. Fast forward to GCSE results day, and they were all fine, but no biology. A-level choices were compromises, and, again, she did OK, but not fantastically, getting quite a lot lower than her predicted grades. Realising that she was not on the right path, she chose not to go to uni, and worked, got married and had a child before finally going to uni at 26 to do a biology based degree where she came top of her cohort. She then went on to do a biology based masters, and was top again. Just because a teacher tells you something doesn’t mean it’ true. If it’s what you really want to do, you will find a way.

Story 3:

A skware peg struggled all the way through school. Exam results were never particularly good, and he got into a cycle of ‘I’m not going to to well, why bother trying’. GCSE results day wasn’t very good (2 passes above C), retakes were the same, but after getting Maths & English Functional Skills at level 2 (GCSE equivalent(ish)) he got onto an AS level course, got a place at uni, but, again, had a disappointing results day. He took a year out, found himself, got a place at a different uni, and has just finished his first year, but because of his determination, may not be going back full time as other opportunities have appeared.

These are all true, and happened to people I know.  I also know people who got their grades, went to uni and have fantastic careers doing what they wanted to do. There are others who didn’t go to uni, didn’t do A-levels, and they are successful in their chosen fields. And there are others who choose to travel, to have a family & be a stay at home parents, or to go from job to job as they see opportunities. All of these people are successful in their own way.

So, to the parents and carers of those waiting for results this week or next, my advice is this: in the long run, it doesn’t matter what that piece of paper says. It will matter on the day, and will matter for several weeks later.  But sometimes, not being allowed to take biology, not doing well in your A-levels and doing things the ‘long way round’ is a blessing. I am glad I didn’t take biology. I am glad my grades weren’t that good, and I am glad that the world kept turning and I found fantastic new opportunities that I would have missed if I hadn’t been pushed onto a different path.

There have been lots of articles over the last year or two about art in schools and as part of the National Curriculum for KS3 & beyond. The pressure is to reduce the amount of time that students spend on ‘soft’ subjects like the arts, so that they can spend more time on more serious subjects, such as physics or geography.  As a teacher, I understand that if you are judged on the marks in the serious subjects, you will automatically spend more time on these ones, but art should never be seen as a soft subject – and what is this about soft and not soft subjects anyway?

Art subjects – be that fine art, design, crafting, sewing, woodwork, cake decorating garden design, photography or any other variant – is good for the soul, it feeds the imagination part of our brain, and it also allows us to day dream, to escape into another plain where we can work through things that are bothering us. I’d like to think that blogging is an art form, and for those of you who regularly read my blogs, you know that it is a form of therapy for me, but so is gardening, sewing, jewellery and candle making. They all allow me to shut off from the pressures of the news, school, work and reports. I can think about anything, and while I am thinking about what seeds I might want to grow next year (did you know that you can grown quinoa in the UK – not planning to, but hey!) I then get a light bulb moment about the way to teach grammar to teens, or how I can tackle the sleeping problem we’re having with our youngest, or even what I can going to buy my grandmother for Christmas. Art is essential for our mental health.

Moreover, (and I think I may be plagiarising this from a Dan Brown book, so I acknowledge that now, but can’t actually cite it as I’m not sure which book), the higher you get in science and maths, the more artistic things become. There are patterns and rhythms to maths, there is beauty beyond words in the vastness of the cosmos, and the microscopic intricacies of the world too small for our eyes to see. And, perhaps most importantly, the sciences and maths need the arts. They need the imagination that sees beyond what is there and what we know. They need the mind that can wonder until it suddenly gets an idea that might change the world, and save mankind as it does. We cannot have advances in science without scientists who have imaginations to see what others cannot see yet.

Seeing art as a soft option goes beyond school. As most of you will know, I teach, and I am really enjoying being back in the classroom. I also did a science degree & masters, and see myself as a scientist, which is probably why I keep stopping myself throwing myself into my arty hobbies more. I love sewing, and am quite good at it (I made an amazing bridesmaid’s dress last year), and I also make jewellery, candles and am formulating lotions and potions at the moment. However, I cannot commit myself to these completely as my head still sees crafting as a non-science even though my lotions and potions, and, to a certain extent, candles, are a perfect symbiosis of science and art!

We all (me included) need to embrace all the difference subjects available to us as adults, and to our skware pegs. We need artists, scientist, mathematicians, geographers and historians, and we also need people who don’t see any barriers between the different areas, who can be artistic, mathematical geologists who can live happy, imaginative lives, while making amazing discoveries and inventions. And me? Well I need to relax, go into my garden and see where my mind will take me!

Anxiety rules our world – it really does. Sometimes it’s our youngest’s anxiety, and sometimes, bear with me here, it’s my anxiety about his anxiety. And sometimes it’s not the anxiety as such, it’s the need for his safe place (home) which means after almost a week of a two-week holiday in a wonderful part of Cornwall, he is homesick, or at least safe-place sick, and the next few days are going to be a bit of a roller coaster. Our eldest isn’t with us, and I worry about him too. He’s had a day trip to Amsterdam (lots of plane stalking yesterday to make sure he got there and got home OK), and now he’s back home, and I still worry! Hence the blog; my anxiety about our youngest’s potential anxiety has now kicked in, and the best thing for me to do right now is write about it.

We are staying in a different holiday cottage, but in the same little hamlet we have stayed in for the last 9 years. He wanted a change even though we were happy with the flat we stayed in before. He helped me choose this (there were others that he preferred, but this looked lovely, and it was in our budget), and it is a lovely cottage. But, he now misses the flat we used to stay in (even though last year he didn’t want to stay there any more). He misses home. He misses his bed. He misses the animals. He misses his safe place. He’s ok, a long way from a meltdown or shut down, but there is still an underlying tension today.

It’s not just today, though. The house has a double room, and a twin room. We arrived on Saturday, and I have been sleeping in the twin room with him, as he doesn’t want to sleep on his own. To be honest, we expected this. Somewhere new, somewhere strange….yep, it’s hard to be on your own. Last night, however, as the home sickness really kicked in, we played musical beds all night. I had to hug him til he fell asleep, a nightmare in the middle of the night meant he needed another hug and then at 6am he had another bad dream and came in to my tiny, uncomfortable bed that’s only just big enough for one.

This is what people looking in fail to understand or comprehend. Anxiety, autistic traits or whatever barrier is driving this current angst is there all the time. It doesn’t ever go away. Not completely. If the CBT works, we have been told it will just allow him to control his anxiety, rather than it controlling him. And it won’t really have much effect on the ASD traits. They will be there forever, but….. I was going to write that he will be able to control them. And then I stopped and paused. Should he have to control them? If he finds smelly crowded restaurants stressful, should he have to find a way to overcome this? If he finds some places overwhelming on a sensory basis, should he have to find a way to be in there anyway, controlling the head ache or whatever physical affect this causes?

Anyway, the purpose of this blog, this ramble, is to say to all you parents who are sharing rooms on holiday, or watching out for possible stressors or triggers, you’re not alone. Our normal may be different to many other people’s normal, but you are not the only one going through this. We live in a crazy world sometimes (all the time??) but the positives, the conversations, the amazing children and young adults who share our lives make all the craziness worthwhile.

A year ago our youngest had just finished year 6, and our 17 year stint as parents as the same primary school was over – emotional times. Ahead was the roller-coaster summer between years 6 & 7 where our youngest would fluctuate between excitement and terror. Added into this mix was an autism assessment, and the associated stress with the test itself, but also with the results.  Our eldest was getting ready for university, a world he didn’t think he would ever be allowed to enter because of his poor academic record and lack of A-levels or any other level 3 qualification.  Added to all this was my application to get back into teaching after a 15 month hiatus.

One year on, and our youngest has almost finished year 7. In 9 weeks when he goes back to school, he won’t be one of the babies any more. He will be in year 8. He will also go back with another diagnosis of visual stress, or Irlen Syndrome (because dyslexia, clinical anxieties and ASD traits aren’t enough), and his colour will be dark green. The year has been incredibly tough for him, and although things are getting better, he had a big anxiety attack on Sunday night, we slept on the sofa as he didn’t want to be alone, and after an upset tum at 5am, we decided that he needed to have Monday at home. He has started counselling with CAMHS for his anxieties, and sessions with a CBT therapist start at the end of July. All good in so many ways, but it’s all still there, and we still have to help him deal with it. Another blog post will follow very soon about the attitude of some of the other children to mental health issues, but to summise, some of his peers have been understanding; others definitely have not.

One year on, and our eldest has swapped courses, completed his first year, but will probably be looking to change course again for September, but still at the same university. What his year in HE has shown me, is that the symptoms of ADHD & dyslexia never, ever go away. To be completely honest, I was expecting more support and understanding from an established university. Yes, he made mistakes with emails, communication chains etc, but he was honest and open about his learning barriers from the start, and I feel he needed more help, and he needed to be asked if he needed help.

And then there’s me. One year on I have really enjoyed being back in the classroom. It has been very challenging at times, and although I am very part time (only 8 teaching hours a week) it has been hard to balance supporting students and supporting our boys (and each other). But I’ve done it – good attendance, retention and pass rates, and hopefully new, exciting courses are on the horizon.

So, we’ve almost done it. We are almost there. We have survived teaching, university and year 7. We are also making plans for a greener, more eco-lifestyle which will mean than eco-therapy will be on our doorstep, and there will be more info on this in future blogs, and also how eco-therapy can help our skware pegs find their own holes.

The other thing that this year has taught me is that as a parent (and sometimes as a teacher) you need to trust your gut instinct. If you believe something isn’t right, pursue it. If you find something that works for you and your skware peg, embrace it. But most of all, this is your life, these are your skware pegs. There are no other skware pegs anywhere in the world like them, so do what’s best for them.