Birthdays and sleepovers

Yesterday was J’s 2nd birthday. N found it so hard to contain himself but managed pretty well. No meltdowns but was still quite difficult to manage. He wanted to take over opening the presents, and playing with them. We had lots of screaming from J because of this and me trying to distract him with other things. This proved really difficult as he was intent taking control of the day. After school we had a birthday tea party and so more of the same behaviours. This time over hogging all the party food, and and nearly having a meltdown over wanting to light the candle on the birthday cake. Glad the day went without too much drama. All in all great day for James.

 

This evening N had gone round to a family friends (just round the corner) to play and was invited for a sleepover., which he has never before had problems with. He has always enjoyed them. Tonight he had to come home because he was so upset and needing me. Separation anxiety getting worse. Normally only bad when it’s me doing the leaving (i.e. when I go out and leave the kids at home with my mum) but he has been sayng some odd things lately and more and more clingy. My 2 year old cried when I put him in the cot the other night and I left him to cry for a bit. N said aren’t you going to sort him out mummy. I said no, it’s ok, he needs to learn its ok to fall asleep in his own cot. He said to me ‘mummy he’s just crying because he wants to be with you, we all want to be with you and sleep in your bed because we feel safe with you. And tonight it’s like he just couldn’t cope to be without me. He was in bits and hugging me so tight. Now in my bed cos I couldn’t be doing with a fight tonight. 😦  

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Meltdown Wednesday

Just had enough. Had a rubbish holidays with his behaviour, bad day at school Mondaay, bad Monday night, fine yesterday, fine all day today then boom..bedtime and has spent the last 2 1/2 hours solid yelling and screaming abuse at me, really upset and scared my 2 year old,  and the dog even moved away from him and hid with me, stamped on my older sons foot, stamped on my foot, nearly snapped my fingers, elbowed me in the face, thrown my oil fragrance all over the lounge, thrown the washing all over the lounge, broken the door frame….again!! I am a liar because I didn’t know Eastenders was on tonight not that it matters cos it was on after his bedtime, apparently I am a fucking shit mum who should just leave, the house looks like a bomb’s gone off and now he is arguing with his brother.I think half of it is I am tired, and also he has not been a problem at bedtime for ages and never this bad. I know people have a lot worse but it’s driving me crazy. It’s every night at the mo. 

Eventually it settled and I am sat surrounded by the destructions left in the wake of the storm. Roll on tomorrow

School changes it tune

Monday 6/1/14 N sets off for school with a friend and his mother in a good mood. He has got dressed fine gone out the door. Late morning I get a missed call from school (Head teacher), and a voicemail saying they have had quite a lot of unusual behaviour from N today. I phone the head back and she says that N has refused to do any work, has been rather rude to the teacher and asked me for advice. She explained that he had a £10 note in his pocket and the teacher had ased for it to keep it safe. He did not want to hand it over and said a few things he shouldn’t and walked away. Various teachers and teaching assistants tried to get the £10 off him causing him more anxiety and he ran and shut himself in the toilets. The when teacher went out he ran into the playground, a teacher caught up with him and asked for the tenner again and he told them to leave him alone and tried to jump the school gate. Threatened with headteacher he came down and once back inside in lessons a TA asked for it again and said she would give it to the class teacher. He gave it to her and she did what she said but the class teacher gave it to the head teacher who then gave it to the office. This upset him loads as to him it felt like they were all ganging up on him. At lunchtime he had to go see the head teacher about being rude to staff earlier in the day and he refused to engage with her. He told her if she spoke to him again he would leave and phone me, and said that the school sucked. He left the room without permission. 

So following on from that and a couple of emails to and from school explaining Nathaniel’s problems (again) and my opinion on how he was feeling and strategies to use, I get an email from school saying they want to get behavioural support and Ed Psych involved. This is like a miracle to me as over the past 4 years of begging for support and help from school, it has taken 1 day of (in my opinion fairly moderately bad behaviour – things can get a lot worse than this) for them to offer everything they have. 

Feeling quite positive

Roll on Monday

So the last few days have been fairly testing behaviour wise. Not stop winding up, aggressive etc now it’s Saturday evening and wine O’clock.

Had a home visit from the CAMHS lady, Emma on Thursday morning. It was good for her to see N in his home environment and I am glad to say he behaved fairly typically instead of perfectly as I had feared. I spoke to her about the recent dangerous behaviour and she said what would I want. I explained that I felt unsafe in his presence when he was in that state and felt like I couldn’t manage. She said that is all I could do really. I said ideally I would like him on some medication to stabilise his mood, but she said ‘they don’t medicate kids’. Now I know through a certain PDA group that isn’t quite true as several of those children are medicated for various things including stabilising aggressive and violent behaviour. I also asked about courses for handling aggressive and violent kids, but again apparently there aren’t any…again not true in my experience. My only options are social service, who wont offer anything but just make sure I am staying safe, or calling the police. Other than that I must just manage it. Not happy about that so will be looking into that a lot further.

Have completed the DLA form, just need input from a professional and to copy the letters to go with it. 

Trying to put together my files on my son for forthcoming meetings with school and referral for assessment. Seems a mammoth task but will be worth it I am sure. 

But for now, time to unwind with a glass of red 

Looking forward

Today is the day I began this blog, and I am thinking where do I start with everything that has happened up until now. There is so much to tell, so much anger, sadness despair, but also happy and fun times too all of which deserve a place in this blog. I guess over the coming days, weeks, months…maybe even years they will all make an appearance bit by bit, but I start here today, this evening,…..

Sat having got Christmas out of the way reasonably successfully thinking about what the new year will bring. Emma from CAMHS coming on 2nd Jan, a meeting with school trying to convince them they need to be supporting ‘N’, a referral for assessment, hopefully a diagnosis.

I quite like where I am sat now. Can’t do anything pro-active cos we are in the Xmas holidays and not focusing on the past so life feels quite normal right now especially where things have been quite calm the last couple of days. There is a hint of anxiety just out of reach, knowing that I have to start gathering my file up together of information and evidence ready to continue the fight into 2014. Not sure I have my armour on yet nor the grit and determination to do anything about it. I must however motivate myself back to the me that was ready to fight all the way before the Christmas holidays.