Never let it be said that there are no innocent victims.
I have had bad problems controlling my rage today. H6 went to art class this afternoon, and while he was out I did some cleaning up. I found this amongst his papers and drawings:
Isn’t that enough to break a Mummy’s heart? Especially when it is completely understandable.
Possum is 6 years and 1 month
As you know, possum and I both have big problems with anxiety. Not a bit shy, but really functionally damaging anxiety.
Possum is on the waiting list for the Emotional Health Clinic at one of the local universities, one that is a leading researcher into childhood anxiety. It seems like forever since I managed to take action on this one, waiting for his name to come up. Maybe it is a little bit of time for me to find some headspace of my own, as well as find out more about his situation.
One thing that I am looking into is “The Highly Sensitive Child” (and “The Highly Sensitive Person” for me…). It was recommended to me by my psychologist. I haven’t read the whole book about the HSC (an acronym with which I struggle, so ingrained in me is its use for the coming-of-age, trial-by-fire in these here parts- the Higher School Certificate). I did read the age relevant bits and some other selected bits. I had to rush as Possum’s teacher wanted to borrow it for the school holidays, which start today.
It is so good. It is so true. I cried. How I wish that someone had read this when I was a child.
According to Arons, approximately 15-20% of all species are classified as highly sensitive. Reading this book it is obvious to me that not only do Possum and I both fit into the more rare highly-sensitive with anxiety and/or depression, but we are at the highly sensitive end of the highly sensitive spectrum.
Now his teacher is lovely. She has heaps of experience. She says that she has never had such an anxious child in her classroom and is beside herself trying to find out what to do.
It is hard for me to explain that her classroom is overwhelming and I am only not completely intimidated by her vivacious personality because I have done 20 years of therapy. Really, she is lovely and friendly, loves her kids, loves to inspire and really does. She helps kids work at their level, but helps them to keep moving up, not get stuck. But the room is bright, there is “literary overload” (stuff written on the walls) and lots of action. Fantastic for most….
Actually, I think the room is much more soothing now that they have started doing big displays of their work on the walls. They are doing a thing about bugs at the moment and all the kids made these cute little insects. There is a single large sheet of coloured paper down one panel and all the bugs are buzzing in front of it. So much better than all the posters and things with writing. For me, anyway, and I assume for Possum, too.
I will be interested to see if she finds the book helpful. I hope so.
Another book that I had previously started, and have picked up again is, “Raising Your Spirited Child“. I am pretty sure that I have at least two of those.
Next I need to look into “The Highly Sensitive Person”. To be honest, I am a bit scared. What will I find? What will it make me do? Will it provide comfort and safety in this dangerous world, or will it leave me feeling more vulnerable and exposed?
Two hours sleep is not enough.
I am really struggling today. Thank goodness the kids are being unusually good. It might have been something to do with the talk I gave them this morning. It went something like, “I have only had two hours sleep. I am tired and cranky. Your (insert behaviour) will not be tolerated today.”. Or it might be luck. God giving me a small break. A small miracle for us all.
So how come I only had two hours sleep?
My depression is getting worse. I know the signs. I have had that burst of energy, that keeps me up at night doing stuff. I’ve been building through the insomnia that becomes less and less fun. I’ve got to the point where it is almost impossible to take my meds. My numbing drug of choice this time has been solitaire on my tablet (computer, not meds). I’m heading for a crash and I’m not sure where to cry for help. Today I caught myself on online bookshops. Soon I will be living off Cheezels.
I hate this. Even after all this time, I don’t know what triggers these downward spirals, nor do I know what to do to stop them. I know lots of my triggers, as in what causes my general episodes, but these whirlpools, uh-uh. I know many triggers are in place, I am beginning to realise it is when things are also out of my control (like I can’t seem to get a break from the kids, even though I have been trying for months), but I think there is something else here, something specific. If only I could figure out what it was.
So, that had me up most of the night. I was going to go to bed at a semi-decent time last night. I was. Really. But somehow it got to 2:15am, the infomercials were making me yawn and it was difficult to beat the deal on solitaire. Oops. So I went to bed. It was freezing cold. We have no heater in our room, unlike in the lounge. And our quilt wriggles inside the cover so that sometimes you pretty much just have two sheets and nothing warm. Last night was arctic, so it was awful. I lay teeth chattering, trying to pretend my daughter would re-settle from the intrusion without me feeding her, yet again (ha! As if!). Eventually I drifted off – until about 4am, when the little banshee started up.
She was inconsolable. I don’t know what happened, she doesn’t seem ill or anything. She was probably just cold. Whatever it was she stayed awake, screaming until morning. Demanding milk continuously (I didn’t have the supply, so let’s add pain, guilt and inadequacy to those feelings of exhaustion and frustration, shall we?)
By morning I was shattered. So was DH. It was an unpleasant morning after an unpleasant night before an unpleasant day.
Unfortunately, she has had some good sleep today. I hope tonight is not a repeat.
It so that time of day again and I feel like I am choking.
I have no idea what I am going to do for dinner. I don’t feel up to preparing anything.
It has been a tough one. I am in an awful depressive funk at the moment, suffering insomnia and playing game after game of ‘solitaire’ on the computer. I think I am doing something repetitive and not to mentally taxing to soothe and blot out what is happening in my head and around me. Close to rocking, but somehow more socially acceptable.
Then today, with rain streaming down outside F1 choked. I think it was a piece of orange, but I am not sure. She was breathing, although not clearly. She was trying to cough, and she couldn’t speak. I tried all the things you do, upside down, back whacking, fingers down her throat. I was scared that I would move whatever it was and block her breathing completely.
So I made a snap decision to take her to the doctor. Our doctor is slightly closer than our nearest hospital, but I know that hospital costs $300- to go through emergency. (The doctor cost me $52-). There is a free hospital, but it is much further to go in this situation. I just thought that I would try my luck. Besides, I think I needed the familiar faces.
I was shocked. S3 was fantastic. He grabbed his shoes and jumper and his sister’s bear and jumped in the car. On the way to the doctor her throat cleared, so I felt like a goofball walking in in such a state. The doctor (not mine) checked her and she was okay. He thinks it was probably orange caught on her larynx. Within half an hour she was back to normal. I am still a bit shaken.
This afternoon when it was her rest time, a combination of exhaustion, feeding, cortisol etc, I fell asleep. Of course, she did not.
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I had to take a break there… F1 crawled up on my lap and went to sleep. Somewhat inconvenient at 4:30pm, as I know I will be up half the night with her again tonight, but I will take what I can get. Of course she has subsequently rolled out of bed, so it probably isn’t the best day of her life, either.
Anyway, in the less than half an hour that I dozed, they managed to destroy both bedrooms, the hall way, both lounge rooms, the dining room, the kitchen and the bathroom. It is going to be a long slow clean up, especially given my current state.
This was just before school pick up time for H6. I tried to bustle everyone ready, not needing the confrontation. S3, instead of a jumper, somehow put on an outfit that F1 has grown out of. I finally got him out of that and back into his own clothes, got F1 into the pram and – he’s naked. Excellent. We eventually agree on a swimming costume with a jumper. *sigh*
At least he was helpful when it was life and death.
Then we got caught in the rain.
Dealing with kids life, and mess, and meals (the leftover chicken that I was going to use tonight still had too much fat on it and it wasn’t shredded, and I just couldn’t face it. I couldn’t face anything much, but I certainly wasn’t going there.). It is all just too much tonight.
I guess I haven’t exactly lost everything today,after all F1 is still alive, but I certainly haven’t won.
It is nearly dinner time. It has been freezing cold all day. While I have been attending to F1, the house has been left open. Somehow S3 has redressed himself in a swimming costume and a pair of sneakers still wet from the soaking they got a few days ago when he and some others got into the garden house. Hubby is trying to assert his manhood in the garage with a pair of tinsnips and some corrugated iron. I aren’t ask who is winning.
And so the litany starts.
“I’m hungry” as they try to devour any junk food in sight. Not that they will eat their dinner when it is ready, anyway.
“You shouldn’t do x should you,” (insert some anti-social behaviour)
– No, no you shouldn’t
“Well he did that”
No,not recently. Just ever in his life.
And the tales really start. Teary faces tattling on each other. Not just things that are happening, but all the wrongs of a day with siblings – a week, a lifetime.
Thankfully, Hubby has reappeared, and, armed with a beer, is running a bath for the kids. Lucky him. I don’t get a beer. I am still breastfeeding F1 and S3. Not that I really have the taste for it after seven years, but the option would be nice. The relaxation.
Dinner will not be a hit tonight. Little frittata things with potato, apple and onion. I really need to do the grocery shopping. We haven’t had a proper shop in weeks, and any of the nice stuff I had lined up disappeared into stomachs before dinner time.
I can hear the yelling in the bathroom that usually welcomes the end of bath time. I guess my reprieve is over. I have enough food cooked to start the kids off, so we might survive. Might.
Time for the next round. I don’t think anyone will win that one either.
My neck hurts.
Well this afternoon I was called in for a meeting with HJ6’s teacher. It seems that I am not the only one with concerns.
He melts down in class now. Just cries when stuff happens. Like when they worked out who needed to get a new glue stick and his name was on the board. Like when his computer didn’t boot properly. Not ask for help, not question anything, just cry. Or, as he said at one point, “I didn’t really cry – I held it inside”. Hmmm. So much better.
We talked about what has been happening in his class, and when the “split classes” are happening. (We also talked about why this has been happening, and why it has been happening so much.)
And during the course of the conversation his teacher had the chance to see some of the behaviour that we have at home. Likewise, I had the chance to have demonstrated that my child is quite capable of being disobedient, disrespectful and rude. Fantastic. His teacher was horrified, but not really surprised.
I don’t know. Am I too soft on him? Am I too hard on him? His brother and sister are pretty bad, too. Am I such a bad parent? Is this not about me at all?
It is all too much, sometimes.
More chest pains.
I don’t know what to do about HJ6. He is a sensitive and anxious little boy. This year he started Kindergarten at “Big School”, after two somewhat tough and sometimes enjoyable years at preschool. He was very upset about leaving preschool – after two years he had finally settled in, and, to be honest, the routine of the preschool suited him very well – by the end.
This year has been quite a challenge. We are nearing the end of the second term and things are not the way I would like them to be.
For example, this morning we had tears, tantrums, kicking, fighting, protesting from the moment he opened his eyes. He didn’t want to go to school. Or should I say, he did NOT want to go to school.
Yesterday his teacher was away sick. His class did not have a substitute teacher; instead they were split amongst other classes in the infants school.
This is the fifth time in three weeks that his class has been split up like this, although only the first time for the full day. I know that this time his teacher was sick, but you would think that they could get a substitute. I know that one other occasion, his teacher’s son was ill and she had to leave early to look after him, and that is fair enough. I have no idea about the other three. I do know that had she not been sick, she had another “meeting” she needed to attend yesterday afternoon, and the class would have been teacherless again.
Also, there are so many teachers for these poor little kids. They have two teachers-one on Mondays and the other Tuesday through Friday. They also have specialty teachers as follows:
Plus they have had a student teacher as well.
He told me this morning (eventually) that he didn’t want to go to school because his teacher was too bossy, and that scared him. I explained to him that she had to be bossy sometimes as she was looking after lots of kids and they didn’t always do what they were supposed to do. His teacher is really quite friendly, if a little gregarious. Normally he thinks she is okay.
I think a lot of his hesitancy is to do with the constant changes, having no idea what to expect when he goes to school. I really don’t think that he feels so safe there just now.
And let’s take a moment to talk about the literacy programme, shall we? In his class on Mondays, the kids go and get their own readers to take home and don’t have to have it checked by the teacher. Consequently, each week, they all go up one reading level. It has become quite ridiculous, with several kids now taking home books they can’t read, so they don’t read at all, and don’t like reading anymore. HJ6 has just reached this point. The books he has this week he can sound out the words, but it is every single word, not words here and there. Reading time is a fight, now, too.
And the sight words! Well, all term he has been waiting to get his sight words tested. That’s what, eight weeks? His best friend (whose mother volunteers for reading groups) gets tested every day, so now, instead of being just a week ahead of him, he is four levels higher. Apparently it is up to the kids to hassle the teacher to test them. What? These are kindies! Surely the teachers should be able to work that out for themselves.
So all that is breaking my heart. But worst is the fight to make him go. I hate all the fighting. He comes home down and tired. He won’t do his homework. He grumps and growls all night (except for when he sometimes explodes) and then the mornings are even worse.
Except occasionally. On Monday he couldn’t wait to go to school. I had to wait for him in the playground until the teachers came on duty, half an hour before school started.
I can’t cope with all this. I can’t cope with watching it and I can’t cope with what I go through. This morning, my hubby took him to school. I sat down and cried. I wake in the mornings in dread. As I sat on the lounge exhausted, I couldn’t help thinking that the headaches, the pains in my chest and neck, the upset tummy (I can’t eat in the mornings anymore) were not all just symptoms of my anxiety.
Some of my close friends have asked me about changing schools. I think about it, but I know that the change would be such a big deal to him, especially as he has so many friends at school. I am even reluctant to ask about changing classes within the school (an offer which has previously been made) because of the disruption it would cause him.
And really, a new school would mean extra commitment on my part. I just don’t see how I could manage doing the school run twice a day by car. Not at this stage, anyway. It is hard enough when we can do it by foot.
So I am torn. I don’t know what to do. I need to talk to his teacher, but she is never available. I am getting more and more upset by stuff, and there are more things happening that just don’t seem right for him. It is so hard to be the Mum. He already tells me that it is all my fault, anything that goes wrong with any of these things, from shoelaces being undone to who knows what. I just agree. Everyone blames their Mum. But in the mean time I am cursed with anxiety about what to do.
I just don’t know. I just know that it is killing us all.
Sometimes, I do. Like now. I am not particularly upset about anything, but I think I am emotionally over-rort.
Winter seems to have settled in here. The days (and nights) are really cold and it has been raining for most of this month as well. Cold rain.
Maybe if I walked in it, it would wash away all my wearies, but I doubt it. I think that I would just end up cold and wet as well as all else.
Today I had a couple of friends over, with the younger members of their respective broods. It was a nice day in many ways, but it was also very tough. At the end of the day, I was totally exhausted. My house looks like a bomb has hit it (even after we cleaned up), the best I could do in the backyard was drag stuff that shouldn’t get wet under cover, the cubby house door has been kicked in and broken (by the one child that is, you know, that child), and somehow I need to keep functioning to not only clean up, but prepare dinner and do the night rituals solo mio as tonight is my husband’s squash night.
You know, sometimes it is too much. I am tired and cranky now. I don’t want to deal with tired, cranky kids suffering from cabin fever from the rain. I don’t want to do it on my own, either. I hate squash night.
And I hate being a slave to the school bell. One of my friends that came by today used to be a regular squash night catch up. The kids would play until the end of the day, we’d toss them all in a bath together and plonk them in pjs. Then it was simply home to dinner and bed (or wave bye-bye, dinner and bed). Now we have to call it quits too early for that, so that we can do school pick-ups.
I guess I am also annoyed at my eldest son (HJ6)’s school. He is a sensitive soul and also suffers a lot of anxiety. Transition to school has not been smooth. By the end of the first term we were starting to make some progress. This term has been a mess. The poor lad is working so hard on his “sight words”, but his teacher won’t test him, despite testing others. You see, they have to ask (yeah, nag) to be tested. My timid, introverted, anxious, sensitive child can’t do that. He asks sometimes, but that takes everything he has got, and so far it has come to nothing. Also, there have been a lot of times lately when they haven’t had a class teacher and has been dispersed amongst other classes. I am not happy about this, not as a regular thing. It is a whole other post. But I was really annoyed when I picked him up today to find out that he had spent the entire day in another room. In another grade. Not really doing any work. Again. He could have been home playing with us.
You see, I like the idea of homeschooling. I haven’t been able to do it this year for two significant reasons:
So I feel like I have failed my son by sending him to school, especially given his anxieties etc. This makes me even more angry when the school/system fails me.
What I want to know is if this is a bad-luck aberration or if this is the way things are run at this school. And what I don’t understand, is why am I the only parent concerned by all this.
I don’t need this concern. Not today. Not on a day when discovering that the capsicum I had bought for dinner tonight has been eaten spirals me into defeat and tears.
Today I need gentle treatment. I needed HJ6 to come home with a Violet Word list and a smile. I need happy kids that will fall into bed early.
I need space and energy to have a good cry.
This is not a pretty blog. This is a real life, messy, gritty bits blog. It is about my life, struggling with mental illness.
It is the bits I don’t want to publish on my regular blog. It isn’t that my other blog is an assumed persona, or that this one is. My other one is my best side, the side I use to try and see the best in life, to try to inspire others to be the best they can be; to try and remember to do so myself.
This blog is the rest – the things I only share with a few of my friends, usually, the bits I need to write about so that I can get them out of me… it is about living with mental illness.
So a little about me.
I am a Mum of three littles (currently 1, 3 and 6, but they will continue to get older) and I live in urban Australia.
I was first diagnosed with depression in 1992. It was diagnosed as SAD (seasonal affective disorder) as I was living in Canada at the time, but it was not treated. I started treatment in 1993 for depression and anorexia. I have suffered depression ever since. I have also been treated for panic, anxiety, depression with psychosis and pre- and post- natal depression.
My current diagnosis is Depression and GAD (Generalised Anxiety Disorder). Personally, I think this is a lot closer to the mark than some of my other diagnoses! I also suspect PMDD (Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder) and the verdict is still out on OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) – although what is causing what in this little bundle is all still being examined.
I am a Christian.
Inside the Storm 