My Parents’ Effects

Tags

anger, death, money, plans

Over the past ten years we’ve had a regular conversation about my parents’ eventual demise and what happens to everything. They’re comfortably off. I struggle to say rich although that’s probably accurate. My father would say he’s careful with his money and has always planned well and been prudent.

He also disapproves of paying taxes on money he’s already paid tax on when he earned it and has gone to some considerable lengths to minimise these concerns at my parents’ eventual demise. Every time his situation changes or there are changes in law he re-considers it all and then tells us all in precise detail exactly what he’s doing.

I stop myself from saying I wish he would spend as much time and care in leaving a positive relationship with his children behind when he dies. That’s not a conversation that is going to go anywhere at all.

Confrontations with a Teenager

Tags

anger, ASD, depression, slap, teenagers

He’s only 14 but 3son is a fully blown teenager now, who barely talks to me unless it is to sneer, mock, disagree or complain. He accuses me both of not caring enough to understand and not leaving him alone in peace. Whatever I do I cannot win.

Ever since 2son was diagnosed with ASD 3son has been hankering after a label. I’m not sure whether there’s some attention seeking there, or whether it’s a Get Out of Jail Free card, or even just he thinks it might solve his problems. I’m not saying he’s making it up, but there is certainly an element of grandstanding in all this. He constantly tells me that I can’t possibly understand what he’s going through but really doesn’t want to try talking it through with me.

Morning Rant

Tags

2son, anger, CATE, depression, frustration, routine, SEN, statement

It’s Tuesday.

3son woke up this morning with a couple of nasty bites on his lips and refused to go to school. It hurts. I hadn’t the patience to argue with him very much.

2son did not get up yesterday until 1pm and CATE finished for the day at half past one so there wasn’t a lot of action there. I ran up and down the stairs every half hour from 8am to try and get him up. He said he was nervous about CATE. Not about the other students or the teachers or the place or the travel, just the whole thing.

What can we do to help make it easier? Shoulder shrug for an answer. Are you going to go at all this week? Shoulder shrug for an answer.

I phoned up the social worker and explained that 2son hadn’t got up or gone to school at all. She’s got transport in place from today, coming at 8.40am. Fat lot of good that’s going to do. I said what he really needs, or what I really need, is someone to help him with evening and morning routine to help get him into bed. She’s applying for it but it can’t be as quick as transport.

I said I didn’t know how I was going to cope with this for the next few months, that my worst fear was that he would just stay at home and sink back into his old routines of not bothering with anything. The statement might provide something useful to meet his needs but by the time it gets done and resources are allocated we’ll be lucky if it’s this side of Christmas.

I didn’t work properly yesterday, with only half my mind on it and have to go back and do it again properly today. I can’t focus as I’m thinking about him upstairs. I’m feeling depressed, now there’s a surprise. I’m also feeling angry and bloody frustrated.

I’m tempted to start looking up the rules and to try and complain about the Commissioner’s decision but the chances of it leaving me anything but more frustrated is virtually nil.

I’m scared that I’m not going to get through the next few months. I’m more than scared, I’m petrified. I’m also trying desperately hard to not lose sight of looking after me.

 

Where Next

Tags

2son, 3son, 4son, anger, ASD, befriending, boarding school, brothers, cohesion, counselling, decision, family therapy, fear, frustration, future, SEN, sons, statement, teeth

On Tuesday I had my counselling session and we had a little bit of a summary, as she has only eight weeks left. Had I achieved what I wanted to? No I haven’t, but with everything that’s going on I don’t see how I could. She hasn’t challenged me as much as last year’s counsellor but I also think it’s been as much as I could do to just stay afloat.

Last week we had a family therapy session with 3son and 4son. I voiced my concerns that with 2son no longer being at home full time I had expected the burden to be diminished (or at least to feel so) and it hadn’t and I found that extremely frustrating and difficult. We talked about behaviour at home and our interaction, how the constant arguments wear me down and the fact that we don’t go out enough as a family. This is partly since 3son started secondary school and it no longer became practical to go out in the evening on a school night but mostly down to my total lack of energy and enthusiasm.

I also feel that since I’m splitting us up at home so we have fewer fights that also means that we’re spending less time at home together as a family as well, which may be practical in the short term but it’s not really good for family cohesion. I also said, which 4son agreed, that since he’d started secondary school he felt far superior to 3son, as if the age gap between them had widened which contributes to him belittling 4son and making the frequent snide remarks that cause him to burst into tears.

We discussed all this and agreed to go out more. The therapist also agreed to recommend 4son for a befriending scheme, something I’ve been asking for the two of them over the last few years. This means that someone will come round at weekends, take 4son out and be his friend which will enable 3son and 4son to do different things more so I can take 3son out on his own or let him have space at home without his little brother.

And then came half term and my lack of teeth, making me feel like a social pariah. We had a day out in Richmond going out to lunch and to the cinema. I suggested a museum on the Saturday before going back to school and they chose the South Bank instead. They watched a free parkour demonstration and then had a go at the workshop which they both enjoyed very much and we ended up having a lovely full day out helped undoubtedly by the sunshine. We need to do more of this.

I also went to a progress meeting about 2son (doing this without front teeth was horrible as I have to put greater effort into enunciating clearly and I can’t stop lisping) during the half term. We discussed his lack of progress during home visits and wondered what to do about it. One suggestion was that the council need to look at statementing him, something that was put on hold when he was initially sectioned, with a view to looking at boarding school of some description to give him a full structure to the day. The consultant thought I’d be reluctant to consider this but it seems to be a great idea. Other than that the only suggestion came from me which was to suggest trying him during the week which is what we are doing this week. I now have a copy of the report of the ASD assessment which is interesting. I’m not entirely convinced but feel I need to research more before I can fully understand the implications. They also talked about next month’s meeting being a discharge meeting which, given the circumstances and lack of progress, really pisses me off.

As I am writing this, 2son is upstairs sleeping away. This does not bode well for being at school in two hours. I went and picked him up yesterday morning, took him out for a quick lunch and delivered him to CATE. He was enthusiastic and spoke to his teacher about starting GCSEs in September and going back to proper school. Lovely, but as both us adults said, it starts with going to school every day and that starts with going to bed at a reasonable time and getting up the next day. Not a problem said he.

Liar.

Last night 4son went to bed. 3son followed him after having had some time on his own with 4son. 4son stayed up. We had agreed he would go to bed at 11pm which is his normal routine. 11pm came and went. Half past vanished. At midnight he said that he just didn’t want to go to bed and that was it. I had been struggling to keep my eyes open and gave up shortly after midnight and went to sleep. As far as I can tell, he stayed up all night and went to be when the alarm went off at 6 o’clock this morning.

So I have no idea what we’re going to do next. He’s thrown a couple of hissy fits when staff have told him to wash, saying that he doesn’t like being told what to do and he really didn’t like the fact that some of the patients had complained about him being smelly. Other than the fact that he’s out of my hair there is very little real progress. He has finished a modular qualification (ASDAN) and is moving onto the next level. This has given him a strong sense of achievement.

As we have abandoned weekend visits, I’ve booked a 4 day holiday for the rest of us next weekend, with each of the boys taking a sneaky day off school along with their INSET day. We’re going to York and staying in an extravagant hotel. I don’t think I’ve been away from home since August so it will provide a much needed opportunity to run away from it all.

So I’m feeling fed up with the world and am wondering how I’m going to cope with all this over the next few years. I have a sense of impending doom or mounting alarm about how I am going to manage over the next five years when I will have three teenagers at once, with arguments and fights on the increase. I really am worried. I would also quite like to have a semblance of life for me and that chance just seems to be disappearing down the plughole. Fast.

In other news my father is back at home and mending very very slowly. We won’t know for a while how successful the operation was but at least he’s recovering.

 

I’ve Had Words

Tags

acknowledgment, anger, confrontation, conversation, expressing emotions, father, feelings, frustration

It’s done. I picked up my father at lunchtime yesterday and we chit-chatted a bit. He asked how each child was in turn, well he asked how they were enjoying school which is as close as he gets. He didn’t ask me how I was doing.

It was sunny so we went for a walk. Perhaps the fact that we weren’t face to face gave me courage. We’d only been together an hour or so and we’d run out of conversation. I spent five minutes with sentences running through my head before I finally thought that I was bored and frustrated with not having a civil conversation with my father that I spoke out.

I said that part of 2son’s issues was that he had no idea how to express what was going on inside his head, what his feelings were or what he was angry about. He expressed his frustration by doing things like urinating on the carpet. I talked about 1son’s inability to deal with confrontation or anger as he’d never learned it by arguing with his parents. I then said that I found it difficult to help 2son as I had similar difficulties because my parents blocked out their emotions, we’d never had verbal fights, we didn’t get emotional because it wasn’t allowed. I pointed that that my mother disagreed with him so rarely that he still talks about the three or four occasions when she did. Out of 25 years.

My father’s reaction was as expected. He recognised that I have a grievance about my childhood but he did the best he could and I should have got over it by now, whatever it is. I’m a grown up now and I should have moved on. Life is full of unpleasant things and we just have to get a grip and get on with it rather than try and change it. He also said there was nothing wrong with the way they’d brought us up. And then he asked what any of this had to do with 2son. Also he said that children choose what they learn from their parents.

That was it really. I said I disagreed with him at several points. He dismissed my feelings, as he’s always done, saying that it was a pity I felt this way. So in that sense nothing was gained.

He did however feel the need for a sudden nap and practically fled. When we reconvened later we went out for dinner and talked about other subjects. He will no doubt go back home and discuss this with my mother and they’ll sit there and sadly shake their head at me.

There were achievements. I said things that have been going round in my head all year that I’ve not been able to verbalise to him. I found it hard to say them but I did. I also said them without wanting to cry or even to get angry. I just felt frustration and disappointment. that he couldn’t even acknowledge or respect what I was saying, let alone understand it. That’s his problem. He refused to bear any responsibility and that’s the part that makes me angry.

I still need to work through how I act with my parents and how I can get to a point of feeling comfortable with them again, of not letting them get to me. I feel I’ve made a major step forward in how I didn’t fall to pieces while having this conversation and that is probably the best I could have hoped for.

Breaking My Silence

Tags

acceptance, anger, childhood, dreams, grief, kubler-ross, parents, stuggle

Unsurprisingly enough I find it easier to write when I’m thinking positively than when life is difficult. And yet it’s then I need most to practice talking about hard feelings.

During these past few weeks I’ve been slowly and steadily sinking, plunging myself into a morass of despair.

The good thing is that whenever one of 2son’s professionals have asked me how I’m doing I have told them at length how I’m doing,  rather than sticking to a one word lie in reply.

A few weekends ago I went to see my friend (mentioned in Theatre) in a quality amateur production. Naturally we stayed behind to say well done to him afterwards and spent a few minutes listening to him delight in the back stage camaraderie and in house jokes and friendships that had developed. As we made our weary way back to London and for several days after, his words reverberated in my head. His joy, his sense of belonging, of pride and achievement. I wondered why he gets to chase his dream and I gave up on mine. Then I listen to his parents praising him, for his achievements, his hard work and dedication and I stop wondering. Is that what it’s like to have parents who support and encourage you?

I’m still grieving and mourning for the childhood I never had, for the friends not made, the parties not gone to, the fun not had, the mistakes I didn’t make, the learning I didn’t manage, for the silly tales I haven’t got to tell. I’m wishing I’d had the confidence then to stand up for my parents and make a difference while recognising that it’s not unexpected that I didn’t. I want to have been a child, to have had the “normal” childhood problems with friendships, growing up, boyfriends and all the rest of it. I wish I had parents who supported me and gave me strength rather than chipped away at me.

And that’s on top of the dream not followed. I’m stuck in the depression stage of the Kübler-Ross model. I’ve spent most of my life in denial, pretending that it wasn’t that bad really as I wasn’t capable of dealing with the truth. I’ve got angry this year, probably not angry enough and never to the point of saying anything about anything much to my parents. The third stage is bargaining. I was never very good at wishing to be able to go back and do it all again, because I couldn’t see a pivotal point where I made the wrong decision. Even as a teenager I was also terrified of the prospect of having to go through my childhood all over again if that magic time wand could be waved. (I’m almost resisting temptation to call it a timey-wimey wand.)

The stage I haven’t got to yet is acceptance, which starts off “Grief Work” with:
T = To accept the reality of the loss
E = Experience the pain of the loss
A = Adjust to the new environment without the lost object
R = Reinvest in the new reality

I haven’t accepted the reality of my loss. I still yearn for what I didn’t have and feel angry towards people I perceive as having it instead.

And I’m struggling. I’m struggling to keep my head above water while looking after 3 boys as well. As an aside, 1son had a trial shift behind a bar this Saturday which he survived but said it was the hardest day’s work he’s ever done. About time I say, but with pride. I can’t be bothered to cook for them or me. I’m struggling to put in the effort to get 2son up. I’m stopping talking to people. I’m not doing the school run so I don’t have to make polite (or impolite) conversation with anyone and I really can’t be bothered. Except for the few people who really know and share what’s happening I don’t want to talk about it. If it wasn’t for being able to have a laugh with my Saturday friends life would have nothing whatsoever to offer. I’m trying to accept that I simply can’t go out during the week unless I’m back early and that’s the way it has to be for the moment. I’m cutting back on work and I’m cutting back on fun evenings out.

I didn’t have a session last week and have my last session with my current counsellor this week. I’m getting bored of counselling and think I need a break before going back and would happily try something else if there was something else to try. Trying to look at what I have achieved this year is going to be difficult as at the moment any achievement seems irrelevant to the struggle to get through the day. I’m barely doing any exercise and as for HAES or trying to put myself first, well it’s bloody difficult. I’m watching more crap on television and reading for books for pleasure as I haven’t the enthusiasm for anything else. That’s about as far as looking after me goes at the moment. And I’m angry that I feel like shit.

 

Out of the Blue

Tags

2sis, anger, child, mother, sister

There I was, minding my own business, sweeping the kitchen floor, when all this anger suddenly came spewing out of me. Well, in my head it did.

I could hear my mother asking, as she did a few years ago, whether I blamed her. At the time I said No, it wasn’t about blame but about understanding which was sort of true then.

What I wanted to say to her this afternoon was “Yes, I am angry at you. I’m angry at you for making a mess of your own life. You made one mistake, albeit a big one and you never got over it. That bitterness and anger that led you to feel trapped in a marriage you wouldn’t have chosen if you weren’t pregnant spilled over into my childhood. You expressed it to me every day ever since I can remember.

“I knew, even before I had the remotest understanding of why, that you weren’t happy, but that you didn’t seem able to do anything about it. You felt that my father was cold, heartless, rational, and that I needed protecting from him if I wasn’t going to be hurt. I didn’t need to be any more confused about my father than I already was. He could be warm and affectionate but he also drove me to tears too many times for me to count. He scared me with his anger and his lack of understanding.

“I loved 1sis, as I still do, but her moods went up and down; sometimes she lived at home and sometimes she didn’t. When she was there for me, she was all the way there, but much of the time she wasn’t, either absent or bound up in her own problems.

“2sis makes me angry. Although we tried to be friends at some point, she went off to university and escaped. Sometime after that it all went bad between us. She resented 1sis being alive and she resented my father’s perceived favouritism towards me. She felt she didn’t have her rightful place within the family and she took it out on me. She belittled me, mocked me, said hurtful things. She did them in front of you and you never told her off. She did it in front of my father and he never even noticed. You used to acknowledge that she caused me pain, but when I started to find my voice, you backtracked and said you had no idea what I was talking about. Us both becoming mothers drove us further apart and we certainly never swapped parenting tips. The fact that I was pregnant as she was getting over a miscarriage didn’t help. We now have no contact with each other and I don’t know what to say when my children ask when they are going to see their cousins.

“As to my father, I feel more frustrated than angry towards him. He genuinely does not understand where his life has gone wrong. He said to me the other day that there was a youth club attached to his school but he’d never gone as he didn’t see the point of having fun and making friends. He still doesn’t. For that reason I find it difficult to feel angry towards him.

“But to you, who was aware that things were wrong in your life but refused to do anything about it, I feel anger. When you told me about the one time you thought about leaving him, when he was gloating about having cheated and beaten me at Scrabble aged 6 you talked about how we children would feel in the morning if you had gone. You did not contemplate taking us with you. And when 2sis had her stomach pumped, you weren’t there for her then either. When you were told that I’d swallowed a bottle of pills, you never mentioned it to me.

“Was your life really that hard? Has keeping quiet for all those years got you what you wanted?”

 

Getting Angry

Tags

anger, control, shouting

This follows on very much from Can I Shout at my Kids?

We went back to discussing anger at my last counselling session.

Last week I had got emotional as I was writing posts about my teenage years but I hadn’t really cried; I hadn’t felt able to. So I watched a film that is almost guaranteed to make me bawl and it didn’t let me down again. It never used to make me cry; indeed it’s not a sad film. It’s a French rite of passage film for a young girl. Unlike American films of this variety it looks at the emotional turmoil not just of the girl but of her parents and even grandmother and this is what makes it a good film. I went to see it four times when it came out and I think I yearned to be her, to have ‘normal’ childhood problems about boys, to be able to shout at parents who would think about what you said, who were not perfect themselves but would at least try and involve you in what was going on. Now, rather than yearning to be her, I think I’m crying for lost childhood.

Her parents protected her from what was going on in their relationship, not by hiding it, but by diluting what they told her (mummy and daddy are having a few problems so are going to live apart for a while, but no we’re not getting divorced). I suppose, to a certain extent, this is what I try and do with my children.

If it’s a practical problem I try and explain it. If their behaviour is causing problems I try and explain what and why. If they’re upsetting me I try to explain it and to just tell them. If things from outside the family are getting to me I will let them know. I try not to shout (or swear) but to make my feelings known. I suppose the more trivial the issue is, the easier I find it to get angry at them. “It would be really helpful if you put the remote controls back in front of the television so we could all find them.” can easily get transformed into “I’ve spent 10 minutes looking for the remotes because you didn’t put them away. Stop what you’re doing and find them, or else.  I put them back and I ask you to put them back because I get angry when I can’t find them and that puts me in a bad mood”.

I usually try to show them how it affects their life, that my being cross will mean that I say no when they ask for something so that it affects them indirectly and negatively.

Do I ever say “sod off and leave me alone, I’ve had enough”? Under my breath I do, but not out loud. Should I? I still don’t think so.

The parents in the film were protecting their daughter by not telling them the full extent of the problems they were having, but telling her enough so that she had some sense of what was going on. I consider that I am protecting my children by not shouting or crying at them but am I just not teaching them that actions don’t have consequences?

I try and teach them to be considerate of each other, to learn to co-operate and compromise with each other, to take turns if necessary, to talk things through rather then bashing each other. These things are good to learn but where 3 children of close age share a bedroom, they are also vital for survival (theirs and mine). I have noticed that their willingness to compromise sometimes means that when they are playing with an only child, who is used to getting his way, that their wishes are left unmet as the single child is not used to that same degree of co-operation. I’m not saying that my children never thump each other but at least they know they’re not supposed to.

I expect similar co-operation from my children and try and offer it in the “if you want to go out/ watch television / play on the computer then you must tidy your room /do your homework/ complete tasks first”.

I do occasionally walk away, saying “I can’t deal with you at the moment” and probably will go and hide in my room for an hour or so, telling anyone who knocks to go away. I do feel somewhat childish as I do this but I also recognise that I need to get away from the situation because I will only get more angry if I don’t and I don’t want to get more angry than I already have.

I asked my sister how she felt when she threw tantrums as a teenager. She says she remembers how our father would hold her down on his lap so she couldn’t be destructive. She said she did this when she felt life was too much, too awful and it would all get on top of her and she would want to break anything. He didn’t hold her to comfort her or to reassure her, just to stop her breaking anything else. Afterwards she would feel guilty. I did not get a sense of cathartic release from her.

I too feel guilty, when I’ve shouted at any of mine, and will later apologise. I never tell 2son for example how angry he can make me be when he’s being unco-operative or winding his brothers up. I have told him how frustrating I find him and how difficult I find not knowing how to help him but I try not to blame him out loud for the gradual deterioration of tempers and behaviour in the family over the last year. My feeling is that knowledge would weigh heavy on him and not help. Maybe I’m wrong.

So I try and explain what’s wrong to them so that they understand. Maybe a little more anger and a few more tears on my part would make them understand better. Maybe trying to stay quite so calm means that they think that adults are somehow more impervious to emotions and that I’m not helping them. Maybe they need to learn that their actions do hurt me, really hurt me and that I’m protecting them too much from that. But I also feel that they are only children and they shouldn’t have to worry about all the things I have to worry about. I could do with worrying less too.

Maybe I also need to go back and discuss vocabulary with my counsellor, what exactly is meant by “getting angry”, whether there are levels that are acceptable and levels that aren’t. I have on very rare occasions smacked them, not for a long time now. I don’t think you should have to, that I’ve only ever done it when incredibly frustrated and angry. It didn’t shock the child, in fact I do remember them jeering that I hadn’t even hurt them. It hurt me more than it did them.

I also have to question whether I’m turning into my parents. I certainly get more angry with my children than they ever did with me. As a child I built up suppressed emotions during our little chats that never got released in anger. Maybe I need to get a little bit angry so they understand that it’s all right to get a little bit angry too. I still think it should only be a little bit angry, rather than a lot.

Can I Shout at my Kids?

Tags

anger, civilised, parenting, shouting

It’s a serious question.

My parents never shouted at me. They never shouted at each other. I’m not sure I ever heard them raise their voices to each other, at least not in my hearing. I used to wonder as a teenager whether they hid under the bedclothes and screamed at each other, went to the pub for a slanging match or worse of all, just never got cross. Even at a young age I knew there was something wrong with this. While I didn’t want parents who screamed and shouted I felt there was something odd. Did they always agree with each other; did they take it in turns to make the decision?

The words I most dreaded hearing came when my father would say “Come and sit down; we’d just like a little chat with you…” Actually I still dread those words today. They usually meant that I had done something wrong and they wanted to point it out to me or that they wanted to ask me something that I hadn’t volunteered. Either way I would tense up, wonder how long it would take before I could escape, whether I could explain myself well enough to run away faster. I would avoid looking at them and try and retreat into myself where I wouldn’t be prodded and poked.

When I was finally released I would go to my room, pump up the volume on the radio and cry. My mother would often come up afterwards to reassure me that my father wasn’t really cross but they just wanted to know whatever it was. She would be warmer and less confrontational but it confused me that she hadn’t said any of this in front of my father.

I never really felt that they wanted to understand what was going on in my head, just to squash me into fitting into their idea of what should be going on in my head.

On very rare occasions when voices were raised I would be terrified. I remember the first time I heard my father swear, probably when I was about 17 or so. My immediate reaction was that 1sis must be accidentally pregnant as I couldn’t think of anything that could make him so irate.

I try not to shout at my children. I don’t think I ought to have to shout at them, that I should be able to raise them without raising my voice. Whenever I do shout at them, I always apologise some time afterwards, when I’ve calmed down. I tell them I love them, no matter what, that I’m sorry I shouted, but that Mummy finds it very difficult when they…. I try and explain myself to them, just as I do before I shout at them so that they understand that it’s the behaviour I’m cross with, rather than them.

I don’t want to upset them. Not in the sense of giving into them because they’re crying, but I don’t want them to think that my shouting means I don’t love them or that I’m going to start shouting at them for no reason at all. I don’t want them to worry because I shout or to feel that their home isn’t a safe place.

I can see the parallels with my childhood; I’d have to be really dense not to. But that doesn’t answer the question. Can I shout at them? I’m also aware that my heart is really pumping just while writing this.

I’m not comfortable with anger. I consider being angry and shouting as bad behaviour, as not being civilised, not being in control. And being in control is what my parents pride themselves on. Anger can cause pain to the recipient. Maybe my children don’t notice me being angry. It most probably bothers me more than it does them.

Maybe I should ask them.

“Hawling like brooligans” (Genevieve, 1953) – if you haven’t seen it, watch it