Hearts and Minds

We’ve reached the middle of the summer holidays and we're surviving.

It sounds dramatic to say that we’re surviving but being honest it doesn’t feel dramatic, it feels like a fair reflection of the stakes. 

We’ve had friends over, adopters who like us, have walked a less travelled road and care for children who can be sometimes challenging. I mean that's an understatement, re calibrate your idea of challenging by multiplying by a factor of 10.

Anyway, I normally find it reassuring to speak to other adopters but this time its had a peculiar effect. It’s reinforced the sense that adoption is increasingly a precarious way of creating a family for many adults and children. I bang on about societal change and the concentration of the most impacted children in the prospective adoptee cohort and I have to wonder if adoption is working. The vast majority of people I speak to don’t miss a beat in telling me that they’d do it again, neither do they shy away from telling me about the challenges that they’ve faced and the impact on their lives. I'd do it again, what other answer could I possibly give?

Last year I wrote a post ‘renegotiating the adoption contract’ about the challenge versus the support, or lack of support, and it's easily the most read post that I’ve ever written. Looking back I wonder what that even means now, increasingly I wonder about the capacity of government, local and national, to affect the changes that I’d want to see in adoption. Their powers only extend to structures, systems and policy & I believe that we need to change the ethos, values and knowledge of applicants, work force and the bean counters. This seems a much harder task, the old paradigms remain entrenched.

Having my friends over was a blast, We’d met last summer and then we acknowledge the challenges ahead. When they arrived they walked up my garden path and laughed ‘we survived’. Later when we talked we came back to 'surviving', it’s not funny we’ve all danced around children’s safeguarding, police, courts and more. We literally are surviving.

We spoke in frank and clear language about our challenges and worries. Peer support works for some but this time it was a stark reminder of the level of challenge that those sat around that table and many other families face. 

A social worker once asked me what my aspiration was for my child, I replied that we were all still together by the time they're 16 years old. They paused and with a serious face wrote something in their note book, ah well. Perhaps I'm suffering from mid holiday blogging silly season, nothing to reflect on other than the 7 of us sat looking at each other across the kitchen table. It's a big table.

I promise my next blog will be a right laugh. 

Clichés & Hope

Some days it feels like I’m living a collection of clichés that are straight from the section at the back of the Big Book of Adoption. The section called 'At the end of a great day we have a bad night'.

Oh boy, what a bad night. I mean how many blog posts, book chapters, support group discussions, social work hours have been consumed with that topic.

'We had such a lovely day at the beach and it came as such a shock when they bit the wing mirror off the car when we got home and ate the cat'

I'm almost embarrassed to say how surprised I was that after a lovely day out with laughing, smiling, conversation and fun we ended in a full on ding dong with all that means. Not nice, but not a unique experience in any way. Once again, my head drops and I'm cast into the shadows.

You'd have thought that by now I'd be wary, guarded and wise to such shenanigans. It seems like so much of my life is a well worn path, with patterns that return and return, the stories that I read in blog posts and twitter threads all ring true and resonate. Perhaps that's why the fellowship we get from twitter is such a tonic. A cohort that gets it, truly gets it, and understands the metaphoric and very real slap that some of our daily experiences represent to our bodies and soul.

I chatted to a very wise friend and as we considered the future. All we could have hope for was the days ahead. I believe that I can do the days ahead.
Sometime my hope stretches to months and years ahead, sometimes it constricts to minutes and hours ahead. Funny thing hope, like mist, hard to grasp but certainly there.

I'm not sure how I ended on hope, so a little blog from clichés to hope.

Final Report - Child on Parent Violence: Grappling with an Enigma

So, here it is:

CPV: Grappling with an Enigma 

The final report that was born out of the Child on Parent Violence (CPV) Survey that was completed at the end of 2016 can be downloaded here

It raises broader questions that need to be asked as we seek to address the needs of families that are impacted by CPV.
Primarily, how do we define CPV? Not as easy as I first thought and with the benefit of hindsight I'd not have used the definition that I chose for the CPV Survey. Why? well as this report notes the intentionality is not as easy to pin on many of our children and even if it is then is it appropriate or relevant to how we then go on to support those families.

This is the last of three reports could have easily been peer reviewed and published in an academic journal but then they would have remained in that sphere, behind paywalls, and privy only to those in that world. So we made them public access but they retain an academic slant to be used as required by professionals or parents. Don't feel embarrassed to skip the first couple of sections to get to the 'stuff'.

Read it, download it, share it. Be encouraged.

I have to thank Wendy, she has undertaken the writing with dedication fuelled by a passion to see CPV brought into the light. It's not taken hours but days, all voluntary and with no complaint.

Trawling through the data has been upsetting and challenging at times, responses are heartbreaking and all who participated represent struggle, pain and distress to varying degrees. A friend took me aside a few weeks ago and asked 'do you think you need to offload all of this stuff?' I'm not sure about that but every comment or reason given for a download fuels the cause, we will keep going. It is going to take time but I see that we've already made a change, when I first wrote about CPV in 2014 I felt like I was going out on a limb. Today, I look through my social media timeline and see conference schedules with the letters CPV and I take heart that we've moved on. We can talk about it we know we're not alone but there remains a long way to go.

The taboo is eroding.

We'll hold fast and keep on.

So, most of all thank you for taking part, reading and sharing.

Managing

Managing

Verb: to succeed in doing or dealing with something, especially something difficult.

What does 'managing' mean? It's no indication of how difficult things are or how we are dealing with it. It's subjective. What is the value of saying we're managing?

We manage because we can't think what else to do, but what do I do to manage, what is the cost, am I really managing?

Every day I meet people who are managing. Some are managing well, others not so.

Some people manage, but they're on anti depressants, they drink a little more than they should, their relationships with partners and friends are in tatters.
They manage but can't sleep at night, they have to give up their jobs, they don't see their friends and they're frightened of their children.
They manage by locking themselves in their room or calling the police.
They manage but they're isolated, aren't able to go to church or to friend's houses.
From the outside looking in I think 'are you really managing?'.
I think, 'yes you're managing but at what cost?'.

I know more families than I care to count who manage way beyond what they ever expected because they love their children and have no other choice.

There have only been a few moments in our family lives where I've thought that I wasn't managing, fleeting moments where I considered the alternative. But the alternative was too much to bear, a choice that was more painful than the 'managing'.

Stepping back, I wonder are we managing or just not giving up.






Please note: this post is not a criticism of the survey that used the word 'managing' in it's reporting more a reflection on my thoughts and ponderings that popped out after I read it.

A Long Hard Week

Remotely reading accounts of children's violence against parents unfold over Twitter makes for a hard week. It's not just now and then but a theme every week, be that 4 year olds or 14 year olds, either way it's hard to read.  

 

Lots of us walk that CPV* path and are still on it, it's a hard path that is exacerbated by the professional responses that have been thought up in a common sense empathy vacuum. 

To feel abandoned or accused by the very people that should help you is a double blow, worse than no help at all,  much worse. As Helen Bonnick said in our podcast one professional can make all the difference, finding that professional can be the trick, but we found ours, many don't.

This week I've seen voices get stronger,  dots starting to be joined. Emails bouncing round my inbox with ideas and suggestions, plans and schemes on twitter with experts in different fields drawn into the debate. I've had conversations with friends planning to make a difference. 

If the Post Adoption professionals are not prepared to navigate the legal, ethical and emotive seas that safe holding, risk assessment and restraint inhabit then perhaps we ought to raise our sails and set off without them.  

Social worker's bread and butter is managing and quantifying risk but for a host of reasons this issue is not one that many will embrace or are allowed to embrace. Safe holding has perhaps been linked to attachment holding which has had tragic consequences. So the pendulum has swung and social care has stepped away and we're met with blank stares when asked what to do, or we're made to feel like monsters for even suggesting that we take control. But there are other voices and professionals with different views. 

Let's keep talking

Forgive the brevity it's been a long hard week.

*Child on Parent violence

No easy answers

In one of my day jobs I speak to teachers and help them develop their understanding of the impacts of  loss, trauma and separation on children. I’m usually invited in on the back of adoption but I quickly move past this with my first slide and broaden it to a whole range of children.

I talk about children who experience abuse, of many strains, children cared for by adults other than their parents, children in the Looked After system, children who experience the death of a parent or loved one, children who experience mental ill health or live with someone who does, children who experience the imprisonment of a parent, children whose parents separate or divorce. I could go on, and usually do, indicating that the children who experience these challenges and are adopted are only a small fraction of those impacted.

Eventually the teachers ask is there anyone who hasn’t been impacted by trauma, loss and separation left? It’s an interesting question and the reality is that probably not, but the degree, implications and subsequent support are perhaps the key issue. 

So with that in mind I go about my day. 

This week on Twitter I was included into a very long conversation thread that drifted into this issue, along with many other issues to boot.  

For many of the adults looking after the other children that I listed they had no choice, circumstances and other such meant that they care for children that have lived under the shadow of negative experiences.

Are their needs greater than ours or ours theirs? Of course not. But we have many things that they do not. A voice. The goodwill of many people that can help us. The Adoption Support Fund. A statutory right to see our needs assessed, lobby groups, conferences and research that benefits us and our children. Adopters are uniquely privileged, we are universally seen by wider society, media and politicians as saintly and deserving. If you’re an adopter it’s not uncommon to be told ‘what you’re doing is amazing’, ‘I could never do what you do’ and other gushing statements. For us this is a choice, many of us didn’t ‘really’ know what we were getting into, but we chose this path none the less. You could argue that for some it was no choice but a last resort but that confuses the issue. Doesn’t it? Probably.

I’m not suggested it’s all creamy but I know enough to know that we have more in our favour than many others. Neither am I suggesting that we should sit back and rest on our laurels, of course we should push for better.

I often think what it would be like to care for my children in different circumstances, to be the cause or to have been a bystander to my children's trauma, the system may not look on me as favourably as I struggle with guilt, shame, mental ill health, challenging circumstances, your own trauma etc. 

I do know that some would prefer money spent on adopters and not on families that struggle. I do know that some would prefer the opposite. I'd like to hope that those who hold the purse strings also hold both ends of this spectrum in tension.

How do we rank need? Are some more deserving of public funds than others? Well I guess there are multiple views on that. When thinking of my child’s life path would money have been better spent on early intervention, or resourcing foster care and foster carers or providing support to adopters or on universal services. The reality is that money is spent at each point with varying degrees of success and to fund one is to not underfund another, as far as I know that’s not how public funds are used or how the system works.

The reality is that the need is greater than the available resources, that being so we are then left in a terrible position where most services could do with more money.  Need is graded and some get access to services and some do not. As adopters we're unique but that does not necessarily mean we receive or deserve a prioritised access to service. I'd like to live in a society where children's need are prioritised regardless of who cares for them be a single mother with mental ill health and a chaotic lifestyle or a middle class family in the leafy suburbs.  Is that the case? I'm not sure I'm in a position to answer that.

What upset me, or frustrated me, in the twitter conversation was that it's a debate that can't be boiled down to 140 characters. Confusion reigned as different people's threads blurred and messages mixed.  It wasn't a uplifting exchange.

I've read and seen enough to know that though the needs of many adopted children are profound and life long but that doesn't make them unique and in the grand scheme represent a small portion of the whole need that is present. 

There are no easy answers.

Adoption Breakdown

I was brought over all funny by the Post Adoption Support Fund Survey that came through the post. I knew it was coming and I've answered enough of this type of Strengths and Difficulties forms over the years so I'm a dab hand at it all by now.

I have to take a deep breadth as I usually have an existential crisis over the nuances and philosophical differences between 'agree' and 'strongly agree'. I can get a little Fawlty Dad over the issue but I try to be a grown up.

Anyway, I was rattling through the form and passed the tricky bit and was into the final section.

On a scale of 1 to 10 

Do you find it difficult to care for you child then? 

Followed by........

Do you feel your child responds to you attempts to help them?

Finally.............

Do you feel there's a risk of your adoption breaking down?

That question just stopped me in my tracks, like a slap. All the others I had to think about and then give a considered answer, weighing up the evidence and analysing the facts.
All the others questions I was prepared to give some headspace too, not that one though.

I was really shocked, then I was surprised at being shocked. I know adoptions breakdown happens but it is a taboo and we're not meant to talk about taboos. It seemed odd to see it written down I felt a little offended that I'd even been asked.

'Adoption breaking down'

A simple phrase that encapsulates a cataclysmic and prolonged disaster in a families lives. I can't imagine the events, circumstances that lead to it. The stats say about 3% of adoptions breakdown but up to a third struggle. I'm not sure about what struggle means, we struggle but the leap from struggle to breakdown is a big one. Also, having I've had a daughter move out before 18. That was surrounded by difficult circumstances but in no way was it an adoption breakdown. I have unending empathy for those that have experienced a breakdown.

I'm not happy with the phrase it's a big blunt phrase that encapsulates a whole range of circumstance, systemic and personal failings, heartbreak and broken dreams. I'm really searching this week to make sense of what point I'm trying to make, I'm not even sure that I've got a point. I'm just dancing around this phrase and event that some families experience. The feeling that I got lingers and I'm not sure why.

Anyway, I just put a 'one', I have no idea what the future holds.

Flashback

Friedrich Nietzsche said 

“That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.” 

I'd be the first to admit I'm no philosopher but I'd like to point out two things Freddy. One you never had children* and two, you've never met my children. 

It's all been rumbling round my head as my friend has just had two girls placed for adoption with him and his wife. Through texts and calls he's keeping me up to date with all the ups, downs and challenges and the challenges.

Hearing the struggles and incidents that they face is agonising, each day I see the pressure that they feel and anxiety that hovers around them. Admittedly the children are 'challenging' and everyone knew that before they came but still the gap between knowledge and experience seems so wide. 

What they describe evokes a visceral reaction in me, those first faltering hours, days and weeks where I felt I was drowning back in '99. As per standard practice and advice our friends and family drew back and we were more isolated than we'd ever felt. Of course it was all ok in the end but touch and go. All I can say is with hindsight is that I'm sometimes glad Social Workers are hard to get hold of.

I text my friend and repeat what I'd said to him during their assessment, waiting and matching. We'd talked long and hard about what it was like, he saw me on some grim days and saw some of the aftermath of the stuff that washes round Coates Towers. But it was all theoretical, head knowledge and stories back then. Now it's all experience, very visceral and hard. 

I tell my friend it takes time, hang in, build your new life. But they are starting from the bottom and that's a scary place. I'm sure it's going to be ok they'll find their feet build a new life together with their children. I want them to believe that it's all going to be ok.

It makes me think about how the good MrsC and I have changed since that summer 17 years ago. Perhaps Freddy was right after all.




*I checked on Google so it must be true

Sick bed

With a gentleness of tone she explained to me:

'It's just that I hate every single thing about you'.

There was no aggression just a sincerity and almost compassion as she tried to get me to understand something that I clearly could quite grasp. I'd asked her, out of curiosity, why she'd spent the previous twenty four hours calling me names that she new would hurt. This had been her reply.

Writing here now I can't even remember what started it, a thing happened, the usual sort of thing, and I said something then it all unraveled. The silence, interspersed with looks of distain and words of harm had trickled on. In the car, at the meal table, bed time, breakfast lunch all simmering. All focused on me, just me.

So, I asked and she helpfully explained that she hated me.

A day later, it was still simmering and I asked if she could remember why she was still cross with me, just me. She couldn't remember was more than happy to confirm that she was still cross with me in no uncertain terms.

I held fast, I knew that she'd come back with the sincere and heartfelt sorry. I daydreamed about playing it cool or throwing it back in her face or some such grand gesture so profound that it would change her, make her think and alter her behaviour for ever.

A day later the good MrsC texted me from home saying the school had called and she was ill and back at home now. She was proper poorly with the flue that been working its way through the massive.

When I got home she was poorly, still cross. I have to admire her tenacity, if this could be harnessed for good she'd be unstoppable.

She was ill. Sleeping not eating or moving. Wanderings through the night, medicine, the usual business.

So, the last day. I sat next to her on her sick bed, she did not recoil. I took a chance and stroked her face.

She let me and her hate had passed.

Coming home

I sometimes sit in the car for a second longer that I need to, I take a deep breath then head into the house.

Often I know what I'm walking into, with regular updates, texts usually keep me abreast of the current 'situation'. Most times it is resolved by the time I walk through the door. But the pause in the car is just long enough to put behind the travails of the working day and get my game face on.

Of course the good MrsC is more than able to manage most situations but that doesn't mean that it's easy, pleasant or that it doesn't take it's toll. We made the decision to be parents together though but it is mostly the good MrsC doing the school runs, making tea (dinner for you southerners) and without doubt doing the lion's share of the work. I go out to work and though I enjoy my work I often feel guilty as the text updates come through. I'm lucky my employers appreciate the 'uniqueness' of my family and allow me the flexibility to take calls as and when I can. It's appreciated but reading and hearing incidents unfold from a distance is a uniquely stressful experience. There's rarely anything constructive I can do, if you've ever tried to regulate a dysregulated child by phone you'll appreciate it's like trying to put a pair of leggings on an angry octopus, an exercise in madness.

Of course saying that its hard for me seems churlish and selfish so perhaps I shouldn't admit to it. Managing it on the ground is of course stressful, upsetting and exhausting and often MrsC doesn't inform me of the trials and tribulations of the day until I get home.

I'd rather know what's going on but the impotence that it brings is debilitating at times knowing that your loved ones are caught in some illogical fracas, a dysregulated child and a struggling parent.

I want to know but I don't want to know. Sometimes MrsC tells me sometimes she doesn't.

So, I sit in the car and take a breath and get my game face on, ready for what might be, has been or is to come.

Tectonic Plates

Over the last few weeks I've been playing a game. I slide up to people I know, brighter and wiser people, and all nonchalant like, when they least expect, it I ask them:

'So, what do you think about adoption?'

What interesting things people say. They normally ask for clarification 'why, what do you mean, eh?' Then we talk, I ask few questions and they give a few answers and the things people that have said to me have been very interesting, very interesting indeed.

It's not a game. My views have shifted, slowly like tectonic plates from the naive ill informed enthusiasm of 18 years ago to now. The trouble is that I'm not sure what I think, I am but I aren't.

Riding up the country gave me time to ponder, but I came up empty, more questions than answers.

The money that changes hands and the business, the dogma and the ideology, injustices and punishment, the challenges and recruitment, the expectations and the promises, the hopes and the dreams, the realities and the wonder,  the adopters, the families, the children, the love. I've not even mentioned human rights and parental responsibilities.

Increasingly I struggle to articulate my thoughts in words and though I can offer to demonstrate my views through expressive dance there's too much to say.

In no way am I turning my back on adoption and I am certain that I love the children in my life I've been given to parent. I even struggle to say my children these days. Perhaps that's a reaction to the US adoption month stuff that floats around the internet. Perhaps that's too much airy fairy social worky thinking. Perhaps it's all too much airy fairy social worky thinking.

Of course my views are informed by my relatively narrow experience and the experience of those I come into contact with. But there's a yearning to know more. So, blog about nothing but that's what I'm doing now looking for more understanding and nuance. I worry that my views push beyond my knowledge and into opinion that I become an empty vessel, hollow but loud. So, if you seem me slide up to you prepare yourself I might expect you to give account of your views.

Unresolved narrative

It's been a hard week for a load of different and mainly external reasons. Of course it goes without saying that I can't say what, when, who, how or why. Of course I can confirm that they're all related directly to the early lives my children and their route to my door. I'm not down or depressed. I just am.

I was speaking to a friend about something or other and he noted that some folks he knew struggled with what I wrote sometimes as there was, as he said it, 'an unresolved narrative'.

Well if it makes you feel any better so do I.

I write what happens, what I see and what I think. Of course I filter and edit it but it's an account of our lives from my perspective. Other perspectives are available of course but I feel that I'm fairly representative of a large number of parents who care for children who have experienced trauma, loss, separation and have travelled through the care system.

I write to make me feel better, to get the dirty water off my chest. I'd love to write about all the warm hugs and beautiful moments that blossom out of difficult experiences. Perhaps I do but in different less obvious ways, I think I find hope.

Today as Mrs C and I returned from our recent sessions with one of the massive's therapist I confessed that I didn't know how all of this is going to turn out for us as a family. Not the immediate but the long term. Not depressed just pragmatic, what does the future hold? I never thought that we'd retire to the seaside, see the grandkids once a week for a slice of Battenberg cake and a Wurthers Original, crikey no.  But I'm not sure how in the medium to long term some of my children's adult lives are going to play out. Our journey so far indicates that for some it will be ok but for some it's not so clear,  so our narrative is unresolved, but can anyone's be resolved?

This week my heart skipped as I walked through the shops, Lotty's 10 year old hand took hold of mine and we walked and talked. Her hand felt small but it was just so natural with an easy familiarity that was precious. Big deal, you say but I'm her dad and I'm the proudest dad in the world because she loves me. I also know that in 5 years this time holding hands will not happen.

Sometimes I hold onto that second in time when my hand is held because in that moment my narrative actually feels pretty much resolved.

It's not personal.

Violence:

1. Behavior or treatment in which physical force is exerted for the purpose of causing damage or injury.
2. Intense force or great power, as in natural phenomena.
3. Extreme or powerful emotion or expression
4. Distortion of meaning or intent.

With the Adoption Social's week of focus on Child to Parent Violence #CPV I've been mulling over my own thoughts and experiences. I often unpick events in minute detail trying to fathom what's happened, what was said, what set us on a path to an incidence of violence. Sometimes I can see plainly and sometimes it's veiled by my lack of insight or understanding.

But really what I'd like to say is how it feels for me. All the books I read and the professionals I speak to. All the still voices of reason and voices of friends and family tell me the same thing. 

It’s not personal.

After we've had a 'incident', when the dust has settled, reconciliation is made and the delicate peace that we live in is restored. 

Then, I know it’s not personal.

I know the violence is born of inexpressible fear and anxiety at the loss of control. 
I know it's the overflow of emotion that cannot be stemmed.
I know it's and the inability to moderate and reason alI routed in a distant experience but bearing fruit in my today. 
I know it's not personal.

When spiders of disassociated fear, anxiety and pain creep closer to my child she lashes out to keep them at bay.

So, it's not personal.

But in truth it often feels it.

It's my body that gets hurt and it's me that is insulted. 

I sometimes wonder if  I'm slowly being eroded by the force of this violent wind. 

This is the paragraph at the end where I tie it up nicely, with a warm sentiment and tell of how love overcomes and parents do what they have to do cos that what we do. But I'm not going to patronise you today.
Fear not, I will keep on and I will refuse to take it personally. 

Rocking the Boat?

A guest post from Eva a prospective adopter............

How dare a SW judge the sincerity and communicational depth of my relatively short marriage when she claims to become an expert in knowing me in and out after meeting me only 6 times before her report (and my future happiness) is set in stone?

To be fair our SW is a well seasoned professional and a lovely person who is very able to assess me / us as a couple and write up a fair and true report, but my question is still valid...

In all honesty we are a V-E-R-Y unusual couple. Unusual is good – the SW said. Panel likes unusual – the SW said. 

But do they, really?

When they have to sit all day in a small room with familiar faces around the table; when they have to comment on each case for the minutes; when they have to read hundreds of pages to come prepared for the panel meeting; when they already know who will have a problem with which couple; when all they want is to approve a couple... do they really want unusual cases? Or do they rather wish for simple, straight forward, clean cut or (heaven forbid) textbook cases?

We could have children. We are 35+ young professionals from safe and stable families who C-H-O-S-E not to become birth parents themselves. We could fill pages (oh, wait, we did! On countless occasions!) with the reasons, but for now let’s just forget the many reasons and focus on the choice we made. If pro-choice is so widely popular; if abortion is so acceptable; if nobody is allowed to tell a young or old / drug addict or alcohol addict / severe mental health / abusive... etc or just simply a very nice ‘perfect’ person the sentence ‘you must not have birth children of your own’ or ‘ok, lady, you had enough, maybe a dozen will do’ and all these people and their choices are and should be respected then why do I feel I am the bad person here?

Why do I have to keep defending my view? Why am I labelled ‘unfit to be a parent’ if I am not desperate to become one (in other words: I need a child, any child would do really, just so that I can be a parent)? We have a happy marriage and life, we feel our family is complete, we do not yearn for a nonexistent hole to be filled by somebody else’s child. We simply put our own needs aside and choose to adopt siblings already in the system who do not have a safe and loving home where they can just be children and then grow up to be happy and supported adults. We could provide all that and much more for these children. Yet, somehow we find ourselves time and time again judged, questioned, condemned even for the choices we made in our lives.

Other that this we tick all the boxes. House, car, income, support network, stay home parent...whatever you need. Why would then our chances of being approved tripled if we said we C-O-U-L-D not have children? I fail to see how any of the above mentioned factors would change and still, somehow we would fit the ‘usual’ box and would be approved in no time...

But I do want to become a parent...
I do want to get approved...
I do want to bless those children...

So I don’t rock the boat. Just keep quiet. And I keep answering the same questions on and on again. With a smile. As usual.