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.

House of Cards

Some times things smooth out. It's all relative of course, my idea of smooth and the general population's are probable a little different. The shouty fighty bits get a little less shouty fighty and we start to relax a little and it all seems doable. Perhaps I'm able to walk this line between push over and commandant, therapist and policeman.
As hours turn to days my confidence grows, deludedly I think that I'm good at this stuff, at least this week.

Then it all unravels.

I get shouty, snippy, pointy and dysregulated, I want to say it was provoked and it was a reasonable reaction to unacceptable behaviour. It wasn't it was over a little bit of normal child procrastination and distraction during the school run. I should have been better. Damn, damn, damn and blast. The night before I was high giving myself over my therapeutic verbal gymnastics. Now that's all gone.

My parenting feels like a house of cards that I'm slowly building sometimes I can't even get the basics  right, two cards propped together. Some times I get further three tiers of cards, the high level parenting stuff that they write in the expensive books and preach at he la de daa courses. I'm learning one things for sure the house will fall, sooner or later, I will fail.

Of course I know all the 'good enough' theories, for heavens sake I reel them off quickly enough to others. I could meditate on some Facebook meme of a kitten in a bucket advising me that

'a true measure of a person  is not how many times you cock it up but how many times you get up' 

or some such pseudo motivational pap.

Of course it was all ok in the end, no harm done, tomorrow's another day and we all make mistakes. Blah blah blah.
Doesn't mean I don't feel pants.





I

Emergency Child Dysregulation Alarm at Coates Towers

A well prepared and organised alarm procedure in case of child/adult dysregulation.

 

Step back

I'm just done in, the emotions I feel during National Adoption Week are mixed in normal circumstances but this year NAW has felt like really hard work.

I don't need to run through all the stuff; the adverts, campaigns and general media hype that sits in sharp contrast with our family's sharp multifaceted adoption reality. At times during this week I've felt outrage, cynicism, hope, confusion, joy, love, gratitude and a rainbow of other emotions as I've watched usual barrage of media hoopla through various formats.

My mind has raced for a week with issues, the number of approved adopters vs children to home; the lack of adoptee representatives, the dogma, the history, the pain of loss, the desperate need, the politics and my role in all of this.

In the middle of all the hoo ha Mrs C and I planned a school visit considering moving from a two tier system to a three tier hopeful that a middle school will stretch out more pastoral school environment. Before we went I was overwhelmed with isolation as we weighed the pros and cons of the various options. After days of representing tother people's views I was almost paralysed with confusion when faced with this significant decision for us. I just needed some help from someone to walk me through this choice. I've read the blogs and taken advice but the buck stops here, we needed to make a decision and the next thing I know I'm throwing up in the toilet. Ok, time to step back, tune out and stop.

So, no blog this week just this, I'm stepping back, loading up Twuffer and going to potter on.

I say this with the utmost sincerity, look after yourselves.

PS Just for the record I really am not an Adoption Champion, I signed nothing and completed no form ;-)

Shame game

I was prepping for a thing I am doing this week and was considering the influence of shame and came across some thought provoking quotes*.

                 Shame: a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behaviour.

                 ‘Shame is a soul eating emotion.’  ― C.G. Jung

                 ‘The difference between guilt and shame is very clear—in theory. We feel guilty for what we do. We feel shame for what we are.’ - LEWIS B. SMEDES, Shame and Grace

Shame in our house is an easy target to hit for some of our children, in fact the real trick is not hitting it for them.

‘Don’t do that, don’t do this, why have you put that there, why did you say that, where have you been, what are you doing?’ Regardless of the intonation or innocence of the questioner these words, like arrows, score direct hits on feelings of shame. Understandably this precipitates a reaction, pushing back and fighting. It’s a well worn path that we often try to avoid but seem to find ourselves travelling.

Appropriate parenting uses tiny drops of shame to moderate behaviour with immediate restoration. Though I confess that Peanut seems impervious to this approach after cutting a chunk of hair off her head this weekend she was given an appropriate stern talking too. She was then given the love, restored to the fold and all was well, though her hair was hacked it was redeemable. Peanut then slinked off and and removed 50% of her fringe to the hairline giving herself a semi mullet. Mrs C, an ex hairdresser, was mortified/devastated, I suggested that Peanut is to only be allowed out of the house in a balaclava for the next six months while it grows out.

Not helpful.

Peanut though without remorse or shame noted in her defence ‘it’s dad’s fault, he says I look like Dora the Explorer, so now I don’t’. In my defence I wasn’t in the house. The more astute will be wondering how a three year old got her hands on a pair of razor sharp professional hairdressing scissor not once but twice. As the qualified Health and Safety Officer/Social Worker of the home I’d like to claim ignorance.

I digress.

In light of the stuff I’d read and pondered on shame I started to think about the ‘why’ questions that I hear myself ask Flossy.

Each 'why' seems like an accusation directed to the core of her being and punch straight into that shame.

‘You are bad’ is what is being heard. Frequently we are mopping up the aftermath of overwhelming shame. Teachers, friends, wider family members passers by in the street set it off and we mop it up.

I’d never given it much thought as to why ‘why’ questions don’t work. Maybe this is part of the answer.

Oh, and we compromised and found a headband for Peanut.

*I didn’t get where I am today by not knowing how to Google stuff

Un petit film

White noise

I was a cookie cutter kid and I just drifted through school the top end of average at all but English where I was strangely significantly below average. Or as I reflect now plain lazy and a slow writer. I had the wherewithal to manage the usual issues at comprehensive and was socially able enough to not be bullied or ostracised. The world of education has changed since the early 80’s. My parents were more than pleased that I didn’t follow in my brother’s footsteps. He had a flamboyant and quite remarkable distain for the requirements of the schooling system and infamously skipped one of his final exams to go and see the Rolling Stones. By comparison I was probably just white noise to most of my teachers, neither ‘nowt nor summat’.

This is not going to be the case for Flossy. She is many things but she is not white noise in a school environment especially a comprehensive school she definitely a Rolling Stones kind of pupil.

In relation to Flossy’s education my attitude stinks. She can get her GCSE’s anytime between now and the end of her life. But she only gets one pass at adolescence. She’s going into year 6 in September and that gives us a year to find a ‘safe’ comprehensive. Mrs C and I decided in May that Mrs C that we were going to give no consideration to the looming issue of school til we’d moved house. As we know you should never open a European land war on two fronts.

So, we’ve moved house and now is the time to start to think about the future schooling shenanigans. We want a safe place, Flossy needs a safe place. On a most fundamental level what can she learn in a scary place? Her feeder comprehensive, or Stalag Luft VII as I affectionately renamed it, is exclusively for ‘cookie cutter kids’* or so Ofsted concludes. Our preferred choice, a Catholic school Sarah and Gracie went to, is unfortunately in a ‘no go’ area for a range of reasons geographic/family reasons. So, we are plotting and scheming, consulting a range of professionals and casting our net further afield to locate more nurturing and sympathetic environment. We get ones pass at this and the increasingly punitive education system, or so it seems, needs to be negotiated with the least trauma possible for Flossy. We’ll travel if we have to and we’ll go where we have to and do what ever we have to do.

What do I aspire to for six years from now? To be the father of a child that feels included and welcome in society rather than excluded and alienated. Doesn’t seem like much but I’m taking nothing for granted.

*Clearly there’s no such thing.

Cat Killer

Firstly, this is a blog about a cat. Any metaphorical coincidence is exactly that.

We have a cat that is convinced that I’m a cat killer.

I am not, but it’s over five years since our cat, Kitty, witnessed an incident that convinced her that I killed her best friend Izzy the cat. Once again for the record I did not.

But to be honest my counter transference is starting to twitch and after years of the cat refusing to be in the same room as me I’m starting to lose my empathy. If I walk anywhere near her she will spring from deep sleep to hyper alert in an instant and literally run around the walls until she can get out of the room. You’d think that I was chasing her with a flaming sword while screaming ‘die, die, die wretched feline.’, I do not.

It all started one fateful evening a long time ago. As I entered our garage I was aware of an unusual cat food fishy smell and the tumble dryer making an unusual, whir, thump, whir thump, whir, thump noise. Suspecting little but just a little curious I opened the dryer door. To my infinite sadness I saw Izzy laying still, very still, very dry warm and dead. Carefully, at least as carefully as a man who could care less about cats can, I lifted her out.

At that very moment I paused and looked up to the watching eyes of…………………….Kitty.

For a second I saw the thought flash across her little feline mind, ‘he just killed Izzy, HE kills cats’, then she scarpered.

The hows and whys of Izzy's unfortunate end are tragic and no blame shall be proportioned. Though it is noted Mrs C is yet to talk of the unfortunate event without tearing up.

The next morning and after some thought I broke the news to Lotty and Flossy. Lotty especially loved Izzy who would let her push her round in dolls prams. Stepping into über dad mode I wrapped the cat in a towel and sensitively explained what had happened as I showed them Izzy. I thought this would allow them to have 'closure' and make sense of the unfortunate event. 

The girls took it well. 

After a brief pause Lotty looked me in the eye and asked ‘can we play with her’. Slightly concerned I explained that would not be appropriate. Lotty’s big brown eyes widened ‘pleeeaaase’, increasingly concerned and a little more firmly I explained that she couldn’t.

Lotty’s eyes narrowed as she took a bartering tone, ‘just half an hour’. For clarity I responded ‘NO, stop it, you’re freaking me out!'. She seemed to begrudgingly accept this answer.

Anyway, back to Kitty, in her mind the die was cast and from that day on she has treat me like I am a merciless cat murdering psychopath. At first I had understandable empathy and appreciated that it must have been upsetting for her. However, after over five years of being framed for something I didn’t do and responded to like I did do it I’m starting to change my view on the cat. 

She’s wearing me down.

So why bother being nice? It makes no difference.

Why try to be understanding? I will always be perceived as the cat killer. Acts of kindness are undone by the slightest sudden movement that reinforces the fears and threat. Offers of affection are pointless, soothing noises and gestures are rebutted or misinterpreted as sinister ploys. 

Anyway, a blog about cats.