Parenting Lark – Page 3 – Now it's mostly better, and the cracks are held together with duct tape

Through What Lens?

I have had a friend for almost 30 years. We have met 7 times over the course of those years. When you get past about 15 years friends become family, although some of them graduate long before then. He is very definitely family now.

This morning he had his second cataract surgery. A week ago he was “too blind to drive”, today he can read fine print again.

He sees the world now through lenses that were chosen for him, to give him the best chance at doing his best for as long as they last him, or as long as he lasts them.

3 years ago I made a decision to see The Boy through a different lens. I had been looking at him and seeing that he was a list of negative words, words that influenced how I thought about him, what sort of future I saw for him. The change was to seeing him through the lens of “Humans do well when they can”. At any given moment he is doing as well as he can. Admittedly, sometimes “as well as he can” looks dreadful, but it is always as well as he can.

I don’t remember the hour or the day that that new lens slotted into place permanently. Sometimes the lens gets a little foggy, similar to when glasses wearers come in out of the cold and their glasses get all steamed up, but I wipe it clean and we are back to where we belong. I know most of the people around me didn’t have that lens change, and as a result don’t see him the way I do, but I cannot change other people and so I will continue to model what I believe is a good way to see the people in my life.

It does lead me to wonder what lens people do see him through. Do they see the kid he is now, looking through today’s uninfluenced lens? Do they see him through the lens of his past wrong doings? Do they still hold the same opinion of him now that they formed then?

This occupies more of my mental energy than I would like it to. I worry that he will, for some people, be forever tarred with the same brush, that they will never get to see the wonderful human being he is growing into.

It Was My Honour

Pain begged me to end it
Fear begged me to rescue it
Tiredness begged me for rest

Love allowed me to say no
Trust allowed me to be the grown up
Connection allowed me to make the decisions

There is no regret for requests unheeded
There is no resentment for concerns ignored
There is no annoyance for pleas rejected

It was my honour
It was my joy
It was my healing

Thank you

Conversation: When Is A Plum Not A Plum?

The Parent: Hey dude?
The Boy: Yeah
TP: You know how to cut up a plum, right?
TB: Yeah
TP: When you ask me to cut up a plum for you, that’s another way for me to say “I love you”
TB: Cool
TP: Soon you won’t need my help for all the things, but maybe in 10 years time when you cut up a plum for yourself you will think “My parent loves me” because loving you is tied up in cutting up a plum
TB: <laughs>
TP: And maybe you will come to visit me so I can cut you up a plum
TB: Maym bay

Conversation: It’s Been Three Years

Me: Dude?
Him: Yes?
Me: Three years ago this week I told you I was reading a new book that would hopefully help me help you feel better.
Him: Yeah?
Me: You asked if it had tips or just stories and said that you hoped it had tips.
Him: <nodding>
Me: It had tips. And that is what we live now.
Him: <more enthusiastic nodding>
Me: We did OK, didn’t we?
Him: Yeah
Me: And we’re doing ok, right?
Him: Yeah we are.

For years, when people foisted their parenting opinion on me in relation to my 11 year old (the usual – a good smack, put my foot down, stop being so soft, punish him more… you all know the list) all I could say was “He doesn’t have a formal diagnosis and doesn’t meet the criteria for anything in particular. He just strugggles with the world sometimes”. The important bit in there was “sometimes”. That “sometimes” excluded him from treatment by the first psychologist he saw, excluded him from a diagnosis (and treatment) from the mental health service he was referred to, got him diagnosed from the play therapist… and on it goes.
I have sat in so many rooms with so many specialists trying to get across to them that he directs his frustrations at his brother and I, and “performs” in public. Each and every time I was told that the problem was with me. I got that, I get that, but no one could even point me in the right direction on how to help my kid who appeared to explode for no reason.
2 weeks ago, when school went back and one of his best friends went on holiday, his previous even keel disintegrated. He started exploding more often and included threatening to kill first his brother and then himself. Suddenly services are interested. Child protection social worker wants him seen by the GP, GP said “why bother, I can’t do anything”. Play therapist is willing to see me but my kid is not willing to see her. He told me during the week that he is not going to talk to anyone else because none of them listen to him and none of them help. Well of course, if he can hold things together in public then they don’t think he has a problem and it is all put down to a personality clash.
I foresee the whole exercise being an opportunity for the play therapist, the GP, the social worker etc to shame me for my poor parenting.
A friend recommended The Explosive Child and I read it during the week. I told my kid I was going to read it and he said “Is it just stories or is there tips in it? I hope there is tips”. He wants to not feel the way he does but MAN ALIVE he is so fragile at the moment there is no time to have proactive Plan B conversations and any time I have tried he has gotten frustrated and I’ve switched from Plan B to Plan C. So many things have gone into the Plan C column this week because I need things to be calmer around here in general so that we can have some peaceful time.
I hope his friend returning on Monday and doing some work with him to help him cope with the physical symptoms of ongoing age appropriate growth will also help to settle things down.
I have started a shopping list of things that frustrate him and I feel a little overwhelmed. <snip> it is the first time in a long long time I feel there is a light on the horizon.
The Parent, September 2016

To Feel Chosen: The Boy

At some many points on this journey I have made choices. So many times in that time I have felt that I had no choice but to go with the option I went with. For me this “lack of choice” was fed by feeling powerless and vulnerable, and sadly the “lack of choice” feeling caused me to feel powerless and vulnerable. And on and on it went.

It is hard to feel positive when the option you picked is really the best of a bad lot, and not something you want to be choosing, and yet there is the choice waiting to be made.

One of those choices was that I chose The Boy ahead of the thoughts and opinions of the other adults in my life. That choice had consequences and even in light of those consequences, I would make the same choice over and over again. This is something that I have told him.

I was telling a friend about this particular choice from our journey. When I got to the end and said that I had chosen him, she replied “What a wonderful feeling, to know that you are chosen.”

That is one of the gifts I give the boy every day.

Conversation: More and More

More and more often I am reminded that the work was worth it.

During the Summer, on a Friday night while I was out of the country and The Boy was with his other parent, I got a text to say that for some reason he had run out of data on his mobile phone. I saw no benefit in investigating the reason because it wasn’t going to change the position we were in right then, and the risk of the perception of assigning blame was high.

I explained that one night in February, because of something I left running on my phone, I ripped through my 4Gb allowance of data and *another* 5Gb for which they charged me by the meg.

So… his concern was he had no data on his phone until Monday, mine was the cost of data add ons.

In the process of laying out the concerns he came up with a possible cause of the data usage, and admitted that it may be his own fault. I thanked him for thinking about the reason, and said that while I was interested in his discovery, the reason for the data usage would not change what I was willing to do going forward.

I asked him how much data he thought he would need before we saw each other (and he got back to WiFi) on Monday. He said he thought 1Gb would be enough, and asked if he could get that add on. This solution met both of our concerns. I thanked him for being so clear in his messages. He got the add on, said thanks, and was gone.

The next night, about 24 hours later, I got “I think I underestimated how much data I would need”. I told him that he could get up to 4Gb of data total but that my expectation was that he would not get all 3 (he had already used 1 over the last 24 hours) at the same time. I thanked him again for his communication and his openness to hearing my expectations. He said thank you again, and was again gone.

Roll forward to Monday and we had a chat about data going forward (he has another 2 weeks with his other parent within the billing cycle). We agreed that we needed more information before we made a plan.

Information sources:

1. Reach out to the phone company and check that he got his full allowance (he thought he hadn’t)
2. If that came to nothing, ask the company if they could sell us a bundle (ideally with a discount)*
3. If they couldn’t then buy the data 1Gb at a time**

* at this point we would have to figure out how much he would need
** at this point we would have to agree to a spending limit

Then, knowing that he was in a good place I said…

Me: Who do you think should be liable for the cost of the extra data?
Him: I don’t know
Me: (I obviously asked the wrong question) Do you think I should be liable for the cost of the extra data?
Him: I don’t know
Me: (Wrong question again) Do you think you should be liable for the cost of the extra data?
Him: I don’t know
Me: (Wrong question again) Do you think we should share the cost of the extra data?
Him; Yes

I thanked him again.

I chatted with the cell phone company, keeping him in the loop throughout. Yes, he had been given and used all of his monthly allotment of data. No they do not sell bundles larger than 1Gb and yes, each Gb would cost €3. Then they suggested pulling forward his renewal from the 28th of the month to today… this way he would get his monthly allotment (again) for the monthly renewal cost which was about 1/5 of the cost of the same amount of data if we bought it by the meg.

It is essentially buying an extra month mid month and it meets both of our concerns… enough data for him, not a huge amount of money for me.

Me: Your monthly rollover has happened
Him: Cool
Me: So the whole thing came to €24 and I am proposing we split the cost 50:50
Him: I was thinking 10:90
Me: That is awesome that you are willing to pay for 90% of the cost
Him: Psych. Yes, 50:50 is good.

We shook on it and I asked if I could give him a hug, which he willingly gave. I thanked him again for his willingness to work with me to find a solution that worked for both of us.

3 years ago that <key moment> would have gone a different way, and it would have ended up with him having a meltdown 2500 miles away from me. This Summer it moved to shared experience, empathy, gratitude and problem solving.

Once Upon A Time In September

Once upon a time there was an adult. They were the most adulty adult in the room. They were also exhausted. You could see it on their face, you could hear it in their voice, and you could certainly see it in the eggy bread they had decided was a good enough dinner today.

For the life of them they didn’t know why they were so tired. They were getting the usual amount of sleep and they were no longer having to juggle childcare which is a nightmare for so many parents in the Summer holidays.

Then they remembered that
– transitions are hard for grown ups, even the most adulty adult of grown ups.
– returning to the term time schedule is wanted, but still hard to do
– it is OK to be kind to themself
– soon it will be more familiar and therefore easier
– a good enough dinner is better than no dinner

Long ago they learned that the most adulty adult in the room should be strong and strict and not show any weakness, but they decided that it is load of codswallop so they sat down with their kids and said

WOAH! September is rough. Getting back to school is tough for all of us, isn’t it. I bet by the end of the month we won’t even remember how tired we are right now. Let’s check back in then to make sure all of the big problems have gone away or been solved.

Then the most adulty adult in the room kissed their kid’s heads, complimented them for their ability to roll with the punches and drank in the warmth of the hug that followed.

Connection Matters

The Brother went to the dentist today. At the reception desk after the appointment:

The Brother: Do I have to do my homework?
Me: No
The Brother: Cool, thanks.
Receptionist: WOW that was a quick answer
Me: In 10 years time we will benefit from the connection we made today, and no one will remember the homework that went undone today
Receptionist: That is a lovely way to think of it.

Ten Words

Image result for The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

I disagree with Mr Franklin, and with my mother for that fact! As a child she repeatedly commented that I said ten words when one would do.

Now, as an adult, I still use 10 words and wanna know what that gets me (other than continued comments from my mother)? It gets me clarity. It gets my message across.

Don’t get me wrong, I know when to shut up and listen, but when I am explaining something I am going to use all of my grown up words and make sure that I am well and truly understood. I am also going to use more of those words to check that I was indeed understood.

I don’t miss the misunderstandings, the confusion, the disappointment.

I will keep my ten words, thanks all the same.

Is He Like I Was?

I recently spent time with a child who is very much like The Boy was back in The Time That Went Before. Not exactly the same, but similar enough for me to remember what it was like living that life, only this time I was powerless to do anything as the child already has an excellent sufficiency of parents, and I am not one of them.

It was incredibly hard to watch this family in crisis, and almost as hard to hold my tongue, which (for the most part) I did.

Afterwards, as I debriefed from the experience, The Boy overheard me talking. There was nothing in the content that was inappropriate for him to hear, so I continued.

At a natural pause in the conversation I was having he said “Is he like me? Like I was, back… whenever? When was it? 2 years ago? More?” I confirmed that yes, that child is much like he was and I told him how impressed I was that he was able to see that similarity, and seeing that makes it easier for us to see where we are today.

Internally it was like New Years Eve, Bastille Day, 4th of July and Chinese New Year fireworks all in one.

It is easy to look with adult eyes and see how far we have come. It is easy to look at where we are now and be happy with the outcome. It is a whole other thing for a teenager to look back at a time when he was an unrecognisable version of himself and see similarities with another child.