Parenting » A Life Not Quite Perplexed

Category Archives: Parenting

5.21.13

Sleep, I remember that.

One of the most challenging aspects of parenting is lack of sleep. Those seemingly endless sleepless nights take a toll on our energy, our drive and clear-headedness. It can be pretty hard to think clearly and take a proportionate, balanced approach to our waking days, least of all those days full of challenge, when we are sleep-deprived. As parents we tend to hope that the sleeplessness nights will be confined to our children’s babyhood and that as they grow their sleep will improve. For many that turns out not to be the case.

In our house sleep became a distant dream with our youngest child, for more than twelve years my husband and I dealt with broken nights and sleeping in shifts to look after her. We tried all suggestions but to no avail. Endeavouring to keep awake a child who is determined to fall asleep is almost impossible, on the few nights we succeeded rather than stay awake until 9 p.m. as we hoped we found that she would still be going strong long after midnight. Most nights we had no success and sleep would claim her at about 8 p.m. only for midnight to see her wide awake and ready to begin a new day. Night by night we took it in turns, one to watch her and endeavour to encourage a return to sleep until about 4 a.m., the other to take over after that, then all swap over the next evening.

It ate into us, leaving us drained, snappy at times and unenthused. I could take advantage of working part-time to grab a midday nap, my husband couldn’t. We began to fear it was to be never-ending. Respite nights when our daughter slept away from home and we had the evening to ourselves were a godsend, I suppose we would have coped without them but it would have been exponentially more difficult without the knowledge that for two nights a month our daughter would be off, having fun and being cared for while we could get some rest. Of course for years we lay awake wondering if she was okay and if we were going to get a telephone call to tell us there was something amiss, several times we did.

Twelve years or more of broken nights and we thought it was going to be our life story, then one night a couple of years ago our daughter went to bed and slept through till morning. We didn’t, we woke several times to go and check that everything was okay, yes we feared the worst, that a seizure had claimed her in the night, gratefully letting out our own held breaths when we could hear her rhythmic sleeping ones. The next night it happened again and then again and again until a week had passed and each night had been slept through till morning, we were elated, and strangely exhausted. As the weeks turned into months we began to feel this was it, an important breakthrough had taken place. Our strength, energy and enthusiasm began to return. We could look forward to the evening knowing we would have some time to ourselves like any other family after their children had gone to bed.

Our youngest also began to improve, herself no longer exhausted she began to learn more, say more, do more. We noticed an improvement in her temper and temperament at home, school and respite reported the same. Where each day prior to this she had been often angry and unsettled for little apparent reason now she was more open, more understanding, more capable of listening when things were explained to her. Along with the increased sleep came fewer seizures and increased learning, we felt we were winning on all fronts.

Each year as the days lengthen I feel rejuvenated by the returning sun, its only downside felt each morning as its increasingly early rays call my youngest from her sleep. We have come to expect this, we know that often she can be encouraged to lie down again until closer to a more reasonable waking time. This week however we have seen a return to waking in the middle of the night and exhaustion during the day. During those few nights I have felt the dread of a return to lengthy periods of wakefulness. Last night she went to bed exhausted, this morning she woke at our usual waking time. My entire being sang a song of relief. Tonight we will hope for the same and the cycle to remain broken.

I hope today brings good things to you.

Lynn x

5.17.13

Good things at the end of the week.

There is something indescribably lovely about walking out of work to see your son waiting for you in the car. I had that wonderful experience yesterday. University is over for another year and although this visit home is fleeting, he is returning to spend some time in the city with his friends, I am savouring every moment. The joy of cooking him nourishing food and fussing over him while he pretends to indulge me makes me a very happy mum.

I am so glad that my children are experiencing life, meeting friends and discovering their adult identities. I know that as parents we must have done something correctly. As I enjoy hearing their stories I am equally glad that they still want come home and be taken care of by their parents. It is a balance they and we are learning together, parenting young adults is a whole new adventure for us all.

These visits are often a mixture of looking at the recent past as we catch up with each other since we last got together, then looking back further to childhood and thinking ahead as we share plans and aspirations. Revisiting the past helps maintain the connection, reinforce the reason we are together and our place in each other’s lives. Looking ahead provides the point of focus to our forthcoming actions and activities.

I hope your Friday has been a good one and that the weekend allows you to reconnect in some way with the connections in your life.

Lynn x

5.11.13

Carers and caring.

The news this morning carried a story that general practitioners are calling for carers to be evaluated more frequently for depression. Today it is news that carers often neglect their own health as they focus on the person for whom they have caring responsibility. Tomorrow something else will be news and carers will still be putting others ahead of themselves. We care because that is what we do.

I will admit to feeling dubious, I cannot see any meaningful help being provided. In a year when benefits to people with disabilities have been cut I see no way resources would be made available to carers. Screening people, diagnosing illness, recognising signs of stress, acknowledging that the task of full-time caring is hugely demanding on personal resources and resilience would be completely pointless if there was nothing available to offer practical support.

Last Friday I wrote about individual offers of help and how even the kindest and best intentioned of people often stop short of offering the thing that would be of most help.

Admitting to having depression can be a hugely difficult thing for anyone who has this illness. Admitting that you have depression, or sometimes have moments of depression is almost impossible for a carer. While people may easily say, “I don’t know how you do it”, the last thing they want to hear in reply is, “well, sometimes so do I”.

There have been times as I parented and cared for my youngest child I wondered how I was going to make it through the day. I narrowed looking to the future not only down to day by day but moment by moment. I told myself I could cope with this minute and I would deal with the next minute when it arrived. I looked at this child whom I loved with my entire being and felt I was in a living Hell. I didn’t want to hear, “I don’t know how you do it”, because there were days I wasn’t. I kept my mouth shut when at times I wanted to say, “okay, you have her for a while and do it.” Add in guilt for feeling this way about your own child and you have the recipe for a perfectly reductive, self-perpetuating situational depression.

Of course there was help, various sources of help, each one stopped because no one else could do it. No one else could handle a child who while small and cute and pretty was aggressive and violent. There were ‘phone calls from those who ran services to say they could no longer help her, seasons cut short because she had lashed out at a support worker while I said, “okay, of course bring her back home, you give her back to me, to whom do I give her?”

No one should be assaulted by anyone, even a small child, I do not want you to think I feel any differently about that. The buck stops with me, with us and we entirely accept this, just please don’t come to me with easy sound bites and good sounding intentions. Do not pretend there is the money to train and employ suitable people to help with caring in the numbers that would be required. Do not pretend there are the resources to offer carers in all areas the level of respite they need to recuperate. Do not pretend there is a genuine will to step in and do what is needed to truly tackle the problem.

For us, thankfully, our daughter’s behaviour has vastly improved. There are plenty of other carers for whom their situation is still relentless, hinting at help that will never materialise to those who desperately need it is a cruel torture indeed.

~ ~ ~

I hope you all have a great Saturday and whatever your situation you find even a small amount of time to yourself to stop, take a breath and just be.

Lynn x

5.10.13

So I don’t always face it.

Yesterday when I went to get my youngest from the school bus, huddled into my coat, soaking wet and full of the self-pities due to my cold, I made the typically insightful British comment to the bus escort about the weather. “What a day!” I know it is hardly earth-shattering repartee but then why should that have been any better than anything else I uttered yesterday. In case you are in any doubt, the usual response is, “it’s a dirty one”, well, if you are in Northern Ireland, other areas may vary. Really, any comment to agree that rain is wet and miserable would suffice.

A grunt is a little different. A head down and a grunt is not good. On a different day I would have asked him what was up, had my daughter been difficult on the bus. Yesterday I just took her hand in one hand, her book bag in my other and walked my daughter into the house. I didn’t ask, I didn’t look, I didn’t react.

Now of course I am riddled with guilt, because not asking means I have had the joy all night of thinking that my daughter must have done something terrible. Sigh.

Cowardice brings its own rewards.

My cold hasn’t eased but the rain has stopped, for now, I’ll ask today.

I hope your Friday is less riddled with imagined angst.

Enjoy your weekend.

Lynn x

5.3.13

Plans change

It’s pretty easy to make plans but sometimes you have to be open to them changing. This evening was supposed to be respite for our youngest, yesterday I received a call to tell me it would have to be cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances. These things happen.

As a couple we had thought of heading out somewhere together without any of our children, the first time we have been able to do so in the almost 23 years we have been parents. Instead we will spend the evening at home, perhaps treat ourselves to a takeaway.

In our earlier years of parenting our youngest, when her behaviour was extreme, the few times respite had to be cancelled at short notice were devastating. It is terribly difficult for someone who has not cared for someone with special needs to appreciate just how demanding this is. As parents we often hear people say, “I don’t know how you do it.” It strikes me this is put out there as if there is some other option. Instead we take each day, sometimes each moment and we work our way through it. Other times I hear it as incredibly dismissive, a little pat on the head to the poor imposed upon parent by someone who can say, ‘I showed sympathy, now I need do nothing more.’

It is rather along the lines of a question someone asked me several years ago. A wonderfully kind and considerate person asked me, “is there anything I can get for you?” Outside of a café there is a limit to the usefulness of this question. When I held eye contact for a while and then said, “no, thank you”, both of us knew what had not been offered. Sometimes it is easy to offer a thing, money or equipment, yet how many step in and say, “I don’t know how you parent in such a demanding 24/7 situation, let me look after your child while you go have a coffee, or get a haircut or …, or … ” That is rather more difficult, it demands the most important things of all, time and self.

This weekend as my boys are in university and my older daughter is away for a couple of days with her friend and my youngest isn’t quite as challenging as she was it really isn’t such a big issue that she doesn’t have respite, there will be other days. For us the times when I relied on the knowledge that she would have hat night was what got me through the time between one visit and the next.

There are other parents, far too many of them, of children and young people who work all hours and divide their time as a single person or as a couple so do their utmost to give all of their children as good a childhood as possible. Perhaps you could be of some active help. Not everyone will want it and that’s fine, that’s their prerogative but some will, perhaps you could make a difference.

However your Friday and your weekend works out, I hope you can find some time to enjoy it.

Lynn x