What’s that black under your eyes?

Our household is a blended family and my son goes between my house and his dad’s house. We have a very good routine. It took us 3 tries to find a routine that fit but we have it and it works extremely well. This is a routine we have come up with ourselves – it hasn’t been decided by a court or anything. And so the routine works very well with my son, he has set nights at each house and we do alternate weekends. My son is happy with this. I am happy with this – well obviously I would love my son to live with me every night but this is making the best of the situation.

This was a Friday night and my son was with me for the next 5 nights after being away for 2 nights. And he asked…

“What’s that black under your eyes?”

I immediately thought my mascara had run but I asked my son to show me where the black was and he rubbed his finger under both my eyes. And I realised he meant the black circles under my eyes. From tiredness. Which was ironic given I had just had two nights without my son and he was the main cause of my tiredness. He is nearly 6 years old and we are still in sleepless nights. He wakes up anywhere between 1 and 5 times a night. If we only have 1 wake up I class this as a full night’s sleep.

And my son is demanding, so very demanding. So when we are together I know I am going to be ran ragged. And I am. And when we are apart I do my best to catch up on all the things I couldn’t do but mainly I try to relax. Catch up on sleep etc but even after two nights full sleeps I still had dark circles. After my son went to bed I joked to my husband that if my son thought I looked tired now god knows what he would think I look like after 5 days together. And I am writing this after our 5 days together and I look horrific. If my dark circles looked bad before they definitely look worse now. And this is why……

We were at stage 10 meltdown – the worst yet. It was Sunday night and I was sat patiently waiting for my son to calm. He was chanting “I am not going to school tomorrow” while crying and hysterically sobbing “I wish it was still 7pm”. It wasn’t 7pm his usual bed time, it was 7.15pm but because he was so scared/nervous/adamant that he wasn’t going to school tomorrow the bedtime had been ruined. Once again I couldn’t stop it. As soon as he thought about school he went into fight or flight mode. It triggered his already frail nervous system. I knew by the fact that the bedtime was ruined that we would have an awful morning. I also knew that I just couldn’t go through it again. As noticed by my son I had dark circles and I was so very tired and completely selfishly I knew I was going to keep my son off school on that Monday purely for my own reasons. I couldn’t have another battle of a morning I just couldn’t. I couldn’t cry on the playground again to another parent I just couldn’t and so I knew in that moment he wouldn’t be going to school the next day. As soon as I made the decision in my head I felt immediately better. I knew this wasn’t the long term solution but I knew I needed a break. I also knew my son did and I needed to help him but I couldn’t help him while I was a wreck I needed to get a grip of myself.

And eventually like everything this meltdown eventually ended, my son cooled down and absolutely exhausted he fell asleep. Once again I left his room, shoulders drooped and I poured myself a brandy. I flopped on the sofa and sat there for a while starting into space. I knew I was preparing for battle. But the battle would not be with my son to get him to school. It would be with school.

I text my mum and primed her to prepare herself for tomorrow as my son would be coming to her for the day, I wasn’t palming my son off but I was at work, I couldn’t bin work off as much as I wanted to. I knew for definite I wasn’t sending my son to school and I knew not sending him would help this battle. I needed him to be calm for the conversation I needed to have with him. And I needed to be calm for the conversation I had with school. When we woke up the next morning he immediately started with not wanting to go to school, I told my son he wouldn’t be going to school. I explained that he does need to go to school but for today I needed him to help me help him come up with a plan around school. I needed him to think about all the things that he disliked and liked about school, all his worries and write them down for me. I would then take this to the teacher and we would try to come up with a plan. I told him we all have worries and when we are worried it is always better to tell someone those worries and you feel better and that person may be able to help you. If my son didn’t tell me his worries then I couldn’t help him. He is only 5 so I knew it was a long shot that he could even articulate what he was worried about but I needed him to try. So he went to my mums for the day and I told her what I wanted him to do. It wasn’t essential but if he wanted to do it he could. That morning was one of the easiest school mornings we had ever had. My son was happy, relieved, like a weight had lifted from his shoulders. Imagine a happy person whistling that was my son. And he went to my mums no problem. And I went to work and knowing that he was safe and happy was worth its weight in gold. While working in the back of my head I was coming up with my battle plan.  When my mum dropped him back off later on she told me that ironically he wanted to play schools. He got an exercise book and he wrote down his worries and likes about school. And this was what we ended up with….

And I was very impressed at his writing, and at his knowledge of what was bothering him. Interestingly its all about the environment of school rather than the actual learning. I wrote his class teacher a letter and asked her to ring me. The next morning was ok. We only got 1 “I hate school” and I handed my letter in. I had barely gotten home from school when my phone rang and the teacher could not believe what she was reading. She had never got the impression that my son was unhappy despite him crying on several occasions, although she did say he had said it was because he was missing his parents. I told her how bad it was, the hysterics, the distress, the chanting “I am not going to school, I am not going to school”, I told her all the worries my son had and she said…

“well it has totally shocked me, he is absolutely fine at school so there must be something else going on”

YES!!!!!!!!…..he has some sort of undiagnosed sensory processing disorder/neurodivergent/autistic/adhd going on. I’m not actually sure. What I am 100 percent sure about is my son does not think in a typical way and he needs help. And I need help. And I am coming to the school for help. And the only way they will help me is if they accept there is a problem. I am not a neurotic parent that cries on the playground…..ok…ok I have done it twice but normally I’m not. I’ve had some interesting life experiences that I have managed to navigate extremely well, and I believed I was navigating this extremely well. I had started this blog, I had an online following and I followed lots of people that offered me help, I was attending free webinars and training sessions on a night, I’d signed up to newsletters, I researched things myself and most of all I put everything I learnt into practice. I educated other people about my son. Yes we made allowances for him, yes we dealt with him in a different way, in a way that appealed to his strengths – isn’t that what you are meant to do as a parent? And because of all of the above he was the best he had ever been. We just needed help to make school easier for him. So I continued to battle with the teacher. She eventually said she would speak to my son and she would get some advice from the SENCO and I felt hopeful. I had told the school that my son was hysterical the night before school, and the morning of school and they said he was fine but if they saw my son hysterical for a couple of hours before coming home and I said he was fine would they believe me. I doubt it.

The next day the teacher caught me on the playground with a referral form to a mental health service that offered help for children who were struggling with school. Finally something that might help my son, something that may start the process to getting a diagnosis. We just can’t continue as we are. I can’t continue as we are.

So in the 5 days that I spent with my son we had had a meltdown, we had had tears, both his and mine, we had had a school absence, I waged war in my head, we wrote his worries down, we had conversations with his teacher, I spoke to my mam and husband at length about it all, I drank numerous brandies and we had had 5 sleepless nights and in between all that I worked and parented my other child, who at times throughout this 5 day period was neglected and annoyed with me. My dark circles were off the chart now. Fighting for something you know to be true is absolutely exhausting. Absolutely truly exhausting. My head was full of all sorts……going round and round…..

Meltdowns, work, autism, school, what can I do better, what can my son do better, work, ADHD, is it me, my daughter, parenting strategies, blog writing, work, must get my daughter new school trousers, work, washing, sensory issues, work, and on and on and on…

And on the way to school with my son after our 5 days together, the last few days must have been preying on his mind as he asked me…

“What are your worries?”

And I just smiled and said

“Today I’m just worried about whether it’s going to rain or not”

If only…….