13 Years An Adopter

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We’re now seasoned adopters, having experienced most of the rides in the Adoption Theme Park – the ghost trains where you learn about night terrors, the rollercoasters where you learn about regulation and escalation, the merry-go-rounds where you constantly ask a teacher to make adjustments, and, of course, the queues. Oh the queues. Where you wait months, if not years for an EHCP. And then discover the computer says no.

What I Wish I’d Known

I’d like to say I went into adoption with my eyes wide open. But I didn’t. I went into it with a heart overwhelmed by giddy hope and optimism. I listened to the stories of trauma and its wide-ranging impact, but I told myself that that wouldn’t happen to us, that our kids (being so young) wouldn’t be affected.

Looking back over some tough years, there are some things that I wish I had known and I want all adopters (to be, or new, or even seasoned) to know to make their life a whole lot easier.

1. The Amygdala (Amy) and Her Tendency To Hijack My Child’s Brain

The amygdala is a HUGE deal in our family’s life. Not just for the children, but for us too. If Amy is driving someone’s brain, then they have a limited set of options to choose from: flee, fight, maybe freeze. They might struggle to process, respond, listen. We might be yelling “STOP” as they run into the road, but Amy just hears more threats behind her and keeps on running as fast as she can.

Regulation is the very foundation of therapeutic parenting and focussing on regulation as our #1 priority made a HUGE difference to our family. It was when we forgot to focus on it, when we gave Amy the helm, when we let tiredness or our own triggers get in the way of this singular priority that it all went to hell in a handcart.

2. There Is So Much More Going On

Behaviour is what we see. But it’s just one tiny piece of the jigsaw puzzle. We might see defiance, but there may be anger, sensory issues, dysregulation, injustice, fear of being ignored beneath the surface. If we respond to the behaviour, we can miss the point entirely.

My son refused to go into town one morning because ‘mummy was going’. He threw his shoes. He raged. He stormed off. His words, his defiance told one story – he didn’t like mummy. But I kept my cool (regulation is king) and used “I wonder” statements to find out what was really going on.

What’s different when mummy goes?

You talk to Daddy and hold his hand.

He wasn’t defiant. He was scared. Upset. He wanted to spend quality time with his daddy without me getting in the way. The more we looked beneath the behaviour and tried to discover their unmet needs (e.g. for Daddy-time), the more we learnt about our children and how to be the parents they needed us to be.

3. Becoming Poirot or Miss Marple

To understand our chhildren and be the best parents that they needed us to be, we had to become regulation detectives. To find out what triggered our children (each was very different), to discover the situations in which they flourished or floundered. To discover the exact timing after a rage-fest to slink into their bedroom and offer support.

By trial and mostly error, we gradually discovered:

Sensory issues – our son is particularly triggered by smells and textures on his hands, our daughter by loud noises and food
Distraction favourites – things that are First Aid gold dust – for our son (when he was younger) a box of Lego was an irresistible distraction, soothing many a fevered brow. For our daughter it was the swings.
Their Greatest Needs – is it independence or reassurance, connection or space, control or freedom, familiarity or adventure, stimulation or calm? What is the quickest, most reliable way to help them regulate? My daughter needs to be left alone in her bedroom, in silence, with no-one present to regulate (me too, although I like a hug sometimes).
Our Greatest Strengths – not all parents/ carers are created equal. Andy was far far better at patiently, gently encouraging my daughter to get ready for school after a night of not-sleeping. So play to your strengths, and if your partner is dysregulated, then tap them out and take over.

4. Not All Children

But if there was one thing that I needed to learn most of all, it was that when other parents said “all children do that”, they weren’t talking about my chidlren. Parents of neurotypical, non-traumatised children rarely have the faintest clue what you are talking about and going through. They might trot out tired trad parenting nonsense about punishments that will not work for your family.

You don’t need to listen to them.

Become a detective, look beyond the behaviour, stay in conscious control, hold your head high and do what your child/ren need you to do. NO-ONE else has the faintest clue how to parent your children, because your children aren’t like other children. They have unique bodies, unique sensory systems, unique brains that only you (who have spent years observing) truly understand. They might mask for everyone else. They might appear to cope, to enjoy school, to belong. But we know the truth.

5. Love Is / Is Not Enough

Love is the reason we become detectives, reading and going on courses to understand our children. It’s the driving force behind everything we do, especially when we’re running on vapours and just want to crawl under the duvet for an hour (week) or two.

It cannot mend our children’s brains or bodies. But it can inspire and energise the parents who will.

Adoption is not an easy route to a family. But I hope that with help and support, you will find your own unique happily-enough-ever-after.

When Happily Ever After Stopped Being So Happy

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Why I wrote And Trauma Made Five

Coming Soon - showiing two books, one entitled "and trauma made five" on a tablet and the other behind is "and then there were four" — coming soon

When I wrote And Then There Were Four, I thought that was the end of the story. We’d reached our happily ever after, beyond the emotional experiences of infertility, adoption, matching and finally becoming our family. What else was there?

I naively imagined that pretty much everything that came next would be the same as other families. Parks, ice cream, school, birthdays, holidays, endless laundry, faces smeared in spaghetti, poo-xplosions, stepping on Lego. Mundane everyday shizzle.

And for a while, life proved me right.

Until our family started to wobble. Then rock. Then face plant.

When my assertion that my children were unaffected, unscathed by adoption began to look somewhere between oversimplification and downright falsehood. When the phrase all children do that began to rankle and hurt. When the unusual chaos began to be more frequent and we felt more and more unprepared for the family we had created. When too many evenings had a WTF? flavour of dismay and despair. When the evidence kept coming at us and we couldn’t hold onto our denial any longer.

New Eyes

But it was meeting other adopters that really helped me see my family and my children with new eyes. First through social media, when I started using Twitter. That led to a sudden and illuminating baptism in words like dysregulation, previously unknown to me but describing our experiences so well. Then it was the Adoption UK conference, when I heard about the way that education so often fails our children. I sought out and surrounded myself with people who understood.

From feeling overwhelmed, alone and confused, I started to understand why our family wasn’t the same as others. Why the traditional parenting approach didn’t fit. To discover pieces of the puzzle: explanations and tools to help my family.

But it was a chance conversation with Betty at school, when I was struggling to understand how to convey empathy in the face of anger, that proved a turning point. She showed me the way. I wanted to dismiss it – it seemed too simple – but I was desperate. The technique clicked and later that afternoon, I used it to instantly defuse a volatile situation that transformed me overnight into a therapeutic convert. It was miraculous. Inspired, I wrote about “Fighting Fire With Fire” on my blog.

On Fire with Enthusiasm

The feedback made me realise how hungry parents like us were for information to help them navigate their family life. And I kept learning, kept adding sparkly spanners to my therapeutic toolbox. Each new insight helped me understand a little more about what was going on beneath the surface, in the brains and bodies of my children, and helped explain what drove their weird and wonderful behaviour. I wrote about those too, because each family needs their own unique toolkit that works for them, in their situation, with their children.

My greatest wish is that this book finds another family when they sit down one evening, exhausted after a WTF? day, and gives them a piece of their puzzle that they didn’t have before.

Something that makes their life a bit easier, a little happier and perhaps less combustible.

The Stranger (not Danger) Rule

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And breathe…

I hug Youngest to help him calm and regain control of his brain (aka regulate). He’s mostly a happy chappy, except when he’s positively not. Right now, he’s expressing distress in an impressively attention-getting manner and volume. It’s a cool Saturday in town and despite sitting on a bench tucked away from the main throng, my plan for quiet co-regulation is about to be hijacked. And not by Amy.

I spot the stranger approaching and avert my gaze. He continues to get curiously closer and asks:

What’s wrong with him?

I wholeheartedly wish I could come up with a withering slam down, but my brain’s otherwise occupied.

‘He’s sad’ I say, with a tone that states that This Conversation Is Over.

‘Why is he sad?’ asks the man, sensing none of my go-away facial expressions, intonation and body language.

‘Because he is five,’ I say even more dismissively, whilst tutting audibly and turning away from him, as Youngest continues his deafening wail in my ear. ‘It’s also none of your goddamn business’ are words I want to add, but don’t.

A few minutes ago, Youngest and I were in a cafe waiting for Eldest and Andy to turn up, so we could order and enjoy a nice lunch out. Youngest was out of sorts. I waved the menu; he threw it down. I offered to read him a book; he crawled under the table. He kept doing the exact opposite of everything I said and I failed to shrug off his defiant eff-you attitude. Lunch out should be a relaxing time, but today it turned into a battle I was too tired to fight. As I became exasperated, I told him that if he didn’t do [whatever it was] we would leave. Because at this point, I still subscribed to the director’s cut boxset of TradP (Traditional Parenting).

Guess what?

Youngest stubbornly and predictably chose not to. He’s going through that phase where if I count to five, he only starts moving on six. When I ask him to come here, he crawls along the floor on his belly but wails ‘I AM coming’ if I call him out on it. Yet he is so often calm and loving that these glimpses of fire and anger are so surprising and random that we’ve yet to discover what triggers them or even how to handle them without pulling the pin. Today, when I’d hoped (prayed) for a simple, easy meal with my family, he poked all my buttons and my patience ran out. I drew a line in the sand, and he jumped over it, kicking sand in my eyes.

Without even ordering, I stood up, put my coat on (his face!), picked up his coat and moved to leave. He frowned as if he hadn’t expected me to keep my promise. Andy and Eldest were just walking in as I walked Youngest out, my face like thunder as I muttered we’re leaving through gritted teeth.

I didn’t win any parenting medals today.

I didn’t make anyone happy.

I didn’t feel good about myself or my parenting.

I’d face planted into a TradP trap where nobody won.

And now I’ve a bawling child on my lap and an inquisitive stranger to handle.

Dear Stranger: if you feel you deserve the full backstory, that was why my son was crying.

And you also inspired me to create:

THE RULE

Say you are out in public and you see an adult with one or more children.

Perhaps you’re drawn to the scene because the youngsters are being loud, or upset, are kicking and screaming, are sulking in a corner, or being timed out in the middle of the pavement. Something that perhaps offends your idea of an ordered, peaceful grown-up life without interruptions from trainee grown-ups.

Perhaps you are now staring (in a way that parents find incredibly helpful and encouraging) and you start (unbelievably) thinking ‘maybe I could help.’

Here’s how to know if you should add your tuppence-worth into the fray:

If the adult in charge of that child turns around to you in despair with a furrowed brow and asks you directly ‘what should I do?’ THEN (and only then) should you sally forth with your advice and opinions.

If they DO NOT turn to you and ask you directly, then you must immediately button it and walk away (tutting optional).

Let me repeat: unless a parent directly invites you to contribute your thoughts and suggestions on the situation, then please under NO CIRCUMSTANCES should you open your mouth and proffer it.

I don’t care how long you’ve been looking forward to reading the paper with your monthly cappafrappacino-almondmilk-nosyrup, or if their child’s wailing is forcing you to turn your hearing aid down, or if children weren’t like that in your day, or if you watched one episode of SuperNanny and consider yourself God’s gift to parenting, or how convinced you are that’d you’d be doing a much better job in the circumstances.

If you don’t like the noise, feel free to get up and leave. If you don’t like being around children, go watch an 18-rated film. You won’t find them there.

If it helps you deal with your emotional reaction, turn to your friend and complain about how the world has gone to the dogs since parents stopped hitting their children, or whisper loudly enough for us to hear your views on our inadequacies. And get over yourself.

Because one thing has proven time and again only to make an already volatile situation worse: the half-arsed ramblings of a complete stranger.

Parenting is hard. Rock hard. In public, parenting is rock hard with knobs on. When everyone’s eyes are on you, every single whine, every windmill arm, every NO, every WON’T, every time your child runs in the opposite direction feels magnified a million times.

To that woman I saw gently dragging her bawling child out of Poundland, lying on the floor, screaming over some piece of inexpensive tat that you weren’t going to buy, I salute you. You held your head high and did what you needed to do, regardless of the judgemental glances, tutting and jaw-dropped audience. To everyone who has ever done what their child needed despite stares and tutting, good on you. Because parenting is hard and not one single person watching from the sidelines knows your child better than you.

To the rest of you: jog on.

Tut if you have to. Eye roll if you must. But leave them to it. They’ve got this, even when it doesn’t look like it from where you’re sitting.

If you are in the cheap seats, watching, look away and bite your tongue. Or move along.

There is nothing to see here.

Coke Bottle Kids

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School is a pretty overwhelming experience for many children.

For traumatised or neuro-diverse children, it’s tens or hundreds of times worse. The senses are assaulted for hours and as they try and cope with it all, their emotions are constantly being shaken: shake, shake.

Sensory Overload

Noises – the chaos, the chatting, bells and alarms, slammed doors and teachers yelling. Even just being in the hall for assembly or in a class of pupils all shouting to be heard above the hubbub. For children who are sensitive to sound, this is like standing next to a huge speaker stack during a rock gig. Who could bear that for six straight hours? Some might be able to wear ear defenders, but others aren’t able to cope with the looks, the comments, the sensory feeling of them.

Touch – being jostled in corridors, having people in the lunch queue bump into you, the physical contact in PE, random strangers touching your hair or body. Never mind being pushed into a wall, or tripped or hurt. Their skin might be super sensitive and even a light touch can tip them into overload. For my daughter, she loathes having her hair touched and it happened All. The. Time. My son cannot bear certain textures – he physically shrinks from having them near his hands.

Smells – the lunch hall, the science lab, the toilets where boys and girls are spraying themselves liberally with deodorant. It’s enough to make children gag. Or be unable to eat. Or be physically sick. My daughter would have deodorant sprayed at her as part of bullying, making her recoil at the smell and onslaught.

The Need to Move

Sitting still is expected. You sit, listen and work without drawing attention to yourself. Because you are desperate to be invisible, to exist under the radar, so the teacher doesn’t notice you, ask you questions, expect you to speak out loud. But that means trying not to jig your leg, tap your fingers, rock your body, move.

My children need to move. Often. Not just little knee-jigs, but wholesale walking, running, jumping. My daughter would tremble, chew (nails, hair, clothing) and stim just to give her need to move a tiny outlet. Too little though. My son has a whole day in one classroom today and he’s worried because he won’t get to move between classes (necessary to help him cope).

Shake, Shake, Shake

All these things are shaking our kids. They are trying to cope, but it’s too much, too exhausting. Hours spent reading faces, trying to work out what to say, what not to say, how to fit in and appear normal. How to avoid doing anything that might single them out as different.

Imagine sitting in class of Russian students (or any language you don’t know) and being asked to remember everything they say, so you can report it all back later. How long do you think you’d be able to cope? To concentrate that hard, trying to work out everyone’s names, who says what and when, and what they are saying?

For our kids, its a room with ten Russians, all taking at top speed, whilst someone is poking you painfully in the ribs, wafting the smell of rotten eggs or sick under your nose, with fire alarms going off just by your ear. How long would you last?

Would you like or choose to do that six hours a day, five days a week, for much of the year? For years? No? Yet we ask our kids to do it, without blinking.

Exploding Coke

By the end of the school day (or earlier), the effort, the shaking becomes too much to bear. The child might lash out (cue detentions and exclusions), or they might keep it together until they come home.

My daughter is an exploder. She would come home and then scream, shout, cry. For hours.

My son is an imploder. He comes home, grunts, grabs food & drink, then hides in his bedroom on the X-box. Unable to talk about whatever is going on, whatever shook him up today.

Teachers say that children are fine, are coping, seem happy. Parents say they’re not fine, they’re not coping, they’re really unhappy. And sometimes we get stuck at that impasse, when it’s all masking.

What Can Schools Do?

Whilst schools can provide fidget items to help a pupil to stim, or ear defenders/ noise reduction, there is little they can do about the numbers of pupils, the teachers shouting, the alarms, the smells.

What we need is a radically different design of school. A low-sensory school, with:

low level lighting (not glaring fluorescents) and blinds to reduce sunlight (remove shiny, mirrored surfaces)
low noise levels with noise absorbing soft surfaces (carpet? soft shoes? lights for alarms?) and teachers who understand that shouting creates fight or flight responses
enough space that pupils can move around without being jostled
menus and lessons designed to avoid olfactory (smell) overload – or separate eating places for those who find the refectory to be unbearable
encouragement for pupils who need to move to get up, walk about, to do what they need to keep their body calm

Inclusion isn’t giving a child ear defenders to cope. Inclusion is designing a low-noise environment that suits everyone.

It might be a crazy dream, but if only schools were more like this, then perhaps all our children would be given the chance to thrive.

What Is an Amygdala Hijack and How Can You Help?

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‘You’re HURTING ME!’ they cry. ‘Stop SHOUTING!!!!’ they yell.

What’s happening at these moments, when your child is beside themselves and they seem hypersensitive to every small thing you try to keep them safe and calm? When a whisper appears ear-splittingly loud and a featherlike touch is like being branded with a hot poker?

The Thinking Brain

When a child perceives a threat, their thinking brain, the curly grey matter or cortex (we’ll call him Cory) processes the information and decides how best to respond. Cory might override the emotional amygdala (Amy) and tell her to calm down, because it was ‘just’ a car door banging. And miraculously, Cory stays in charge and Amy has a little huff, but sashays out of the way.

But there are times when Amy decides that this is serious, so she punches Cory and seizes control. What happens next can seem wildly disproportionate, extreme, intense. Your child is in fight, flight, freeze or fawn mode, an automatic response to danger that’s run by the amygdala (Amy). For some children, Amy is more sensitive than others, constantly alert for danger and likely to respond with greater intensity than other (neuro-typical or non-traumatised) children.

When Cory is in charge, a person is regulated. When it’s Amy, then they’re dysregulated (also known as hyperarousal).

Regulation

Regulation is our default mode. It is when we can think, process, listen, learn, respond, react. We can draw upon knowledge and experience to size up situations and respond. As parents, we need to remain regulated to handle our child’s amygdala hijack. Things are likely to go downhill quickly if we panic or get overly stressed by it, because two dysregulated people adds up to utter carnage.

When we (or our child) are regulated, we’ll be relaxed, our movements will be fluid, our pupils will respond appropriately to light levels, our breathing will be calm, our limbs will flow, our skin will have good blood supply. We will adjust our volume, tone, pace to suit the conversation. We might be sad, excited, anxious, frustrated; and yet we remain regulated.

Dysregulation In An Instant

But something happens (we might trip and fall), or emotions build slowly until they hit overload and we push out of our window of tolerance and into dysregulation. Amy is the fear and panic centre of the brain and has a limited range of responses (fight/ flight etc). Our children act like rabbits in the headlights, goading, or running at full pelt. My daughter flees; my son freezes with a side of fighting.

When Amy is in charge, then our bodies will be tense, angular, our pupils might dilate so we can see better. Our breathing will likely be fast, short, panting; our heart will be racing in our chests. Our faces may pale as blood diverts to our muscles. We might get sweaty palms or goosebumps on our arms. We might shout, yell, push people away, run away.

Many children struggle to identify the early warning signals that are clues to an imminent amygdala hijack – my own children have sensory processing issues such that feeling hot or clammy or noticing a racing heart is beyond them. Which makes life tricky as we can’t take evasive action to disarm the hijacker (Amy).

An amygdala hijack is when Amy is in control of their brains and we have to deal with her, because Cory is offline.

How To Make Things Worse…

We can’t reason with Amy. She’s not listening. As parents, by trial and bruises, we discovered all the things NOT to do:.

Touching the person – a hug, squeeze, even a light touch, makes our daughter explode. She’s not all that keen when not aroused. Remember in fight or flight mode, all our senses are heightened. For children who are sensitive to touch, then any physical contact at this point is like punching them. I cannot tell you how many times our children yelled ‘you hurt me‘ when we tried to hold them during a hijack thinking we were doing the right thing to keep them safe.
Raised voices. I get it. The whole situation is super stressful. You might be freaking out (and even dysregulated). But, as above, children who are already sensitive to noise hear even a raised firm voice as unbearable. My children would yell ‘stop shouting at me‘ even when we didn’t think we were and sometimes burst into tears at the unbearable pain that a loud voice inflicted on their super sensitive hearing.
Being too close. My children’s bodies ripple with tension that I dearly want to soothe away. But they want to be left well alone. Stay safe and out of kicking or hitting distance if that is what your child needs.
Soothing, calming noises. Sounds like the right idea, but if I’ve learnt one thing, asking a dysregulated child to ‘calm down’ is like pouring petrol on a fire in the hope of putting it out. It’s only going to make things worse.

How To Make Things Better…

It’s detective time. What works for one child may not work for another, and what went brilliantly one day, might exacerbate things today. For my children, the generally successful (but not guaranteed) approach is:

Breathe. This is about keeping yourself calm. You might put your hand on your stomach and deliberately breathe deeply so that your child might notice your hand rising and falling. But often Amy doesn’t give two hoots about breathing, because she’s not all that keen on relinquishing control.
Stay close but do not touch. Depending on the situation, we might be sat outside their bedroom, across the room, or at the other end of a bench. We stay close (to keep them safe) but well out of arms (and kicks) reach, leaving clear air between our bodies. As they calm down, we might gently stroke a hand (but only by moving our hand slowly towards and backing off if they flinch away). You’ll get to know when they might be able to be hugged.
Stay silent. Nothing we say is going to make this situation better. Because talking is processed by Cory, and he’s not here. Amy speaks fear and panic only, so the less you say (preferably nothing at all) the better.
Hugging Toys. Whilst touching other humans can be triggering, some children can find hugging something cuddly tight to their body (a pillow, coat or toy) soothing. I’ve been known to stroke my daughter’s face with the ear of her favourite cuddly bunny and that’s met with more success than touching her directly.
Wait. Time is the most powerful tool you have. I’ve read that it takes six seconds for the adrenaline rush to calm down. That’s your golden window for quiet space. Whilst an amygdala hijack is often instantaneous, the reverse process can take minutes, hours, sometimes days (depending on the trigger, the child, their brain, neurodiversity and more).

Then What?

As the child starts to calm, then having specific extra-calming activities to hand can help to reset their bodies and help them recover from the stress hormones that have flooded their system.

chewing (gum or sweets)
sucking (particularly thick liquids like smoothies or milkshakes through thin straws)
eating (to reset their blood sugar levels which can be disturbed by the fight/ flight response)
listening to music, movement, and
distraction can all help.

My son (who freezes) would respond really well to Lego as a distraction. I’d rattle the box, chatting merrily to myself about whatever it was I was building. He couldn’t get himself out of a funk, but his natural curiosity and love of Lego would gradually overcome his mood and he would slowly come out from under his duvet, peek at what I was doing and eventually join in, building with me.

Safety Is Your Priority

As Sarah Fisher says in her book “Connective Parenting” the two most essential steps are keeping people safe, and staying regulated. Everything else can wait.

Sometimes you sit outside a room whilst your child throws stuff around (and you pray they don’t up-end the box containing a thousand pieces of Lego). Amy is unpredictable and wild. So you keep your distance and keep yourself safe. And you wait for them to calm. Because they will, eventually. Amy is no marathon runner. She’s a sprinter. Thank goodness.

Yes, I know how hard it is to handle these situations when Amy hijacks them in a busy public place (when a stranger touches her hair, darn them). But knowing what to do, and how best to react, gives everyone the best possible chance of calming down and recovering the situation. We try to make sure we (or the children) always carry fidgets, worry stones and chewing gum for emergencies.

What are your best strategies for helping a child who is dysregulated/ hyper-aroused or experiencing an amygdala hijack? Let me know in the comments

Six Reasons School Is Hard for SEND pupils

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School is hard. Our two children coped okay in Infants (bit fidgety), started to struggle in Juniors (bit distracted and can’t sit still) but by high school, things became far, far harder. To a point that school became a step too far for our daughter as she hit autistic burnout.

But why? Here are six reasons that SEND pupils find schools to be exhausting, overwhelming and an huge strain on their mental and physical well-being.

1. Communication

Teachers are busy and have a lot of information to convey. They might give a series of instructions in a single breath. But what if you can’t hold that much in your brain at once? Our daughter has a very low working memory, so can cope with one or two things at once (on a good day). Anything more and she simply won’t remember the rest. Too many and she won’t even remember the first thing you said as her brain is overloaded and freaking out. How many teachers have time to give out one instruction at a time and wait for the pupil to process and then complete it? Yet that’s what she would need.

And it’s not just complexity of teacher’s instructions that derails them; communication in the teenage years gets a whole lot more involved. They have to navigate nuance (subtlety), metaphors, ambiguity, idioms, sarcasm and jokes. Obviously this applies to chats with friends too, as teenage relationships become more complex and blunt honesty is less welcomed. Which brings us onto…

2. Relationships

The teenage years are about identity, belonging, fitting in. My daughter tried to be invisible, to avoid negative attention. But it doesn’t matter how much an SEND pupil masks or tries to be like everyone else, students know. They pick up on the differences. Neurodiverse young people say the wrong things, hold themselves differently, copy others as they try to understand the world, laugh at the wrong bits, say too much or too little, have too much or too little eye contact.

My daughter is attending a course for neuro-diverse teens and whilst they are all different (a few cope in school, some self-teach at home, some struggle to say anything at all), the one thing that is universal is that none of them have any close friends. And that sucks.

3. Stress

Many neurodiverse people find comfort in routine, whereas school is unpredictable. A teacher might be absent (and the temporary replacement rarely understands pupils’ needs), the seating plan might change, a test is set unexpectedly, children are asked to pick teams in PE (which is divisive and should NEVER happen), pupils are asked a question, put on the spot or asked to stand and read aloud. All of these things create huge anxiety and stress.

My daughter becomes mute when stressed (selective mutism), yet a senior teacher put her on the spot and then waited patiently for a response. Whilst she became less and less able to respond as her anxiety rose and rose and rose. (This was before her formal diagnosis but when her support plan noted potential neurodiversity.)

4. Concentration

Focusing for almost an hour at a time, in a stressful unpredictable environment is a huge task for neurodiverse children. They have an ability to focus that is almost unparalleled (hyperfocus), but only on the things that hook into their brain and capture their attention. So with topics that don’t grab them, they struggle to focus their energy and enthusiasm. They might lose their place (then have to ask another pupil what was said, incurring the negative attention of a teacher for talking), miss steps out, or just lose interest because they’ve no energy left.

Their desire to escape, to look outside, to cope with overwhelm by stimming or day-dreaming, often takes their brain in directions that aren’t conducive with study. But these are valid coping mechanisms and no amount of shouting or cheerleading is going to change things.

5. Safety

Safety is paramount for all of us. Our children need a solid foundation beneath them, to feel that the world is okay, that it is free from threats, that they are safe and can relax. Despite policies that promise safety, schools are rarely the safe haven that SEND pupils need. It doesn’t matter what your paperwork says, if a student is harassed, barged and picked on before they’ve even sat down for the first lesson.

My daughter doesn’t trust adults (due to trauma as a baby). She takes months to get to know a grown-up well enough to trust them. In a high school with five lessons a day, five days a week, on a two-week timetable, her interactions are too infrequent and too many for her to build that solid relationship.

Then there’s bullying. The name calling. The pupils who touch her or her hair deliberately to provoke an extreme reaction. Who say horrible things about her being adopted or her birth parents. How can a pupil feel safe if they experience things like that on a daily basis?

6. Sensory

Finally, there is the sensory experience of school. Imagine having the volume turned to overdrive on every one of your senses…

Smells – from science labs to the food hall, from the smell of deodorants in the toilets or after PE, or being maliciously sprayed with it. The smells can make our children feel physically sick.
Sounds – school is a busy place with thousands of pupils. There is a constant onslaught of noise from chatting, chairs scraping, desks moving, books banging, alarms going and more. Then there are teachers raising their voices to be heard above the melee.
Touch – for a child who hates to be touched, the jostling as pupils stream from one classroom to the next in a busy corridor, the queues for food at break and lunchtimes, the poking and prodding, the chair kicking, those who deliberately touch her hair for a reaction. Never mind the scratchy uniform and shoes…

Everything Is Wrong

When my daughter or son were struggling with school, when it all became too much, when they sobbed or shook in their beds unable to move or attend, I’d ask them gently what’s wrong? I wanted an easy answer. Something I could solve.

Invariably their answer was EVERYTHING, which I thought less than helpful.

It took me time to fully understand them, their bodies and brains, and get to grips with their individual needs. To unpick their experiences in school. To wake up to the truth in their answer.

For them, nearly everything is wrong about school.

And however much school make minor adjustments – like ear defenders or letting them leave class early to avoid some of the crush – most schools are inherently overwhelming, overstimulating, overtaxing. They’re an experience that is just far far too much for some of our children.

Our children were born a certain way and they can’t rearrange their bodies and brains to fit a system that causes damage (to their self-esteem) and threatens their well-being (through constant crippling anxiety). It’s time for things to change. For government and local authority to truly understand the special educational needs and disabilities and design (and crucially fund) a system that fully supports their needs.

We Are Twelve (Years Old)

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Twelve years ago, our children came to live with us. The two of them (brother and sister) came and made us a family of four.

How has it been twelve years already?

We still remember that first night, where we thought they’d gone to bed exhausted and congratulated ourselves until our son woke in fear and cried for ages. We tried everything until Andy found a spot half-way up the stairs where he settled. We’ve no idea why, but we suspect it was sea of beige that had no reminders of the fact he was somewhere different, new, strange.

The Toughest Year Yet

Those early months were tricky – mostly due to the constant demands and utter exhaustion that dogged our steps and brains. Oh, for the simple joy of swinging them higher and higher whilst they blew raspberries at each other, giggling their heads off. Nowadays their muted joys involve TikTok and three-hour baths.

The last year has been the hardest yet. Our daughter hit autistic burnout and has taken a very long time to recover. There were weeks when she barely left her bedroom; her mental health was precarious and her anxiety huge; it impacted all of us.

School is no longer part of her life; it’s proved too much, and we’ve had to adjust to a new normal. Our son, amazingly, has kept going, although his anxiety sometimes stops him in his tracks.

So Much To Learn and Unlearn

For ten years, we viewed our daughter’s struggles through the trauma lens. Yes, she struggled with sensory overload and emotional regulation, but that was trauma wasn’t it? Eighteen months’ ago, she was diagnosed with ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorder and we hit a new learning curve; discovering more maps to her brain. Whilst also saying “Oh” as we realised why she does what she does. We also believe she has ARFID.

Since every autistic person is different, we’ve become detectives. Observing her body language (she’s often unable to express her needs), her stimming, her movement or stillness, her face, eyes, the tension in her body. We have to hear the words she doesn’t say.

We suspect our son is also neurodiverse, and whilst the professionals assure you that children don’t need a diagnosis to get the support they need in school, that’s not our experience. He is not even on the SEND register as school still tell us that his needs can be met by ‘Quality First Teaching.’ But that’s next year’s battle…

Goldilocks Life

We search for the sweet spot. Not too overwhelming that they hit sensory overload (bowling on a Saturday afternoon proved impossible, whereas early Sunday morning had been fine). Whilst encouraging them out of their comfort zone.

Avoidance is a strategy that’s all too easy to fall into. The world can be an utterly overwhelming place, with strangers, sensations, noises, lights and more to deal with. Yet we don’t want to batten down the hatches and live like antisocial hermits. Because whilst that’s an attractive option (especially for our daughter), it won’t help us learn, grow, and refine coping strategies.

A Meal Out To Celebrate

We went out for a meal. We’ve gone out every year, and sometimes (before we understood their specific needs), it wasn’t easy, fun or a celebration. There would be stress, anxiety, an inability to eat, an urge to leave almost the minute we arrived. Several meals ended up with frowns, sulks, stomping and mutterings about why bother and we should’ve stayed at home.

But we’ve learnt a lot. We’re honing in on the Goldilocks spot. By going early, we avoid the noise and numbers of strangers overwhelming them. We go somewhere we’ve been before, where there is something they both like to eat. We’ll encourage them to take fidgets, headphones, to chew on ice, to suck on straws, to nibble to avoid hanger, to stim on their phones.

I’ll be able to assess my daughter’s level of anxiety from what she’s wearing: on a great day, my daughter will pick a fab outfit with tights, short skirt, something that yells “Look at me”. She’ll slay (but hate me saying that). If she’s feeling anxious, it will be baggy tee-shirts, a huge fleece, baggy trousers. It’s her armour, and it tells me that she needs support.

We know how to read our kids. When our daughter starts to struggle, she’ll shrink inwards. She might struggle to eat, as she’ll be using all her energy to stop herself running away. We won’t stay long (maybe an hour). And afterwards, we’ll allow both of them to stay in their safe places if they want to decompress.

How Did It Go?

We had a good time, the only hiccup being we all ate too much!

Eldest sat in a corner of the room (good spot), using her headphones to listen to music (I could tell she was anxious as she was part-baggy). She thumbed her phone and popped her head up occasionally. She smiled. She laughed (at whatever was going on online). But (massive win) she ate a burger from the adult menu for the first time and demolished most of her meal.

Youngest didn’t feel the need to stim or fidget. He got a bored, so we played word games (20 questions) as we waited for food to arrive, which was great fun and taxing as we had to guess the cartoon character (thankfully Andy got SpongeBob).

There was no stress. No struggle. No overwhelm or meltdowns or raised voices. Not once did I think it would have been easier/ happier to eat pizza at home.

Our life might be quite a long way from what we imagined, but we’re finding our way, together. We love them to Ikea and back, and we’ll do everything in our power to make sure that they have the best life they can, given the way their brains and bodies are wired.

Sometimes it’s a bit rough around the edges. Sometimes we get it horribly wrong. Sometimes we forget, or fall back into Tradiitional Parenting territory.

But we’re still here. We’re still together as a family. And that is worth celebrating.

Happy Familyversary to Us.

Why Won’t They Call It Bullying?

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The litany of incidents my daughter experienced was long and protracted – months of:

stamping on her feet
calling her names
sending notes around class saying she was ‘a little rat’
swearing at her
tripping her up
scribbling on her work and telling the teacher that my daughter had done it

My daughter would tell her teacher/ the lunchtime supervisor/ whichever adult was nominally in charge. We would tell her teacher. We would email, ring, or catch her teacher in the playground at pick-up. Her teacher would nod and say:

“Thank you for letting me know. We will deal with it.

I’ve no idea how they were ‘dealing’ with it, except that my daughter was still being punched, kicked, yelled at.

School Policies

We researched their policy on behaviour and bullying. It said:

‘Bullying is taken to be the willful and conscious desire to hurt, threaten or frighten someone using words, actions or gestures. Bullying is pre-planned and usually happens on more than one occasion.’

It Was Never Bullying

Not once, not in any call, meeting or email did anyone refer to the situation as “bullying”. From teachers to the Head. It might be ‘an incident.’ For months at Junior school it was a “friendship issue.” We felt gaslighted. It wasn’t a friendship issue. It felt more like a campaign of physical and verbal abuse.

The strongest punishment that school gave the perpetrator was a missed break and lunchtime. They didn’t miss a single day of lessons, whereas the stress took it’s toll on my daughter for hours each day and night.

School’s Duty of Care

Schools, and every member of staff in them, have a duty to keep children safe. From adults, but mostly from their peers (in our experience). But all that means nothing if all you do with your bullying policy is post it on your website, then ignore it when push comes to shove comes to trip comes to name-calling.

Children need to be able to trust adults to keep them safe. That’s fundamental to their emotional and psychological well-being. If they are scared to come into school every morning because they are afraid of what another child (or children) might do to them, that’s not okay.

And the responsibility for solving that doesn’t lie with the parents. It lies firmly with the teachers, the staff, the leadership team, the governors of the school. And the first and most obvious way to make a school a safe, welcoming place is to take bullying far more seriously than they do.

What School Can Do

LISTEN. Not just to what is being said, but the tone, the emotion, the feelings. If the child is so upset they are dysregulated, then help them calm down first.

BELIEVE THEM. If you don’t believe them, you destroy what fragile trust you might have, and if a child earns that adults aren’t trustworthy, then all bets are off. You need to know that a stressed child might experience an amygdala hijack. That means that their thinking (curly grey) matter is not actually online. So they might not remember the incident clearly. Don’t assume they are lying. Their memory of the event does not exist (clearly, or at all). Ask witnesses if the picture is unclear or confusing.

ACT. Follow your school’s policy. If something nasty happens a few times, it counts as bullying. Don’t call it something else. Record the incident. Record what you have done to resolve things.

COMMUNICATE: Tell the parents about what happened and what you’ve done as a result. Keep them in loop. Build trust between you, that you are keeping their child safe, that you are taking it seriously, that you care.

It’s not just sticks-and-stones, it is psychological warfare.

Our children deserve to go to school and feel good about who they are, not attacked for their size, their sexuality, their neuro-diversity, their beliefs, their phone or lunch.

Bullying destroys self-esteem, mental and physical health. Don’t let them win.

Unconditional Love In Action

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Our kids need to know they are loved. Not just with a hug (see below) and a “Love You” sung as they walk out the door.

We have to show them every day that we love them no matter what.

If they look like they were dragged through a hedge backwards, we love them and let them express their inner worlds with whatever they choose to wear
If they refuse to take painkillers and then cannot attend school because of excruciating pain, we let them know that their choices are valid, even if we might make different ones in our own lives
If their bedrooms look like a bombsite but that chaos is how they want to live, we shrug and move on*

*I struggle with this one the most. I can’t tell you how many times my teen has shouted at me to “stop tidying” when I shut a spilling-over open drawer or pick up socks for the wash. It’s my problem that the sheer mess in their rooms makes me tingle with discomfort.

Special Needs

Our two children are neurodiverse teens (where did that time go?) They have sensory issues that we are starting to get to grips with. Understanding how they respond to sound, smells, light, noise, people, crowds, environments helps us respond with more love and empathy.

Until recently, I had no idea that my daughter is freaked out by things that look like they will feel one way (soft, squidgy) but actually when touched feel totally different (hard, slimy, tickly). My son would rather walk over hot coals than go into a scented candle shop or Lush (other overwhelmingly smelly shops are available). And I get that, because I can’t bear it either. But I can’t always rely on what matters to me is what matters to them. I have to get inside their minds and experiences.

Loving them unconditionally means putting aside my wants or expectations – when half-way through an event (film, meal), they text me (or mime) that we have to leave because some smell or experience has tipped them into fight or flight. I might want to stay. I might wish my children found it easier. But loving them means listening, nodding sagely and getting the heck out of Dodge.

I can’t always live inside their skin, but I can do my best to be open to being influenced by them, trusting them to tell me their truth. Even when I am tired. Even when I am busy. Even when it is 11pm and I really, really want to be asleep.

Clothes Reflect Their Inner Life

I can tell a great deal about how my daughter is feeling from the outfit she chooses.

If she is scared, overwhelmed, anxious – out come the baggy fleeces and tee-shirts, creating an invisibility cloak. She doesn’t want any attention as she’s already fizzing. These items (often purloined from my husband’s wardrobe) act as armour, or a cloaking device. They matter to her. They also surround her with her dad, so she feels safe, hugged by his presence.
If she is feeling great, confident (which isn’t often) – she might be rocking big boots, a short shirt, tight clothing. She’s ready to take on the world and be noticed. One day recently, I saw her walking out of our house dressed to kill. She looked incredible and I nearly burst into tears (embarrassing!) because she exuded confidence. [It had been a long, long time.]

She’s amazing and stylish and I love her quirky individuality, even if not everyone finds it quite to easy to accept.

Conditions Creep In

My daughter was staying with old friends when an adult commented she looked scruffy (in her baggy armour). They asked her to change before they went out. My daughter texted me, very upset. She felt that their love was now conditional – on her looking or dressing a certain way. She stopped feeling accepted, safe. Her anxiety started to grow and grow; she texted with increasing exclamation marks, teary emojis and I wanted to drive over and rescue her.

Clothes are important, but touch is an even bigger issue: she hates to be hugged. Accepting that sometimes she is going to put up her hand in a stop motion and tell me to back off, isn’t easy. But forcing a hug on her tells her loud and clear that what she needs from me doesn’t matter (when it does). So we don’t hug, unless she asks for one. Because in loving her unconditionally I need to respect her world, her life, her choices. The more I back off, and respect her needs, the more hugs (paradoxically) I get from her.

We can all learn to be a bit more accepting. To love without conditions. To understand that each person is unique, different. The world is expanding and people are finding new ways to express who they are – whether that’s what they wear, their taste in music or food, their gender identity or sexuality. I want us to create a world where our young unicorns are given love and acceptance, so they don’t have to pretend to be a horse to fit in.

I’m learning what each of my crazy, amazing, neurodiverse children need. How best to show them love (chocolate biscuits and sensory fidgets are always good) and how to adjust what I say and do, so that the message comes through loud and clear.

I love you exactly who you are in this moment now.

Book Two On It’s Way

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It’s been years since And Then There Were Four was published and years since I finished writing book two. And it might never have seen the light of day…

Then I found a box of ATTW4 in my garage and offered them to friends who didn’t know me back then – many of them from choir. Genuinely I just wanted to declutter them! But I shifted more than a few books. Their response changed everything. Someone asked how many copies I had sold, and when I checked the figures, it was over 1,400 copies. WOW! Really?

Vicky then said: “I’ve just finished your book Emma and absolutely loved it! Book 2 please! X”

I dusted off the version I hadn’t read in years, when I decided that if I didn’t want to read it, then neither would anyone else. And whilst there was a lot that needed changing, I reconnected to the journey within. Reminded myself of the rollercoaster. And even smiled a few times.

I mapped out the chapter, fiddled with the order and flow, let Vicky read chapter one, to see if it grabbed her and made her want to read on. Then I jumped headfirst into the writing rabbit hole, where I spent every spare moment writing, editing, deleting. Getting up at 6am because there is a chapter that has to be put on paper.

[And I found 70,000 words of Book Three that I’d forgotten even writing… Covering some of lockdown. So then I started updating that, filling in the blanks, ranting about the stuff that was driving me crazy right now….]

This week, I mocked up a cover design, worked on the back copy and had copies of the very first rough draft printed.

And Trauma Made Five charts the move to Junior School for my daughter, when trauma bit deep and we struggled to find our way and convince school of her needs.

Are you looking forward to getting your hands on it? Would you like the back copy to whet your appetite? Let me know below…