Cappucinnapology

The phone rang. It was my daughter’s carer, telling me my girl was in Café Nero, she had dug herself in, heel-first, and wasn’t leaving. It was a full-on, 'horse-at-Becher’s-Brook-in-the-Grand-National' refusal. 

We haven’t had one for a while.

Every other Saturday my daughter goes out on a little trip, with a handful of other young people/adults with disabilities. They have a coffee, and go to the cinema or the bowling alley. They are encouraged to use their money to order and pay, and it’s basically good practice in social interaction and independence.

My girl was acing the independence bit and flunking out of the social interaction module, by getting herself tied up in knots over the discussion of what film they were going to see, putting her blinkers on, and basically shutting down to any instructions. Tears and a little bit of temper were involved.

Putting me on the phone didn’t help: she ‘mysteriously’ couldn’t hear me.

In the end it needed a mercy dash in the car to get her home so the other girls could head off to the film my daughter hadn’t liked the sound of.

Later, when my girl left the Zone of Anxiety, I was able to chat to her and tell her how important it was that she does what her carer says. 

She nodded.

She went very quiet. 

She fetched her tablet and painstakingly tapped out an email to her carer:

I verry sorry I had a melt down and shouted at you in cafe neo and I am excremliy sorry that I refused to in your car and didn't come as i was told and i realised i was acting like a little girl and not acting like a 19teen year old. mummy explain to me that i have to come as i am told overwise it isnt safe to come out with you and i wont do this kind of behaler agan see hyou inweek on onsaturday and iam worried that you dont wont to take me out eney more but i still wont to come out with you

And yesterday I found this letter of apology to...erm...Café Nero.

Translation: I am very sorry I had a meltdown and shouting in your cafe. This is my favourite coffee shop. I have realised people want to have peace and quiet to drink their coffee and not listen to me crying and shouting. Yours, sincerely xx

As for my apology?  Nope, still waiting. But, hey, I know my place, and it's way down the chain. Beneath the coffee franchise, obviously.

Song is Nirvana - All Apologies

Insomnifest

RAT-A-TAT-TAT!

A handclap echoing round a silent house in the early hours of the morning sounds a bit like gunfire.

RAT-A-TAT-TAT!

It’s loud. Really loud.

RAT-A-TAT-TAT!

I crawl out of my bed and trudge into my daughter’s bedroom, my patience twanging in the air like broken guitar strings.

“You HAVE to be quiet, now. You can’t carry on like this. No-one is getting any sleep,” I hiss.

My daughter seems to exist entirely of ruffled hair and huge, wild, staring eyes. The hysterical laughing starts again.

“Enough. This isn’t funny.”

A strange look comes over her face. She doesn’t look right. She doesn’t look like my daughter. I suppose it’s hardly surprising, as this is the fourth night in a row when she hasn’t had any sleep. I’m not exactly sure what she’s running on. She looks like she’s been mainlining Pro-Plus and coffee.

“I’m PISSED OFF,” she shouts. “I’m PISSED OFF.”

I’m taken aback. 

But this is just the start.

“I don’t fucking care. I don’t FUCKING care. I don’t FUCKING CARE.”

I try to hide my astonishment. It’s as if my daughter has been replaced with some sort of boggle-eyed swear-bot.

Using a huge amount of effort to keep my voice calm, I tell her: “We don’t use that kind of language in this house.” 

For all the notice she takes, she might as well have answered: “I think you’ll find we fucking well do.”

Eventually, she stops. Other noises take over: a yodel, animal sounds, more handclaps, guttural laughs. Peace finally comes at 4.30am. For half an hour. Then the silence is broken by a yelp, and I bundle her downstairs so she can’t wake her brother up.
____

A week later, and the intensity of the night-time ravings and rantings has subsided a little. We’ve had one night’s sleep followed by an up-all-nighter, then two night’s sleeps, and another insomnifest.

School have been aware of what’s been going on: one day in the middle of the maelstrom, she decided to spend the entire school day shouting and making strange noises. Her teacher has been brilliant: she’s come up with a detailed behaviour management plan which we’re linking up to use both at home and at school.

We’re trying to pinpoint what’s triggering this. If we can just get back to more than a couple of night’s catch-up sleep, I think we can break the cycle.

Oh yeah, and just to add more trial to the tribulations, throughout all this, I’ve had an awful cold, cough, sore throat, the shakes, the shivers and the sweats. And all I want is a really good sleep.

Song is The Decemberists - Sleepless. It's kind of beautiful.

Unhinged

Two hours sleep is not enough to survive on. It makes you slightly unhinged. Margaret Thatcher managed on four, and to be honest that explains a lot.

Last night we had meltdown. I’m still trying to get to the bottom of why it happened, but so far I’m stumped. 120 minutes kip is not sufficient to keep the brain cells whirring fast enough to do the necessary sleuthing. I’m chalking it up to ‘just one of those days’.

My daughter had had a twitchy evening, asking random questions, repeating herself, and nervously sticking her fingers in her mouth.

The volume got louder, the questions more off-kilter.

“Am I going to shrink. Shrink. SHRINK?” was the starter for ten (explained by the fact that her prescription for growth hormone hadn’t been ready at the chemists, so she knew she’d miss her injection for one night).

Next minute, it was “Is Hitler alive? Hitler. Hitler. HITLER!” (this one made me laugh, I must admit. She’d been learning about World War II in her history lesson. Apparently at one stage, she thought he was in the school toilets). 

“No, he’s dead. He died in 1945, sweetheart. Sixty something years ago.”

“Ah, so if he hadn’t died he’d be dead.”

“Er...yes.”

“IF HE HADN’T DIED HITLER WOULD BE DEAD.”

“That’s right.”

This was a bright spot in a dark night.

From this point onwards, my usually compliant, polite daughter clambered into her stubborn shoes and wouldn’t take the cement bastards off.

Getting her to have a shower was a battle I wish I’d never started. Getting her to clean her teeth was another. Persuading her to stop cleaning them was another. She didn’t want to go to bed, she got up six times for a wee, she turned her light back on countless times, searching her room for books she couldn’t find, wandering down the stairs to put them in her school bag and take them out again. All the time, all requests were ignored or given some serious attitude. “NO. I WON’T. I’M JUST DOING THIS. No, no, NO. I will NOT.” Every time I told her off, she giggled to the point of hysterics. Threats to ban favourite toys, and subsequent confiscations, had no impact.

I tried ignoring her because surely she’d flag, but after hours more of footsteps, bangs and crashes from her room, more visits to the loo, her dad ominously putting a shelf-load of books in a black bin-bag, more loud backchat, and finally, the piéce de resistance - wetting the bed (quite deliberately) at 4am, I gave up. Nothing, and I mean nothing was going to stop her mini-rampage. So I left her to it, and snatched a couple of hours kip.

This morning, I was shattered. My daughter, of course, was bright and breezy. 

She smiled up at me, bashfully. “I’m sorry, Mummy. I’m going to be really good today.”

Video is Eels - Unhinged

Related posts: 
Meltdown
Wave
Dam

Tired

Tears. Aches and pains. Worry. Nerves. Frustration. Hormones. Tiredness.

It hasn’t been a good day. All of the above have been showcased by my daughter. And some of them by me, too. The need for full scale bucking bronco toddler-wrangling hasn't helped, either.

I’m too shattered to think of a funny line to insert here.

I’m not sure why I felt the need to share this. I don’t normally mention the run-of-the-mill difficult days. 

They happen. Quite often, like today, on the fourth day of my husband’s four day shift. 

He’s off from tomorrow. Reinforcements are on their way.

But like the lady says in the soul-soothing song below, this was one day I really could have done with my firecatcher, rainmaker, soothsayer, guardian, plate-spinner, peacemaker and liontamer.

Video is Charlie Dore - Liontamer