My world is a dinner plate that someone has tipped upside down

[mumsay]

I can't believe I'm talking to the world through my iPad but that is my only small voice waiting to be heard. My sister just text me that I should try and concentrate on the positive. She's on a train to London for the weekend and I'm sat watching the dog to see that he does not lick his stitches, so he can take a break from his buster collar. Funny how he really knows the word 'No' now; as he takes a stealthy nose-dive towards the ex region of his manhood. I'm such a careful person. I have waited for him to fully grown before his snippet. Which I agonised over; snatching away his hormones seems a punishable offence as I'm sure someone has snatched away my small cabinets of oestrogen and spun them around on some evolutionary roulette table. I'm the only one besides him in our house without the bonus of hormones and it's not by choice. It's that faulty middle-aged component, centuries old. He's not my dog. He's my child's dog. My child has suffered from anxiety and depression for two years and my mother does not know. I invent a life of illusion because I thought we were on a short day trip not a season ticket. I thought all this would blow through. It hangs around me and I've fought it for two years. NHS rug pulled out at 17 now - cut off point for child services and my sudden 'grown-up' child is without an NHS psychiatrist but not without the same diagnosis. I'm a good, kind person who wants their life flipped back upright again. If you're out there, reading this, with longterm sick children, you'll know why it is purposeful for me to sit here feeling useful, stopping the dog from licking his wounds whilst I sit here licking mine. Two professionals asked me if I needed a bit of help recently ? What I need is some help for my daughter at 17 on the NHS. That would help me.

[Trifle66]

my 16 yr old DD is going through the same thing I totally understand what you mean about needing to to something, anything useful to feel a little bit more in control. DD not responding to CHAMS (surprise surprise teenager doesn't want to talk) however things a little easier after the stress of gcse yr but As exams looming in the future.
Did you see this in the Guardian. Thought it was good

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/05/my-daughter-my-beautiful-failure

[mumsay]

Hi, the buster collar is back on, so estranged look from mr-recently-neutered permits me time to say how good the Guardian article is and to thank you loving mum for showing it to me. I am conscious that my own lack of competitiveness and passivity has ill prepared my children for the jagged cut and thrust of the modern world which I remember hit home with every notched up graded reading book that other parents forced me to reveal in the playground, as anxiously and furtively as if they were a set of private parts. Both my children have autism and both were diagnosed post sixteen so these anxious years have been doubly anxious as crowded classrooms and inexperienced providers neglected to see the finer points of the individual dilemma of one wellbehaved child in their class who needed them to see their needs. I am surprised to find that as a parent I am equally lacking in confrontational ability which may have saved things a bit, as on pressing my child recently to comment on my maybe over-liberal approach eg: not just kicking them out the door to sink, or swim, resulted in the response of "if you'd been any different Mum I wouldn't be here now". I feel a great sense of relief in being formally classified as the official 'port in the storm' that I almost want to make myself a badge. Just checked the errant licker's stitches, they were weeping yesterday, now the errant licker is 'weeping' within buster collar; I don't know what is harder, sad dog or 'sad' child. I breast fed my child for five years,being guided by a wonderful GP, with the onset of baby eczema. We banished the eczema but my 'careful' parenting was carefully questioned as if I'd never spoken to a medical professional who warded me off cow's milk. Thankfully, I have the only parental trait worth fostering; gut-sensory-stubborn-git-ness. A small step up this year is the social fostering of friends met at a suitable young person London based costume event. This has been our big saving. Not at college at the moment but there is laughter-tuned-skype-ing and if it was simply that my mum would value a reasonably good social life, (which has taken three years to establish because none of it was created through school) then I would tell her the intricate rest of it. So it was with interest that I read similarly in the Guardian article that a good social life seems to be the route back to wherever sensitive, loving children feel they need to be. I had wondered about this as my daughter had taken the train independently last weekend to Friendsville, outlasting a panic attack on the platform, but not been able to attend college all week, for the fourth week running. Who do you talk to, or who let's you talk to them about your worries ? I am urged to see a counsellor but I can't face the ridiculousness of needing to talk to someone who is not my husband when it is him who needs to hear me most. Feel the flutter of my butterfly wings on the great draft of the might of the terrifying world that lies beyond organic, spelt pancakes and newly stitched dogs balls.

[gamerchick]

I hear you OP. No peace of mind really takes it out of you and you really could sink to your knees and weep when you know that you may not get it back anytime soon, if at all. I totally understand

Are you in touch with the carers association? They are really good.. its just for you.

[mumsay]

I'm sitting here wondering, loving parents, if that flickering of the lights is really low wattage or me racking my brain for 'things to try' and kinetically overheating the domestic circuitry ! Just picked up on your note about the carers association so I will google that. Thanks. There is no set, exact way of doing anything, not really, the universe is proven chaos and that seems to do ok; you don't see the squawking that might, or might not be going on behind the moon when a shower of asteroids hits left instead of right. Why do we get into such a pickle when our children seem to take a bit of a different route when some of the greats in history battled with depression and anxiety. I would like to see a complete change in early years education again - more sand tables and less times tables. Why's the big rush/push during the teenage years anyway ? We need to re-think education here in the UK and bolster up the NHS mental health coffers. And who dictates the limited NHS provision for post-17 and why do they move young people from the child services at 17 who are making good progress because of that service and will undoubtedly mostly be continuing educational and definitely not be thinking like adults. Why can't we keep going with child services until 19 ? Why oh mighty NHS have you got this so very wrong that on leaving child services at 17 we plummet like the abandoned stone you cast away ????? Did I hear a whisper of Liberal Party promise of extra funding for mental health ? Why is this still to be even debated ? why are we not talking about it already so that I can just tell my Mum and she can take it in her stride and know that the whole world is accessing mental health at some point in their lives and no, we don't have to rush our children through their formative years as if their lids fit tighter than Tupperware boxes ? I have days when my back feels like some threads have come apart, I curl up like those orange cracker fish do in hot hands to tell you how you feel. I feel and I feel and I'm glad I feel and if I can't talk about all this without a paper hanky stuck to my face then I wouldn't be me. But the fact that my world is different, that my children are different is really ok. Just until my Mum comes on the phone to ask how college is going, going, gone...

[Trifle66]

Is there a Parent support Organisation/ help line in your area? I've had some "parent counselling" and found it very good . The counsellor helped me look at all the positives in the situation and pointed out that actually I was going the extra mile as a parent and not the failure I thought I was.

[mumsay]

Thank you, I have thought a lot about the counselling but I have decided to keep on re-reading the wonderful Lucy Clark's article and reciting it quietly to myself as my new-found mantra and this has really helped. I have surprised myself, in fact even yesterday, I astounded my worry-bedraggled husband with some very rational phrases which cemented my recovery from believing that I had failed as a parent and today I am not quite the curled up crinkly, orange, fortune telling cracker-fish; well maybe still a crease here, or there but I am unravelling a bit and taking in air. Filling my sea-lungs with air instead of water because I am not going to drown ! and the future is going to be this : that I am going to keep on making my organic spelt pancakes and that I am going to frame my diploma in post-operative care in canine-nuts-off surgery and put it on the kitchen wall ! Speaking here is enabling me to identify with other parents and shake off that meek and reserved very unsound Englishness that reflects all this 'Keep calm and carry on' bllcks. For it is never a good idea to stand at the edge of a precipice if the view before you terrifies you and not say that actually you would prefer to go straight to the gift/tea shop instead. I am not programmed to keep calm but I am skilled in the art of keeping going. And the sense of this is the unifying voice. That small voices reached me through the deafening clamour of my confusion and grounded me again so much so that I spent three hours straight on Netflix yesterday evening, film bashing, without thinking once about things I should be doing to try to help my child because I finally realised that I am already helping her. But this realisation comes from all the lines gifted to me here and the bravery of Lucy Clark's article. I am newborn and ready to run out naked in the rain like some passage of a DHLawrence novel. Feeling my Mother Earth-ed-ness intact and sprightly. Even though I still get a sideways glance from our hopefully soon-to-be forgiving darling hound. At least one of us is still intact, I whispered to him this morning; your nuts lost, my marbles saved; the circle of life...