EBSA support thread 2

[Luddite26]

Hopefully this links to Brambley Hedges EBSA support thread.
A community to discuss the processes and support each other when children are experiencing Emotionally Based School Avoidance.

Gosh that sounds incredibly difficult for both you and DH.

It sounds like all 3 have particularly rigid and incompatible rules and it's left you and DH having to find ways to be omnipresent.

I'm so sorry this morning isn't going to plan. If it isn't going well anyway, make sure you take some of this time for you just to catch your breath and make sure your own needs are met.

Thanks. Now I am sitting in an armchair while DS sits on our new sofa. I am drinking chicory coffee and he is having tea. I brought DD2 her drawing tablet so all is now peaceful. At least I know now what today will be like. And DH got DD1 in.

We were still up with DS at 11.30 last night and I thought about you all.

Sorry to hear this @ISaySteadyOn. I do think blaming yourself is just plain wrong. As Jimmy says there are just too many constraints being imposed upon you and DH. Three children, 2 adults, the maths ain't mathsing. It's not your fault that DS has picked one parent either, I guess his brain wants to exert control to compensate for the hours he is being controlled in school. Your family is still in a crisis and that is stressful. It won't always be like this.

I hope others have had a smoother start to the half term.

Sometimes accepting who we are is the big break we can give ourselves. My mum always says 'oh I couldn't live like you your chaos'. But no matter how hard I try I can't be anything other than chaos. I beat myself up about it still most days but it does nothing to make me less chaotic. Sometimes I look and think well I'm holding it together so to hell if it's chaos. That's you @ISaySteadyOn you are spinning all your plates and only you cleans it up when one drops so hold your head up.💐 It's easier to see where you went wrong after the event.

Hugs to you. Catch your breath.🩷

My mum always says some days you're the pigeon and some days you're the statue. It feels like a lot of days, we are the statue.

Qué sera sera.

DS did manage to get in today for the first day back but it's day 2 that is the battle after every school holiday so I'm steeling myself for tonight's explosions. The good news is we've taken every opportunity over the school holidays to fatten him up ahead of his anticipated no-eating, and managed to get fish fingers back in his rotation, and Iceland chicken animals seem to be a decent substitution for Bernard Matthew's chicken unicorns that they've absolutely decimated the shape and size of during their utterly useless restructuring. And our free school meals application has been approved so at least we're throwing less money away now on food he probably won't eat.

I am from the States originally and we have a country song where one of the lyrics is 'Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug!'

I am glad you managed to get the meals approved. Good luck with DS, I know how it is with Day 2s.

DD1 said today was alright and DS is currently doing his homework even though he didn't go. He also has just said to his friend that I am 'chill'

Things may look up soon. DD1's college is on the same street as DD2's school so maybe they will manage together at some point.

I’m sorry you had such a tough time today @ISaySteadyOn - you can only do what you can do. I can’t imagine how tough it is with three kids to consider.

I love the pigeon/statue and windshield/bug analogies - I’ve never heard those before so will be stealing them!

Dd didn’t go in today. Not really through any fault of her own. She had a hospital appointment this morning as we think she has POTS, which had already stressed her out as she didn’t know what to expect. DH took her and thankfully the paediatrician was fantastic with her. She had to take BP and do an ECG and there was talk about blood tests but we’re going to go back for those as DH decided it would be too much for her all in one day as she is terrified at the thought of it. Apparently we can call and they have a special sensory room they can use for the blood test. She has to go back and have another ECG fitted for 24 hours in a couple of weeks time. So after all that DH just brought her back home as it would have been too much to go in to school late on top of everything else. Hopefully tomorrow will go smoothly.

Remind me what POTS stands for?
DD1 and DS in. DS being v mature and saying that if he couldn't find his PE kit that he left at school, he would take the detention as that was less expensive than getting new PE kit (too late, I already got it). DD1 grumbled but school is a necessary if unpleasant duty so I appreciated that.

Fingers crossed @ISaySteadyOn that today is day 1 of some good days!

I hope your little lad has managed it ok this morning@Jimmyneutronsforehead.?

And @Leafywool I hope dd has got in after yesterday?

A lady I have found very good for send support is
SendinMama - Natalie Froud. She's very reasonablely priced. An ex teacher with a lot of experience in EBSA. But she also has POTS. Her website is definitely worth a look. Her knowledge is extensive.

Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome.

I had to have a tilt table test for autonomic intolerance and it was grim. Impending sense of doom akin to a pre-seizure aura.

DS is in!

But he said this morning "when I am at school I have no home so what am I supposed to do?"

Poor lad thinks he becomes homeless when he goes to school 😭 just another demonstration of his poor object permanence I suppose but I too would be quite anxious to he homeless 5 days a week against my will.

Yes, me too. Is there any way you can remind him that home is there even when he isn't? Could he bring a photo of it in with him or something like that?

I can ask, we've got parents evening this Friday.

I did reassure him that he still has a home and after school he can come back and play, but he has a very important job to do at school and fill his noggin up if he wants to be an astronaut.

His current obsession is the 3 astronauts they're supposedly planning on sending on a 10 year mission to mars. Thanks to the national space centre movie he saw in the planetarium.

Funnily enough @Luddite26 you strike me as a pool of calm and solace on this thread, not chaos at all.

@ISaySteadyOn sounds like good progress for DS. Going back to school is always tricky. He's processing and deciding to do it off his own bat. Good for him.

@Jimmyneutronsforehead well done feeding up DS. You know him best but is it possible he just means he is missing home and wishes he was there? I can imagine my son saying "I have no teddy" to mean just that his teddy is not here in his hand now. He wouldn't add the "now" or "here" as qualifiers because he is describing the situation right here and now, so to him they go without saying. Just a thought.

Have you been to the national space centre in Leicester? We loved it.

@Piony he would definitely just say he misses home or wants to stay home. They're frequent phrases in his lexicon 😭 he does really forget things exist if he can't see them. Last week he got upset because my mum didn't exist anymore, which was news to her because she was very much existing at her own house.

He has been to the NSC and he absolutely adored the place. He was most disappointed that we didn't actually go to space in the rocket though. We can go back before April with our current receipt so I'm hoping to make another trip up soon. I wouldn't mind going to one of their themed nights either to be honest.

Ha Ha @Piony it's because my mum was always doing the shopping at a certain time, washing ,ironing and putting away. Where I would go shopping in the middle of the night and sit reading next to a tower of ironing. Horses for courses!

@Jimmyneutronsforehead maybe now ds has a place in a school which should be more suited to him he may settle into the routine and start to feel more self confident if his nervous system gets chance to settle down as much as it can. That's really sad if he's thinking things aren't there so he is very brave leaving them to go to school.

@Jimmyneutronsforehead Oh bless him re the no home comment! I can see how he thinks that way though. Also love the astronaut ambition. Dd announced yesterday that she wants to go to the London School of Economics 😖 I don’t know how she even knows it exists!

I am pretty sure dd has POTS - she has all the symptoms. I am dreading when the tilt test thing comes up as that won’t go down well. I am glad the GP took us seriously though and referred us to the hospital.

@Luddite26Thank you for the recommendation I will look her up 🙂

@ISaySteadyOn Good to hear about dd1 and DS getting in today 😃

Sorry I’m on my phone and struggling to read replies. Dd didn’t go in again today sadly. We will try again tomorrow. But in a surprising turn of events, DH took a call from the caseworker for DD’s EHCP and she said the panel have agreed to name the RP in her EHCP!! I am very very surprised. She also discussed all the other (many) things we feel need changing but I’m not 100% on what she said, but she is going to send an email. I know for a fact DD won’t access the RP at this point but it’s good to know we have it to fall back on. The Sendco said it’s very much lead by the child - some are in there a lot and others they don’t see for weeks then they will spend an afternoon in the sensory room. So to have the option for dd is reassuring anyway.

I'm so glad that the GP took you seriously, but it makes me feel a bit sad how in this day and age we feel like we still anticipate our GPs not taking us seriously for our health issues.

That is good news about the RP. It's better to have the option even if it isn't used often than to not have the option at all. @Leafywool

I'm surprised DS didn't have his usual day 2 wobble but with how tonight is going I'm not hopeful for tomorrow morning.

He came out of school today though with his teacher who was apologising before she'd even gotten out of the door because a little boy who was sat next to him had a sudden and unforseeable meltdown and scratched DSs head in a caught in the crossfire sort of way, not an intentional and directed behaviour. We got home and he said he didn't want to sit next to that boy anymore, and I said that's OK I can talk to your teacher, and you're allowed to say you'd like to sit somewhere else. He's since been to get sympathy from my nan and my uncle and been talking about how "that boy scratched me" and I've told both my nan and uncle just to make sympathetic noises and not get into further discussion because it's not like he's always been pure and innocent with no other casualties and I do think this is the sort of playground politics he needs to work out for himself, but I will still talk to his teacher and just ask if their 2:1 teacher can sit between the 2 if they get paired up together because I know from experience that unintentional and unexpected doesn't mean the risk can't be anticipated.

He's still ruminating on it though, and it's a fine line validating that it wasn't a nice thing to experience without reinforcing the idea in his head that he may anticipate it happening again so I hate to say I've just passed him his tablet so he can watch some brain rot and break the rumination cycle.

Oh no @Jimmyneutronsforehead. Rotten luck. Hopefully staff can anticipate that DS is going to be worrying. I hope you get him in. And I hope he is ok if he goes - or I just hope he's ok one way or another.💐🚀🤺

I hope all went well today @Jimmyneutronsforehead . We did ok. All three in though we were late due to public transport failures.

All went well this morning. A bit of hesitation, a few minutes late, but not a big deal as they were still unloading kids from the transport buses when we got there. I just asked the teacher to keep an eye on them both and she said no problem.

I'm absolutely shattered though now because we were up until at least 2am but he's in, I've been shopping, I've bought christmas cheese truckles that won't make it to next Wednesday and some tiramisu. A win is a win is a win.

Excellent news @ISaySteadyOn @Jimmyneutronsforehead - I am also now a ‘win is a win’ person. Dd was going to go in late in time for English class then missed that and wanted to go in for music, then ended up arriving half way through that class and then it was home time after her next one. So not there long but I am thrilled she’s at least made it in for the first time this week 🙏🏻

@Leafywool that's good that she's chosen something she's happy to engage with. Desire conquered fear.

Has she always had a passion for music or is this something that has just started this past month?