The Goose & Carrot Pub

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A thread for all who have DC with SN. The thread is deleted in 90 days and doesn’t show in active. The season is changing and the bar is well stocked.

@FrostySunRun would your DD consider boarding? My DD school is very small and has boarding (state boarding). They offer Production Design and Media Studies though I suspect those are not what your DD is looking for. They have been great so far for DD who has just been diagnosed with ADHD and seem very proactive.

@FrostySunRun just so you are aware, the phase transfer review meeting should take place in the autumn term of Y11 (or failing that at the very, very start of Jan). No matter what the LA says, you don’t have to make a decision in June.

That sounds interesting re garden room @Lougle though quite a task to move the roof. Hope you can find something that works.

I was just cleaning downstairs bathroom and found on the light in the cupboard a note written in DSs handwriting with 3 short lines written, one was just a number, one cant remember what it said but the first one was Where's my staff? There was also a pencil in there again. I think it was written recently as I have cleaned that room many times before though I don't normally clean the light. There was also a photo on the floor of his French relatives though may just have knocked that.

Thanks @drspouse but I don’t think she would board.
Yes thanks @scoopofmintchocchipicecream i have pushed back in an email before this meeting reminding them but they are still keen to discuss options..so I’m researching providers so as not to get railroaded by them. Plus DD2 has been asking as her friends still in school chat to her when gaming about things they have been up to at school. Hope you’re hanging in there on revision / exam support & your back has eased a bit. I’m nursing my back at the moment too as it went into acute spasm over the weekend so it’s been lots of icing and gentle stretching I’m hoping it settles down in a week or so.

Writing?!!!! That sounds almost too exciting to notice. @Tulipandmagnolia How wonderful.

Ds is very much himself again today. We ran out of milk for his breakfast and he came and told me, and I thanked him and said dad would go and get some more and he said “that’s ok mummio” gently like I was a doddery old fool. (So cute and so so my real boy). I went to sleep back to drop the EHC and get on with our lives and woke up thinking the opposite…I’m annoying myself now. Wednesday are busy here as ds needs accompanying to his activities but I think I’m going to find a private moment to call the one provider I think has legs and ask them what they think they could do for him. Then I’m going to write out each schedule and try to imagine him living them. I can do that bit as the “build a life” is easier for me. Then I just need to compare. I have to act fairly smartly as ds is going up on his meds on Thursday so there will be another month of awful. I’m so sorry to keep going on about it all. I don’t have any RL support on this one and RL itself throwing curveballs at us from all sides.

My eczema is flaring so I look and feel hideous and am reacting to everything. If anyone knows a really hypoallergenic deodorant I would be so grateful for a name. Smelling on top of everything else is just grim.

Zeoonlywayisup
I am sorry everything is so tough at the moment. I hope you can find a way forward for Ds.
Eczema is horrible. Have you tried Pitrock? It is a solid mineral block. I think it is not quite as effective as standard deodorant but I have found it non-reactive and it is better than nothing. (Saying that my eczema is fairly mild and Ds, who has severe eczema, won't wear deodorant at all so it might not be helpful for you.)

The ICB are going to assess DD1 today, as part of their annual review. We were invited to be there; but for the first time ever, both of us feel too ill to go to an appointment for her! DH wrote 3 emails and had to have a lie down - no way, either of us can do a seven hour drive there and back. Then, there’s the thought of possibly infecting the staff?

I am just hoping she is in a good mood, otherwise they could be in for a shock! She told us on Monday, her 1:1 was chewing bubble gum - so she threw her out of her bedroom. She was practically speechless with indignation.

@Zeonlywayisup you're not going on. This is vital stuff.

It always amazes me how they can be so expressive when it counts!

@Zeonlywayisup DS1 has multiple allergies and severe eczema, although his eczema has improved since he started biologics for his asthma. We use Earth Conscious pure unscented natural deodorant for him. Expensive but works for him.

When I was diagnosed with ADHD I was also diagnosed with cPTSD and added to the waiting list for EMDR. Today I had an initial appointment having reached the top of the waiting list. The service won’t offer EMDR because part of the trauma is ongoing. I wish they had said that at the beginning.

Good grief, they don't want to help you do they @scoopofmintchocchipicecream. Could you afford private? I have heard good things about EMDR.
DS had a tonic clonic at school today. In related news DH just went into the play room and found his morning meds under the TV. We hand them to him to take, checking he's got a drink, and then walk out because if we don't walk out he messes around e.g. throwing them in his mouth and "missing" or saying "wait wait wait" and then not taking them. When we do walk out he just takes them without fuss and we then go and get the "morning meds" dish from wherever he is sitting. Need to update the procedures - the last step was missed this morning it seems.
Interestingly we did not get any report of poor behaviour (though perhaps they were saving that till he got home which is when we usually get a note or a phone call).

@scoopofmintchocchipicecream god I hate the looooong wait for something you weren’t ever going to get. I’m sorry. How utterly frustrating.

@drspouse tonic clonic here today too. I watch ds take his unobtrusively by having built it into the routine. If it helps ours goes like this, meds and two small cups are kept on a tray in my bedroom. Alarm goes on my phone, I say “medicine time”. Ds collects cups and fills them with water and brings them and the meds to me. I give him his pills which he swallows with water, he gives me my water and I take my meds, I zip up the meds box and hand him my cup and the meds, he returns them to the tray. It means he doesn’t wander off with the pills. The job after means he wants his hands free to do it so gets on with it. Then he has breakfast in the am and bedtime(Youtube chillax) in the pm.

I’ve eaten 6 slices of toast an honey and wrecked my diet. Feel a bit less emotional though. Dd2 is laughing at me because she asked me what on earth I was doing consuming a mountain of toast, and I told her I was eating my emotions.

@scoopofmintchocchipicecream how very dare you have an ongoing trauma. Don't you know that you have to be able to put it in a box and tie a neat bow around it, with a little gift tag that says 'past'?

@Zeonlywayisup did you enjoy the toast and honey though? When I was younger I could easily eat a whole packet of fig rolls without really thinking about it. It was only a couple of years later that I realised those tiny bad boys were 65 calories each and I was eating 12 in one evening. So yummy though!

DD3 is in a right old state about next half-term's timetable. I emailed the HT yesterday and he's replied with really sensible explanations but DD3 is distraught. Her science teacher is 'so adhd and exhausting' but is the only science teacher, so if she doesn't have her, she can't do science. Unfortunately, she only works 2 days per week, and says that DD3 needs 3 sessions per week to cover the curriculum, so she would have to have a double lesson on one day. English is on there but her English teacher is leaving, there isn't a replacement yet, so she is timetabled to have a literacy 'TLP' 3 times per week, just in case she doesn't get the grade she wants for English Language. She says there's no way she's doing that. She's finding her therapy sessions really difficult because the therapist is asking what she thinks she needs, etc., and she says she has no idea because she just doesn't want to feel broken.

Aside from all this, the science teacher has a real dislike of bugs/animals/being outside, it seems, and when DD3 tried to chat to her about the difficulties of ridding snails and slugs from the planters, the science teacher said 'it's fine if you tread on them.' Then DD3 found a dead mouse, so dug it a grave, and the teacher dropped the mouse into it from a height, which DD3 considered disrespectful to the mouse. It's not a great start!!

I've spent all day trying to identify provision for DD2. A couple of years ago she visited a specialist college about an hour away from us. They do the BTEC levels 1-3 in animal care, but she's not sure she can cope with an hour's drive each way each day. She had her ADHD titration appointment today, so I guess that might change things a little.

I could just eat a dozen fig rolls now. DD has been stealing money again, work is challenging to put it mildly and I was told by person A to prioritise big job X as big job Y could wait and now person B is asking if we can meet to go over big job Y as "the deadline is approaching" but I have barely started it and it's a really boring task that I can't bear to do for more than half an hour at a time.
Plus the usual getting DS to do top up learning, other fights with DD, and the cat has fleas. DH could handle quite a bit of this but doesn't and I'm trying not to lose it with him as well.

@Zeonlywayisup @drspouse sorry DSs have had more seizures. I hope you can both get better seizure control soon.

@Zeonlywayisup I hope you enjoyed your toast and honey. Very grown of DS to get his medication for you.

@Lougle is that the college that is part of the light in the sky group that a previous Pub regular’s DC went to? If so, I doubt DD2 would cope with the college.

It is so frustrating and I don’t understand why. EMDR can still be used, and the psychiatrist knew at the point of referral there is an ongoing element that isn’t going to go away. Why accept the referral in the first place if that is their policy? We could afford for me to have EMDR privately. I thought about it when I was added to the waiting list, then decided to wait.

scoopofmintchocchipicecream that is indeed very frustrating. And worse if they haven't given you a rationale. Will you go private now?

lougle I don't know what to say about your struggles to find good (or any settings) for your girls.
However a science teacher with a dislike of bugs,animals and being outside is rather odd particularly in that kind of setting. I don't know why therapists think that asking someone who is really struggling what they think they need is at all helpful. DD's answer was a magic wand!

@scoopofmintchocchipicecream don’t waste a single nanosecond more on it. They are being totally unreasonable. Pay to get what you need if you can and move forward.

@drspouse sounds like you need a trail of fig rolls so you can scoff one after every 30mins of B. Dh sounds irritating but you can do it all. It will just be a lot more work than one person should have to shoulder. Honk honk

I didn’t get to phone possible provision. I should have done it before the review In hindsight. I have too many plates this month and definitely no stamina. In between seizures ds is doing better and a level of happiness is returning. I haven’t told him he’s not going back yet though. I will wait for half term I think because then all his clubs stop and he will have time to regroup before people ask him if he’s at college (which they do endlessly).

@NoHaudinMaWheest I agree. People are forever asking me for solutions particularly when I’ve just said “I don’t know what to do”. Baffling and infuriating.

Eat 24!!

Sorry about the seizures @Zeonlywayisup and @drspouse

Sorry about the lack of mental health support @scoopofmintchocchipicecream If you can afford it private are generally better as NHS have a habit of cutting off after 6 sessions or so even if you get through to the list.

Yes the note was interesting. Since hospital DS really struggled once trying to sign his name on my Mother's Day card in 2023 and managed half. Then no writing at all apart from we found two words written in the shed mid 2025, one the name of a flower and one looked like a password and both in perfect handwriting but single words. It told me DS loved the garden. Then nothing again until last night and this was a yellow post-it with 3 short lines on, think 3 words, 2 words, a number. Hidden in a light. Perfect handwriting. Second and third lines meant nothing but first line of Where's my staff? was interesting. I suspect this note was written recently and hidden so we couldn't see DS could write. Staff I wonder if it refers to the cleaner (timing adds up) or us. The cleaner would also add up as she has been cleaning that room but not that cupboard but since she started I have been in there cleaning a lot less so he may have thought note would not be discovered.

It was interesting as it suggests he now can write a little at least but wants to hide the fact he can write. It suggests he likes the cleaner and is OK with accepting help as they are "staff" - rude but may give us a route in. It also adds weight to DDs theory that DS is quite happy with his life and wants to hide that he can do things so it doesn't change and he doesn't want to rejoin the world, go to school etc. I have no idea what DSs capabilities are now but don't think he's suitable for school / work still as not talking and risk of him growling or lashing out. He doesn't do with us but the moment others enter its a risk. The photo of his French family on the floor was interesting too but maybe an accident - he has consistently been no to visiting them but maybe he's thinking about it. They do phone and ask about him a lot and nobody else does. Though could well be just knocked random photo on floor.

@scoopofmintchocchipicecream I had to google your reference but yes....thinking about it I think it may have been. I'm not worried about discretion in this situation - it's Aurora Boveridge. It's 1hr 10 minutes away, so too far anyway, and when we visted a couple of years ago it was a few farm animals, snakes, chickens and guinea pigs, so not ideal. I'm really scraping the barrel, though.

Regarding EMDR, I do understand, tbh, why they don't want to use it for a current trauma. I think the theory of EMDR is that traumatic experiences get 'stuck' in the here and now, and that the therapy helps to correctly file it as a 'bad thing that happened that isn't a threat now'. If the thing that you're trying to deal with is a current trauma, it can't move into the 'past' folder because it is still a current threat. However, it's supremely unhelpful to give you the hope of a treatment and then finally get to the point of treatment and say 'Oh...it's still happening. Nuh Uh!'

@NoHaudinMaWheest that's how DD3 feels. The psychiatrist she saw privately for EMDR wanted her to identify the 'I am' feelings associated with her trauma - 'I am incapable of identifying the I am feelings' would have been the closest she could get. She eventually said 'Well I feel sorry for the me that went through that...' This psychologist, apparently, says 'I wonder what you'd like to get out of these sessions....' and 'I wonder what we can do that will make these sessions useful for you...' and DD3 interprets it as a demand for her to have answers and she really doesn't have any.

I think she's panicking that she'll never get 'well enough' to cope with a college environment, and that she's going to end up with so few qualifications that she'll have to start college at a really low level, which will frustrate her beyond belief. The trouble is that her setting went from 10, to 15, to 28 students over the course of 2 years. I don't think they have capacity to be as bespoke as they used to be. For example, in the past, the RSHE teacher taught a student GCSE Sociology. There are 20 lessons per week, and I presume that with 10 students, she had some slack in the schedule. Now, she doesn't have capacity to teach DD3 because she has too many students who have a statutory requirement to learn RSHE.

DD2 can't cope with a full time timetable and they've been great at reducing her timetable, picking her up, dropping her off, reducing demand by only doing things she likes, etc. DD3 can't cope but refuses to do anything other than 100% attendance, so she ends up curled in a ball on the floor in a classroom, or having to beg not to do science because they've scheduled Maths, Science, and English on the same day and she's working so hard to please her maths and English teachers that she doesn't have anything left for Science.

It's not helped by the fact that they provide lunches, but the cooker doesn't work brilliantly, and the staff who do the cooking don't cook brilliantly, and DD3 is a fussy vegetarian. So she often doesn't eat what's on offer, but it's too much pressure to bring a lunch from home, and she doesn't like attention when she's eating, so she's running on empty a lot.

Add to that the fact that DD2 will be gone in September, and the girls rely on each other a lot when things go wrong...

It's not fun being their Mum right now!

@scoopofmintchocchipicecream EMDR became tricky for me as there were too many individual things to deal with and it was too traumatic for me. I couldn’t function with the here and now because of the enormous process of EMDR. It’s hard work but did chip away at certain things. Gutted for you that it was decided that you are not suitable. Giving it a try privately, what’s the worst that can happen, CPTSD is a heavy load.

@Zeonlywayisup chat away! Big decisions need a lot of airing and we have got you honk honk

@Tulipandmagnolia the writing is an exciting development. Project tiny house feels like momentum, glad you went for it and plants can be moved.

@FrostySunRun hope your back is better soon. College is very different to school, I know a few EHE girls similar profile that found it good as you are not in all day every day more autonomy, no uniform etc and they transitioned well. Also no backlash if you can’t make it in so I can see why you are considering it.

Grinding through the final dregs of assignments. Word count is off so a chunk is missing, but there is plenty in there to pass. Submit the assignment! Just do it. The pub gin vat and snorkels are needed.

New sofas arrived today. Terrible timing, I’m not sure who is more put out, DD or Dcat. Even worse they are not as comfy or sturdy as the 25 year old ones that are stacked up for removal.

@Lougle boo to people that are mean or indifferent to animals.

I’m feeling decidedly indifferent to one of my cats. She’s a pest and keeps going to sleep in my shopping basket. Now it’s all cat hairy. I spoke to her about it but she just purred. Blasted freeloader she hasn’t even been ratting for weeks.

Freeloader AND taking a basket holiday. Dcat is asleep on the upturned old sofas.