Just Like Any Other Boy

Jo Adamson-Parker - 18 Sep 19

I don’t want to tempt fate and it feels like saying this will bring it crashing down around me but so far we’re having a good week! Actually we’re having a really good week. There, I’ve done it, watch this space now!

So Monday evening Bubba was at school camp which meant him sleeping there. People have been really shocked when I’ve said that in the six and half years of him being with us, Monday was the first night we’d had without him

Six and a half years! That’s a long time without a night off isn’t it? But not every parent has the luxury of Grandparents around the corner. The ‘Mother-in-Law’ lives eight hours away so the option of the boys going to hers for the evening whilst me and ‘The Wife’ skip out for the evening just isn’t there.

And besides, with his Attachment Disorder, issues around loss and needing to feel safe not to mention everything else going on with him I thought ‘I have to keep him close, I have to show that he has his place with us and we’re not going anywhere’. I think I thought I had to be present ALL the time and actually it turns out that I don’t.

Monday evening, I won’t lie, was lovely. I worked a couple of hours but ‘The Wife’ and Squeak had a very nice, chilled, calm bedtime. He loves his brother but I don’t think he actually realised he wasn’t at home as he took full advantage of having monopoly over his pre-bed tv schedule. No whooping, no shouting, just a calm bedtime.

Next morning there was no naked kitchen dance, no whooping, no screaming, no negotiations over not eating breakfast, no need to stop and search pockets before leaving. There was no arguing, pushing or shoving leaving the house, no moaning or whining.  There was no drama. It was all very calm. Squeak was very chilled and happy and Mummy has to be said was slightly delirious at it all.

I’m just not used to it. I’ve had three years of stressful school runs, some downright awful. The peace I felt was incredible, odd but liberating and just what I needed really.  All yesterday I had a sense of just feeling free so I might be forgiven when I say my heart sank a little come pick up time. I really didn’t want to collect him and go back to how things were. But I thought ‘no, let’s be positive, let’s give him something sunny and happy to feed off’. You never know, it might work.

Bell went and instead of the usual ‘last one out of school because he’s been fannying around to the last minute’, he was out first, almost toppling over under the weight of the huge rucksack on his back. It was honestly just one night they went for! He looked tired, slightly grubby but for once came straight to me, hugged me ‘Mummy? Can we go home?’

This was different!! It might not sound like much but when every pickup I have him canvas every other parent to see who’s going to the park before he then tries to force me into going and is aggressive and physical if I don’t, this was massive! Especially when it was followed by ‘I missed you’.  And it just kept coming. The soft edged Bubba, the one that’s gentle and thoughtful and doesn’t have the sharp bristly edges his early years trauma have left.

It sounds silly but I looked at him, tired and grubby and he looked more grown up. It felt like he’d left me Monday morning sullen, grumpy and angry and come back to me Tuesday, I don’t know, content, mature. He even held his brothers hand to the bus stop! Who was this boy? Once I saw him again I thought ‘I have missed you, I’ve missed the potential you that I knows inside there somewhere’.

Once home, bathed and fed, I was desperate for information, to share his experiences but I thought ‘I’ll let him come to me, do it in his own time’ and it didn’t take long before he’d climbed onto my knee, and curled up (well as much as a baby giraffe can curl up, his legs are so long!)

Bubba sitting with me, cuddling with me, wanting my arms around him hasn’t happened for such a long time. I made sure I made the most of it, I gave him what he needed, what I think we both needed.

So I don’t know, I’ve been so focussed on ‘getting it right’, on understanding, on being therapeutic, on reacting the ‘right’ way, on being there. Of being so aware that he’s different and needs support. I’m constantly thinking of his AD, Autism, sensory issues, challenges. I’m hypervigilant for possible incidents or issues and pre-empting behaviour and reactions. I’ve been so aware of it all when actually sometimes he needs to just be an eight-year-old boy.

Turns out, in many respects he is just that –  he slept in his clothes, didn’t change his underwear, I don’t think his wash bag was even opened and he was obviously starving when he got home.

He is different and I celebrate everything that makes him ‘Bubba’ but I don’t want to make him feel different. I want him to be a boy, have friends and create memories he can laugh about in the playground. I was worried how he’d cope in a tent with six other boys. Would there be bullying, would he misread people, would he get upset? I was worried about everything when actually sometimes we need to just take a moment and think ‘somethings they just have to go through for themselves’.

We can’t be there all the time for them. I can’t always be there and as he’s growing I know that all the more. One day he’ll be a grown man and he’ll still have the trauma, the Autism won’t have gone away but actually, today, something tells me he’ll be ok.

This morning I got a kiss before he left me and ‘is it Mummy/Bubba time later?’ (that hallowed time when Squeak is at After school club it’s just me and him). It’s nice to have him back.

I was adamant he wasn’t going to the camp, but I had a wise person tell me that he needed to do this, he’d enjoy it and it’d be good for him. I didn’t believe her. I think it’s been good for both of us. It might just have been the thing that saved us. So ‘Thank you wise person, I hope you’re reading this as you support my family more than you can appreciate’.

Jo Adamson-Parker

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