When Does it Change?

Jo Adamson-Parker - 19 May 19

I feel like we’re stuck in ground-hog day at the moment. Each day brings an event we should be able to use as a learning moment but then nothing sinks in, nothing changes.

Take last Thursday as a prime example. Me and ‘The Wife’ had our therapy session for Bubba in the morning. We’ve had a tough few weeks with him. It’s drained me and every time I’ve started to write, I didn’t want to revisit what we’d gone through, but we came back surprisingly positive and energised. We were full of ideas and resolutions to do better, to be better. Cos you do that don’t you? You could be giving them the earth but still you don’t think it’s enough. You feel like the bad parent even when deep down you know that you’re not.

So in I trotted to after school club with a lightness and an excitement I’d not had for a while. I was ready for a fresh start and looking forward to seeing my boy. Things were going to be different. Early life trauma had no chance against us now!

Bubba always plays up when we collect him. Transitions are hard and he never wants to leave so we usually wait it until he’s the last child there, it’s just so much easier. That day I was early but still when the TA said, ‘I’ve got something for you’, alarm bells didn’t sound. I didn’t immediately put my guard up and prepare for what was to come.

That came when I saw what she had for me, what had been taken from him at school that day – jewellery that my parents, who are no longer with us, had bought me, jewellery that was also now broken. It wasn’t worth anything but it was the memories it held that meant I felt a bit violated. I felt a little betrayed by the last person I thought I would be betrayed by but then he had no concept of what he’d done.

I didn’t feel angry, I still don’t. I just have a hollow sadness. I’m sad that my little boy is so traumatised from his early life that it feels like nothing touches him. Even though he came into my bedroom whilst I was asleep and took it, even though he then hid it from me to get it out of the house so he knew he was doing something wrong, even considering all that, I still look to understand – ‘why?’

We’ve talked about it and he’s had a punishment but I don’t think its been a learning moment for him. For me maybe but not for him. I confiscated his toys so he had to earn them back. I wanted to connect with him, show him how it feels to lose something you care about but he’s not bothered, he’s forgotten about them already.

I know some might read this and think he’s ‘bad’, he’s acting up but there’s genuinely no malice in his actions. He just doesn’t get that somethings aren’t acceptable. He says he knows he made me sad but I don’t think he connects the emotions and the consequences to his actions.  Is that a combination of his early life trauma and his Autism? Can we ever build his neural pathways so that one day he thinks before he acts?

In this respect, I do need to do better. I need to help him, I need to connect with him and show him how we behave, how we respect others and it feels like everyday I’m revisiting the same thing hoping one day he’ll feel it.

Jo Adamson-Parker

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