Forty four - the Never Ending nature of grief

Not quite sure how to start this one, so am just letting my fingers type until I find a way.

The other day I was hit with the stark reality that grief never really lets you go.  Of course, having been part of a support group for parents who have a surviving twin, I have met people who are early in their grief journey and I have been able to support them as they travel the very difficult and unique road of having had one of their multiples die.  I have managed, as the years have gone on, to shed some light on the future for these (in particular) mums, to let them see that, as the old saying goes "You never get over it, but you DO get through it".

Last year the funeral service provider that I work for held an art show, with the theme being 'Grief'.  People were invited to submit pieces of work that they felt represented their grief journey.  My Cherub had drawn a picture of a rainbow some months before, as a representation of Heaven, in his words "Where Scott is".  The rainbow, he said, was just for Scott, his 'something special' in Heaven.

I decided to write a little poem about the story behind the rainbow picture, and submit the picture and the poem for the art show.  It was a very brave thing for me to do really, to publically display something about the death of one of my babies.

With the art show over, the picture was returned to me, complete with poem attached behind the glass in the frame, and I have kept it by my desk at work ever since.  It has been a nice little thing for me to have there, in a way it has comforted me - each time I reach to my drawer, or drop a piece of paper that I need to pick up from the floor, I see the picture, and it symbolises my Cherub's twin-ship, and makes me remember that for just that moment when Cherub voiced why he was drawing a rainbow, my two boys were linked in a 'twin' way.  In the 'twin' way that I and my Cherub will never get to experience for real.  (I've just done the best job I can at explaining how I feel, it's kind of a tricky one actually)

The picture has been there for months, giving my soul just that little bit of peace, and I have liked it that way.  I have not felt the need to put the picture on display anywhere, that's been done at the art show, now it is just mine, for me, and nobody else.

This week a work colleague decided out of the kindness of her heart to take the picture and put it on display at work, find somewhere to hang it on the wall so that everyone could see it.

Her intentions were good - and this blog post is not about her being 'inconsiderate' of my feelings or anything.  It is about my reaction to an event, and how I have come to realise that although I may be 'through' my grief, perhaps I'm not quite 'through' it yet.  Certainly not 'over it'.

Despite my protestations (which I admit were not overly loud, and not direct to the point - because those of us who know will always tell you that the death of a baby is so taboo that we unconsciously try to 'protect' those who may inadvertently say or do the 'wrong' thing), the picture was taken from what I had deep down started to perceive as some kind of 'sacred spot'. It was fussed over, carried around the room to find a suitable hanging position, and then finally placed on my desk, facing the office door for all to see.  My colleague's intention again I reiterate, was to put the picture on display because she thought that it looked good and was worth displaying.

When I looked up from where I was and saw it there however, something was missing - my poem.  Again, from a good place, my colleague had decided that the poem having been typed up on a simple piece of paper and stuck behind the glass was not aesthetically pleasing, and had simply taken it off.

I cannot begin to explain how I felt.  I really can't.  All I can say is that in some kind of flash of emotion I felt like my boys were being separated again.  Of course this is only a figurative description, an illustration of how severely I reacted, but I guess that because I had started to see the picture and the poem as representing so much more to me than 'just a picture', I was literally devastated to see it disfigured in such a way.

I am sure that my colleague was quite shocked when I insisted that I be given the poem back, she offered (kindly) to re-type it for me in a nicer font so that it looked better, but for me that was not acceptable.  I wanted my poem on my Cherub's picture, the picture he had drawn as a way of working through whatever feelings he had about the brother that he spent nine months with in the womb but never got to meet after they were born.  Nobody else had a place in this, no matter their good intentions.

I finally ended up speaking quite sternly, ('standing up for myself and my grief' is a term I've read before) and said "I want MY one back!", which I received and was again devastated to find that it was a little torn and crumpled.

Through trying to help, my colleague had unintentionally caused me to feel the feelings of grief and 'possessiveness'  that I haven't felt for a long time.  Not self pity, not despair, nor jealousy nor hatred. No feelings of 'Of course YOU wouldn't understand'.   Just a feeling that my 'special thing' had been tainted and my grief had surfaced.  Things like the picture become so very important - in fact it was only when this all happened that I truly realised how much it meant to me, and what I feel I have now 'lost' - again.

To some this may seem like an over reaction.  Others will know exactly what I am trying to say.

The point is, I learned from this experience that I will never be 'over it', that the nature of grief is never ending, and that it will never leave you.  We often talk about 'finding a place' for our grief.  Sometimes things happen, and even the 'special place' isn't strong enough to hold it.

Forty Three - Gonski from the perspective of a parent of a child with Autism

Recent events in my life regarding my autistic son’s inability to attract funding to remain at his specialist Autism school have led me to investigate the Gonski report. Having been told of my son’s predicament, I have now set up a lobby group to lobby the Victorian government to change the criteria that needs to be satisfied in order to attract educational support funding if you are a child on the Autism Spectrum.

Under the current Program for Students with a Disability 2013, an autistic child must have a severe language deficit in order to attract additional funding, which means that high functioning autistic students like my son are deprived of the help they so desperately need in the classroom (or in his case, they are placed at risk of losing their place at an Autism specialist school).

As part of the process I have recently downloaded all 319 pages of the Gonski report and read most of it. I skipped the parts on capital expenditure, but read the rest and highlighted the parts I felt were important to our cause.

I had already joined the ‘I Give A Gonski’ cause, adding my name and my reason for joining to the website that was set up. I already knew the basic nature of the report, as most people who have an interest but haven’t read the full thing probably do: more funding for our schools to help our disadvantaged students achieve their full potential.

But, as I have trawled through the document, my dismay at the current state of our education system has increased, particularly in relation to kids with a disability, and even further in relation to kids in a specialist setting (like my own son). Gonski has revealed a number of problems and my hope is that the recommendations are taken on board by the Government and put into effect. Having seen the Government’s initial response to the report, however, I hold little hope that this will be the case, no matter how many people in this country ‘Give A Gonski’. More on that later.

There are really four ‘overall’ suggestions by the panel.

1) There should be more funding available to schools whose student population is considered disadvantaged, with five factors covering the definition – socio-economic status, Indigeneity, English language proficiency, disability and remoteness.
2) The way that funding is provided needs to be changed – Federal government to provide the greater level of funding for Government schools, and state/territory governments to provide the greater level of funding for non-government schools (currently it is the other way around, with non-government schools being predominantly funded by the Federal Government, and state/territory governments having to fund the bigger public system).
3) A National Schools Resourcing Body should be established that would determine the resource requirements of schools in Australia based on statistical information.
4) Funding to be allocated on a ‘per student’ level, with a base level for each student, and then loadings according to the students level of disadvantage.

These are all good recommendations as far as I am concerned, which I believe would indeed help our young Australians achieve to a higher level. It makes sense when you read it.

When it comes to the 'findings' however, I wasn't quite as excited. The 'findings' are the panel's view on the current situation, the way the system is at the moment. This frightened me.


Why?


Because when it comes to disability resourcing and funding, the panel found that there really isn't enough known about students with disabilities and their resource requirements. When it comes to specialist setting, the report devoted two....that's right, two...paragraphs to this sector, saying that immediate work needed to be done to obtain relevant data regarding the requirements of this sector because nobody seems to know what these kids need.


WTF????? How can the government (federal AND state) not know the requirements of their own charges in relation to their educational needs? WTF??? WTF??? I cannot believe this!!!


So, I decided to look into whether any of the main recommendations had been put into place yet.

Recommendation 35: The establishment of the National Schools Resourcing Body by the middle of this year, so that it could have a good 18 months of research, and a new funding model could be implemented at the start of 2014. The Government seems to have done something about this, with the establishment in March of the Ministerial Schools Funding Reference Group - perhaps not as quickly as Gonski had recommended, but it has been started nevertheless. And there is scope for Australians to add their voice (see link below) to the process.

You can see a table of what has already been done in response to the Gonski review here. I was going to go into it recommendation by recommendation, but this gives a good overview really.

It seems that there is some work being done to at least find out what resources are required by children with disability, and to work on an appropriate loading.

You can contribute to the discussion here so please do so if you have an interest in this area.

It looks like things are starting to move, albeit slowly. Of course Gonski recommends that things got started quicker than they have, but these things never work like that. I'm still not hopeful on the recommendation that the federal government funds public schools and the states/territories fund non-government schools. I read somewhere (I think it was in the report actually) that the current funding arrangement has been part of the constitution since forever, and something like that is hard and complicated to change.

Which leads me back to Change The Criteria. One of the reasons I started looking into Gonski in more detail was to see whether the recommendations meant that we would need to lobby the federal government harder than we are. I'll support Gonski until the cows come home, but none of the findings of the current situation lead me to believe that lobbying the federal government on the Criteria for ASD funding in Victoria is going to make much difference, because they don't really have anything much to do with funding the government schools at the moment. Not sure where it sits regarding disability funding in the non-government sector, but I suspect that these dollars also come from State because I'm told that ASD kids in non-government schools have to meet the same stupid criteria.

So, unfortunately for the Victorian State Government, whatever colour they may be, we will keep fighting until the Criteria is changed.

Talk later

Janeane

Forty Two - The Guilt We Feel

Seems that today is filled with 'guilt' for me. I use the quotation marks as an indication that on an intellectual basis I know that I don't really have anything to feel 'guilty' about, but I cannot help but feel incredibly guilty today.

Any parent will tell you about 'parent guilt' - the guilt that comes with putting work first for example, and missing that school assembly where your child unexpectedly (or God forbid expectedly) receives an award. Weighing up the pros and cons and deciding whether you can forgo that meeting so that you child feels like you actually care about their achievement. Weighing up whether getting to work a couple of hours late is worth ensuring that your child looks out into the assembly crowd and sees your smiling face.

Or the guilt that comes with putting off that kick-to-kick of the footy in the backyard because the toilet needs cleaning, the washing needs folding, there are bills to pay.

My main 'Mother Guilt' comes from the fact that I send my Cherub to school often at times where he could probably stay at home due to being sick. Some might say that this is not a bad thing, but usually when I make this decision, I do feel kind of mean that I've put my own needs of working (read: getting a break from the house and getting some adult conversation) over the fact that Cherub needs a rest. Particularly since Cherub has to be on the school bus at 7:30 in the morning, where he sits for an hour and a half before getting to school, and then has to do the same thing on the way home. I do spend those days worrying about how he is going, did I make the right decision, and will this come back to bite me on the backside later in the week when he gets sicker and simply cannot go to school?

Which is when my other 'guilt' comes in - 'Work Guilt'. Am I letting my work colleagues down by not being at work? Could my Cherub actually make it just one more day, so that I can commit that one more day to work? Am I being over-reactive? Perhaps? Perhaps not?

I make these decisions all the time (so it seems), and this week is one of them. Cherub has been throwing up each night since Saturday, coughing until he spews (sorry, but that's the easiest way to describe it). I've seen this before - last year in fact, when he was diagnosed with Whooping Cough.

Yesterday we headed off to the doctor's to discuss this issue, where I was routinely told that 'No, you can't get it again. It's not impossible, but it's highly improbable'.

'But can it lay dormant?', I asked, 'Not go completely away because I'm telling you Doc, this is exactly what I saw last year.' I note here the following: Cherub was immunised against Whooping Cough as a baby, and still got it last year. Cherub was immunised against Meningicoccal as a baby, and still got it in '07. Instinct is telling me that maybe my child might just have whooping cough again, based on his 'immunity' history, but still, I'm not the doctor.

A quick pat on the shoulder (metaphorically speaking) and a 'There there' and we were out the door, with no testing done and me shouldering the mother guilt of not pushing things further. Because, quite frankly, my instincts are telling me that this is not just a 'croupy virusy thing' like I was told it was.

But, having been told that this simply couldn't be whooping cough again, I decided that no matter what happened last night, Cherub would be off to school, because the 'work guilt' was already starting to settle in - I'd kept him home for what I was basically told was 'no good reason'.

Of course, last night, as Cherub settled down for bed, it all happened again. And so my mother guilt and my work guilt went into overdrive. Mother Guilt showed herself by chastising me for not pushing the point further at the Docs, however she did give me the impetus to video what was happening so that next time (and I'm sure there will be one, either tomorrow or the next day), I can show them what is happening.

Work guilt, however, came up trumps, and I said to myself 'No, this will be OK, he can go to school tomorrow, you need to get back to work, you cannot let the team down'.

Until the second time he had a go, when Mother guilt tapped me on the shoulder and said "You're kidding, aren't you? You'd send Cherub to school after this effort just so that you can save face at work and not look like you're letting the team down? Gimme a break"

At about two o'clock this morning, Work Guilt woke me up and said 'He'll be fine, just send him along', coincidentally at this time Cherub was having one of two successive (non chucky) coughing fits in bed. Work Guilt forced me to just wait it out and not go running in to Cherubs room to check....if he didn't throw up, he would be fine for school. He didn't throw up, nor did he throw up the next time, but the coughing fits lasted for nearly 45 minutes each, so Mother Guilt showed her face again and said "You can't send him to school tomorrow, he's just exhausted, and besides, look at yourself now, you've had two nights of shocking sleep and quite frankly, I doubt that you'll be able to string two words together tomorrow".

And so, Work Guilt, Mother Guilt, and Self-Preservation were now in a standoff, similar to the ending of the movie 'Reservoir Dogs'.

Mother Guilt has won, Cherub is home again today, but Work Guilt is shaking his head quietly in the corner. Self preservation knows that she doesn't stand a chance either way - it was a choice of exhaustion here at home, or exhaustion at work....but I get through that sort of thing all the time, like most parents (especially single ones), so poor old Self Preservation never really gets a look in anyway!

See you on the other side

Janeane

Forty - Funding? Don't talk to ME about funding!

On Friday I received a call from my Cherub's school, telling me that he had passed a language assessment with flying colours (a score of 93, whatever that means, 93rd percentile or 93/100 or whatever).  How good is that?  Awesome, I would say.

Unfortunately, in our situation, this rate of success is actually a 'failure', as it means that he no longer qualifies for autism specific funding, and his position at his specialist school is technically under threat.

You see, the criteria for autism specific funding (or more specifically Autism Spectrum Disorder funding) now involves THREE criteria, and you have to meet ALL THREE to qualify for funding.  You need to have a diagnosis of autism (which he has), you need to score less than 70 on the language test (which he didn't) and you need a psych assessment to say that you have problems (which he didn't even undertake, because once you don't meet one criteria, there's no point moving through the process).

My Cherub has attended his autism specialist school for the past seven years, because....der....he is autistic.  Granted, he is high functioning, but believe you me, the fact that he has good language skills has made very little difference to his emotional and social levels, which are very much behind his peers.  Nor has it made a difference to the fact that he still, at nearly twelve years old, hangs on to a poop for as long as possible because he has such sensory issues that he hates the sensation of doing a poop and won't until he really really has to.  It doesn't make a difference to his temper tantrums, or his inability to process emotions (and understand his own).  It doesn't stop him from not liking to have to wait for something (in fact, as you have seen in previous posts, his high level of language development actually makes this stiatuion worse because he can verbalise how he's feeling, but in totally inappropriate ways!).  His writing skills are still that of a prep, possibly if I am gracious we may now be reaching a grade one level.  He gets his letters around the wrong way, he is only just beginning to be able to write his letters the same size, and the words still have capitals all the way through because these are easier for him to form.

And the myriad of other issues he has - dislike of noise, dislike of crowds, crippling fear of the unknown, crippling anxiety, a tendency towards depression etc etc etc.  Those of you who know him will know what I mean.

Do not tell me that he doesn't qualify for autism funding.  Please, do not tell me this.

But, guess what?  He doesn't.  I have now read the document produced by the DEECD which states the different funding criteria and he doesn't meet all three, so he doesn't qualify under the autism criteria.

So, I get the phone call from the school to assure me not to worry, they have a strategy that they have had to use in the past to enable students to stay at the school and not lose their place.  THEY realise he cannot leave the school, but of course he needs the funding for his place.

So, from now on, my child is going to be funded because of his Severe Behavioural Challenges.

Are you F#$%^&g kidding me?

I agree, Cherub does have Severe Behavioural Challenges, but....again I say 'Der'...he's autistic, this is where they come from.  Why can't they have a level of funding for high functioning autistic kids?  Better still, why can't they just acknowledge that you don't get 'better' or 'cured', and if you've been deemed to be best served in a specialist setting, then quite frankly, by the time you get to year 7 and haven't been moved into mainstream, well, maybe this is because you're not quite up to it because your autism gets in the way, and so you get funding to be able to stay there and get the education that you deserve and can achieve to your best ability.

But now, for the rest of his school life, he will only receive funding because, on paper, he has Severe Behavioural Challenges.  My kind hearted good little boy, who doesn't hurt animals, doesn't draw on walls, doesn't wag school, but does fly off the handle when he gets confused and frightened, will from now on be pegged into that small but dreadfully nasty hole.

I understand that this is not the school's fault - in fact I am grateful that they know of another way to obtain funding for my Cherub.  Otherwise, he would literally be kicked out of his safe environment and thrown into mainstream, where he STILL wouldn't meet the criteria and wouldn't be given any funding for any support.

This is ridiculous.  He has his diagnosis, he has attended the specialist setting for all of his school life, and it is blatantly obvious to all and sundry that he would never EVER cope in a mainstream setting.  If I wasn't so angry over this, I would be spending my days crying and wondering how Cherub is ever going to get through life when even his autism is no longer acknowledged as 'real' in terms of funding and educational support as he gets older.  This is utter bullshit.

I am, of course, thinking on an intellectual level that funding is funding, and at least he is going to be able to stay at his current school.  This is the most important thing.  But I am soooooo crapped off that the only way he can get that funding is to, at least on paper, imply that the funding is needed because he is a challenging student because of his behaviour, ignoring the medical reason for that.

I will be writing a letter to the Minister for Education.  But for now I ask that you share this post with everyone you know so that they are aware of this injustice for kids on the ASD spectrum and their families.

Forty one - Tapping my little heart out

With so much going on in my life at the moment (see previous post), one would think that life was pretty crappy for me at this time. But it's not really, we're going over a bit of a hurdle, we'll get there eventually, and in the meantime I have my latest joy to keep me happy.

Five weeks ago I started attending tap dance classes - and I LOVE it!

Growing up, my very closest friend was a dancing queen; she attended troup lessons on Saturdays, private lessons (ballet, jazz and tap) during the week, undertook exams and of course 'did the concert'. Being relatively inseparable on weekends (we attended different high schools and alternated at each other's houses each alternate weekend), I used to watch her and her dancing friends as they strutted their stuff on a Saturday morning, sometimes for several hours at a time, in the old church hall up the road.

I became a part of that social group - her friends became 'our' friends, one in particular, the others always familiar faces at her birthday parties and the odd trip to the city as we moved into our teens. But I was never a 'dancer'; though I craved to be one I just couldn't bring myself to ask my parents if I could take part, and by the time I was 16 or 17, that part of life had passed me by, because as a girl of 16 or 17, the thought of taking beginners dancing lessons is a bit humiliating - if you hadn't done it by then, you pretty much had missed the boat.

Why I couldn't voice my desire is something that still remains a mystery to me, but I suspect that my excruciating level of shyness had something to do with it, my paranoia about embarrassing myself or not being 'good' at the whole dancing thing, or the fact that at home I was often praised as a 'smart' girl who loved books and classical piano (which, incidentally I WAS pretty good at!). Also, being on the....ahem....chunky side for most of my life, getting into a leotard amongst all those skinny girls wasn't something that I relished the thought of.

So, it was destiny that I was to forgo the chance to pursue my little fantasy of being the next Ginger Rogers.

But, five weeks ago I decided to finally follow this little dream of mine, which had never really subsided, and in fact was exaccerbated when another friend of mine took up tap dancing as an adult a few years ago.

Having donned the shoes and attended the classes, I have not looked back. It is just such a wonderful feeling to be finally doing that one thing that I have almost literally always wanted to do. For that one hour each week I am in another world, my problems fade away as I focus on getting the steps and the beat right. I practise most nights, in my loungeroom, with the CD that the dancing teacher provided (full of very old-school tap dancing music, titled 'Music Maestro Please' - you get the picture) playing at the highest volume level. Harry the cat HATES it when I practise, and actually attacks my legs - one night he sunk his teeth in and drew blood - but I have learned (and so has he) that a quick squirt of water from a water bottle sends him running, and leaves me able to focus on getting the tap tap tap correct.

I always thought that having made the decision to take adult tap dance classes I would somehow feel a sense of regret that I didn't speak up when I was younger, that I would lament the fact that I didn't do this when I was a girl. I was wrong.

Doing something like this at middle age has made the experience all the more enjoyable and precious.

Concert tickets anyone?

Talk later

Janeane
xx

Thirty Nine - Just checking in

Well, seeing as it's been so long since I've put fingers to the keyboard, thought I would just drop by and say hi.

First, let me tell you that there's a 'subscribe by email' link somewhere on this page where you can now sign up to receive email alerts if you're at all interested in following what I write here. I mention this not because I am a big head egotistical narcisist, but because I usually post on FB when I have written here, and I'm thinking of getting off the whole FB roundabout. I really only manage to get on there to share pics these days, with the occassional status update, and quite frankly I can do that from here - with more detail and in a more personal way. Kind of like writing a letter to all of the people I like/love all at once.

With no swear words.

Mostly.

This weekend has been one based around 'cleaning out'. I know, I know, the word 'cleaning' isn't at the top of my vocab list, but 'cleaning out' certainly was this weekend (no laxatives involved, in case you are wondering, I am talking about something totally different, as you will soon see).

It's hard rubbish time - yay! Time to get rid of all the crap I have acccumulated over the past six months and see how many people view my trash, as their 'treasure'. This is the joy of hard rubbish time, it's not the feeling of satisfaction of cleaning out the shed (which I got majorly this time, as it had in fact been TWELVE months since I last got rid of the hard rubbish). The joy of hard rubbish time comes AFTER you put it all out on the nature strip, and see who comes around to pick through your total crap to find their little treasures to take home.

This is a big part of any kid's life, by the way. Doing the hard rubbish, then sitting at the window, just waiting for the vultures to come around, then saying to your parents in absolute amazement "What the HELL do they want with that?"

And now, in the age of social media, that same conversation is occuring, as we speak on at least one Facebook page:

"Someone took the lamps? What do they want THOSE for?"

"Don't know, probably desperate. Probably sell them for ten dollars at trash and treasure next weekend".

And here, then, is the conundrum.

If we KNOW that people are going to take our crap and actually make a PROFIT on it, why the blue blazes don't we do that OURSELVES????

Answer? We are lazy.

Well, I realise here that I speak for myself, as I know there are some of you out there who do actually do the ebay thing that I cannot be bothered with (and some make a nice little profit out of it too.) But I can't be bothered with that. Stuff it, they can have it for free if they feel like poking around in a pile of goodness knows what from a household they don't even know.

But I digress.

Scatters came over yesterday afternoon and we spent a couple of hours going through the crap that I'd collected over the past twelve months. Well, collected and then thrown out into the shed, waiting for that wonderful week that we know as 'Hard Rubbish Week' (which starts tomorrow here in downtown Moreland).

I couldn't have done it without him, we moved old desks and broken chairs, old cupboards and mattresses, an old air conditioner. God, it was empowering to get rid of all that crap.

The best bit was the sweeping up afterwards, and the great release of guilt that I have had for a while now that my father's beloved shed was becoming a pseudo rubbish dump. Not any more, he'd be relatively happy with the state it's in now I think. (Although he was one of those blokes who loved his shed so much that you could possibly have eaten off the floor, he swept it religiously and everything was in it's place, so he's probably still looking down from Heaven, shaking his head in despair.)

Then, early this morning I was up and cleaning the fish tank, which had come to resemble the ocean at the time of that massive oil spill two years or so ago. This cleaning effort was due wholly to Scatters, who walked in the door after not having been here for a while, and said in his blokey oh-so-observant tone "Jeez, the fish tank could do with a bit of a clean". It had been on my list for a while now, as the gunk and grime slowly built up over time, and the fish near on screamed at me every time I fed them "Heeeeelp, we are slowly suffocating in here!!!". The fact that someone commented on it kind of gave me that kick up the butt that you sometimes need to do these things.

And, once again, with the job complete, I felt a whole lot better about life in general.

The next cleanup I'll probably do will be the Facebook thing (as mentioned at the beginning of this post). I'm feeling a little overwhelmed with all the notification emails I keep getting, and although I have turned most of them off, I now have this urge to continually log on to see whether anyone has left me a comment. That's bad. It's a bit of a catch-22 situation really: the notification emails annoy the crap out of me, but without them I get paranoid that I might miss something. And quite frankly, it makes my brain hurt.

So, dear friend, feel free to pop your email addy in the box to the right if you feel like it. And feel free not to. I won't know any different.

Talk later

Janeane

x

Thirty Eight - the ultimate punishment

Too often as parents we find ourselves being slack with the whole 'negative consequences for negative behaviour' thing.

Well, at least I do.

I know, I sound horrible, especially in this day and age where smacking is being outlawed in some countries, that little clip on the backside for misbehaving in the supermarket because of the impact it may have on a child's psychological wellbeing.

Now, of course I am not advocating any form of child abuse here - of course there is a firm boundary to stick to when it comes to punishing your child. Don't misunderstand where this post is coming from, and please understand that I do not actually smack my Cherub.....anymore. He's too old for that, but I do admit to a whack on the bum during the terrible twos and the terrorist threes, mostly for things like biting/hitting me - the old 'see how that feels when I do it to you' routine (yeah yeah, I know there's some of you out there who don't agree with that, but I'm fairly sure there are more of us that have done it at least once in our life....and felt horrible about it....but have done it nevertheless).

A friend of mine used to do a little trick with her somewhat active sons while she was at the supermarket. If they played up while they were out, she would simply hold their hand, smile and give them a little pinch on the wrist, nothing too hard, but enough to let them know to 'behave themselves or else'. Then, when she got home, that's when she went ballistic. Her boys knew the 'pinch' was a sign that there was more to come and after a few episodes they realised the way it worked, and the 'pinch' wasn't required very often after that. And all the time she would keep smiling deleriously at the other shoppers, while her sons (I suspect), regretted their indiscretions for the rest of the shopping trip as they antipcipated the trip home in the car with dread. My friend didn't show any signs of guilt over this little trick when she was telling me about it, and her sons have now grown into quite stable young men, both at University and doing quite well socially and academically.

Of course, as a desperate mother of one very challenging child, I tried it out for myself (when my Cherub was about six or seven). Unfortunately it doesn't work with an autistic kid - they don't realise that they are being punished or given a warning when they get a little pinch on the wrist. They don't think "Jeez, I'd better settle down, she means business". No! They live in the moment, and scream out at the top of their voice "Stop pinching me!! You're hurting me!!", and you, the mother, come off looking worse that you would if you just let them throw themselves on the floor in a tanty and walk away. (I did that once, and an old lady went up to my Cherub as he was kicking and screaming, cooing at him "Are you alright Sweetheart?". I fair dinkum wanted to scream at HER and offer for him to live with her to see whether she was cooing at the end of a few days with him).

So that 'punishment' lasted once, never to be used again.

Lately my Cherub has taken to being verbally abusive....I mean REALLY bad. Think of the worst curse word you can, drop down to the one below it on the list, and there you have it. It rhymes with 'duck' (in case you hadn't figured it out yet). In the case of my Cherub, it is usually followed by the phrases "Hate YOU", "Stupid Idiot" - you get the picture - quite loudly at the top of his voice, no matter where we are.

Now, some of it I can put down to his autism, but he's old enough now to be able to at least understand that this is just not on, not to your mother, the woman that held you to her breast as a babe in arms and gave you nourishment. The woman that wiped your backside when you were a baby (and actually still does sometimes, let's be honest about this autism thing). The woman that will bare the stretchmarks for the rest of her life that you gave her as you grew inside of her.

Enough is enough.

But no matter what I did to try to deal with this abuse, nothing has seemed to work. And I myself have ended up in tears many a time at the fact that my own child can be so abusive.

Some people say that to get on a child's good side, to get them to do what you want them to, you need to find a good motivator, something they can strive for. Well, I'm out of them, and quite frankly, I'm sick of trying to go down the 'If you don't call me names or get abusive you will get a reward' track. That's ridiculous. I'll reward you if you don't treat me badly? Nah, not anymore - I will now punish you if you do treat me badly, because the expectation is that you will be nice to me.

Last night I had one of those lightbult moments, the ones where you think to yourself "Why didn't I think of this before?". I realised that there is one thing in this whole world that my Cherub hates the thought of more than anything, and it has now become the 'ultimate punishment' in our house, reserved especially for those verbally abusive or physical attacks on the Mother.

"You're scooping up the cat poop"

Well, you'd think that the world was going to end. He was climbing up the back of the couch screaming 'No!!!! Nooooo!!!! Anything but that!!!!! Nooooo, I'm not doing the poop scoop!!!!!"

Oh yes you are my boy.....oh yes you are.

And yes, he did. There was a lot of screaming and carrying on (and I helped him by holding the bag to put it in), but yes he did the poop scoop.

And he did it again tonight too, because as I said to him "If you can't think about the way your behaviour makes me feel, you're going to have to think about the effect it will have on you".

I'm hoping that it eventually sinks in - 'If I'm bad to Mum, it's the poop scoop for me'.

I have a list of things written up all over the house regarding behaviour, as visual reminders (apparently that works, but not in our house). I now have fantasies about being able to have a poster stuck to our fridge/loungeroom wall/back of the toilet door.....anywhere really. It would be in big, bold letters, and it would have my new slogan on it:

"If I treat Mum like s#!t, I'll have to scoop the s#!t."

It's simply put, it's clear and precise, it shows the action/consequence relationship. All the things that we're supposed to ensure we put into place with instructions for our autistic children.

Knowing my luck, we'll be at the supermarket, my Cherub will misbehave, I'll lean in and quietly say "Right, tonight you are scooping the poop" and at the top of his voice, in the same way he did about the pinching, he'll yell out "Nooooo!!! Don't make me clean up the s#$$$%%%t!!!!".

I get nervous just thinking about it really.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Janeane