No such thing as happy ever after!
Well, I thought I would bring the continuing saga of Sunbeam up to date! So much for living happily ever after following him going to the new centre (they don’t like to call it a unit!). The first 6 weeks were euphoric. Sunbeam seemed to settle in very quickly and all seemed right with the world. However, after the October half term, the LEA started putting pressure on the head to start producing academic results! I think the LEA felt that now that these children were in a place where they were understood they could start rejoining the the educational rat race!
That’s when things started to go wrong! Sunbeam felt he was being pressurised too soon (I agreed) and suddenly became reluctant to go to school. The children (origially 4) all damaged by their experiences of previous schools. It appears the LEA underestimated the amount of support they needed and just presumed that they would all be happy and contented by being in a place of understanding! Oh how wrong they were!
Sunbeam was also regressing despite giving the appearance of doing well at school. He was socialising, laughing, joking and generally getting on with it but once he got home he would collapse and say he’d had a bad day. There have been many things that made Subeam anxious, one of which is his interpretation of incidents and I believe that he may have been confronted by his teacher (not in an agressive way) and as he feels upset when he realises he might have been in the wrong, it was enough to make him not want to go to school. There are a multitude of things that also make him unhappy or anxious; the wrong taxi driver, the smell of the taxi, the colour of the carpet etc etc! So by the time Spring half term came he was unable to go to school, becoming so anxious and stressed he couldn’t get into the taxi.
Sunbeam’s mood has fallen even more to the point where he said life isn’t worth living anymore. The feeling of failure on my part and alarm that he should feel like that at a time when he should be having fun were enormous. I’m his mum, I should be able to make it all better but I do know that it’s not my fault but it doesn’t stop me feeling I have failed him in some way.
Following Sunbeam’s declaration I made an appointment with his psychologist and requested a review of his medication. He has been on the same medication for over a year and I’m sure it has lost any effectiveness together with the fact that he’s a big lad for his age, over 6ft 2in and built like a rugby player (rather ironical as he hates sport!) and I feel sure that the doses have been far too small to help him. So, the psychologist recognised the need for a change in medication and the fact that he’s a big lad so we are keeping our finger’s crossed that this medication works and lifts his mood.
My poor boy is also feeling the effects of his obsessive hand washing. His hands are red, raw and bleeding but he HAS to keep washing his hands. During the Christmas holidays 2 “friends” came to see him and they didn’t wash their hands after visiting the loo. When I got home I found Sunbeam in his room banging his head with his fists saying that everything was contaminated. I had to wash everything down and change his bed before he would think of settling down. For the next week he would ask if I’d washed something as they had touched it. It does seem odd that he’s like this when he doesn’t mind being covered in soot and oil when he goes on the steam engines!
So, for the time being, Sunbeam is at home, out of school and waiting for things to get better in his head. He spends his days telling me he’s sorry for causing all our problems and I keep reassuring him that he’s got nothing to say sorry about; he’s unwell. We had his first annual review yesterday and it was as if it was for another boy. It seems to be generally accepted that college would not be appropriate for him as he wouldn’t be able to cope with all the people or the work. We are hoping that we might find a sympathetic employer to take him on as an apprentice without all the paper qualifications which he can do as he works (I’ve been told!).
Meanwhile, we tread on eggshells, keep reassuring him and loving him and hoping that maybe one day he can live happily ever after.