2nd Appointment this afternoon

I am nervous as it is the first one Freyja has to attend, but kind of weirdly peaceful too.  It is a step in the right direction. 

We have had a pretty good week.  There have been tantrums as always, but bizarrely, she has been behaving better since her baby sister has been behaving worse!  Rosie is coming up to 2 years now, and just like Freyja, is becoming very much the independent Miss.  That means every time I need to get her into the car, she wants to get in herself and starts screaming and thrashing as I try to strap her into her carseat.  I know this is a phase she will get through, but as we are always already running late because Freyja takes forever to get ready (and so do I - Mommy ADHD!) it becomes even more stressful.

Freyja has been telling her sister to stop misbehaving and has been trying to be more helpful.

Last night was actually the best night yet, despite being the busiest.  After school, she went to a beginners chess club.  Despite being her first game ever, she won it!  She is really enthused by the idea of taking up chess and her birthday is coming up so I think I will buy her a set and start going to the monthly chess at the library in Calgary, hopefully it is something she will enjoy. And it shows she can concentrate when she is interested in things.  I played chess with my Dad at a similar age, and card games, and I loved it.  Partially because I seemed to have a natural ability to remember and anticipate moves, and partly because I won - all the time - and no, my Dad didn't let me win, I just had a flair for it.  Hopefully Freyja will get the same enjoyment, as she certainly seems to have the same capacity for remembering and anticipating moves in games.

After chess we went home and found she had homework.  Usually, she does not get homework, but at her Parent Teacher meeting last week, the teacher commented that while Freyja is working at Grade 1 level, as she should be, she actually could probably work at Grade 2, but because of the lack of concentration, she always has work left unfinished while the other kids get theirs done, so we said "send it home with her then".  They did send it home last night, and asked it be done for today.  She finished Chess at 4.30pm and had to be at Sparks at 6.30pm so I was dubious, but she ate her dinner (quickly for once, and only got up twice) and then settled down to her homework, finished it and got ready for Sparks all in time to get out the house, no arguments.  Apparently she was really well behaved and attentive at Sparks too, so maybe that is what she needs, more structure and things to do.  Maybe all of this isn't really ADHD or behaviour issues, maybe its just a very bright kid who's bored silly.

She's been showing a great interest in space and science lately too, as well as her reading and art.  Her choices from Scolastics this months were - A solar system mobile to build - A geology set with rocks and an experiment to 'make your own sedimentary rock' - A Phineus and Ferb science kit with household experiments.  She's been having great fun with it all, and can't wait to put everything together.  The library books she chooses are often science based too, and the other day when Lee put on a program about the Big Bang Theory, she asked him to see if it was on again and record it for her to watch.  As a pupil at a Catholic School, I see her trying to have some interesting debates with the teachers in a few years (as it should be).

And so, I have been doing some reading these past few days, looking at the aspects of ADD or ADHD which can be seen in a positive light - exploration, creativity, enlightenment, and I'll add another post with some links to these and a bit about some famous people who would these days probably be classed as ADHD.  This is my challenge to myself now, not to look at the bad side, the tantrums and distractedness, but to look at the good points of how she is 'different' and imagine what she could become if I loosen the reins a little....

Ist Appointment done

Well, we were there for 3 hours! Who knew we had so much to say! Poor Lee was nearly falling asleep by the time we left, he had just come off nightshift, and I was an emotional wreck.

Lots of stuff came out that I wasn't expecting. Mainly my fears of it being "all my fault" in one way or another. Most of her "bad" or "Difficult" behaviour is the stuff that revolves around me and my response to her. We kind off feed off each other emotionally, but in a bad way rather than good. She is so like me, I started to notice in the questions we were asked that the behaviours that she is showing are my behaviours, the ones that made my mother crazy, the ones that Lee tells me remind him of my mother (We are all carbon copies of one another - we ever all look alike).  Actually, the night before I was getting a bit emotional at dinner (hormones kicking in as AF was about to arrive) and started getting annoyed because she was yet again not eating her dinner.  I started to cry as I felt so bad about tellin her off yet again and hugged her and apologied for raising my voice.  As I did so, I caught sight of us in the mirror (we have a mirrored wall - rented house - not my choice!) and there she was, MY MOTHER!  I looked just like her when she would get all hormonal and upset when I was a kid.  Freyja looked just like me when I'd hug my Mum and apologise for doing wrong and tell her it was going to be OK.  History was so obviously repeating itself here and I think that is why in the meeting I just broke down.


My Mum and I had an amazing relationship when we were still in England, she was (and still is), my best friend (apart from Lee of course), but it wasn't always that way.  When I was a kid, our relationship was so volatile.  Always shouting and crying, always feeling bad but never able to put it right.  When I was about 10, my parents spend a few months apart.  My Mum had married at 18 and had me at 19, and kind of felt she was missing out on stuff.  It didn't take her long to realise that she wasn't, but those few months, whilst they were incredibly hard, were the best thing to happen to us as a family.  She and my Dad realised just how much they absolutely could not be without one another, and she and I were only together Friday night through Saturday.  We didn't have time to argue about the petty, silly things and spent real quality time together.  We found out, firstly, how much we cared about and loved one another, and secondly, how incredibly alike we were.  Our relationship from then on was great, to the point where my Dad admitted to feeling a little jealous as we were spending so much time together.  Anyway, enough of the past, back to the present...


So, one surprising thing that came out of it all was not just that they asked us to fill out questionnaires about her behaviour, but I was also given one to fill out about mine (along with Lee as he is on the outside looking in - usually shaking his head and sighing) as I may end up getting assessed myself for Adult ADHD.  The thing is though, at the beginning of the meeting I would have been incredulous at such a thing being suggested. But when we had been through the meeting and she suggested it as a possibility, it made more sense than I would like to admit. Most of the things Freyja does that seem obsessive and incredibly annoying, are that way because they go against my obsessive and annoying things that I do.

Oh, I should mention, that after years of struggling, and weeks of telling my parents that we were beginning the process, during which my mother has always said I was never that bad, my parents suddenly decided to tell me that I used to have almighty tantrums where I would stop breathing, right up until I was 7 or 8! Maybe they could have mentioned this sooner.

So now, we are into the process, and I have bared my soul. While the depression flags come more from Lee's side, the ADHD flags come from me and my mother (have I mentioned she has been known to break down and leave a store because the reorganised over the weekend and things weren't in their right places! I have never done that - though I might have sworn when they have done that I have never cried and left - dear god, I am turning into my mother and Freyja is turning into me - poor kid!! )

We have another appointment next week with the person at the clinic where Freyja will be going (the parent one was the starter) - I have no idea what her job title is, I just know she has a degree in Social Work - and then the week after that we see the Paediatrician for the first time.

At least I am not scared now. She told me not to feel a bad mother, as I have proved I am the opposite by making this step. I know everyone has been telling me this, but it feels good when the professionals tell you that - even if you still don't feel it as you carry your screaming, flailing child into her room for a time out, checking the clock on the way and starting the mantra.... two more hours.... two more hours.... only two more hours until bed time

This Monday?!?!?

So, no sooner did I make the last entry than I get a phonecall from the clinic asking for Lee and I to go in for a meeting. "can you do tomorrow" asks the nurse....

Erm sorry what?

"or Monday if tomorrow is too short notice" she says...

Wow!!! So on Monday we go to start it all off. I am so nervous!!!!

Where we are today!

Finally, now, we have some stability again.  Our finances have improved.  My husband and I both have stable jobs with family oriented bosses.  Freyja’s school is great, a huge improvement on the one we went to for kindergarten, and there is no bullying.  She has dear, close friends.  She is growing and learning and doing well at school.  We have close family friends who are like a surrogate family here, they live only a few streets away.  Her daycare (before and after school) is the one she has been going to for almost three years now, her sister goes there now, and her care-giver is like an extra grandma, the other kids are like cousins.  Our landlady is a wonderful woman who has treated us like family and basically told us we can stay in the house until it falls down if we want to.  Finally she has a stable basis, continuity….. but the behaviour hasn’t stabilised, if anything it is getting worse.

She’s getting vivid nightmares of people hurting her, her sister, me.  Daddy trying to save us but not being able to.  She is frustrated when she can’t get something right first time.  Calls herself stupid, hits herself on the head.  She is angry when she can’t do things her own way and lashes out, especially at me.  She is doing well at school, getting all B’s,  but her teacher is getting frustrated because she thinks she should be easily getting all A’s.  Says she is the smartest kid in the class but cannot concentrate, does not listen, is always the last to finish.  These are things I have been hearing for a while, and things I have been telling teachers since she was 3, but because there has been no continuity, they have not realised that this is a continuing pattern, not a phase.

Well, it finally came to a head a couple of weeks ago when she started throwing things during her tantrums and almost hit her little sister with something.  She was heartbroken about it, and as always when she loses her temper, she was full of remorse after and telling us she was stupid again, and that we would all be better if she was dead.  As a person with depression issues, that waves a huge red flag to me.  There is depression on both sides of our family, and after watching her cousins as kids, I think possibly some ADHD tendencies amongst them too – certainly they had anger issues as young kids, though now they are grown into well adjusted teens.  So, we went to the family doctor last week, and he referred us to a Paediatric Psychology Unit, who have in turn yesterday referred us to the Paediatric Behavioural Development Clinic (PBDC) at the East Calgary Health Clinic.

So, in around 10 weeks we should have our first appointment, and bearing in mind that we have been dealing with this for five years, you would think that 10 weeks would be a breeze, but already my mind is racing....

What have I done? Am I a bad parent? Will it scar her for life? Will they think we are mistreating her, hurting her? Was it a mistake? What did we do wrong? All the usual second guessing I am sure all parents in the same situation as me and DH must go through...

So, I am going to take a deep breath and started this blog to get all those thoughts and feelings out. To document it for me, and for her, so we can decide if it was a mistake, or if it was the best thing we could ever do for us as a family, and to show her down the line (hopefully) how far we have come.... oh how I hope that we do indeed go far and that she can grow up to be an inspiration to other kids who just can't help themselves sometimes.

The first few Canadian years...

In the intervening years, getting Freyja to sit down and learn things has been a major struggle.  At five, she finally started to learn to read, at the same time as her peers, but long after she could have done.  Only 12 months later, she is a good reader, and gets all her words correct in the weekly spelling test.  She loves to read and her frustration is gone because she can now do it for herself, and has learned the skills she needed.

The frustration is still there for other things though.  She wants to swim, skate, dance, draw, sing, and all the other things that every six or seven year old princesses want to do.  But she can’t do them as she wants to, straight away, and she can’t easily learn the skills, because she won’t or can’t concentrate for long periods, sometimes not even 2 minutes.

The frustration has manifested as anger and as a lack of self-confidence.  It has grown and mutated over the years.  The tantrums at the terrible twos continued into the traumatic threes, the f***ing fours and fragile fives. Now she's six and will be seven in a few weeks and we have pretty much decided that this is not something she is going to grow out of by herself, it’s something that we need a professional to help us with. That was not something easy to admit, for me or her dad, or even for her, as no one wants to say their wonderful, talented, clever, funny, amazing child has something 'wrong' with them, especially a (shhhhh) *whispers* Mental Illness...

But ultimately, when the elephant is acknowledged, that is what this is classified as.  People still have that fear of the term Mental Illness, but they bandy around the component terms of it with no problem at all, Depression, OCD, ADHD, ODD and so on…  though there is still always a little tinge of embarrassment about it, we are finally starting to get there.  Mental illness means that a part of your brain is not producing the correct chemicals in the correct levels for your body.  If you had diabetes, you would change your diet, get more exercise, maybe take insulin.  If you had Asthma, you would do the same changes to diet and exercise and take an inhaler.  Why should faulty brain chemistry be treated any differently?  If there’s an issue, it can be fixed or at least helped, maybe with diet and exercise, maybe with therapy and counselling, maybe with medication, but where is the big taboo?!?

I have thought for over a year that Freyja may be ADHD for a long time.  We used to joke about her OCD tendancies when she was three and had to touch everything in order on the way to her room at bedtime.  We wondered about the anger and defiance (usually directed at me) – could it be ODD?   We worried about the vivid and disturbing nightmares she had, and how they were getting progressively worse the older she got, despite shielding her from adult programming and news broadcasts.

And then there was the emotional turmoil, maybe it’s all because of that…..

When she was about 16 months old, her Dad and I both found out that we were going to lose our jobs.  At the time, we were living in the North East of England.  My parents lived around 20 miles north of us, as did my Grandparents, and her Dad’s parents lived around 20 miles south of us, as did his brother and sister and all their kids.  We saw them all every weekend, sometimes through the week too, we were a close knit family.  But her Dad’s Granddad had been from Canada, and it was a dream of ours to move to Canada when she was a little older, but because of the job situation, we would have had to move to find work anyway as it was the beginning of the financial downturn in the UK, so we decided to make the leap and head out to Canada, specifically to Calgary, which was then Boomtown.

A few months later as Freyja turned 20 months, and 2 days after Christmas, we moved out of our house and in with my parents for a month.  At the end of January, we caught a plane west.  Now we do not regret our decision, we love Calgary, we love the opportunities it provides us, though the intervening 5 years have seen a lot of financial struggle, and the economy in the UK along with the general attitude of those living there has plummeted.

BUT, and it is a big but, our move took away her stability.  She lost her family overnight, and while Skype is a wonderful thing, it is not the same as a hug from Nana or a couple of hours playing with your cousins on a Sunday afternoon.

Since we’ve been here, finances have been tight, friendships have been started and ended for us as parents and for her, as people have moved out of the city when the economy nosedived.  We have moved house 4 times since we have been here, she has been to 4 different day-cares, one preschool, one kindergarten, and a different grade one.

Last year, she became a big sister too, only 4 weeks after her birthday.  A wonderful, and yet terrible thing for a five year old.  She wants to be an amazing big sister, and she is, but she also wants things to be as they were, no competition for affection, no praise directed at someone else, no having to share Mom and Dad….

And that is pretty much all the back story......  next, Where we are today!

Where it all began....

This is a blog about and for my eldest daughter. As I begin this, she is 5 weeks away from her seventh birthday. She is funny, sweet, very clever, kind, amazing and the most beautiful miracle any mother could have not to mention an awesome big sister. She is also at times angry, defiant, depressed, achingly unsure of herself, of her worth, and of her place in the world. This is our journey to find out what we can do as a family to make things better for her, for us as a family, and for the family she will have in the future.

Freyja Honey was, and is, our little miracle. We had some stuff going against us for getting pregnant, and had decided that we would start trying 3 months before we got married. We expected it to take at least 6 months, probably a year or two – we were pregnant next month! That’s Freyja for you, determined to have her own way even if it means making me have last minute dress fittings!

Nine months later (2 days, induction and absolutely no labour ) later she was born. The birth plan had gone out the window, she had decided not to come out, and was eventually born by c-section, to the background music of “Is this the Way to Amarillo” by Tony Christie and Peter Kay on the radio, and the accompanying grunting of the doctor who nearly broke Daddy’s rib using him as support to literally force this baby to leave the womb – yep, really we should have hear alarm bells then. She really will not do something unless she wants to, no matter how much you beg, plead and cajole.

And so, off we went home with our bundle of joy. New parents. I’d never even held a baby before, and here was this amazing little girl.

Freyja was a very happy and smiling baby, very independent even early on, and very quick to develop, though again she would do things when she wanted to, and only then. Just as she was approaching her first birthday she was not yet walking, not really doing much crawling either, though we were sure she could. One day a little girl at daycare that she always played with got up and walked a few steps, much to the excitement of their carer. Freyja immediately got up, stalked across the room, sat down at the other side and gave everyone the look…. Yeah that look, the one that says “I did it better than she did! Now what do I get?” Sure enough she showed off for Daddy and Mama that evening too, and that, as they say, was that.

Her speech was early and she was fast to learn, by a year and a half she had the vocabulary of someone a year older, by 2 years she was speaking in full sentences. Her ability to communicate was wonderful and helped reduce frustration, but at the same time it also became a bit of a curse. She was the size of a child of three when she turned 2. She had the speech of a child of three, so everyone treat her as if she were older, including me if I am truly honest. I had never had a child before, I didn’t know what to expect and thought she was just like any other child. It’s only now as a mother of another baby, and after spending much time with other parents over the last 7 years, that hindsight gives me the truth of it. Everyone expected more of her, everyone treated her as if she should have the understanding of someone older, and we were so wrong to do that.

Along with the early speech development, came an ability to know her alphabet and her numbers, again both were in place by 2 years old, but soon they were accompanied by a frustration that she could not put them into context to read a story, or add up a number. The frustration got worse as she did not want us to teach her, she did not want to LEARN how, she just wanted to KNOW how!

And that was the beginning of the path that we are on now. A great morass of frustration, love, anger, laughter and tears that makes up our family life.