On Friday we went for family counselling.

I could stop there and leave that loaded sentence to show how crappy things have really become round here. But there’s a reason I blog anonymously and it’s so I can share with you the, err, let’s call it grittier shall we, side of life. Basically, I’m everything you’re looking for on a Monday morning!

So on Friday we went for family counselling. I was apprehensive to say the least about talking to strangers about our circumstances but then I thought, hang on, it’s just like blogging! And so I smartened us all up, wiped a few snotty faces and off we went, me with pockets stuffed with bribes at the thought of the one hundred and twenty minutes ahead of us with someone who would be writing down everything, which would consist almost entirely of notes about my inability to control my rowdy children. Except, ha! I took ammunition in the form of food. Lots of it. About a hundred and twenty minutes worth in fact.

The counsellor talked to the children in turn, small talk at first to make them feel right at home, ALTHOUGH I’M THINKING THE LEGO BOX WITH ITS CONTENTS SPREAD ALL OVER THE FLOOR DID THAT, and then she gradually ramped it up to start getting to the heart of issues affecting us as a family. The bigger children were reasonably forthcoming, Harry actually giving them a ten minute impromptu presentation explaining how he behaves: ‘I hit, scream, kick and throw things‘ he said and I half expected him to turn and point to the whiteboard, or give a Powerpoint presentation entitled ‘Ten Things that Set off My Bad Behaviour’. If nothing else, he’s got a good future as a public speaker. Although given he didn’t try to put a spin on his actions at home, I’m guessing politics is out of the question.

William was equally forthcoming but given he has speech difficulties it was often up to me to interpret for the consellor. But he explained how he always picked the sad and angry faces when trying to tell his teachers how he was feeling. He told her how he had no friends and when he did make a friend, the friend was Someone Else’s Friend when he returned from another period off sick. He told her how he was too tired to play in the playground and often had to sit on the friendship bench. Then when someone offered to play with him, he said no thanks and that friend wondered why the hell he was sitting on the friendship bench (it doesn’t occur to him to tell them that he is tired). He told her about the pain and the medicines and the worries about having to go to hospital. He told her about the times he wished he was dead.

I can tell you that it feels like having a knife stabbed through your heart to hear your child talk like that.

The little two had really nothing constructive to say, which is hardly surprising given that the one year old can’t speak and the four year old’s world revolves around using the Force. But Ben’s stammer was apparent and she wrote it down in her notes. And possibly that he likes to Strike A Pose (I didn’t explain his ‘using the Force’ action – she’s the counsellor, it gives her something interesting to wrestle with).

I told her about my postnatal depression but how I had recovered and was better at looking after myself now. I told her how I basically fell apart between February and September last year after Wiliam was diagnosed but was doing better now.

Doing better.

I’m doing better, but as a family we are not.

She summed up at the end when the children had lost interest in spreading the lego into every corner of her office and I think she had us pretty much spot on. Although given I was doing a passable impression of a sheepdog trying to keep all four children rounded up and not bleating too loudly while she was summing up,  I’ll no doubt be marking her letter for mistakes, when it arrives, possibly with red pen because it will make me feel like I have JUST A LITTLE BIT OF POWER IN THIS WHOLE PROCESS. ‘Cos that sounds a bit more proactive than seeing the bottom of a wine bottle.

We have long term help in front of us. I think of all the intervention we have had in the last year and ahead of us and I think about the files being compiled on us, the private things being written about us not coping. It leaves me sick with worry, if I’m honest.

But then I imagine what our family might look like a few years down the road without help and I think it is my family is that is important. My family. Nothing else.

Photo credit: macinjoshdotcom