8 June 2017

Parent Paranoia - A Break Down In Communication


Often parents of children with different needs, disabilities and illnesses find themselves fighting  battles with professionals in different sectors daily.

As a parent you want what’s best for your child and interventions in place that they need to be able to access life as fully as they possibly can.

Often, as a parent you are the ONLY person that fully understands your child’s needs and differences because you know them so well. You know when they are masking or putting on a front, and you know that what they actually look like isn’t necessarily how they are really feeling, but that it is their coping mechanism for when you aren’t around to support their needs as you know fits them well.

Enter parent paranoia! This feeling is real, and consuming and has the ability to knock you left right and centre so that all you can focus on are situations where you’ve tried helping your child and the response from professionals is nonplus.

'Do they care? ‘ - you ask yourself, ‘was i too forceful?’ you constantly overthink.

‘Did i come across like a pushy mother?’ ‘Am i imagining things?’

All these thoughts and lots lots more playing over and over in your mind after certain situations where you’ve advocated strongly for your child.

You know what they need, you know what helps them. So they don’t show it in school, because they are trying their hardest to fit into a society that everyone else is moulded into believing is normal and correct.

My daughter is beautifully behaved at school. Im so proud of that, however it tires me out a little because the extremely violent behaviours that we see at home are unbelievable to those that see my angelic, happy little smiling girl.

Then comes the fall out - The violence, the demand avoidance, destructiveness, picking on her siblings, uncontrollable tics, that she’s suppressed.

My son, is also beautifully behaved at school, he often just gets on with things, does as he’s asked, is a very polite little boy which I’m so proud of - but he’s falling off the radar with his ability to “just get on with it’

'Am i being too pushy?' Am i expecting too much?” thoughts creeping in, situations playing over and over and over in your head, taunting and tormenting. - Parent paranoia. Wasted time spent on thinking about things too much, dissecting them, worrying about what people think of you and how its going to impact on the professional relationship that you thought was sound.

You know that your child needs X,Y,Z, yet because they mask and because they ‘plod along’ means they miss out on those interventions that they desperately need. Which all too often results in their tricky behaviours increasing tenfold at home, regression starts, more paranoia creeps in. Children masking and breaking down at home is all to common and familiar see my Coke Bottle Analogy

'Its a parenting problem' is all too often thrown about like it won’t harm anyone, 'take a parenting course and all will be fine and dandy.’

Its not as simple as that, when there is a communication breakdown, it is the child who suffers the most. falls the hardest, and the parent who tries desperately to pick up the pieces, fighting, and begging, pleading and seemingly harassing people for help.

As a parent of multiple children who have autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, who both have the ability to mask and ‘plod along’ in situations so they get by, a good communication relationship is THE single most important tool needed to sustain a healthy working relationship for the child. When that communication breaks down, paranoia sets in and eats its way through threatening to destroy everything.

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