White Rabbits

Mental Health Concerns.

We didn’t have the best start to 2009 either. Ryan’s violence continued to escalate as did my concern for his mental health. He was still very violent & disruptive. He wanted to kill everyone or himself. His head was ‘Full of zombies & voodoo’ (no he wasn’t playing computer games at this point). Several more instances and meltdowns resulted in him bolting from the house and school. This is where the Education Psychologist (EP) comes in (remember I mentioned her in Horror Friday). She first met Ryan in March 09, he was seven at this point, and she agreed that he was a very challenging boy. The EP provided a very detailed report on her day spent observing him and offered some excellent advice and strategies for managing the situation going forward. Things did improve slightly for April and one of the strategies of Ryan being moved ‘up’ a class for his Maths seemed to work well. Giving Ryan some much needed boost to his self esteem. Oh I do have a knack of speaking too soon don’t I...

Violent Meltdown - White Rabbits.

I still to this day do not know what triggered a major violent meltdown on the morning of 27 April 2009 as I tried to get him ready for school. It took both DadiSkilts & I to get him ready and to school after both of us being thoroughly punched, kicked, head-butted and called numerous obscenities. As soon we got out of the car at the school gates he attempted to bolt but was managed to be headed off by a teacher and crossing patrol.

The head (Mr J) took Ryan into the staff room where he eventually managed to calm down, so DS and I left. A short time later Mr J went to answer a phone call at which point Ryan managed to climb out of the window and went missing. We were called and so were the police. Ryan was eventually found in a local park right up at the top of a very tall conifer tree where he could be heard repeating over and over “Hurt is good, it cleans the soul”.

Mr J tried to coax him down but he sat rocking back and forth repeating “White Rabbits” over and over. He refused to come to me and eventually another parent, who lived locally, managed to convince him to go with her instead. I don't know how she managed it, but she got him to come down from that tree. The EP saw Ryan urgently the following day for a follow up and it was here we agreed that Ryan would benefit from a restricted school timetable and that I would home-school him for a while. We would continue to try Ryan in school during the mornings, as overall he seemed better able to cope in the mornings, to get some formal education and access to social situations and would come home at lunch time.

Homeschooling.

The ½ days worked well and were the start of a positive change for all of us. Ryan began to really open up to me on one of our afternoon sessions about how much he hates school and that the ‘Good days’ are only because he puts himself into a ‘pretend world’. SNAP Cymru also became involved and were a great deal of support to me.

Snapcymru.org

Home education should not be seen as an 'easy way out'. For some it is definitely the best option, for me I was not confident in being his formal teacher although capable of doing so at least temporarily. If you think homeschooling is right for you then the NAS provides some really good advice on their website. I also have a Pinterest board on Homeschooling with lots of lesson ideas, tips and advice.

Comments

Missing Education due to Illness

The Importance of Attendance If you read any news articles on education, correspondence from your child’s school, or are simply clued up on parenting then you will know the importance of school attendance. Schools place a great deal of focus on targets and will often offer incentives and competitions to encourage and increase attendance figures, but what if your child has a serious illness. What happens if they really are not well enough to attend school. What happens then? Attendance targets at Ryan's school are currently set at 95% attendance for the school year. Therefore realistically your child can only miss 10 school days due to illness. Medical appointments such as GP or Dentist do not count, but you are encouraged to make these appointments outside of the school day where feasibly possible. If your child consistently misses school, even if it is only one day a week, that equates to 39 days over the school year. Even missing one day in a week results in pressure on the

Chemotherapy Cycle 5

What is Normal? With this being our penultimate cycle of chemotherapy I have had several family and friends comment to me “oh I bet you can't wait to get back to normal”. This has really thrown and upset me because it seems to come across that they have failed to comprehend the fact that we have 2-3 years of maintenance ahead and at least two more general anaesthetic surgeries. Not to mention physiotherapy as it is expected Ryan will take 12+ months to heal from the effects of being poisoned from the inside out. Normal is long way off yet. While everyone else appears to all be getting excited that Ryan is coming to an end of his chemotherapy protocol treatment, Ryan himself is becoming more and more tired with the cumulative effect of the onslaught of the chemotherapy drugs and is spending long periods of time in hospital after each cycle with infections due to his impaired immune system now as a result. Ryan is far from excited. Ryan is exhausted. We still have one more cycle t

Questions to ask after Cancer diagnosis

Cancer Sucks I have shared with you Ryan's lymphoma journey where we have talked about the ups, the downs, the protocols for drugs, the side effects, but I realised recently I have never shared the questions. This post is all about what to ask when you receive a diagnosis of cancer. Receiving a cancer diagnosis is never ever going to be seen as good news. It can never be dressed up or made pretty. It is devastating, it is gut-wrenching, it is life-changing. There is so much information to process you will not think of the questions you need to ask or you will have hundreds of questions you want to ask all at once. These are just some of the questions you can ask once you have processed the news, in order to gain a better understanding of your fight ahead. General Information What type of cancer do I have? Where is it located? What are the risk factors for this disease? Is this type of cancer caused by genetic factors? Are other members of my family at risk? What lifestyle c

Peritonitis

Emergency Surgery On the morning of 25 October 2016 Ryan was complaining that his PEG feeding tube was unbearably painful. He was due for a review anyway that day at Velindre Cancer Centre and a PEG specialist nurse came for to look at Ryan. She said the site was a bit weepy and raw, she thinks he possibly caught or pulled it in the night. She is confident that it is fine and she also gave it another good clean. A week on and we are back to square one. The district nurse came out on Monday 31 October 2016 to advance (turn) the PEG tube as is needed each week after the first month. The nurse was unable to move the disc and caused Ryan an incredible amount of pain. We ended up having to go to the Teenage Cancer Trust ward in Cardiff, where two gastro nurses met us and spent the best part of an hour, torturing Ryan while they 'forced' the PEG to move, which they eventually did. Or so they thought. The following week, 7 November 2016, the district Nurse came again to the h

Worrying About the Future

Worrying About the Future. Ryan said to me recently. "Childhood gave me Autism. My teens gave me cancer. What will adulthood bring?" Big worries for someone so young. So much pressure and conditioning are placed upon us about the importance of education and the set path that the majority of us will take through the system to university and/or the job market. What happens if you do not follow that path or miss so much education that the path is no longer open to you. How do you plan for the future? What options are there available to you? Ryan was excluded from his primary school in year 2 and I home schooled him for a year while we worked with the Educational Psychologist to find a placement that would suit his complex needs at the time. Due to his speech, language and communication difficulties the decision was made to withdraw him from Welsh-medium education and focus on English only which meant our choices were limited in the area of Wales that we call home. We

There's a Panda in my Bellybutton

Search This Blog