Push and Pull

I actually had another topic planned for my next post, but we’ve been having so much push/pull behaviour from Tiny lately that I felt like I needed to write about it. This is something he does at times – it’s usually much worse and much more noticeable at times when he feels unsettled, and we’re still trying to work out which of several possible triggers is behind the latest increase.

It usually starts with something fairly minor that for some reason he takes offence to. This morning it was the stairgate. Most times when he gets up in the morning the stairgate is closed. This morning Little was already awake and watching TV downstairs, so it was open. Cue lying on the floor screaming for it to be closed. From then on we can do nothing right. If we close the gate, he screams for it to be open again. If one parent goes to him he screams for the other. If we try to stay with him he screams at us to go away, with a little bit of kicking to make his message clear if needed. If we leave, he screams for us to come back. We’ve got no option but to ride it out and to try to avoid letting our frustration show. Eventually the anger turns to sadness and that’s the point that we can swoop in, scoop him up and give him the comfort and reassurance he needs.

The GBB approach we follow (described in my previous post) tells us that anger is a manifestation of fear. What is he afraid of? Is this a desperate need to be in charge,, to regain some control over the little things because so many of the big things have been decided for him. While the fact that has sister was three years older than him at placement comes with its own challenges, her age and level of understanding at least meant that we could do a lot of work with her about her life story and really explain why she was coming to live with us and the (simplified!) mechanics of the adoption process. While this caused some upset and anxiety at the time, it is now paying off and she finally seems to be feeling a little bit more stable and secure. I’m not convinced that Tiny, on the other hand, understands much at all about why he had to leave the foster carers he’d spend most of his his little life with, or that this new home is forever, so it’s hardly surprising that he rages at times he’s feeling particularly wobbly. We’ve also wondered whether this push/pull behaviour is a case of reject us before we have the chance to reject him. He needs us and wants us there with him when he’s sad (pull) but the fact that he needs us terrifies him as he doesn’t know that we’ll always be there. So he pushes us away before we can push him.

A couple of people who have seen Tiny in action in the course of day to day life have commented on how independent he is. In this context I don’t think this is a necessarily a good thing. I think we need to keep him as our little baby for that bit longer, in the hope that he might start to learn that we’ll always be there

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