Just a normal day

Little does not want to do her reading practice. It's boring, apparently. She flounces up the stairs, flinging her reading book around. By the time I get to her room she's hiding under the duvet. I sit down on the bed and attempt to empathise with how horrible it must be to have to do something so boring, and promise some fun afterwards. She kicks me. I ask her to stop; she doesn't. I retreat to my bedroom, and let her know where to find me when she's ready.

She follows me to the bedroom. I attempt to use humour to snap her out of it and point out she's got some cheese from dinner stuck to her cardigan. I pick it off and feed it to the cat, who's asleep on the bed. She hits the cat. I ask her not to. She hits the cat again. I pick the cat up and call my wife to come and remove her.* While we're waiting for her to come upstairs, Little continues to hit my legs and pull the cat's tail. Once the cat is out of the equation I offer Little a hug. She declines. I let her know the hug is there when she's ready and follow her back to her room.

We sit side by side on Little's bed. She tells me she doesn't care the cat is hurt. I tell her this is a shame, that I care about her, I care about the cat and it hurts my heart when people I care about hurt each other. She reiterates that she doesn't care the cat is hurt because she doesn't like the cat. She wants her to go away apparently and for us not to have any pets.** I wonder aloud if she's saying that she doesn't like the cat because actually she knows that hurting her was not the right thing to do, and inside she's feeling really guilty about it. But it's easier to pretend she doesn't care than think about the yukky feelings.

She nods, we hug and she reaches for her 'What a Muddle' workbook, saying 'I think this will help me Mummy'. I gently suggest there's something we might want to do first, and we go downstairs holding hands, she seeks out the cat and very gently apologises to her, strokes her and gives her some treats. We spend a good 20 minutes working through What a Muddle, and reminding ourselves of the calming strategies. She says she wants to take the book in to school for show and tell the next day. We've not read her school reading book, but she's happily taken turns with me in reading the paragraphs in What a Muddle.

This is progress. Physical aggression (towards me, my wife, her brother, the cat) used to be a daily thing for Little. Now it's more like weekly, and much less intense. She's mostly quicker to calm, usually willing to suggest and engage in strategies, and is starting to move from all-consuming shame to healthy remorse. There's no way we'd have got here without ASF funding for a therapeutic parenting programme, and it was a real battle to get the children's local authority to agree to that. I've seen a lot out there about post-adoption support and self-care recently, and I'm inclined to agree with others who say this kind of thing should come as standard. It's one thing to sit in a prep group and be told about how parenting adopted children is different from traditional parenting, but (for us at least) it's not until you're in the thick of it that you realise what triggers you, what situations you need a bit of extra help with, and how difficult it is to remain calm and therapeutic when little hands and feet are laying into you.

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* I know I could have just let the cat run away of her own accord, but I'm slightly paranoid that without a bit of positive attention of her own, she'll decide one day that enough is enough and find herself a quiet old lady to live with. The cat is a huge part of our adopter self-care regime and the children love her 95% of the time, so she needs to stay!

** This is blatantly untrue. She adores the cat and is thrilled whenever the cat decides to hang out in her room.