Mummy guilt at Christmas

Originally written January 2020

So…. Its that time of year and Christmas is upon us. Every parent looks forward to their child getting excited for the big man to appear and fill the house with happiness and joy. When we heard that nursery were putting on a Christmas party yesterday, we were so excited to send Ted off to enjoy the festivities, fill is face with party food and come home full of joy…. This is not what happened. We want Ted to have every opportunity that a child without additional needs would have and as nursery is a familiar setting we hoped that he would have fun, however the reality was different. Calling my mum for an update on Teds day i was confronted with the reality of how his day went. He had apparently been clawing at his face and when they went to collect him he was sitting in the corner on his own, covered in food and couldn’t wait to get back to nanny and granddads. Apparently he hadn’t had a good day and was stressed with the Christmas party. This broke my heart as all i wanted to do was take him to a fun Christmas party that would allow him to dance around and have fun. however in Teds world this was not the case. Ted has never clawed at his face before and working in emotional wellbeing i know this is a sign of distress and i felt so guilty for leaving him there and allowing him to be so distressed. As Ted is non verbal and has disordered communication, he can not show when he is upset or uncomfortable, instead he shows it in other ways such as isolating himself avoiding eye contact and fidgeting. If you don’t know Ted then you don’t know what signs to look for and i’m guessing that the people around him were not in-tune with his signals or needs, hence why he became more distress.

Crying tears, i call my fiance to explain what had happened and that i felt terrible for putting him through that torment. He reassured me of our prerogative that we want to give him every opportunity but sometimes we will get it wrong and sometimes we will excel. It did give me a little hope but i felt terrible because as a mummy i should have known that he didn’t want to go.

There could be many reasons why he did not enjoy the party….. It was not his normal nursery day, His keyworker was not on hand, There were different kids there or the daily scheduled had changed, all these things can have a MASSIVE impact on his wellbeing and can become easily distressed and disorientated. Once back at Nannys, he started to get back to his usual mad self of running around and playing with his animal figures. When i arrived i broke down. Seeing his little faced all scratched destroyed me, they are superficial scratches but just relating it to his experience of the day just bought the guilt to the forefront. I felt terrible and it opened my eyes to the challenges of what Teddy faces and also reminded me of the importance of trying to see the world through Teds eyes and understand what may seem trivial to me is actually a big deal for our little boy.

We are learning and even though its all new to us, as a mum i feel i should know my boy inside and out but unfortunately its not that simple as he can not tell us how he feels or what he wants. Its new for me to accept that i don’t have all the answers and that i need to learn that i will get it wrong, but as long as my intentions are pure then that is all i can do.