Today, I thought I would post a review of a book that I found particularly helpful when my son became unwell with anxiety and the help from CAMHS seemed like hunting for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I guess like most parents, if your child is unwell, you want to start accessing help straight away and lets be honest, appointments often mean that you have to almost sit on the problem sometimes for weeks until help is offered.
The book is called Coping with an Anxious or Depressed Child, by Sam Cartwright Hatton. There is a link to purchase it here:
https://www.anxietyuk.org.uk/products/children-and-anxiety/coping-with-an-anxious-or-depressed-child-by-dr-sam-cartwright-hatton/
The first 5 chapters of the book discuss signs, symptoms, causes and differences between normal adolescent behaviour and depression. The types of medication, counselling treatments for anxiety are also discussed and the whole tone of the book is greatly reassuring.What I particularly liked about it was that it was written like a programme of care that would ordinarily be prescribed by psychologists. You could not progress on to the next chapter without implementing the previous chapter's recommendations.
Seven Confident Thoughts are described by the author as the building blocks of improved self esteem in children. At the time of reading I could easily see that my boy was not thinking any of these. His school was perceived by him to be terrifying, we were always shouting at him about his attendance and he was stating that the city in which we live was unsafe and full of crime. More importantly we were using strategies to get him into school that involved consequences and ignoring bad behaviour, which were the final step in the programme, he was barely achieving the first chapter, so no wonder nothing was working.
It made me realise that actually even before he was unwell enough to no longer cope with school, he was not really functioning at a confident level. His temper tantrums as a toddler were extremely difficult to manage and it was only when we noticed that we could get the girl to do as we asked that we realised he was different. His delay in co ordination was a reason for seeing the GP but to be honest, it was the tantrums that gave the most difficulty. The paediatricians that we all saw, advised the rewards/consequence system, these never worked and just exacerbated the situation. I came to realise that in the end, he just did not have any motivation left to meet the never ending list of day to day challenges that were presented to him. He did not feel good about himself, his lack of co ordination meant that he could not play football with his school mates, he had no control over the noisy hustle and bustle at school and at home, we were always nagging him to tidy his room, participate in sporty activities after a school day or rushing around like every other family. At some point, his confidence had disappeared into a hole and there was nothing left to give.
I have always been wary about the reward chart/consequences systems, they can work but they need to be delivered in such a way that the child is able to feel that they can achieve what is being asked. I think with dyspraxic children this is particularly relevant, they are prone to suffer lower self esteem, so challenges need to be bite sized and achievable if this system is going to work. The book gives some very good examples of "good" and "bad" consequences so that this step is managed sensitively and carefully.
So, we started on the first step.................and stayed there for a rather long time. The boy by then was suffering from depression, he was not doing much so it was a struggle to think of activities that I could praise him for or get him to do. I felt terrible when I realised this so I became very creative in my approach and gave him a task such as emptying the dishwasher or the bins so that I could tell him how wonderful it was to have him helping me. Bearing in mind there had been an awful lot of shouting and negativity in the house prior to removing him from school, our relationship needed to be rebuilt and the trust renewed. We had special time every evening, when I would massage his back. For a while he became very clingy, he loved to smell my perfume because it reminded him of me and he almost rejected his father. I will admit that I was worried but then thought about how bonds needed to be regenerated so for the first time in my life I was quiet and just reassuring. I doubt that the boy now can remember being like this which just goes to show how far he has progressed.
The boy's love of computing and all things I.T and our acceptance of this has been especially pivotal in boosting his self confidence. The book describes this as Pleasure and Mastery in that he is able to participate in something that he feels confident in. I think that the portrayal of computing and gaming is negatively portrayed by the media and I used to worry that it wasn't a good outdoorsy hobby such as football or scouts. However, the boy's gaming community are the most honest, politically aware, law abiding people I have yet to meet. They are entrepreneurial and he has learnt so much from them. It is because of them that my poor husband has to accompany him to various gaming festivals, We no longer treat the computer as a "dirty habit" and something that has to be denied. There is no expectation for him to play sport and win countless trophies. He is our IT expert, it is what he likes to do and at least I always know where he is!
The Seven Confident thoughts are now my guiding principles which influence how I raise my children and also those that I work with. Being able to see where we needed to start from was extremely helpful and I daresay that as a consequence of following this, I no longer worry about consequences for bad behaviour because I guess he has no reason to misbehave anymore.
