Hearing Voices

This is a difficult post for me. I have been doing my best for both my children and at the moment I feel like my best really might not be good enough.

My oldest is hearing voices. Voices that are telling him to do naughty, destructive and dangerous things. These voices told him to knock the house down with a hammer. To pull his wallpaper off his wall. He has been caught leaning out of his bedroom window (it is locked closed now). He knows that these things are wrong, I think the voices scare him and I have no idea how to help him. At the moment we are in the place where he will tell me when the voices are saying things to me so we can talk about what they are saying and hopefully stop him from acting on it.

I have emailed social services and told them we need support - quickly and without having to mess about waiting. I doubt that my quickly and their quickly are the same thing and I am also worried that the help will be just for my husband and I. We might have to fight to get them to talk directly with oldest. It is a fight that I will enter into without hesitation.

In the meantime, in the hope that anything was better than nothing, I asked oldest about this voice - I was amazed by the level of detail he went into. An old man, always cross and rude with one blue eye and one red eye and with grey hair. He described his arms and hands. The man even has a name. He was so sure that he drew me a picture and we then locked it in an empty drawer. In the mind of a child if the man is in the drawer he can't also be in his head. We shall see if it helps.

Organised Activities

Now that the smalls are really settled into school we are once again looking for organised activities for them to enjoy way from school. As a youngster I enjoyed loads from Brownies/ Guides, ballet, swimming, hockey and trampolining.

I have oldest's name down for Beavers as soon as there is a place for him. I am hoping the variety of activities will stop him getting bored plus the chance of camping is always a motivation. Youngest has started a gymnastics class after school which she seems to be enjoying, For the last 2 weekends I have taken them to rugby. The original plan was for oldest to have a go and see what he thought. In the end both children got stuck in, participated and had a blast and so we are planning to let them both go. I had hoped it would teach oldest about being part of a team, working together and maybe a little patience. I am still hopeful as the coaching staff seemed very good and, after a full hour of running about, they were both shattered, covered in mud but happy and begging to go again.

What I don't want to do it over fill the week - school is exhausting as it is. Oldest has more homework since he started year 1 and we have reading books to do every day. I would also like to try and get swimming back in as this was during the rugby slot. It might be something I try as an afters school activity but this means swimming after work for me and I am not sure and Saturdays are already pretty full. Might have to be something we do at half terms more often. I sometimes wish my working week was 1 day less and my weekend lasted an extra day but I have to work with what I have got.

In other news the last round of contact letters has gone in and I have been offered a voluntary position with Adoption UK after which I am exceptionally excited.