Jericho’s appointment with the psychologist was today. It went well, if I exclude him cracking the side of his head into the couch in the waiting room and screaming, and then hiding behind a chair and refusing to speak to her for the first ten minutes! She had a box of toys in the corner near him though, and after a little while he crawled over to it to check things out. He found a toy duster and broom and cleaned the room, and then found a light sabre and by the end of the hour he was leaping all around being a Jedi ninja. As we were packing up to go he told Jari and I, “It’s okay here. There are some strange and fun toys, so I will come back.”

Today was mostly talking, and of course Jari observed what she could of Jericho during that time. I was pretty organised with what I wanted to talk about- I printed out the kinder transition letter we did at the start of the year and wrote down some dot points of behaviours that we’re all finding hard to manage, so that helped enormously in being able to get right into the issues.

She said that there’s obviously something going on with him, but nothing that fits immediately into a box, ie not Aspergers etc (which I knew already). She said that it seems to be more of an internal issue than a response solely to external things, although of course they impact. Going by what I said, and even his flip from sulking behind my chair to bouncing around the room with a light sabre she said he would seem to be an emotionally volatile child, and that a lot of his hysterical overreaction to things comes from feeling out of control within himself, so he seeks to control everything around him. Which of course, at four years old, just isn’t happening. I think his perfectionism is part of this too, that he gets angry with himself for making mistakes and for not doing things the way he thinks they should be done. She said it sounds as though, mentally and emotionally, his mind is always working at a million miles an hour and he is not able to give himself any down time to just chill out and process.

I think what she hopes to be able to do is separate out and work on the different issues. Help him manage himself internally as well as he can (considering he’s only four and all) and help me manage the external behaviours. She said that with a lot of other emotionally volatile children she’s seen they usually get a lot better once they’re seven or eight and have the cognitive skills to express themselves more appropriately, and that with a four year old he just expresses all those strong feelings through tantrums, which unfortunately leaves the responsibility for managing them on me.

I think it was a good session, although I really don’t know. I know she’s got a lot of experience, and she did seem quite kind and perceptive.

I’ve just come away feeling pretty flat. Not really feeling bad, I mean a big part of me feels relieved just to have started addressing the troubles I’m having with him. But even though I knew there was going to be no magic bullet quick fix here, the prospect of multiple more appointments and therapy with him leaves me feeling sick. I don’t want to do this.

 I feel so scrutinised at the moment. I mean, Nicholai and his psychologist on Monday, liasing with his teacher about that, Jericho and his psychologist today, my appointment that I have scheduled for tomorrow, checklists I have to fill out for Nicholai, further appointments for both boys set up… why can’t I just be a mum who gets to take her kids to the park? I’d much rather have random strangers judging my mothering based on my kids wearing shoes in public and eating tanbark in a park than have experts picking through all our family dynamics and interactions for the impact it’s having on my little ones’ mental health!

Of course, I’m finishing up typing this as the kids are in bed and I’m listening to Emma throw a tantrum about it! I had to lead her in the direction of her room earlier and she was all snarky, “What are you doing? You can see I’m not interested in going to bed.” I reminded her quietly of what happened the other night when she was naughty and she immediately shouted out, “You just don’t care about me!” and flounced off to bed. Although now she’s sobbing from her room, “You don’t care about me! Nobody in this family cares about me. I wish I could go somewhere where everyone WOULD care about me! You CLEARLY don’t love me, or you’d let me stay up later!!!”

Ha ha- you’ve got to laugh sometimes.