While you're dealing with my kangaroo, put my rhino in a cage too

As I said last month, I tend to jump the the defence of clinicians even when it's not in the least my role to do so. As an administrator within the NHS I know the frustrations involved in this and tend to try to understand administrative mistakes too.

Sometimes though, I just get veeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy angry at the incompetencies of the services, particularly the mental health services, and want to charge at them and tell them what utter numpties they are.

That of course is no more helpful than covering up for them so it's probably just as well that I found out about their latest mistake in communication (which I suppose may have been caused by the post office anyway) at 6:30 tonight when they'll all have gone home. Gives me time to sleep on it, formulate a plan and then CHARGE

cheating!

Last night I went to a quiz night organised by Kathryn. It was a lovely night and I really enjoyed it, however being parted from my internet connection, even via my phone, for three hours was hard.

The reason I wasn't allowed to use the internet was obvious - to do so might have involved cheating.

As the great Tom Lehrer noted, there's a fine line between cheating and research. 

I'm definitely crossing it here. Instead of my own blog, I give you, and more importantly ME, someone else's.

Here is ONE MORE MUM'S blog post about her dear son J. In a week in which I had begun to doubt whether pursuing an assessment for my daughter for Autism was a good idea, I am much encouraged by this. I think it's probably a good idea for everyone, whether they have what are euphemistically called "special needs" or not, to be encouraged to do what they are good at rather than made to do what they find impossible.

Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport, Tie Me Kangaroo Down

I've been trying to write this since November - it's still not "right" but if I don't press "publish" now I never will, and having got used to blogging again during Lent it would be a shame to give it up for Easter.


I adopted the boxing kangaroo as my picture after the EDIC 2010 conference. I was so angry that the plausible theories of "The Recovery Model" actually boil down to leaving people to struggle without support, that professionals thought it OK to allow patients with a BMI of 11 to "choose to live with their illness" and that parents were still being encouraged to "let them hit rock bottom", that I decided the only reasonable stance a parent could take was to nurture his or her child safe away from this madness and hit out at anyone who suggested otherwise.

Of course it was a bit of black humour. I know that kangaroo parenting is preached against in the New Maudsley Method and thought I understood what it was and why I shouldn't do it.

I didn't really, and in an attempt not to be a kangaroo I think I've sometimes been an ostrich and ignored genuine opportunities to help and sometimes been a rhino and tried to head-butt others over obstacles when t would have been better to carry them.

It was only at the FEAST conference in Nottingham that I think I REALLY got the drawbacks of being a kangaroo and realised that I am still very much one. By advising carers not to be kangaroos the professionals aren't telling us not to care, to cook, to plan, to support the person. They're telling us not to cover up, make excuses, bluster, support the illness.

My ahah moment about this came straight after the showing of a brilliant film developed by Professor Treasure's team and funded by the Succeed Organisation. It showed a family acting out the kind of rhino meets kangaroo meets  jelly fish in the zoo from hell that can become the new normal with a misunderstood life-threatening mental illness in the house, and then the alternative when dad took the St Bernard stance. Doing so did NOT involve covering up the distress caused by the illness, or explaining to the angry brother that "she can't help it". It involved acknowledging his distress, rolling with resistance, and moving on.

Straight after the film was shown I logged on to Around the Dinner Table and found someone I know quoted (presumably without his express consent) as saying something controversial. Immediately I knew that the Dolphin or St Bernard approach would be to leave it up there and let people discuss it - these weren't the words of a vulnerable patient, they were the words of a robust clinician. They weren't being hammered down out of ignorance by a group of hostile harpies, they were being questioned by a polite but extremely well informed group of people with a passion for the subject. What I did was to try furiously to edit it to take out any identifying information. As I was doing this from a conference room via my phone all it did was mess up the format of the post and make it obvious that it had been edited by a madwoman. Just as in the first film clip, my attempts at saving the person, while well meaning, only ended up saving the misguided remarks.

I tend to do this with clinicians. I work with quite a few of them. I think I understand where they are coming from. I try to support them because I know that in general they are doing valuable work with the best of intentions. All too often though, in attempting to support the person, the organisation, the good parts of the work, I end up leaping to cover up the mistakes, to make excuses for the gaping holes in the system, to delete the unfortunate wording which "he can't really have meant, can he?????"

THIS IS THE KANGAROO STYLE THAT I AM ADVISED TO AVOID

It's difficult, especially when the whole system in which the clinicians I respect and want to do well are working IS under real attack. Try running the mouse gently from side to side over this "helpful" diagram and you'll get some idea as to what it's like within the NHS at the moment. But the dad in the film did it, and with a lot of help I can too.

Tell me a story

Here we are at the end of Lent.

It certainly doesn't seem late enough in the year to be Easter, but that's partly because it is rather early and partly because the weather's colder than it was in January. I've been able to get into the garden today but only because it's been dry and, as 7 year old A says, if you work hard you'll get warm.

The LLLL task is to share the Easter story, and the suggested method is by giving someone an Easter card.

I HAVE posted Easter cards to a few people. I've received two lovely ones in return. However I'm not sure that, lovely though they all are, the cards really do much to tell the Easter story. After all, the real cross didn't have flowers round it and I'm not sure there are any bunnies in Jerusalem.

So here's a real Easter Message, courtesy of Kathryn.

And here are some cute little bunnies just because

A regular churchgoer

One Sunday morning I got caught. My husband set out for his church wishing me well in attending mine. It started to snow so he turned back and found me, not singing Anglican hymns in the pews, but enjoying an internet debate in my pyjamas. He wasn't best pleased and accused me of not going to church any more.

I DO go to church. I sometimes go on a Sunday if I can get dressed on time and there isn't some frightfully important thing to do on line. I'd rather stay in my PJs but although our congregation were very accepting of 4 year old A's decision to wear her penguin PJs to church every Sunday and hardly batted an eye-lid when her older sister wore a Minnie-Mouse onesie to Midnight Mass I think they might draw the line at my Peacocks fleecy jammies. When I do drag my clothes on and go I usually enjoy the service and really appreciate the music but my concentration span ain't what it used to be (probably all that internet time) and I don't always manage to concentrate on ALL of the service.

Thursdays are different. Thursdays are a Holy Day of Obligation. Maundy Thursday is the Holiest of days and particularly significant and wonderful for always being a Thursday.

Yesterday was special even as Maundy Thursdays go. It started with the customary foot washing. As usual most of the toddlers while fascinated by the water were reluctant to take their own shoes off. Rather specially though one two year old did it, and washed my feet and tried to encourage his twin to join in. The toddlers then baked bread to take home and break with their families.

After lunch with a friend I collected the god-children and went to the Catholic church hall for the local passion play. I'll admit, I expected it to be pretty dire. A, who is now all of 7, expected it to be a pantomime with a Dame and dancing and lots of jokes. We were both wrong. It was serious. I was glad that A has a wobbly tooth to keep her occupied in the quietest bits and very proud of the lot of them for being so good through what was a long, serious and very moving play. It DID contain the usual suspects from the local am-dram set playing the usual parts but it also featured some of the god-children's young friends including a girl with learning disabilities who performed her lines quite magnificently, a youngster who was too unwell to attend school at 11 but featured as the first convert at 13 and a Christ figure who was "chunky", Welsh and absolutely excellent. It managed, for me at least, to pull off the almost impossible - to retell the same old stories, including the parable of the Good Samaritan adapted for modern times, which is usually enough to send any churchgoer to sleep, movingly and memorably.

After the play we repaired home and shared a non-Passover meal. It WASN'T a weak and mocking attempt at being Jewish. It was a fun and Holy and very often irreverent meal with friends complete with prayer and wine and, when the children were hopefully not listening, quite a bit of Tom Lehrer 

The other special thing about Maundy Thursday is that, unlike other Thursdays, it isn't followed by a day at work, it's followed by Good Friday.

My Love Life Live Lent task today is to think about the Good Friday story and I'm going to do that as part of the Church on our village's walk of witness, but first I had better get off t'Internet and change out of my PJs if only because it's going to be a very cold one.

I give up...

Yesterday's task was to "be more imaginative, find out what someone has given up for Lent and then buy it for them for Easter"

I really can't see what's immaginative about that. Or practical.

One of my bosses gave up meat for Holy Week, but I'm sure she wouldn't thank me for buying her a ham sandwich for Easter. My husband has given up meat and milk and I WILL buy him some of both for his Easter, but since that isn't until May I have plenty of time to find a bargain Easter egg or a good value piece of beef. I don't know what anyone else gave up. I suppose I could try to find out but that wouldn't be imaginative it would be intrusive and unwelcome.

So all I did yesterday was to give anyone who might be reading this blog the gift of a day off - consider yourselves blessed!

Today's talk is easier - to buy some flowers for someone. So far the morning is lovely and the sun is shining, so I will be able to pick or buy some flowers for my neighbour, and I will get some for me too.

Repeat after me....

today I'm supposed to learn something off by heart.

Love Life Live Lent doesn't actually specify what but I suspect they don't mean the NICE guidelines on eating disorders so that I can recite them backwards as a party trick so I think I'm going to try to learn the words of this so that I can sing it even when I've forgotten my reading glasses and lost the hymn sheet as I usually do in Church.