aka R’acquel

Hmm… Aidan’s start with the new school year has been unsettled. Year 1 is definitely not as much fun compared to Kindy. A lot more structured, more work at the “table” - and it’s making life very difficult for him.

He had a virus 2 weeks ago, which caused a rise in his temperature but it didn’t result in any overt cold’n'flu symptoms. Enough to keep him at home for a day, but the day after that - Mitch & I kicked into the,

“You must soldier on kiddo - mum & dad don’t take time off work.”

…in the sense that our own parents did no differently with my husband & me when we ued to holler out,

“Mum/Dad - i’m not feeling well, i don’t want to go to school today.”

It was during this time that some of Aidan’s angst towards school started to come out and it hasn’t been easy for me to drop him off at school for the last 2 weeks. I’ve had this sinking feeling. I’ve been trusting my intuition very deeply of late. It’s been so accurate and spot-on, which makes me trust my gut-feelings even more. This is no mystical-psychic ability I’ve got here, i’m regarding it like a very sophisticated computer in my body that’s making super-fast calculations which I know are based on very logical-like explanations behind it all. I guess it would take me a bloody novel to explain it all - no need for me to justify, i just “know” and i’m trusting my gut religiously.

February 11th - that’s when the uber-intuitive sensations struck me really hard. There - it’s been 16 days since i’ve been sensing something “askew” even though i’ve been picking up on this for a while longer. I found it really hard to “let go” of my son that day. I was overwhelmed by this sensation that i had just made a terrible mistake by leaving my kid at school that day. I wasn’t able to shake that feeling off for a few hours - it was really disturbing for me. It was making me feel so uneasy that i was almost contemplating on calling the school,

“If Aidan has trouble at school today, can you please give us a call? I’ve got this sensation that i think he could have a very unsettled day today.”

…and my body, still screaming at me,

“Something’s not right! Something’s not right!!!” my body - wishing i had never left him there. My body - feeling so unsettled,

“Go to the school, take him out of it now - you need to be there, he needs you, you’ve just left him to the wolves!”

/// ~ how to explain that rationally?

…and of course i hesitated on making that phone call - didn’t exactly want to make a fool out of myself on the basis of having a “HUNCH”, hey - even consulted with my husband to see if i was being “over the top” with “just imagining things” (ok, maybe over the top to call the school, but we will need to check in with them)…but oh my - those feelings, and the way that the day had panned out…(and in hindsight, i regret “denying” and invalidating my feelings/intuition in the way that i did).

Major class disruptions due to enrolment numbers. My son’s aid didn’t arrive at school that day -off at an interview for another job, she’s moving on and will eventually be replaced by someone else.

Aidan’s mood/morale/attitude towards school - not good. Seriously - not good in our opinion, cause for concern and I’ve started doing the rounds of contacting other people. Checked in with the school, the hospital, family support services, scheduling Aidan to try a drama class next week - taking the steps required to get some help to intervene with this.

I was hoping that a change of scenery could’ve helped lift Aidan’s spirits up, so i took him to my parent’s place over the weekend whilst Mitch was away on business over the weekend. We spent about 6 hours swimming at the pool. He’s progressing rather well with it - learnt how to do forward/backward sommersaults underwater. My mother could see the shift in his mood, she can sense how the school environment is not helping. We’re not imagining it - even my son’s aid can see it. If i face anyone who fails to see it - i’m not going to think very highly of them.

~

My husband checked in with his new teacher recently. I’m not sure of how that conversation panned out as i had to wrangle the kid away to the car. We’re not comfortable about Aidan being present when adults are “talking about him”. It affects him, so this has made our bodies sensitive to it, as we’re the ones who has to live with his interpretations & internalisations of what the adutls are talking about.

I caught myself off-guard tonight when Aidan’s aid called me tonight. I was asking her if she’s seen his library bag, because he didn’t bring it home. Aidan was right next to me on the phone - he heard every single word, every single one of my “concerns” raised over the phone. I later faced this terrible story of this nightmare he imagined of being charged by the librarian loaded with so much persecutory attack towards himself.

The red flag for us was a few days ago,

“Why don’t they all (school) just get a gun and shoot me/put me into jail.”

~

As for the uber-validation of my kid?

*sighs*

I experienced it on Monday. It was the way my son woke up in the morning, that made me stop and take the time to really listen to him.

“Mum - i really don’t want to go to school today. I’m not feeling well. I need to take a day off to heal.”

No signs of cold’n'flu, his mood/morale was down, he was tired - but it was the way he said “heal” that made me listen more. My “you must soldier on” way of life lost it’s power. As soon as i heard my son telling me that he needed time to heal, i backed off.

“Ok honey - let’s take it easy today and take the time to heal…”

It was followed by,

“I love you mum…” but when he said that - it sounded like,

“Thanks mum - thanks for listening to me…”

So - we took things really easy on Monday.

“Are you starting to feel a bit better?”
“Yes mum! I’m getting better!”

Got a call from the aid, saying she won’t be in on Tuesday.

Fine - we’ll take Tuesday to heal as well.

Another call tonight - aid not coming in on Wednesday - working at the other school.

Fine - i’m not taking my kid into school tomorrow either. Not taking him in, until my gut-feeling starts to shift and unless my son’s regular aid will be there.

~

“Ayca - he’s so lost now….”

No - that’s not my kid. It’s another one a year ahead. Less funding, assistance from the aid slowly being withdrawn. We’re not feeling confident that the school has enough experience with this. I’m trusting my gut-feelings.

~

I’m not overtly stressed. I’m not feeling helpless. I’m feeling very capable & resourceful. I’m feeling very skilled & confident in knowing how to deal with this remarkably well. My intuition - is serving me well. I can almost see the answers right in front of me - within me. I can feel the answers inside me. I’m taking action every day.

~

The state of my house is reflecting my mood. I can see great clarity & strength emerging.

~

The beauty of conflict, is it’s capacity to inspire change & amazing things that follow as the result of that change. Without it, i think we’d all still be living in mudbrick shithouses and complaining because no one came up with the idea of designing a sewage system to effectively deal with the stinking shit on the streets.

Like, in the olden days - people used to wear 20-30cm wooden platform shoes to stop all the piss & shit on the streets from staining their clothes… and i’m sure we can be thankful to the guy who invented toilet paper a few centuries ago as well.

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I prefer to keep a good distance away from politics but can see that i’ve been affected by facilitating a support network for mums.

Childbirth, starting a family ~ is a significant passage of experience for both men & women. I’ve seen all sorts of issues raised in the last 4.5 years. Collective input from people, reveals insights that governments can not possible have the access too unless they facilitate direct discourse with the public.

We saw the baby boom emerging. The childcare crisis was self evident due to input from women explaining how horrid it was to find a place which owned excessively long waiting queues. It took the Australian government a good 4-5 years to realise the things we saw that were happening in a single suburb which had the highest birth rate in Sydney around the period of 2003.

A large volume of women actively chose to delay childbirth for a good 7-10 years on average. This generated a knowledge-gap amongst people. A long period of time where women have not had the opportunity to engage in continued knowledge-transferal with issues surrounding motherhood. The mean age of a new mother now hovers around 32-35.

I suspect it’s going to take another 4-5 years for things to get to a level where there will be significant improvements in comparision to the decade which existed before it.

With more families on the rise, this places more weight on demand - so supply needs to adjust in order to meet it. Have seen things change for the better across the last 6 years due to the increase in demand.

Currently reviewing the archives and going through a process of “summarising” a vast slab of data that’s the equivalent of a few thousand novels which the support group has collected over the years. I found it confronting to see an old post of mine asking questions that live within this trail of thought. I’m still trying to come to terms with what it was that motivated me to ask those questions.

I then reflect on what it was that gave conception to the group. The sheer absurdity of “lack of knowledge”. To face “breastfeeding problems” when women have been doing this for how many thousands of years and to face such “lack of knoweldge” on how to counter the problems that do occur. So many thousands of experience - so wtf happened to the knowledge? Where did it all dissapear into?

Clearly a process of oral story telling that can never be captured by some Baby/Parenting manual written by a “single doctor”.

Women unecessarily stressing themselves out for not having babies that “sleep through” the entire night - where an industry has evolved to profit in the education of parents with the next latest “technique” to “cure” an issue which is very likely to take a good long 8-11months to “naturally” resolve itself in the first place anyway. That’s what i’ve found over the years.

Those who have taken up “services” to try and address the problem, claiming that it was the elixir to resolve the problem - I can not help but raise my eyebrows when i hear that the time-frame in which such rest was achieve, still lives within that rough brack of 8-11 months.

The real “cure” for sleep-deprivation in my opinion - is that it takes a small village to raise a child and people have fooled themselves into thinking that just the two parents alone, are adequate-enough for the task. Long lost is the spare grandparent, aunt or cousin who could take up a leg of the night-shift that could allow a mother and father to sleep without interruption to gain a single night of decent rest.

Anywayz… i really can’t go on indulging details at this point in time and this isn’t the space for it. I’m just note-taking.

Summarising - is quite an overwhelming experience at this level. How to condense a few thousand novels into the key ideas and insights that reveal themselves across a long period of time.

Oh…what i would have paid for a book that contained the experiences of motherhood dating back a few thousand years.

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My friend Rambling Rose & I cordially invite all of our friends to join us for a scenic tour in Sydney, where a donkey tragically dies from the smell of his own farts during our Fabric Shopping Adventure in Cabramatta over at Newtown Mums.

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