Silence is golden....?

I just had rather a pleasant morning, despite the down-side of sitting in the dentist's chair for about 45 minutes in the middle, being jabbed and drilled. But I got to drive there and back all on my own, which meant I had peace, quiet, time to think and time to listen to John Denver, to whom I have been listening for so long (30 years....!) that almost every song has a memory attached. It felt so .... healing .... to just be able to let myself go wherever the music took me.

Because DH now works at the university where I took my degree (10 years ago, wow!) and that's the only NHS dentist we could find, the trip took me to Oxford and to the place where I spent one of the happiest times of my life. I was musing on that as I walked past, today, and realised that much of the absolute pleasure I got from it was having hours and hours to sit and think - about nutrition as I sat in the library and researched topics, feeling like a detective as one research paper lead me to another and to another, but also about everything else about my life as I drove to and fro or studied at home.

I may have asked this before on this blog, but what do you do when what is best for your children is not what's best for you? If I knew that my children would be happy and fulfilled at school, then I'd probably grab the chance because I am so, so craving time on my own. How I wish I had time to follow up all the things that interest me, to sort myself out a bit, to do all the stuff that needs doing instead of always feeling like I'm drowning in a backlog, which leads me to not want to take on anything else (including any projects/activities the girls suggest) because I already feel I have too much on my plate. But I absolutely can't do that, not only because of all home education's benefits in general and having been utterly convinced that it is by far the better way, but also because of Jade's particular difficulties that mean she would be utterly miserable in school and of course I could never be happy about that. So somehow I have to find some time for myself, and none of the options are easy.

Talking of Jade, DH and I met with the psychiatrist and the speech therapist yesterday to discuss progress with the selective mutism. Actually, I have decided I would much prefer to use the name that one Canadian group gives it, which is Social Communication Anxiety Disorder, as it is so much more than just not being able to speak in certain situations. In stressful situations, body language becomes frozen too, as she attempts to disappear so that nobody can take any notice of her at all. And she seems to be anxious about moving forward with many life skills, such as brushing her own teeth, cutting her own food - it is noticeable that Shannon is already catching up fast in some of these areas and is far more keen to 'do it myself' than Jade ever was at her age. The upshot of the discussions is that we will continue the progress with the speech therapist for a few more sessions, but then she needs to slide out of the process so that we can introduce others. We have got to the stage where Jade will, somewhat reluctantly and still with a bit of difficulty, answer the speech therapist's simple questions, e.g. what is your favourite colour, or play games involving guessing the correct answers to riddles and speak out with the answer, so we now have to try and extend that into becoming proper conversation and then doing the same thing while out and about instead of just at home. Then we have to go through the same process with some other adult, who can then take over as keyworker, and gradually generalise the process out to more people and situations. It's going to take a long time though. We decided that the childminder we've been using for Shannon might well be the best person to get Jade talking to next, and the psychiatrist suggested we apply for Disability Living Allowance to enable us to do that and pay for it. Then, at least, I would have some reliable childcare for Jade, as she refuses to go to most people and my parents are now too old, and not geographically close enough, to help regularly. It really is tough when your child really can't bear to be looked after by anyone else. I do worry about her, a lot, particularly in the small hours of the morning when Shannon wakes me up and then I can't fall back to sleep for agonising over what I/we may have done to cause this in Jade. I know it doesn't help, but logic doesn't work very well at 3am.

Anyway, as I am at work I really must get on, but I really had to get that lot off my mind before I could concentrate on anything else.