NIGHT TERRORS

 I want to make a little bit of noise about something that's never talked about in fostering, but is commonplace and often problematical.

Ghosts.

Yep, ghosts. I'll say it again so we know what's under discussion here:

Ghosts.

The subject of ghosts first came up in our house when our own children were young. The whole "ghost" thing is so ever-present in childrens' stories, dramas and films. No pantomime is complete without the "He's behind you!" Ghost.

We adults, we know ghosts don't exist (except them men who watch channels about sharks and UFOs).

But cast our minds back to when we were small. Do we not remember being spooked after being put to bed in the dark and hearing strange night-time noises. The noises the average house makes all day long but which are magnified into terrifying at night.

We all got a bit scared. We all worried if it might be…

Ghosts.

So spool forward a generation or two. The supernatural is pandemic in kids entertainment. Time travellers, aliens, superheroes etc form the basis of almost every entertainment. Mind, 'twas ever thus; most fairy tales are all about the wierd.

What happened was this, and it was early doors in my fostering;

A six-year old arrived, we'd put her in our box-bedroom. We hoped that the cosy room would help her sense of security. But a couple of nights in she had a night terror. We were downstairs, she'd been put to bed about 7.30pm. Peace was shattered by urgent screams from upstairs. I raced up. She was standing on her bed bouncing and screaming and pointing at the curtains.

I calmed her down. She nodded off eventually. Next day I diplomatically asked her about the previous night. She replied;

"Ghost."

Ah.

I told my other half about the 'ghost' later that day, loves his sport my other half.

He told me about an Australian cricketer, a great big lug of a proper bloke, who came over to the UK for an Ashes cricket series. They were staying in a converted castle - an alleged haunted house. The owners played on the 'ghost' thing to titillate visitors. Sometime after midnight the team captain heard a knock on his door. Standing in the corridor was the big lug who said;

"Mate, can I kip on your floor? Only I keep hearing ghosts."

Yep, the grown-up macho Aussie was frightened there might be ghosts.

Fear of ghosts is a very real fear of a very unreal thing.

How do we foster parents deal with fear of ghosts?

I'm afraid I can only suggest we manage the aftermath as best we can. Unless…

You can; 

a) Stop the radiators and pipes giving off a gurgle or two. 

b) Stop the wind rattling a window. 

c) Shut up the local fox.

etc etc.

Obviously it's impossible to eliminate every noise that might be a 'ghost'.

So we have to manage the thing. The 'ghost' thing.

It's not just 'ghosts' by the way. Night time is always hard for kids in care with memories of argueing downstairs. Or worse.

I've tried and tested a bunch of strategies, I'm afraid none are game-changers. Here's why:

When kids in their birth homes are in bed in their own home feel frightened or threatened at least they know that mum and dad are downstairs and stand between the child and any danger.

The only success I had dealing with the ghost thing was moving the child's bedroom so that our bedroom was between her door and downstairs.

Her ghost was a man she knew and never told us about, but we learned. 

Horrible person. Far worse than any ghost.

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7.30pm for 8.00pm

 The current young generation are going to be alright.

I've long hoped - and suspected - the world will be safe in their hands; fostering only serves to confirm.

What happened is this;

Middle foster child has spent a first year at secondary school and has made a bunch of new friends.

There have been ups and downs with these friendships, nothing odd about that. It's always saddening when a foster child struggles with friends. Often they've been deprived of normal opportunities to learn how these things work, that's the case with this guy, who was kept out of school most of the time and away from other kids because the birth parents thought the child would somehow lead the authorities to them and they'd get somehow busted.

So on the many ocassions this last year when the child came home from school and ran upstairs to cry it was never because they'd got a demerit for talking in class or a bad mark in a history test. It was always because of peer group trouble.

Always.

Like most of us I spent more than 10 years sitting in classroom listening, and not one scrap of the information I believed I was supposed to memorise has come in handy at any time in life. I suppose perhaps I learned to organise my thinking a bit better. I know I found it useful comparing the different types of adults who stood in front of the class doing the teaching. I suspect I subconsciously chose to try to model myself on the bright, kind, accessible ones rather than the cold, remote ones.

Everything I learned at school that's stood by me down the years I learned in the playground, in the corridors, in the dinner hall. On the bus home, then hanging around outside the sweet shop. Having a laugh with friends. I learned my place in the world among my peers, and how I wanted to have fun and fit in life's duties.

And it's becoming the case with middle child.

Out of the blue came the request every parent loves to hear. It's music to the ears, our heart sings.

"Can I have a party?"

Only after we agree (with provisos) do us parents/guardians/carers remember from past experiences what we're letting ourselves in for.

So.

Me: "How many?"

Child "12".

Me; "You sure? There's usually an uninvited bunch turn up because they've heard there's a party and see if they can blag their way in."

Child "That won't happen".

Me; "Dancing?"

Child; "Doubt it. Can't really dance to Lounge."

Now when I was younger "Lounge" was something different. It was slow background stuff. Remember Sade?

Me; "No alcohol, obviously."

Child; "Obviously."

Me; "Do you want food? Y'know; snacks. Crisps, Doritos, Pringles…that stuff."

Child; "No. No Thanks. Deffo no thanks."

Me: "Interesting. What sort of a party are you planning here?"

Pause. The child had something up their sleeve, I could sense they were relishing telling me…

Child; "A dinner party."

Long story short, child threw a dinner party. 

A "twelve". 

Aged twelve.

My days, what a success. A handful of them arrived early with carrier bags of chicken breasts, fromage frais, fresh parsley, new potatoes, and baby carrots. There was a plate of charcuterie (I kid you not) for starters and a selection of cheeses or cheesecake to follow the main.

Luckily our dining table has extendable flaps (not that I've ever used them), and the chairs didn't match. But middle child made sure the plate mats matched, the cutlery was spotless and the candles lit.

We sat in the other room with the telly sound turned down trying to hear what was going on. Loads of laughter. Music by Sade (or some other retro-lounge artist).

It broke up about midnight with carriages awaiting. Middle child and bestie hung around chatting. Bestie's dear mum was held off until 1.00am for the collection. Come about 1.30am I had the downstairs to myself and set about the washing up. There was plenty of it, and no shortage of charred pots and baking trays. By the time I got done the birds were singing.

As was my little old heart.

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THE SOLITARY THING IN ALL OUR LIVES THAT NEVER CHANGES

 I often wonder what part God plays in the hearts and minds of children taken into care.

Precious little I suspect, I don't delve. Their lives are in such turmoil they haven't space in their heads to ponder the mysteries of life. If they did they'd probably give the idea of an all-powerful but caring God the thumbs down.

When I was little my parents sent us to Sunday school. 2.30pm to 4.00pm every Sunday afternoon, I hated it, didn't get why I was sent as my parents were not at all religious. They'd lost a daughter aged two, something that would make most people wonder if there's a God.

But they sent us anyway. I found out why eventually, it'll make you smile.

The reason I mention it has to do with the fact that each Sunday we'd have to listen to a sermon from a guest vicar. There we'd sit, about twenty or thirty kids in their Sunday best, sat at the front of a huge empty church. The star vicar would solemnly climb the steps up to the magnificent mahogany pulpit thing so he could deliver his words of wisdom from on high. No intimacy there then.

They'd start with something like:

"I saw a man on a bicycle this morning, and I though to myself 'God is very much like a bicycle…'"

or

"I had toast with my breakfast today and I thought to myself 'In many ways God is like a toaster…'"

Anyway, the reason I mention this is because;

I was spreading Marmite on a child's lunchtime sandwich and I thought to myself;

"In many ways, fostering is like Marmite…"

Marmite, for overseas readers is a British salty brown yeast spread. It was discovered when brewers of beer had to clean out the massive tubs they'd brewed the beer in and found at the bottom a layer of gunge. Sticky and hard to clean it was. Then one day one of them put his finger in the gunge, licked it and pronounced it disgusting. Another chap did the same and declared it was not too bad.

So instead of flushing it down the drain they bought a load of big French pots (French for big pot is "Un Marmite", and they were in business.

If anything would remind you of fostering, where we foster parents have to pick up kids who've sunk to the bottom, and help them find a place in the world, it's Marmite.

But there's more to the Marmite comparison than that. It's this (and it's breaking news folks)…

Marmite has changed. They never announced anything, but it doesn't spread easily any more. It sticks to the knife and stays in a clump of the bread.

I've seen nothing in the papers or on social media about the change. We're onto our 3rd or 4th pot of Marmite that won't spread, so it isn't a one-off, or a rogue batch.

My point is that Marmite has changed, like everything. Life is all about dealing with change.

My grandad said;

"The solitary thing that will never change is the hard fact that everything changes."

And boy, do the lives of kids in care change.

They have to deal with so much change that when they transistion from Primary School to Secondary School there's usually a transition programme to help the youngsters deal with the change. Most foster kids don't need the programme. They're used to change. They've developed their own resilience.

Had to.

So back to my Sunday School days. Why did my parents send us to church every Sunday afternoon?

Well, one sunny Sunday the Sunday School adults decided to take us all out into the sunshine for a healthy walk. The walk took us down the road I lived in. We stopped outside our house for five minutes because one of the adults wanted to nip in and speak to our next-door neighbour. Some of the other adults, who knew we were standing outside my house, starting staring at my house, whispering and smiling. I looked in the direction they were looking in; our upstairs front bedroom window. My parents' bedroom.

The curtains were drawn tight.

Ah.

Obviously I never mentioned it to mum or dad. 

But I saw them in a different light after that.

They'd somehow…changed.

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BETTER TO BE STREET-SMART THAN STREET DUMB

 Many children coming into care aren't doing very well at school.

That's if you can get them there.

They struggle to pay attention, which ends up getting them into trouble because they amuse themselves by trying to distract everyone else. You get comments from teachers such as;

"Wayne needs to learn to concentrate"

"Chloe must involve herself more in the lessons"

And so on.

But y'know what? There are lots of types of intelligence, such as the type that gets called "street-smart".

The majority of foster children in my expereince have way more street-smart than academic ability. In fact I'd go as far as to say they have more street-smart than the average child, sometimes even more street smart than the kids at the top of the class.

What is this thing "street-smart"?

Perhaps it's nothing more complicated than sharpened survival skills.

Any skill of any sort improves with practice. Children born into chaotic households have to learn from the get-go how to have their needs met. They come up with strategies to get food, stay safe, find some peace.

If a hungry newborn baby doesn't get fed she'll go back in her mind to what she did the last time she got fed. Maybe she'd settled into exhausted whimpering rather than bawling her lungs out. So next time instead of crying with all her might, she whimpers.

If a baby just a few weeks old is forced to strategise, just think how further advanced she is than other babies whose needs are anticipated and met. Once a brain starts to think strategically there's no stopping it.

If only that street-smart learning weren't often hand-in-hand with attachment disorders and under-developed empathy, you'd have yourself a bunch of young people who could run this country a whole lot better than the current mob in Parliament.

Here's an example, my favourite one actually, of a foster child using street-smart. I've mentioned it before more in connection with happy outcomes, but here it's to illustrate street-smartness in foster kids.

She was a teenager who was absolutely flunking college. Getting her out of bed and into the car was a daily struggle. Bargaining and negotiating - not something I use with the very young - was the only tool I had, and it gradually dawned on me how adroit she was at playing the game.

Her opening gambit:

She would always open with this phrase:

"I'm confused..."

Her core opening gambit:

A bunch of assertions which only had a thin layer of truth, eg:

"I thought you said, and we agreed, that if I got up in time not to be late for college for a whole week I could go home for the weekend. My social worker Carl agreed as well. I thought we was all agreed. But I was late on Tuesday because they changed my timetable so that I started at 9.00 instead of 11.00 but they didn't tell me. So when they phoned to ask you where I was and marked me down as late that wasn't my fault." 

Her second-phase tactic:

Wear the listener down:

"Carl said that if I was feeling ill and couldn't go in it would be alright as long as I told you by 9.00 so you could ring college and tell them. So I did that and you had a go because I came down on the sofa and was watching Jeremy Kyle because there was nothing to do in my room. And the downstairs toilet is nearer the living room than my bedroom is to the bathroom in case I was sick. So Carl said last time I saw him that it was normal that you can be too ill to be at college all day but well enough to lie on a sofa, like, if you're still in your dressing gown and under your duvet, that's not cheating, like."

On she would go.

Her plea-bargain;

Finally, her pitch:

"So what I'm saying is, like, that instead of me having to go to college every day for a week so that I can go home Friday night, like, well it's the same thing as if I go home on Friday, yeah, like even if I was late once and missed a day last week, because if I go home this weekend then I thought we'd agreed I would agree go to college every day next week. Which is the same as what you're saying but the other way round."

Her trademark payoff:

"If that makes sense…"

Poor girl didn't want to go to college because she had a body image problem and she got bullied about it.

In my book her education could go on hold while we repaired her heart. But it's your job to do your best to get then to school, to college, to contact; all those things.

Sometimes her street-smart was poignant:

One evening a friend of hers showed up at our house. They were going out for the evening, to McDonalds. The friend had her arm in a sling after falling downstairs. We sympathised. Our girl disappeared upstairs to change into going-out clothes. Came downstairs gingerly half an hour later and asked for bandages; she said she'd turned her ankle over.

Obviously she craved the simple sympathy we'd given her friend and wanted some of that.

We bandaged her ankle and sympathised. That's what you do.

Was she self-aware of her guiles? Her self-taught skills at having her needs met?

I don't think so, not for a moment.

Some people would dismiss these behaviours as low cunning, I don't. 

I call them canny. 

We all need a bit of canny, and they don't teach canny at school.

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