Room for two more ? Latest blog by Amanda (one of our brilliant foster carers)
What’s the best thing to do on lockdown, when you are struggling to find enough essentials to feed and home educate your brood of six? Well you add two more lovely little girls on emergency, who come with no clothes and no education packs.
So there I was at 9pm texting my son an emergency list for ASDA of girls pants, pj’s, and any clothes that might fit two little girls. He also had to obtain food for ten of us. My son’s only ever shopped for himself so combined with social distancing rules it was not far off a turn on a Jumaji game.
I woke up with a ‘how hard can it be’ attitude. This lasted an hour tops as I surveyed the array of playdoh on the floor and the cat’s fur. My littlies, aged 6,6,7,8 and 9 had already formed a ‘tight knit gang’ by 11am and had even given themselves a name. I think my memory has erased the name to protect my sanity. By 12pm I was wishing I had the energy to pour a glass of wine or maybe self isolate in the playhouse. By the end of the day these two little whirlwinds had wrapped me round their little fingers and I can honestly say I’m really enjoying having them to stay with us.
“I might self-isolate in the playhouse”
So three weeks on from this day I’m still alive, the kids are still alive and I still haven’t found time to pour myself that wine. Home school has happened but with the children’s significant learning difficulties and three teens plus in the mix we are effectively teaching every year from nursery to college.
If OFSTED were to come and spend the day observing my makeshift school I think they would quit, but my children are learning to tolerate and engage with each other. My youngest borrowed son has found a friend in my eldest borrowed daughter and my eldest borrowed son has enjoyed spending time with my youngest borrowed daughter as she is as ‘unique’ as he is. My birth daughter (6) is enjoying having someone to engage in imaginative play with and so the ipad is gathering dust as the Sylvanians and other dolls come out to play.
I’m currently sat here pondering over the different roles we now have to play and how to get the balance right. During school hours I feel I am stricter and possibly more authoritarian to make sure school work is covered and then when school is over I struggle to leave that role behind and become just ‘mum’ or ‘Mandy’ again. Eldest borrowed son can’t cope that well with my role change either, He likes everything black and white and hates that I am teaching him something that ‘my teacher should teach’.
“First impressions mean a lot to frightened children”
Then there are the new additions, first impressions mean such a lot to these frightened children. How do you build up a successful/ sensical attachment when one minute we are having fun in the garden and then the next I’m writing out sums for them to do ? How do these poor kids feel when you are telling them that they can only see Mummy on the phone because we are in lockdown ? Lockdown makes very little sense to many children.
The only thing I can promise is to keep them as safe as I possibly can. I will also admit to myself that’s its OK to give my kids an inset day when I feel like zoning out, its OK to pay my eldest kids to clean the kitchen and pass it off as my amazing multi tasking and its OK to spread chocolate spread on a biscuit and call it a cooking lesson.
Keep safe guys and keep blocking all the Sally Sunshine posts, ie ‘I’ve had a fabulous day bonding with my child over making an organic salad (child took a bite of a carrot in return for money), today my five year old managed to achieve GCSE Spanish past paper, (child learnt hello in Spanish thanks to Dora the Explorer), this week my five beautiful kids have spent the day sharing and helping each other (all five children managed to remember to brush their hair today and helped each other locate the entire snack drawer and grudgingly shared it between them)’!
