Helping families in distress
19 November
By Sue Newman
Carolyn Jarman could be anyone’s next door neighbour. She has a ready smile, an infectious laugh. She’s articulate, intelligent and went into parenthood well prepared.
Andrea and Mark were wanted babies, but like many plans, Carolyn’s fell apart. Not just fell apart, but disintegrated spectacularly.
Where once she was a young wife with one child and a newborn baby, years down the track she is a solo mother who has been to hell and back with her children. Their behaviour has confounded the experts and driven their mother to total despair. Her health has suffered and she reached a point where she felt her life was over. Death seemed a very nice option.
Andrea and Mark are children with multiple problems – ADHD, ODD, borderline intellect, dyspraxia and Asperger’s syndrome. They’re the children no-one wanted to know, the children who defied diagnosis, the children society seemed unable to help.
As a first time mum, Carolyn had little idea what to expect in terms of the behaviour of her first child.
Looking back she says Andrea was always different. She was distant, refused to bond with her mother, rarely slept and appeared to take great delight in contrary behaviour.
Instinct told Carolyn something was not quite right. She visited specialists, she visited welfare agencies. No one could help, no-one could make a diagnosis.
The problem she was regularly told, was hers.
It was to take six long years before a diagnosis was made, before Andrea’s behaviours were given a name.
When Mark was born Andrea’s behaviour, already bad, became worse.
“I walked into the bedroom one day and found her standing over her baby brother with a carving knife. I sought help and was told I was being a neurotic mother, that I should just get on with it and give the children some more attention,” she said.
Carolyn finally managed to make a mental health agency listen to her, and Andrea began a long round of assessments before finally receiving a clinical diagnosis.
Reaching that diagnosis involved 18 months of absolute hell.
“There were endless waiting lists, endless bureaucracy, but we just had to muddle through it all. We couldn’t go anywhere, couldn’t do anything. The house just became like a prison camp,” Carolyn said.
Andrea seemed motivated by just one thing, angering or upsetting her mother.
“If she couldn’t get at me, then she’d attack Mark so I would react. She was hurting, but she didn’t know why.”
Carolyn tried natural therapies, she tried allergy tests, she did everything she could, stopping just short of medication.
Today she wonders why she waited so long before accepting Andrea might need medication to cope with life.
“When she was first put on it and I saw the reaction, I wondered why I had fought it for so long.”
Some of Andrea’s problems may go back to her protracted birth, others to the departure of her father when she was three. Others can be put down simply to unknown factors, to fate.
While Mark is just a shadow of his sister when it comes to behaving badly, he is still a child with big problems.
He’s now 10, but over the years has suffered badly at the hands of his sister.
For Carolyn, finding she had one child from hell and another who wasn’t much better took her to the brink of despair.
“In my heart I was asking myself what I had done to my kids. I brought these children into the world. All mothers have some guilt, but when you have children like this your guilt is magnified 10 times over.”
Over the years Carolyn attended every parenting course, read every book, explored every avenue for help. CYFS had been in and out of her life, so had the police, mental health agencies and virtually every other welfare or care agency on the Government or private books. Nothing seemed to work.
Strengthening Families came into Carolyn’s life when she had reached rock bottom.
“I had reached a point where I wanted to give Andrea up. I was at my wits’ end. I’d had enough and just couldn’t cope anymore. Mark and Andrea were both facing expulsion from school. After a while you start to think you’re not capable of parenting, that maybe your parenting style has caused all of this.”
At that point almost 10 years of battling with her children were taking their toll. Carolyn was becoming extremely run down and stressed and the only time she could spend away from her children was when she was granted respite care at Cholmondeley Children’s Home. She was so desperate, she borrowed money to pay the fees.
Family help was not forthcoming.
“I didn’t have a very maternal relationship with my mother. Her attitude was that I had spoilt Andrea and now I was paying for it,” she said.
Through the Strengthening Families process she was handed a lifeline, but it was a lifeline that wasn’t always easy to hold on to.
The first meeting with the many agencies involved with her family was incredibly daunting, Carolyn said.
Having to talk about your problems and justify your family and its behaviours to everyone in the room was very difficult and put you on the defensive initially, she said.
She applauds the support she received from Ashburton co-ordinator Debbie Bremner.
“She was brilliant, she’s a good listener and she was very supportive. A lot of agencies tried to assert their influence, but Debbie just stood up and said that was not how the process worked.”
Right from the outset it was made very clear that the agencies did not come first, Carolyn and her children did.
Working through the family’s multiple problems required a step-by-step approach, with tasks allocated at each meeting to everyone involved. High priority problems are dealt with first, others take their turn.
Strengthening Families is about empowering parents to drive the problem-solving process, Carolyn said.
“They all have to accept the parents’ point of view and understand it, and it means you finally don’t feel you’re trying to balance 20 pots on one finger anymore.”
Before Strengtening Families, Carolyn said she felt she was battling alone.
“I knew I had a problem and I tried to do everything I could to address the problem, but I had to fight the system every inch of the way, when all I needed from the professionals was for them to say they knew where I was coming from.”
She says she loves her kids, warts and all, and wouldn’t swap them. She just wishes she’d found the right kind of help years earlier.
“I was very close to hating Andrea when Strengthening Families started. I didn’t have anything left to give.”
Working through finding solutions can be very emotional, Carolyn said
“It’s your kids and your family that’s involved, you can’t just disengage from your kids and stand back.”
Eighteen months later Carolyn’s family has completed the process and is forging ahead with their new, refocused lives.
She’s amazed at how far they’ve come.
“If someone had told me that first week that I’d still have the children with me and that we’d be leading happier and healthier lives, I would have laughed. At that point I genuinely felt I’d be dead by now, and I knew I’d have to choose between the two of them, or lose them both,” she said.
Today Carolyn can accept that her children may have been predisposed genetically towards some forms of behavioural problems.
She has an anxiety disorder, now well under control, and their father had been diagnosed as having behavioural problems in his youth.
“I guess with that background, my kids just didn’t have a show,” she said.
Andrea now attends a residential school in Nelson, for children with behavioural and learning problems.
She has almost completed her first year at the school, has one year to go, and the change in her behaviour is remarkable, Carolyn said.
“In her eyes the world was a very, very unsafe place. She has trouble reading other people’s emotions but now she’s finally connecting with me. She will continue to improve and will find ways of healing herself.”
It’s easy to think warm fuzzy feelings around Andrea today.
“I can look at her and know now that I love her. I can hear her voice on the phone and miss her.”
With Andrea’s departure for the residential school, Carolyn feels she has been given her life back.
“Ironically, I have also got Andrea back. I had to send her away to get her back.”
Before she was taken into the school programme, Andrea, then 11, was effectively five years behind her age in school achievements.
“She simply got too hard to handle and she just slipped through the cracks, but already she’s made up 18 months to two years of that time.”
Carolyn knows Andrea will always be a little different, a little younger and a little less mature than her actual age.
“Now Andrea has a chance. Before she’d have ended up dead, in prison or institutionalised. Now I can see she has a shot at leading a productive life, a healthy life,” Carolyn said.
Eventually Andrea will return to take her place in mainstream schooling.\
Mark’s life has also changed and improved through the programme
“He’s gone from not being allowed to stay at school for lunch time and having to be supervised at all times, to being a child who is at school fulltime and without supervision. He is on medication, but that is being halved now. He still has anxiety when Andrea is around, but I suppose that’s only fair, given what he’s been through. Their relationship was very, very violent and volatile, but hopefully now it will be nothing more than sibling rivalry.”
And Carolyn finally has some semblance of a normal life, but she’s no longer sure what normal really means.
“For us, I guess normal will be when they can live in the same home without trying to kill each other, or me. We’re getting close to that now, but without Strengthening Families it would all have fallen apart.”
She has been unable to work because of her high maintenance children, has tried to study but had to abandon this because of the time required on child control.
“My life was simply on hold for the last eight or nine years because of the children, trying to stop them harming each other. Now I have been able to pull my family up and I can see we have a shot at living a productive life. That’s all anyone can ask for.”
Today she is back in study, working on health diploma papers and hoping to complete a psychology degree.
“I just want to be there for the parents who need support, where I had none. I’ve been there and I’ve had it all happen to me.”
She says Strengthening Families gave her the strength to stand up for herself and to believe she did know what was best for her children.
“I’ll be eternally grateful to Strengthening Families. If it worked in my situation, and we were dire, then it can work for other families who don’t need to get to the level I was at. Sadly, I had to hit absolute rock bottom before anyone would take any notice.