Scaffolding

I am putting up scaffolding around the crumbling family. I have to believe the foundations are secure – whatever I did in the first ten years of my children’s life did, I trust, form the basis for them to grow with self-esteem, confidence, and independence (I’ll ignore what damage the divorce did, for now!). So constructing scaffolding to support them from the foundations up, seems the obvious place to put my energies into at this ghastly time.

I continue seeing my occasional shrink, Nigel Latta. His advice is around concretising the emotional. “His brain will only be 14 years, 10 months and ten days old, today. Tomorrow is another day of brain development and growth”. I hold fast – I cling actually - to this inevitability of growth, maturity, change, learning, and brain development. I wonder what I can feed Teen1 to super-speed the synaptic and cellular growth in his brain. Food that counters the narcotic influences from dope and tobacco. Ten kilos of juiced spinach three times a day?

What about me? I’m excavating my foundational core – what are my values, needs, tolerations, expectations? Where might I change in myself, grow and develop my ‘brain’ responses, my Self, my behaviours. Why do I react like a needled lioness; roar at times with frustration and grief; leap when I should stand still; shout when I should be quiet? What’s driving me? What is the one thing I can control? My Self. What do I need to let go of? Controlling my children. Where’s my heart at? Peace? Or war? These thoughts, the learning around them, consumes my long waking hours. I search for greater understanding and wisdom.

For my boy, I’ve initiated counselling. I’ve spoken at length to the school counsellor; I’ve opted to bring in external counselling. There’s a highly recommended programme in town, free of charge and I’ve met a counsellor there who seems to connect with my son and tick some boxes in my mind: professionally qualified; gentle, but firm; experienced in family dynamics, but open to individual situations; able to relate to teens and their experiences; supportive of me and deeply committed to my son’s health and well-being. He asks powerful questions; is holistic in his worldview. (Let me mention again, it is a free service. Please email me if you would like the contact details.)

T1 is scathing, disinterested, dismissive. The other day, he didn’t go in to the counsellor despite my dropping him at his door. So in-school sessions have been initiated with the school’s approval. Here again, is an example of working and keeping open communication with the school. I doubt they’d have approved this if I hadn’t been building my contact – my scaffolding – with them of late. (I’m only just getting used to being in the principal’s office, so many years after leaving school!).

A young friend who is a Social Worker called in the other night to talk to my boy. He works at a youth detention centre, and he sat, privately, with my boy for 45 minutes talking to him. I don’t know what he said. There’s a family conference at school we have to attend and T1 is adamant he won’t go. My friend talked to him about that. His only comment afterwards to me, was that my son shows incredible resoluteness in his viewpoint and has a great gift at obfuscation and manipulation of truths.

I wonder if a career as a prosecuting attorney might be on the cards for T1 later.

I research youth development organisations, Outward Bound, community groups, boot camps. I get distracted googling around the USA and all the camps offered there, Culver Academy being one that a friend sent their child too. Timbertop in Victoria, Australia was where several friends’ children have gone with their schools. Schools seem to be good at recognizing the educational, social, pastoral, and developmental need for such ventures for kids – St Paul’s Collegiate in Hamilton runs Tihoi, and I speak to a former teacher from there who has me enthralled and hopeful and vastly envious hearing about the value of this 18 week experience for teens. I call an ex-Army member of the family and put a proposal to him to set one up! He is far too busy raising his own children, he tells me. I speak to a Maori elder in the Rotorua region who used to run camps funded through Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) based on Maori wisdoms and Army disciplines, with hugely successful results. There seems to be a gap in New Zealand for independent boot camps that support and provide life lessons for teens.

I decide to book a holiday at Christmas where I can aim to do all that myself with the boys, far away from city distractions. Camping, tramping, kayaking, cooking… seriously, I must be mad. The only boot camp I need at the moment is the one at the Golden Door Sanctuary in Queensland : no kids allowed.

I will need to concentrate on building the scaffolding to support us if we are not to fall apart. The best place to start might just be with myself.

Wishing all parents strong foundations, and stable scaffolding around them and their families, and a good sleep every night.