side box1 We love to receive letters and emails from our clients, hearing about how they are getting on. Captured below are what we feel are inspiring and moving stories.
"Thank you for helping me be so much more patient with my children. I thought you might like this story...My son is 8 and has never been an enthusiastic reader to say the least! Lately he has been absolutely outright refusing to read to me and never reads to himself. He says 'I HATE reading and I'm a rubbish reader'. I have been using all my powers to avoid any kind of battles or threats but have been talking to him about how our brains respond when we tell them we are rubbish at things or that we can't do them and how they need nurturing like a flower. I said that if we don't feed or water plants they wilt and our brains do the same. I've also been talking about the muscle the brain is and that every time we read or do maths or challenge our brains, the muscle develops a bit more - even doing things and getting them wrong still makes the muscle grow. He loves cricket, and I equated it to a bowler developing his bowling arm. Tonight we played a reading game that he did willingly. I read a word of the story and then so did he. It was fun but a bit slow so I suggested we go to two words each and then a paragraph. After a short while I continued to read the story to him myself as I didn't want to push it. Then I told him that his brain will be a little bit stronger from what he'd read." Lindsay, mother of 3
Samantha has had 2 ingrowing toenail operations and in October the same nail infected again. She SO didn’t want the operation again that she didn’t tell me for 4 months, hoping daily that it would settle down of it’s own accord. But of course it just got worse and worse. Eventually, on the first day of our holiday in Egypt, when she knew she couldn’t hide it any longer because of spending time on the pool/beach, she told me – and 3 weeks later had the operation which went very badly.
A couple of days later, I noticed she was withdrawing and miserable. I asked as gently as I could and tried to listen to her, and eventually she told me that for 4 months she had been feeling terrible about it all. I began to ask her if she had been scared of the pain of the operation, scared that I would be angry with her for having picked at her toes and made it happen again, embarrassed at school incase anyone saw her swollen toe, worried during sport sessions incase it got hurt, confused as to how to wear shoes over her big sore infected toe, terrified of going on our impending holiday in egypt as she knew we would see it there, filled with shame for having got herself into this situation. I really tried to reflect back to her what I imagined she might have been feeling – and she cried and cried and cried as I went through all these big emotions she had been carrying on her shoulders for 4 months.
And when I got to the end of the big list of emotions – she clearly hadn’t cried quite enough yet, so I went through them all again with her nodding and nodding and crying and nodding. And when we had gone through them about 3 times, she stopped sobbing, and seemed to feel purged of the experience. And then was all smiles and lightness – it was over and she’d shed it. Had we not had that moment, she would have carried all that with her still." Emily, mother of 4
"My tough little six year old son came home acting very aggressively last night. He is the type of child who barely ever tells you how he feels and I was struggling to find out what was bothering him. Recently I have been making sure I spend 10 minutes alone with him before bedtime (as my class teacher had recommended). We have discovered he loves to have his feet massaged so I do that for him. Last night instead of probing him I simply said "It seems to me that school wasn't so good for you today". The fact I hadn't asked a direct question and that we had physical contact contributed to what he said next. "Yes", he said "No one would play with me at playtime. I even went to sit on the new friendship bench and nobody came to pick me up" His eyes welled up as he told me. I praised him profusely for telling me his feelings and empathised about how lonely it can feel sometimes at school. Then he brightened right up and told me that tomorrow he was going to take his Dr Who cards to school and play swapping with the other boys. It showed me that how so often when we really listen and empathise with our children that they tell us how they feel and come up with their own solutions." Elizabeth Marris, mother of one.
I wanted to write to thank you for the one-to-one sessions we have been having over the last few weeks. I had put off coming for many months thinking that I 'should' know how to handle my children and feeling a certain sense of failure that I needed help. From the moment I walked in the door and started to talk I felt a huge sense of relief. Camilla gave me so much confidence by praising the fact I have good routines with the children and that they do go to bed with no fuss. She helped me see that by feeling better about myself as a parent I felt more able to be positive with the children without getting cross and shouting at them. I felt so much better even after the first session. I had the nicest week I've ever had with them. I began to appreciate the small moments and slow down my pace. One day my two and a half year old came up with me when I had my morning shower and instead of rushing about I sat on the bed and cuddled him and played a tickling game. It sounds like something so obvious to do with a small child but before these sessions I just didn't have the confidence in myself to slow down and take the pressure of myself to be perfect. My four year old daughter even said she feels so much happier now that mummy is happier. I can honestly say that for the first time since becoming a mother I have stopped comparing myself unfavourably with other 'super mum's' and even though I still shout at times and have stressful moments, they are so much fewer and we come out of them so much quicker. Jasmine Ben'Hamid, mother of two.
My son wakes up in the night and calls out to me. It's so difficult in those dark hours when you're woken up from a deep sleep, but instead of me speaking AT him, I reflectively listened "I know it is so hard for you to lie still and stay calm and you wish you could come into my bed... " instead of fussing he just turned around and went back to bed.