Posted by: Alasdair | 27 June, 2007

my traumatised son

Following our problems with our last neighbours, from whence we fled 11 months ago, our son continues to bare the scars and fears that they invoked (read more here, here, and here).

Apart from the tantrums and tears we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks there has been more telling signs from the lad.  He has now added, to insisting that music is turned down and the computer isn’t too loud, raising concerns that the old neighbours house will burn down and they will need to buy the house next door to where we are now.

This was new this morning and came out in one of his random, unrelated to anything current, speeches.  The mrs was very diplomatic explaining that what he feared was very unlikely and that they wouldn’t want to live here anyway.  Very rational, very well put, and very … correct!  He’s three.  He doesn’t get it.  I’m not so diplomatic!

“David.  It doesn’t matter anyway.  If they move here, I am going to go and get my BIG axe and chop them into little pieces …

[the lad gives his biggest toothiest grin]

… obviously, you understand David.  Violence. Solves.  Nothing.”

The scarey thing is, it’s not so far from the truth … well, what would you do?

Posted in children, docupostery, family, life, nfh, parenting, sahd

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Responses

Understanding that i don’t know the entire story, I am going to put common sense aside and give you my opinion anyway.

In the words of an OBGYN, this may be a little uncomfortable and cold…

Your child is not traumatized do to your x-neighbors actions. Your child is worried about your reaction. I think your son could give a crap about this fella you lived next to. I think he doesn’t like what dad and mum look like when they interact with them. Your child’s comfort comes from you and the secure feeling you provide in the controlled environment of your home. Start showing him examples of handling stressful situations with a smile. Then go off into a dark corner where he can’t see you and punch holes in the walls.

You have reminded me of an experience that happen with my son and i years ago. i will blog about it soon so that you can see that i am responding about myself more than i am assuming that you are doing or not doing something you should be.

I made a huge mistake (as you will read) and corrected it with his help.

He used to be frightened of the way i responded to certain things, he trust me more now

Good luck sir

By: Charles Arcario on 27 June, 2007
at 7:16 pm

Hi Charlie,

I can do cold and uncomfortable a whole lot better than I do nasty and intentionally provocative, so don’t worry about it.

However, the lad’s trouble stems from not being able to sleep at night (and when he was daytime napping, during the day). This is largely what he seems to be concerned about, and he never directly witnessed any confrontations, although I’m under no illusions that he heard one (potentially 2) arguements.

Obviously from the point-of-view of ease of posting some details are dropped from the main posts. He also talks about our dragon (it’s a garden ornament) that used to sit by the front door and which protects us from any ‘bad people’ he takes this as a comfort of sorts.

On the whole axe thing. The discussion actually continued over the course of the day when we agreed that the axe wasn’t really how we would deal with these ‘bad people’, rather the far more traditional policing approach is advocated … in the same breath though he knows that I won’t allow anything or anybody bring any harm to him or the household, it’s a simple truth, and he believes it.

It’s been a long time since I punched a hole in anything ;)

By: Alasdair on 27 June, 2007
at 7:55 pm

Strike my assumption…

What is dad and mums stance on having the lad in your bed when the going gets tough for him?

I struggled with that for a while and we figured a great compromise. I found that my daughter has a harder time with her room at night due to her incredible imagination My son, however, can sleep on a picket fence

In time all of that seems to pass. Time just takes so darn long sometimes…

Respect to you sir,
Your new friend,

Charlie

By: Charles Arcario on 27 June, 2007
at 8:08 pm

“What is dad and mums stance on having the lad in your bed when the going gets tough for him?”
Neither of our kids have slept in our room (let alone bed) since the day they were born … it was planned that way in order to minimise seperation anxiety and to allow us to get a better nights sleep.
When we had problems with the neighbours we used white noise to block out the drum and bass coming through the walls and it worked really well. The lad’s room was the only one that didn’t have an adjoining wall with the neighbours house so he was better off where he was, although he still needed the white noise.
The mrs and I resorted to playing a CD of a thunder and rain storm which helped … the mrs has written more about that on her blog somewhere, I think, I can’t find it though :? , I’ll get her to find it when she comes home …
Thanks
Alasdair

By: Alasdair on 28 June, 2007
at 2:47 pm

It’s here:

http://naughtystep.wordpress.com/2007/06/21/nfh-1/

“…We learned that white noise could help us to sleep and downloaded a CD of rain from the internet. This helped us no end, coupled with my discovery that if I tried to think of four letter words for each letter of the alphabet and spelled them out I could switch off from our troubles and fall asleep.

When we realised that David couldn’t sleep either we put the wrong end of a baby monitor in his room and this provided constant white noise for him each night. This seems so simple and trivial now but at the time it was a real revelation to us that with a bit of alternative thinking we could manage to shut out all but the worst of what they were doing…”

By: jolenemartin on 28 June, 2007
at 3:47 pm

cheers love ;)

By: Alasdair on 28 June, 2007
at 4:36 pm

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