Probably one of the greatest driving forces that is seen within Education for all HQ. We often talk about emotions and how adults get and often children don’t.
I see it very differently and believe that we all feel emotions the same regardless of whether we are adults or children. What I see is our ability to understand what these feelings are and why they might present at this time. I have spoken about how way anxiety presents in specific members of education for all HQ. There is for all of us some physical aspect to these feelings and I believe this to be true with all emotions.
We talk about how younger people do not always know what they are feeling. Which is very much true. They still feel the physical aspects of the emotions and they know something is a mix within their brain often they cannot label what that is or is too muddled for them to do so. This is also the case with adults at times too. I know there are times when I feel a specific way, but I can’t point to what it is.
This then leads to what I call big emotions. Which is a big ball of emotional spaghetti that bounces around our heads with random Physical reactions happening to our bodies.
We then find that a small thing sets off a meltdown of epic proportions. We had this last night when I told H he could not go on the Xbox at 10 pm. I don’t say no often but this is one of the times we had to bluntly tell him no. It was near bedtime, and he struggles to settle at the best of times.
I actually sit here the day after and often wonder if we had to be blunt about it simply saying no was the right track. This unleased H’s emotional spaghetti and ended up with a night-long meltdown of how sad he is, and how boring life was. We got 20 minutes of sleep.
I clearly was also struggling emotionally at the time we had the 20 minutes of sleep as the sleep for me was a nightmare where W had gone on a week-long residential trip with school. Not the special school he attends but a mainstream school that seemed to be a hybrid of W’s old school and H’s old school that my brain had formulated. Now the cut scene was W turning up in the staff car just him and this member of staff as he could not handle the coach’s journey around the rest of the children. It then cuts to walking up a stairwell and W is sobbing; I am following this staff member questioning why no one called and told me. I had at this point been informed that W had been sobbing all week. I could not understand why they would not call me to collect W and heard myself repeat this question repeatedly. This was the end of the 20-minute nap I was afforded, and H woke me up.
There were very clearly a lot of big emotions at play last night and once I sat down this afternoon to finally start to process the events that have unfolded over the last 24 hours, I find it so interesting that when you look and think how much the emotional spaghetti that is bubbling around our brains and bodies is actually a by-product of the years of trauma that we have all felt and that to this day we suffer greatly for what has been done.
The question often is if big emotions will always be in our existence and if we are ever able to put any of the thoughts and feelings that are brought about by trauma to bed. I thought as many do that once the fight is over and the boys had what they needed that we would head into some sort of recovery to feel better. I was probably rather naïve to think this.
I am sure one day the road will feel less bumpy but as with most journeys, we have to deal with the worst parts to get to the smooth surface again.
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