*§*AS-Parent Support Group*§*

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May I join you? Rather than post another long intro:
My kid
I've actually found that the folks at Kayli's school like her, they just don't know what to do with her.

Hello, Magique!
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Good!

I hope the other route/support works out.

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Hello, oh lively and chattering group!

I am BORED. I am soooo BORED that I don't feel so much like screaming as crying, I feel so (desperately) bored!!

And it's cold here suddenly, and I hate the cold.

Since getting back from Germany/holiday have been aware of how little there is to do here, that the internet seemed/s like the most exciting thing around, and even that has lacked fire, pep and zip, recently.

Suddenly motherhood doesn't seem to take up much of my time at all, and I don't have anything else to do.

I know, I could draw, ( faces, whatever) , paint, ( carry on with my "purple" pictures that I started, back in June), write, ( if I could get over a total lack of faith in continuing anything for more than a few pages), make little clay figures, ( I bought some white and blue clay a couple of months ago), go for healthy walks in the lovely countryside round here, ........................

But I don't want to, I don't know what I want to do, just that I'm not doing it, whatever it is.

It is agonising. Had forgotten, if I ever knew, that boredom could be so painful.

Aware that this is the sort of state that I have been in in the past just before making huge, reckless and sweeping changes in my life. Checking in with my astrologer's ephemeris today discovered that a couple of major planetary movements/approaching transits, after going into retrograde, ( "letting up" the pressure a bit), over the summer have just turned round and are once again heading forwards, since just a few days ago, which fits.

Aaarrrgghhhhh! Almost desperate enough to dare going round to a "slight/sort of" friend's house ( I'm pretty sure she smokes) and asking if she has any grass.

But not quite.

Any feedback, preferably foolish, unsensible, and off the wall, would be appreciated.

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Painfully severe boredom blurt. Part II

The weirdest thing is that I was so bursting with new interests, activities, and ideas, in June and July, and now all that fizz has evaporated. Don't know why.

Something about the german trip was so "right", so satisfying, that "here" has lost its charm. I think that I loved feeling unquestionably part of a group, the extended german family, and connecting with people with whom I could speak in english, ( germans, unlike the french, seem to learn english as a genuine second language), and I liked having things like travel and timetables and new hotel rooms to organise.

Whatever it was I don't see how I could recreate any of it here, and nothing else seems as interesting.

Realised today, doing some "school exercises" with my son, about verbal "register", that that is something I had more or less mastered, with great care, in english, but that am incapable of it in conversation/real time anyway, in french. My french is flat, without dimensions, and again see why the sort of people that I would like to talk to do not talk to me, because my french is so utilitarian, without all the layers etc which make verbal communication so fascinating.

I get a sense that what I am feeling is something like "my job is done here", or "there is no more for me to do here"; even if I wouldn't, I think, leave my son with his father, yet, ( logistical reasons if nothing else), I feel as if I am entering a new phase in which the respective importance/position of things is changing significantly.

Sorry to go on. I think that I'm hoping to work out what I need to do by writing about it.

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And I am missing having an all-absorbing, or at least "live"/fresh/happening, "intense interest". I am still interested in nutrition, esp. wheat/gluten's role in the development of western civilisation, and in child rights and homeschooling, and astrology, but there is no big theme at the moment occupying my head.

Has anyone else gone through something similar as their children grew up/became less dependent? I wonder whether it may even be as radical and disturbing a change in this direction as it was becoming a mother. If so I'm in for a bumpy ride.

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sorry I didnt reply sooner I didnt realise there had been a new post.

I know how you feel, I get this a lot. I started doing an msc with the open university (people can do a course with them anywhere in the world) as I wanted not to be bored and make changes and its been great but I still dont feel satisfied. Like you I felt a great freedom when I went on holiday earlier in the year (to devon though lol). I just want to break free and go to coffee shops and galleries and explore the world and myself and everything. I think its stimulation seeking behaviour.

Apparently, Yeats, Mozart and Spinoza all moved a lot too and sought new things to do. i think the life of a mother is a frustrating one and our responsibility ties us to the home when our spirit longs to explore further.

Blooming CAMHS phoned today and said they want to send a welfare officer round

On a brighter note I am going to a GF/CF workshop led by Paul shattock on the 28th, how great is that

That doesn't sound good. Is there someone you can call who could sit in on the visit? The homeschooling organisation that I belong to advise doing that, and even sometimes offer to do it themselves, whenever the state is becoming too invasive/hostile; that way you have both moral support, ( which helps to keep you calm, supposedly ), and also a witness to the dialogue.


That sounds wonderful. Have fun!! !

Thanks for replying. Yes, it is as if I have experienced the most extraordinary/unique parts of being a mother, ... and now I want to learn something else, experience something new.

I already looked at OU, and other online/by post learning options, ( since coming back from holiday! )but I quickly realised that I don't feel like book learning, the courses sounded so "school-like" too !

Like you say it feels more like a need for hands-on experience of different environments/situations.

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ouinon

i get down thinking about not having an all-absorbing interest.i really like to have something to hyper focus on.

its been odd round here what with a new school-run routine to get used to and the return to the other school routines of homework etc. even though its hectic, stressful + somewhat chaotic i prefer the regular routine to follow rather than the break times

lotusblossom

like ouinon said, i'd definitely seek to find someone you can trust who can be present with you when they visit. have they given you an idea about the reason?

yeah, I made the mistake of saying that my daughter was restrictive about what she would eat and what she would do and they have taken it that I am restricting her rather than the other way round I told them I was busy on the appointment time they suggested and that I would get back to them. I just hope the stress doesnt ruin my msc exam in october, as at the mo all I think about is cross thoughts about the CAMHS rather than my studies. I need an advocate to tell them to F off.

hey Ouinon - lets run off like Thelma and Louise, only lets not drive into the grand canyon lol.

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Lotusblossom, I don't know whether you already belong to a homeschooling organisation or not, but it can be very helpful, supportive, with both legal advice and also hints and tips on dealing with the authorities. Here are two english organisation contact details in case you are interested:

Education Otherwise
PO Box 325
St. Germans, Kings Lynn
Norfolk PE34 3FB

www.education-otherwise.org

and:

Leslie Barson
The Otherwise Club
1 Croxley Road
LONDON W9 3HH

020 89 69 08 93

[email protected]

I think that, if the french org is anything to go by, they might have a lot of useful experience of dealing with social services hassle.

Good luck.

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To continue my blurbs about boredom,

I was actually wondering whether having been on an entirely gluten-free diet for almost a year, and a mostly casein free diet for the same period, might have something to do with it too.

In other words maybe it isn't just the reduction of motherhood-role/duties/responsibilities which is producing this sudden sense of increased time and space ( emptiness ) in my life, but that being gluten-free ( with all the physical relief, lowered auto-immune activity etc that follows ), has so reduced the amount of inner mental activity/"noise" that I am for the first time in a very long while looking/thirsting for more outside stimulation/input, ( and perhaps even have something to do with the fact for the first time in 5 years I am wearing a colour, purple, other than black/grey, aswell?) .

Could this be? How long have you been following a gf diet, Lotusblossom?

I'm even wondering whether this is what it feels like to be NT, a need/hunger for stimulation, contact with people, with "in the flesh"/"real life" events/activities, ( rather than books, the internet, thoughts and ideas, etc) , which pushes them to talk to people so much ( about anything ) , to turn on TVs and radios all the time, and so on.

I know that alcohol was once a powerful, effective, prop for putting up with, even enjoying, noisy crowded active environments/situations, and that it was probably because it dulled/deadened sensation to some extent, reduced "noise", so perhaps longterm exclusion of gluten has a similar effect, ( if one has an intolerance/auto-immune reaction to it, or sensitivity to its food-opioid properties) .

In which case I might have to revise my, ( already revised last year in face of persuasive/convincing arguments on WP principally), opinion about the effect gluten-free diets might have on AS, ie: that can only "cure" associated problems and not the AS itself.

How much might the disabling syndrome/disorder, which we know as AS/Aspergers, be the result of chronic overload ( on the genetically sensitive, and particularly creative/inventive/perceptive), in an increasingly industrialised and noisy, chemically saturated, gluten and casein rich, society?

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Ive been GF/CF for about 4 years now with a few indiscretions every now and then when Ive not read the label properly. I feel more autistic now than before I gave it up, as now i can see my failings where as before I just mindlessly got on with things. I can see that Im making people cross now but I am still not able to act correctly.

I think the restlessness comes from just doing the same thing for too long, most people want a change of job after 5 years, Im sure thats why school starts at 5 , because most mums have had enough of it.

I think the feeling well and having more energy plays a part though.

perhaps before, when we felt restless, we may have reached for the bread and got stoned.

Yes, the life of a mum has become increasingly isolating and narrowly-focussed in the last 100 years. Whereas once motherhood was the heart of an important and complex economic unit, with many essential production/craft/organisational tasks and processes involved, ( before tinned or packaged or frozen food existed, and most fruit and veg and even eggs came from one's own garden, unless lived in a city, and many clothes were still hand knitted/sewn, etc etc etc !), and the educator of one's children until they entered apprenticeship/employment in many cases, and children were still able to play outdoors/had more freedom so that mothers were not so tied to their children, ( roads for cars had not yet cut off block from block), NOW it is barely more than babysitting with a little shopping and cleaning thrown in.


I've been eating pretty healthily for most of the last 16 years, but have not experienced this mental space/calm/hunger for outside stimulation very often at all; in general I have sought to reduce activities to a bare minimum necessary to sustain life.


Yep, tranquilised/doped ourselves out of feeling the need to do anything. Definitely.

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