Mum of children 5, 2 and 1 – A Great Mum

I was in a really bad place with my three chil­dren, I’m a sin­gle Mum and they were all under five at the time and every day was a strug­gle. My part­ner was depen­dent on pre­scribed med­ica­tion and he also liked a drink and that wasn’t a good mix. His behav­iour was erratic and I never knew what he was going to do next. I was in fear for my children.

My life was hell just try­ing to keep every­thing nor­mal for the chil­dren and my own san­ity. I ended up going to the doc­tors for anti-depressants. I felt I was out of con­trol and felt incom­pe­tent in being a Mum. It was so bad I just wanted some­one to take them away – for good.

It was my fam­ily sup­port worker who recog­nised my vul­ner­a­bil­ity and sug­gested the course. At first I was dead against it, I didn’t want any­one to know I needed help and was too proud to ask for it. And I thought I could man­age anyway.

In the end they nagged me enough to give it a try. After the first ses­sion I thought it’s not for me. Then when I thought about it after­wards I realised there were oth­ers in the same dark place and what have I got to lose.

I think one of the biggest things is com­ing to terms with your­self in the way of believ­ing in your­self and you can do it, it’s just being given the right tools to do it with.

Once I learned to believe in myself and I am doing the right thing, not com­ing from your head but it’s what you feel, that’s what’s right and what’s wrong.

I’ve got to think about myself. I’m just so much hap­pier within myself. So much hap­pier within my fam­ily life. My chil­dren are so much hap­pier. I dance around the kitchen, singing or try­ing to and it’s just every day is a joy.

There’s always going to be times when you think awe this isn’t going to go well but then if you just prac­tice what you’ve learned you can’t go wrong. And if I hadn’t of done the course, I don’t know where I would be to this day. I don’t think I’d still be standing.

I think that’s what really amazed me as well though because you sit there and you think I don’t know about any­one else but I thought it was just me feel­ing like this I thought every­one was happy in their lives. But com­ing to the course, you real­ize, God it’s everybody.

I think my tools were the expan­sion exer­cise, just focus­ing on one thing instead of a thou­sand dif­fer­ent ones going around at the same time and lis­ten­ing as well because I thought I lis­tened, I really did, dur­ing wash­ing up, yeah that’s nice, that’s nice. But I wasn’t any­where near it.

Actu­ally in-depth lis­ten­ing, get­ting to the root of it, the heart of it, it’s such a dif­fer­ence. I thought it was that they weren’t lis­ten­ing to me, that they weren’t doing what I wanted them to do. And you learn it’s not that they’re not lis­ten­ing to you, it’s you’re not actu­ally lis­ten­ing to them. The way I did that was lis­ten­ing and find­ing out about them as indi­vid­u­als, not as my chil­dren but as their own per­son and how won­der­ful they are.

For me, the value is being, know­ing that I was in that place where the new par­ents are now think­ing, … no one can help me. And some­times it’s nice to reflect on that, not to for­get you were there once. And reas­sur­ance that if you lis­ten to your­self, con­nect with your­self, it will work out. You may not see the ben­e­fits of it straight­way, but over time and they’re big, big ben­e­fits. To know I’m help­ing some­body, I’m able to, I’m con­fi­dent enough to with­out think­ing. It may not work for them every time but it worked and it’s shar­ing, shar­ing what worked. Trial and error.

I have a more under­stand­ing response to my chil­dren and a much bet­ter rela­tion­ship. We talk, laugh and play more than we ever did, I love every­thing about my girls and I am a great Mum.”

Miss E. Parent