Mums Just Wanna Have Fun

Nancy laughed. ‘Come on, you’re being too hard on yourself. Look, I think about stuff like that because I have to. Jack is different from your children; if I don’t plan and think ahead, it could mean the difference between him feeling comfortable and him having a meltdown. I don’t have a choice. It didn’t come naturally to me; I had to learn the hard way. Your children are not the same. If you told Isla to wait an hour for breakfast, yes, she would kick up a fuss and she might feel like it was the end of the world, but ultimately, she would cope. Jack wouldn’t.’ She squeezed Harriet’s hand. ‘That’s the difference.’

‘I guess.’

‘Hari, I don’t get it right all the time – you know that!’

‘I just don’t get the whole “it comes naturally” thing people say with parenting.’

‘That’s because it doesn’t come naturally to everyone. I love being a parent, but parenting an autistic child is a completely different story and I certainly do not feel like that comes naturally to me. Everyone is different. It’s really shit but we have to learn things the hard way, by experiencing the ups and the downs and working out what went wrong so that it doesn’t happen again. And that’s why I know to have breakfast stuff – it isn’t because I’m Supermum.’

Harriet smiled at Nancy, thankful to have such an understanding friend to travel this rollercoaster of feelings with. ‘I just need to balance my life better, I think.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Just, you know, work and stuff.’

‘I agree, you work far too much.’

Harriet made a noise which was half an exhale and half a laugh. ‘It’s not as simple as that Nance, I have to work.’

‘Yeah I know that, but do you really have to work as much as you do? You have a team of people around you – use them!’

Harriet nodded. There was no point in having this conversation. As much as she loved Nancy, she just didn’t understand what she went through with work. She didn’t have the same stresses as Harriet. If Harriet didn’t work and make it a success, she would lose her business. And not just that, she would lose her house, her only source of income and her dignity. Regardless of how much she wanted to spend more time with the children, the fact of the matter was, work had to take priority. She had no choice. And until she found a solution that would allow her to embrace both aspects of her life, she would have to continue juggling.

She looked over to Jack who was now seated on the chair by the window, glued to his iPad. She then looked over to Tommy who was playing in his cot with some toys. Finally, she looked over to her laptop which was still open but had gone to sleep. She could almost feel the emails dropping into her inbox.

It would be another late one tonight – she needed more coffee for this.

Chapter 8

‘Shall we go exploring today – see what the resort has to offer and find out where the best cocktails are?’ Harriet winked at Nancy.

‘Sounds like a plan.’ Nancy cleared her plate of the omelette she had chosen for breakfast from the buffet – trying to forget about the cereal and croissants she’d had before that. This was a stark contrast to how things were at home, where Nancy ate mostly leftovers. She was really thankful to Harriet for giving her this chance to re-evaluate things.

‘I found out where the kids’ club is, and they open in an hour so shall we drop the kids there and then set off? Apparently, they’re doing party games, painting and a mini disco today. Sounds great fun, hey Isla?’

Isla nodded excitedly. ‘I’m going to wear my pink dress today so I’m ready for the party and I’m going to paint Nanny a picture of a goat.’

Nancy looked at Harriet questioningly. Harriet shook her head. ‘I have no idea.’

‘Sounds great. Are you putting Tommy in too?’

‘Yeah, they do a babies’ club as well and take them from a year old – bonus.’ Harriet paused. ‘Are you putting Jack in?’

Nancy pulled a face and looked over to her son. ‘I don’t know that he’ll go to be honest.’ She didn’t want to come across as negative, but she was already pre-empting how Jack might be feeling. Part of her was willing him to give it a try, to see what would happen, but the more dominant part of her was realistic and felt concerned about letting him go in the first place.

‘Do you want to try?’

‘I guess so – it’s worth a try, isn’t it?’ It was more of a question. She didn’t feel comfortable about it at all and she could already predict how it was going to go. It wasn’t like she had spent all her parenting years never challenging Jack. She did get him to try new things, quite regularly. It didn’t have a very high success rate though and this was causing her uneasiness now. She knew he would feel worried and anxious. She knew he wouldn’t like the new surroundings and if it was noisy inside then she knew he wouldn’t cope well. Nevertheless, she was reluctant to be seen to not be trying in front of her friend. Harriet was a strong- willed person and a lot of the time being around her brought out a more confident and risk- taking side to Nancy. Sometimes this paid off and Nancy achieved things she wouldn’t normally – like when Jack didn’t like brushing his teeth and it was Nancy’s confidence and Harriet’s idea of finding a teeth-brushing song that ultimately ended with him now loving to do it. Sometimes being brave paid off. Sometimes it came back and punched her in the face. She thought for a minute and finally said, ‘It’s a new place and he’s never been before so I don’t fancy the odds, but maybe I’ll give him the option and see if he surprises me.’

‘That’s the spirit.’

An hour later they were all lined up at the hotel kids’ club reception, ready to sign the children in, and Nancy was feeling more anxious than she had done since they’d got on the plane to come here. It wasn’t just that Jack didn’t like things like this, but over the last year everything had been that little bit more difficult and his behaviour had become more unpredictable. She felt like everything she knew about her son had been turned on its head. She wasn’t sure if it was because she was more anxious about it all being on her own or whether Jack was reacting to the changes happening at home, but either way, she was on edge constantly, swimming against the tide.

‘Good morning!’ said a cheery voice from the desk. ‘And who do we have here?’ she looked at Isla who was performing her best ballet routine for the lady.

‘My name is Isla and I do ballet!’

‘I can see that, it’s beautiful. And will you be joining us today?’

‘Yep! I’m going to draw a goat!’

The woman at the desk smiled and looked to Harriet.

‘I don’t know the relevance of the goat.’

The lady laughed. ‘That’s fine, we can draw some goats and maybe some other animals too. Can you fill in this form for Isla? And will little man be joining our baby club?’

Harriet nodded. ‘Yes please, he’s just had his breakfast so will probably go for a nap soon.’

‘No problem, when you go into the baby room just tell the ladies in there, so they know.’ The woman’s attention now moved to Nancy and she instantly felt her panic levels rise. ‘And will this handsome young man be joining the party too?’

Nancy looked at Jack who was still kitted out in his headphones, but he was now noticeably hiding behind her legs pretending to be looking at his iPad. ‘He’s a little unsure,’ she said, placing her arm around him which he promptly shrugged off – he didn’t like to be touched.

‘That’s OK, some children are a little nervous. Why don’t you take him in with your friend and her little ones and he can have a look around and if he wants to stay, you can just come back and grab a form – how does that sound?’ The woman’s smile was so comforting, Nancy instantly relaxed a little. Childcare professionals seemed to have this natural talent of being a walking smile on legs.

‘Thank you,’ Nancy said and followed Harriet into the club entrance. She chose to ignore the voice in her head that was screaming at her to prepare for disappointment. Maybe today would be different…

Chapter 9

Nancy followed the others into the club, taking in the colourful surroundings as she did. It was very bright and busy, and she didn’t have to look at Jack to know that his little heart would be racing. Toys were strewn about all over the floor and the volume levels were loud. Nancy had no idea how these women worked in it every day. She could almost feel the clock ticking, waiting for a reaction from Jack. She had that awful sick feeling in her stomach, the feeling when you just know something is coming and the anticipation of waiting for it makes you feel queasy. She had the urge to turn around and march out of there with Jack, but her head was screaming at her to just try. How was Jack ever going to move forward if she kept stifling him and wrapping him in cotton wool? How was he ever going to learn to cope if she always managed situations for him? She needed to let him at least try these things, but she really struggled with the knowledge that she felt like she knew it would end badly anyway. She didn’t know what the answer was, what the right thing to do was. She tried to not let the angst show on her face and turned to Jack, plastering on a smile.

‘Isn’t this lovely, look at all the toys to play with!’ His little face looked terrified and pale, and she could see the little white marks on his knuckles as he clutched the iPad to his chest, headphones still on but she knew there was no sound – it was just the comfort of the pressure on his ears.

Harriet came over to where Nancy and Jack were standing, a huge smile spread across her face as she adjusted her sunglasses on her head. ‘Right, Tommy’s in the baby room and Isla has run off already to draw her goat – you ready?’

Nancy looked back to Jack and then to her friend. ‘I’m not sure Jack is going to stay.’ She couldn’t shake off the unease but equally, Harriet was the one paying for her holiday and she felt pressured to make sure Harriet had a good time – and her ideal day didn’t involve having Jack tag along with them.

‘What?’ Harriet knelt down to Jack’s level. ‘What’s up, little man? Don’t you want to play with all these amazing toys?’

Jack shook his head.

‘You’ll make some friends and have such a good time.’

Nancy knew how wrong this statement was. The reality was, Jack wouldn’t be playing with these children. He would, most probably, be sitting with his iPad, stressed, counting the minutes until Nancy returned. He would hate the other children screaming and shouting, he would feel out of place and he would struggle with communicating with the staff, too. The more she thought about it, the more ludicrous this seemed, and Nancy was surprised that she had even entertained the idea of kids’ club for Jack. Jack was different, she knew that, and it was times like this that she found herself overwhelmed with feelings of helplessness and sadness. As his mother, she so desperately wanted to make it all better and take away the sad feelings for him, but she couldn’t. As a parent, that felt devastating. If she truly thought about it, she knew deep down that Jack wouldn’t cope here. Now she just needed to work out a way of telling Hari without letting her down.

‘You can do some painting or play some games and Mummy and I will be back in a few hours.’

Jack noticeably tensed up and grabbed onto Nancy’s skirt, gripping it hard enough that his knuckles returned to their white colour. Nancy crouched down as Harriet stood.

‘Do you not want to try, sweetheart?’ The words had no conviction; she had already known they were leaving. She said the words to show Hari she was trying, to lessen the blow of potentially ruining her idea of a perfect afternoon without the children.

‘It’s too noisy – I don’t like it.’

He looked like he was going to cry and Nancy’s heart broke. Whilst she was getting used to the fact that he now had an autism diagnosis, sometimes it was still really hard to accept that he was different to other children. Harriet’s children had strolled straight in without a care in the world – she had it so easy. Nancy had to second guess everything. She could never just leave anything to chance, she always needed a plan B (and often a plan C and D too). When Jack was born she’d prided herself on taking to motherhood really well but then as the years went on, her parenting technique suffered, and she went into survival mode. Some weeks were better than others and now that Jack was seven, there were certain elements that they had under control and Nancy was proud of herself for getting to that stage with these parts of his personality – but they still had a long way to go. Pete leaving was the spanner in the works that she just didn’t need. She was determined to show him that she was doing fine without him, but it was hard, and she struggled, a lot. Every day was a new learning curve for her and Jack and she quite often went from feeling like an amazing mother who managed to gain little victories with Jack, to feeling inadequate, unprepared and a failure.

She stood up. ‘Looks like we have company today then.’ She didn’t miss the flicker of disappointment on her friend’s face and it was like a punch to the stomach. What was she supposed to do? Jack was always going to come first in anything Nancy did but she really resented this when it affected those around her. And this happened more often than people thought. She had lost friends in the past because she wasn’t able to stick to play dates or when she did go, it ended in disaster. It started by those around her giving her space when Jack was uneasy and ended with her just not being invited out at all anymore. She still occasionally spoke to these mums, but they weren’t her friends and they never included her in their get-togethers. Now here she was again, potentially messing up another friendship. She had known Harriet so long, she didn’t think she was so fickle as to let this affect their friendship, but the disappointed flicker in her friend’s eyes was enough to make Nancy feel really shit. Her life was led by Jack and his behaviour and even though she knew he couldn’t help it, it was a tough pill to swallow.

Harriet quickly covered her disappointment and replied, ‘No worries. Let’s go.’

The girls made their way back to the entrance and as they exited through the doors, the smiling lady caught them.

‘Oh, are you not staying with us, little man?’

Jack hid further into Nancy’s skirt. ‘He’s not feeling very confident today, so I think we’ll try again another day.’ She smiled and tried to continue walking but the woman crouched down to his level.

‘We have lots of games and toys to play with and all the ladies are very lovely – you’ll have a great time.’

Jack’s hands becoming increasingly whiter as he gripped Nancy’s skirt. He had started to rock slightly too. It wasn’t noticeable enough for anyone else to spot it, but Nancy knew he was incredibly anxious right now. She needed to get him away from this situation to a place where he could relax. She reached into her bags to retrieve his Calm Cards. A while back Nancy and Jack had spent an afternoon finding pictures of all Jack’s favourite things and they’d printed them off and laminated them, so that whenever he was feeling anxious, he could take some time out to look at his cards and get into a better headspace. So far, they had been a hit. He had pictures of him and Nancy, pictures of buildings he had visited and landmarks from all over the world. Jack loved architecture so looking at structural pictures was calming for him. She rummaged around in her bag and after a moment felt the disappointment settle as she realised she must’ve left them up in the room. She cursed herself – she never usually went anywhere without them. The tension was building and she could feel her temples pulsating.

‘I think it’s probably best if we try another day.’

But the woman just wasn’t giving up.

‘I know, why don’t you give it a try for just an hour and then if you don’t like it, we can call Mummy? How’s that sound?’ And then she did the one thing she shouldn’t have done.

She took his headphones off.

Chapter 10

The next few minutes felt like a lifetime for Nancy, and yet everything seemed to happen so quickly.

The first thing was the rapid movement of Jack’s arm swinging at the lady, catching her square on the chin as he flung both arms up when he felt his headphones being removed. Nancy couldn’t move quickly enough to stop the connection of his fist hitting the lady’s face. The woman recoiled in surprise and screeched which caused Jack to let out an almighty wail as he struggled to take in the sudden commotion around him.

‘Jack, no! It’s OK!’ Nancy called to him, reaching out her hands to try and stop the swinging of his arms as he became more panicked and unsettled. But in moments like this, Jack had an unbelievable strength that would challenge the world’s strongest man.

Nancy frantically tried to calm him, making shushing noises and reassuring him that everything was OK, but he was already in the meltdown zone. His anxiety had been building the whole time they had been at the kids’ club and the woman removing the comfort blanket of his headphones had tipped him over the edge. Nancy knew he was too far gone now to be pulled back easily. His face contorted with distress, bright red with a look of fear spread across it. He was holding his ears as though someone had hurt them, and it broke Nancy’s heart. She was so angry at herself. If she had said no at the start, then none of this would be happening. Instead, her little boy was frightened and distressed and it was her fault. She felt sick with frustration.

‘Nancy, what do you want me to do?’ Harriet called to her, but she barely heard her, her focus was now purely on trying to calm Jack down.

‘Here, Jack, have your headphones back.’ She held them out to him, but he batted them away with his hands, dropping to the floor and squirming around as his cry became a wail.

The woman who had started all this was standing open-mouthed, staring at him as she held the area on her face where he had whacked her. She looked from Jack, to Nancy, then back to Jack, unsure of what exactly was unfolding in front of her. She didn’t understand, nobody understood. It was an incredibly lonely place to be when you were parenting an autistic child.

‘I need to let him get it out of his system,’ Nancy said to Harriet, pleading with her eyes for her friend to not judge and just be there. Harriet had never judged her, but the scars from those who had were still raw. Harriet, true to form, just nodded and smiled, showing her unwavering support and this meant more to Nancy than anything she could have said. Words were nice, but it was the comradery of support shown in Harriet’s actions that spoke the loudest. She had her friend by her side and she was going to get through this. She hoped.

‘What an earth is going on out here!’ Another member of staff had joined them from inside the kids’ club and her gaze instantly went to Jack on the floor writhing about in distress. ‘Oh dear, does somebody not want to come in today? He’ll be fine once he’s in, Mum, go on, off you go and we’ll take little man in with us.’ The woman began to kneel down to Jack who instantly kicked out and just missed making contact with her face. She jumped back in surprise and made a comment about being unruly under her breath. This made Nancy’s blood boil because it was the conclusion that so many people came to without knowing anything about the situation. So many children were branded as misbehaving without anyone looking into why they were behaving in that way. Not only did she have to deal with the pressure of watching her son clearly distressed and inconsolable, but she also had to listen to people who thought they were child behaviour experts pass judgement on them.

‘He’s not naughty!’ Nancy found herself throwing the words back at the woman although she wasn’t sure why she bothered. People like that were never going to understand.

‘Oh no, I didn’t say that ma’am.’ The look on her face said different.

‘Come on, Jack, let’s go.’ Nancy said, trying to be more authoritative when inside she was feeling totally helpless. She just knew she needed to get both Jack and herself away from this situation. But as she moved towards him he lashed out at her too, grasping tighter at his ears, practically ripping them from his head. He was pulling at them so much they had turned a deep shade of crimson and looked so sore. ‘Jack, stop it! Stop pulling your ears and put these on!’ She shoved the headphones at him, but he couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything except stopping the feeling that was making him so uncomfortable. His wails became sobs and he curled up into a ball, rocking.

‘Hari…’ Nancy sobbed, looking to her friend. Generally over the years, Nancy had built up a good coping strategy for dealing with Jack when he was like this. However, being in a new environment, she found herself panicking and becoming stressed a lot quicker than she would do in the comfort of her own home. Seeing Jack in a state was proving too much for her. She was so grateful to Hari, who instantly went into leader mode and took control of the situation.

‘OK, what needs to happen right now ladies,’ she addressed the two kids’ club staff members, ‘is that we need you both to step back and give Jack some space. I’m sure we don’t need both of you out here so if you wouldn’t mind…’ She nodded towards the second woman who had joined them and indicated that she return to the crèche. The woman didn’t appreciate being told what to do but the receptionist surprisingly backed Harriet up and said, ‘Perhaps you should go back inside, I’m fine out here.’

‘Right, Nance, put the headphones next to him on the floor so they are there when he calms down.’

Nancy did as she was told, sniffing back the tears that were now falling down her face.

‘And just FYI,’ Harriet addressed the receptionist, ‘Jack has autism, so this isn’t just a child having a tantrum, and we would appreciate some support as opposed to the judgemental looks.’

The woman looked away, half embarrassed and half fuming at being addressed in this way but Nancy didn’t care right now, she just needed Jack to calm down. She was annoyed at herself for failing to cope in Jack’s moment of need. It was day one of their holiday and already she had crumbled. She couldn’t help but wonder if she was more wound up about this holiday than she realised. She knew Jack would struggle but she had coping mechanisms in place at home and she thought she’d be able to cope with anything he threw at her. But for some reason, she’d struggled today. It could be tiredness from the travel or worry about what might happen. Either way, she needed to get a grip on things if she was going to make it through this holiday with her sanity. She needed to refocus … and then she needed a drink.

***

‘Here, I think you need this, hey?’ Harriet passed Nancy a glass of sangria and watched as she gulped down half the contents in one swift movement. ‘Are you OK?’

Nancy exhaled, her gaze fixed on her glass. ‘Not really.’

Harriet felt incredibly sorry for her best friend. This last year had been so hard for Nancy, and she’d watched her friend slowly but surely lose her identity and a little bit of her sanity since Jack’s diagnosis and her marriage break up. Harriet tried to be there for her but there was only so much she could do and with work getting increasingly busy she knew she hadn’t been there for Nancy as much as she perhaps could have, which made her feel guilty. She’d wanted this holiday to be a positive break for them all, but she hadn’t envisaged Jack struggling with it. She hadn’t even thought about Jack if she was honest, which pretty much summed her up as a parent – useless.

‘It wasn’t your fault – she shouldn’t have taken Jack’s headphones.’

‘Yeah, but how was she supposed to know? How is anyone supposed to know? It’s so fucking hard, Hari.’