Why We Exist

I want to share with you the story behind CAIM, and the nitty gritty of what our programs are about. How they have been developed from when I was at rock bottom as a parent, dealing with extreme violence at home from my son whose state of severe anxiety and distress due to his PDA profile of Autism, mixed with ADHD impulsiveness meant he was lashing out at his siblings, us as his parents and making attempts on his own life.

This was a horrific time, when I didn’t even know if I could continue to have one of my children living at home and wondering if we could ever climb out of the pit of despair we were inhabiting, or ever recover from falling into it.

Discussing what CAIM Consulting will do and what we commit not to do. Firstly, we do NOT offer parenting courses that tell you how to parent your child. I was sent on many parenting courses in the height of my challenges with son, and all they did was invalidate me, make me feel judged, useless and a failure.

CAIM Consulting offer support programs that aim to offer a genuinely safe space for the people who support Neurodivergent children and young people, such as parents, carers, educators, support staff, to openly and honestly discuss their experiences and how they feel about them.

I was once told that I was a terrible mother for feeling negatively about my Neurodivergent child, I disagree, I was a mother who was lost, confused, feeling hopeless and seeing no way out of a parenting situation I had totally lost control of. Negative emotions in negative environments are perfectly normal, exploring those emotions, processing them, and moving forward from them in a positive way is healthy and necessary if we want to avoid trauma.

Being able to openly discuss how I felt, gave me the chance to explore WHY I felt like that, and what I needed to do to get out of that emotional hole, because I was no good to anyone whilst I was stuck in it. CAIM Consulting resources are often based on mistakes that have been made, and our facilitators will support you to:

- Identify the mistakes.

- Accept and own those mistakes.

- Apologise and make amends for your mistakes, by fulfilling your role as the responsible adult supporting an ND child/young person.

- Move forward positively with confidence, capacity and courage (we will also be honest about what ‘positively’ means, we won’t confuse progress with perfection, because good enough, is good enough and the pursuit of ‘perfection’ is a waste of your time and energy and will hinder your joy as a parent/supporter to an ND child/young person).

Parenting- course / advice I have been given in the past includes:

1. You will feel grief for the child you thought you would have.

2. You are your child’s safe space, it is a privilege.

3. A parent's love will get you through.

4. You can’t pour from an empty cup, put your own oxygen mask on first.

I don’t necessarily disagree with most of this, however there is a time and a way to deliver these messages. CAIM aims to explore all of these points with parents (and other people supporting ND children/young people) in a way that supports and empowers, not judges or burdens, because your child is not a burden, and if you feel that way, we will support you to move away from that destructive feeling – I know that it is destructive because I have felt it, and I will always maintain that nothing changed for the better in my family, until I changed my mindset to focus on what was wrong FOR my Children not what was wrong WITH them.

1. Grief

This is definitely something that I have experienced as a parent to ND children, however that is not grief about who they are or who I thought they would be. It is grief for the parent I thought I would be, and the skills and qualities that would make me such.

When I was permanently attached to the Mamas and Papas catalogue, picking out my polka dot buggy and beautiful, but hideously overpriced baby grows, no one in that catalogue had snot in their hair or tears streaming down their face from the sheer frustration of feeling utterly clueless in the chaos. Hiding behind an actual mini mountain of washing eating my fourth dairy milk of the day trying to make me feel better, was nowhere in my parenting plan. Nor was wondering if I my child might harm himself or his siblings every time he was distressed, or the way the relentless noise of a sensory seeking child would consume my brain sometimes.

I was never going to shout at my children, never would I Iose my temper, or be mean or puerile towards them. I was always going to know what they needed, and always engage with them, I would always feel as connected to them as I did when they were physically a part of me.

Then came Neurodiversity, and I was disconnected, detached and devastated by my parenting. I had no idea who I was, as a mum or as a person, I felt cheated and hopeless.

I grieved my identity, it wasn’t who I had ever been, expected or wanted to be.

I have set up CAIM and am committed to run CAIM to support parents/supporters of ND children and young people, to know that they can do this in a way that does not harm or traumatise your child, but will allow them to feel safe and valued. You’ll just be doing it in a different way than you ever imagined, and achieving goals that you had never considered. Achievements that are different, but not less. Achievements CAIM Facilitators will support you to celebrate, enjoy and value.

2. You are your child’s safe space (your child as a parent, or the child you are caring for a supporting person), and it is a privilege.

Both statements are true, however both statements are often not easy as I did not feel safe in my child's space. Often due to the fear, frustration, confusion, and chaos that being your child’s safe space can bring, because all of the feelings your child has absorbed that makes them feel unsafe, often is communicated through a behaviour that is incredibly challenging to deal with, including violent and aggressive meltdowns towards themselves or others. They let their distress go, around or at you, because they trust you enough to know that, YOU will still care for them in their darkest hour, when most people find them at best unlovable and at worst hateful.

The level of vulnerability they are sharing with you is HUGE, and so is the responsibility that then places on you. That is neither easy nor enjoyable, even if it is a privilege. CAIM Facilitators will give you opportunities to explore how you feel about that and signpost you to how you can practically and emotionally deal with it on an ongoing basis. Often solutions are neither quick not easy, so you need to build endurance, flexibility and stamina. CAIM Facilitators will also support you in advocating for the support you need to sometimes share that responsibility as a safe space, and in creating a safe space in different environments, such as school or youth services.

CAIM Facilitators will support you to feel safe in your capacity to be what your child/young person needs in their most difficult moments. To feel pride in what you have to offer your child.

3. A parents love will get you through (or as a carer/supporter your love and commitment for your job/role, as let’s be honest, none of us want or plan to fail, and when we do we don’t feel good about it).

Again I expected to love my children unconditionally, and I do, however caring for them in a way that fills my soul with parental joy is not always what I expected and love has come in forms that I never expected.

Love became grit, and determination not to give up on my child when everyone told me that I should say ‘enough is enough’, and so often I myself felt ‘enough was enough’.

Children are easy to love when they are cute, calm, compliant, and not causing you stress, when they are throwing chairs at you and calling you names that would make a sailor blush then it’s a bit harder than you expected. Loving your child is sticking with them, it is recognising that their distress has to be your priority and owning that it may have been caused by you, usually unintentionally but still requiring YOU to be the change.

It is responding to their need before your own, knowing that dealing with their fear, frustration, confusion and dysregulation has to come before dealing with your own.

Not that your own feelings don’t matter, they do, but you have to park them quickly, regulate yourself and support your child/young person to regulate themselves. Regulation IS putting on your oxygen mask first, it can save you and the people you are responsible for.

Simple? No, not simple at all, our CAIM Facilitators will guide you through understand why our body responds the way it does, and how to get this under control enough to be able to fulfil your responsibility as the adult in a dangerous, distressing situation. That is what will get your through, and doing that that comes from a place of love.

That also helps to create safety for everyone in the room, siblings, classmates etc, what is important then, is that you have a space to then off load the distress you have absorbed. Because..........

4. You cannot pour from an empty cup.

If I had a euro for every time I had been told that, then I would be drinking from a solid gold tea-set, but in reality I have often felt like I didn’t even have a cup, and certainly no spoons!

Self care is vital when caring for an ND child/young person however it does not mean spas and long walks, except maybe to massage your confidence enough to make decisions to walk away from the toxicity of ‘parenting preaching’. CAIM Facilitators guiding you through the process of giving yourself permission to reset parenting /caring decisions outside of societal norms and rules, safe in the knowledge that doing what is right for your child is how you keep control of the environment you are operating in. Exploring the turmoil that often brings, with you.

That is no easy task when your mindset has been programmed differently for your entire life, and learning to think differently about the people who think differently, takes times and concerted effort and support over an extended period of time. CAIM Facilitators will coach you how to reset your expectations of your role in a challenging situation and in your child’s life, using our own experiences and evidence based approaches that have been researched and tested, often by the voice of ND People.

That is why it is so important to surround yourself with people who trust your judgement, and who you know that you can trust their judgment/input based on the knowledge you all have of Neurodiversity, and of your child, to make informed choices and decisions.

In the Disabilities / Neurodiversity community, this is known as your TRIBE, and CAIM Facilitators will be the first people in your Tribe, and will connect you with people in similar situations, with whom you can discuss and explore the challenges you are navigating at various points. There is no limit to the amount/frequency of online TRIBE Sessions you can attend with CAIM.

CAIMs follow up service, is our long term commitment that is part of the CAIM Programs and is organised and facilitated by the CAIM team. I genuinely would not have survived my life over the last ten years without my Tribe, I know that sounds dramatic, but my family life has been dramatic and in the times I could barely stand, my Tribe held me up and moved me forward.

The CAIM Facilitators are all in my Tribe, and I trust them with my life and the lives of my children’s - that is why I feel safe to let then near yours, to support you to be the parent/support that your child needs.

That is the responsibility CAIM Facilitators absorb, and will work with you to confidently and capably take on, signposting you to advocate for your child and family, by advocating with and for you at the appropriate times.

So that is what CAIM is all about. We are here for you, warts and all. Between us, the CAIM crew as I affectionately call us, have a MASSIVE Pool of combined resources, skills and experiences. Do we have all of the answers? Not a hope! No one does. But we will help you to find the answers you need right now to survive and thrive, and we will guide you how to find those answers as your child/young person/family needs evolve – because they will, and you are able to handle it.

You just may not feel like you can right now – that is why you need CAIM in the chaos.

As a mum, parent, carer, advocate, person, human I now am very confident in my identity. It is not who I was 15, 10, 5 years ago, not is it who I probably ever expected or planned to be. However I am proud of whom I am , proud of my children, and proud of our family. I hope to be make CAIM something that I am proud of too.