Rosie Scribble

A happy ending

Six years ago I left the life I knew and arrived in the Midlands with a two-year-old daughter. Angry with the world, unwell and struggling to cope, I faced a choice. I could battle my way out of my hell or give up.

I gave up. Tired of fighting and battling on, the world felt a harsh and unwelcoming place to be. I’d grown exhausted with the effort of simply existing.

At rock bottom I waited for someone up come along and gather me up, but no-one came.

My anger at the world depended. My previous efforts to get some help and support have proved fruitless. I felt dismissed, unworthy and abandoned to my fate.

But only one person was really in a position to change things: Me. So I decided to fight.

I fought for a further two years for the support I needed. I got it in the end.

How do you help an over-anxious child?

I was going to call this post childhood anxiety but quickly realised that anyone landing here in the hope of finding some useful information to help their own child would find themselves disappointed.

What I’m actually doing here is asking for help on this very subject. If I am able to access some helpful sites and resources I'll be sure to write a more useful post. In the meantime I'm asking: how do you help an over-anxious child?

This is not a persistent, all-consuming issue in our house, but it is one that does raise its head every so often and one that leaves me concerned and unsure what to do. It is something we are living with at the moment and it isn't easy.

IJ’s recent episode of anxiety has been caused, in part, by a trip to see Narnia with her school. It’s not a film I feel she should have been exposed to and I wasn’t aware that the trip involved the showing of a PG film that is quite scary in parts. However, I’ve made my views known and the matter has been dealt with.

But it does leave me with a child who isn’t sleeping well, who is worried about me dying and being alone in the world and who has become acutely sensitive to absolutely everything to the extent that she has resorted to watching The Tweenies, because there is nothing anxiety-provoking or frightening in the world of Jake and Milo.

And we’ve been here before.

Last year I wrote a post called Mummy, I cannot smile. We haven’t reached the stage of IJ being noticeably unhappy. She remains happy and outgoing, at least at home, but the anxieties that have been with her on and off for the last couple of years are creeping in again at night, and something isn’t right.

So how do you help an over-anxious child who winds herself up with worry and goes over and over the same concerns in her head no matter what reassurances you offer? I’d like to know.

Ellen Arnison on Blogging for Happiness

I’m delighted to be featuring Ellen Arnison on my blog today ahead of the launch of her book Blogging for Happiness later this week. The book is a guide to improving positive mental health (and wealth) from your blog and shows how blogging can be a real force for good in people’s lives. It looks at how a blog can actually improve your mental health, lift your mood, meet people, clear the air and even earn you some money.

I’m hugely supportive of the ideas behind Ellen’s book as I’ve met some of the nicest people I know through blogging and really do believe that blogging can lead to improved emotional well-being. I’ve seen bloggers write about difficult experiences and watched readers rally round to offer support. I’ve also found it therapeutic to write about those times when life has not been easy and found others have been able to relate, which can reduce the feeling that we are alone in all of this.

As well as this, the opportunities I have experienced as a result of blogging have provided a much-needed confidence boost and given me the endorsement that I have something worth saying. And standing in a medical centre in Cameroon listening to a doctor talk about treating malnutrition in children completely changed my life. None of this would have happened if I had not started a blog.

I put a few questions to Ellen about Blogging for Happiness to find out what had motivated her to write it, how difficult it had been and whether there were times when blogging isn’t such a positive experience, as well as asking what tips she could offer other bloggers keen to see themselves in print.

Help for families coping with anorexia

With the recent news reports that eating disorders in the UK are affecting a larger number of young children than ever before, I'm re-posting this article which originally appeared on the Brit Mums blog back in September last year.

While labelling children as young as five with eating disorders like anorexia might not actually be particularly helpful, clearly there are many children experiencing eating problems who need help and support, as do their families.

For families trying to cope with anorexia, here is some information based on my own experiences and also on the research I undertook when writing my book Anorexics on Anorexia, Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Mummy, sad people don't eat

Sitting down for dinner this evening IJ remarked that sad people do not eat.

It threw me off kilter and set alarms bells ringing. Immediately I knew we needed to have a conversation I’d put off for some time; a conversation we should have had well before now, because children are incredibly perceptive. And when there are only two people in one household, the behaviour of each party rarely goes unnoticed.

But in the past I had wimped out and brushed the subject of food and eating under the carpet. The pair of us talk about anything and everything, and have done for some time, but when it comes my eating habits at least, I’ve haven’t been quite so open.

Anorexia is not a word a seven year old needs to know. On the whole it is part of my past – a large part of my part - and something I know we will discuss in detail one day, but I have been kidding myself about the number of times over the last few years when I have slipped back, if only for a day or two, and assumed she has not noticed.

I haven’t wanted to burden her with adult issues she is not emotionally equipped to handle but by not saying anything it has led her to believe that sad people don’t eat. Without realising it I have given her permission not to eat when she is sad too, which is a dangerous thought pattern for any child to be developing.

So we’ve had a talk about how people cope when they are sad. The words ‘eating disorder’ have not been used but she now understands that some people eat more when they are sad, some people eat less and for others their eating isn’t affected at all. I’ve explained that the important thing is to say how you feel rather than focusing on food or anything else.

It might be a little premature to be talking about relationships with food but the outcome of not talking, in our case, could have been far worse.

I do worry for girls (and boys) growing up in today’s society. I hope IJ doesn’t feel the pressure too much to be thin. Today has proved a reminder to me to continue having these conversations with her about life and growing up, and to remember I’m her most influential role model.

Whatever I do, she will do too, if she wants to. Some days there’s no harm in being reminded of that.

If you are a family coping with anorexia, my Brit Mums article offers 14 tips I hope will help.

Photo credit.