Okay, seeing as you asked, I’ll expand – without the huffing and the shouting..

No.1 – tis apparently just result of stress of moving to High School, was entirely expected by CFS co-ordinator knowledgeable lady, and is why she didn’t sign him off her books when he was haring around swimming pools and going to the skate park last summer. Whilst he was slowly struggling (and not really coping) with the adjustment, his energy was sliding, and then around November his immunity took a dip, and the throat and ear infections began, then he stopped falling asleep at night (we’re back to midnight at the earliest…) – eventually had to stop pretending it was a bug (he’ll-be-better-next-week), and realise it needed better handling. Hang on, I wrote it all out for his form tutor earlier, that’ll catch you up…

“No.1 has unfortunately slowly headed into a relapse, falling back around 12mths on his progress.
In theory, if managed properly this should be relatively short lived, but we needed to create a longer-term action plan, as reactive-responses just don’t work with CFS. Resting when he’s tired isn’t good enough – he needs to be resting BEFORE he gets to that point, the end aim being to maintain an even energy level throughout the day/night, rather than serious peaks and troughs

His daytime energy levels are those typical for CFS sufferers – massively painful early morning and evening lows with a peak around mid-afternoon. Whilst Barbara talked through NO.1’s typical day she highlighted various areas which are clearly more difficult for No.1 to cope with, and suggested ways we can manage them better.

It was apparent quite quickly that he still finds the noisy, busy corridors of High School difficult, and the locker area in particular is very stressful for him. He also isn’t building any rest periods into his day, and with the constant movement involved with his timetable he’s just keeping going – and therefore suffering every evening with overtiredness (he rarely falls asleep before midnight currently, despite a strict wind-down routine which would have me sleeping like a baby by 8 every evening!). This of course then has the knock on effect of making his mornings even more difficult, the pain increases, and so the cycle perpetuates.

So – he’s doing slightly-later-start mornings in school to avoid stressy corridor-before-registration issue, staying through lunch to have rest time with his mates and not feel depressed and isolated again like before, and we collect him at 2 – they only have one period after lunch anyway. On Wednesdays we take him back in at 3 for STEM club cos he’s a geek and he loves it and he’s been upset at missing it.

Boy – tis a phase, you’re right. Tis uber-common amongst 9yr old boys, apparently – No.1 did the very same thing. Mind you, tisn’t helped when one plays one’s DS under the bedclothes at 11 at night either. But all the lessons we learned with No.1 come in handy and we’ve adjusted the bedtime routine. Now instead of climbing into bed, having 30 minutes lights on to listen to MP3/audio books/read whatever he likes, he now has a comfy area on the floor in the corner of his room. He has to go THERE for lights on, and is only allowed to read. At lights out time (which we’ve currently pushed back to 9, and will gradually draw closer to 8)  he is allowed to climb into bed – bed is for sleeping only y’see. Tonight he was asleep about 15 minutes after finally being allowed to climb into bed. DS is residing currently on the Banned Goods shelf in the office, too.

Jolly is shouty cos he’s not sleeping. He’s always been one for 11hrs solid, asleep within 5 minutes of getting into bed. But now he’s taking over an hour to nod off, and then he’s frequently waking with bad dreams. Doesn’t seem to be worrying about anything, can’t get to the bottom of what is causing it, but he’s vicious when he’s not had enough sleep.

Bear is far more delicious, mind. Poo-ing where she’s supposed to. Oh the sheer joy of it. I’ll take all the small happy’s I get this week!