When the identification of need feels synonymous with judgement

It’s three o’clock in the morning.

Two out of four of my children have been awake since midnight. I’m exhausted. I’m tired in a way that makes your head hurt and simultaneously your brain work on overdrive. Writing feels like a better choice right now than just crying. I judge myself already, I don’t need anyone else to add to it.

Earlier tonight, I picked up my girls from nursery after a working all day. I had their story ready. We have a song I’ve made up for our bedtime routine. Their pyjamas were folded, and even the clothes for tomorrow organised. I’d done everything I could to create that calm, safe time from day to night. Yet still, it was chaos. Shouting. Kicking. The kind of behaviour that I’ve previously described as “rage bingo,” where I’m never quite sure when it will quieten down. I took deep breaths and carried on.

Also today, in another corner of my life, I spoke with a conference organiser in Uganda. I’m visiting an orphanage soon, and we talked about the children there, some of whom have experienced trauma that should never be part of a child’s life. Stories that should never exist , and yet they’re all too real and scream from awfulness of it all. When a child has faced that kind of harm, it’s not hard to connect the dots between the behaviour and experience. No one questions their need. No one blames the child. In those stories, we often allow ourselves to name the real judgment: the adults who failed them. Who continually failed them. Those who have hurt or neglected them. In those cases, the trauma explains the behaviour, and our role becomes clear, we support, we nurture, we repair. We try and tell those little ones that not all grown ups are like that.

How about then those children who don’t fit those obvious narratives?

What about the children whose behaviour isn’t wrapped within a horrendous story, but seeps out in behaviour that baffles and exhausts those around them? Not all behaviour is trauma but it can be complicated.

What about the children with “refrigerator mothers”?

That term, so damaging, so anger inducing, was once used to blame mothers for their children being autistic. Those apparently cold, unloving, detached mums. It’s been discredited now, but I wonder how much of the legacy in such pseudo science still lingers in quieter, more socially acceptable forms. What happens if we swap “refrigerator” for “chaotic,” “over-attached,” “too permissive,” “too harsh.” We pathologise the parent and their parenting before we understand the child and the situation before us.

I felt it tonight. I like a terrible mother, on a regular basis. I don’t need anyone else to add to it with judgmental labels.

Anyway, I’m tired. My head hurts. So I hope you will forgive typos and lack of clarity.