Saving Danny (31 page)

I now told Reva that I’d introduced a bedtime story into Danny’s routine as it was a nice way of relaxing at the end of the day, before having his bath and then going to bed.

‘Do you find there’s time?’ she asked. ‘Everything takes him so long.’

‘I know,’ I smiled. ‘That’s why we start the bedtime routine early.’

She nodded. ‘I’ll have to rethink our routine around dinner and Richard coming home.’

I told Danny that his mother would read him a story tonight, and he chose a book and then settled beside her on the sofa. I sat in the room with them. Reva read to him for fifteen minutes until it was seven o’clock and then told him it was time for her to go. She’d been with us for two hours, as Terri had suggested, and it was long enough. I could see Danny was getting tired, and if he got overtired his behaviour would deteriorate. We hadn’t really done an awful lot, but everyone was more relaxed now, and another evening we’d include Danny’s bath and bedtime routine. Reva stood as Danny returned the books neatly to the bookshelf and then she said goodnight to him, kissing him on the head. To our surprise he threw his arms around her and hugged her tightly.

‘That’s lovely,’ she said, clearly moved and holding him to her.

They hugged for a while longer, but when she tried to move away he tightened his grip. ‘Mummy stay,’ he said. ‘Mummy stay.’

While it was nice for Reva to have this spontaneous display of affection from a child who normally had so much trouble expressing it, I could see it was going to be very difficult for Danny to say goodbye. He buried his head further into her skirt and clung tighter.

‘Mummy has to go now,’ she said, still holding him and giving him mixed messages. ‘But I’ll see you tomorrow, and Daddy will be home too.’

Danny didn’t move.

‘Danny, give Mummy one last hug and then say goodbye,’ I said.

He clung to her and Reva began easing him away, but as she did he screamed, ‘No!’

She looked to me for help.

‘Danny,’ I said, going over and touching his arm to gain his attention. ‘It’s time for Mummy to go. Do you want to say goodbye to her in here or come with us to the front door?’

There was silence before he said, ‘Front door.’ Slowly he relinquished his grip on her skirt.

‘Good boy,’ I said. ‘Excellent choice. Well done.’

‘Yes, well done,’ Reva said.

And I made a mental note to tell her about the closed-choice technique on her next visit.

Reva’s first visit had gone pretty smoothly and Danny had been on his best behaviour – partly, I thought, because the situation was new and he was unsure and treading carefully. Her second visit – on Sunday – proved more challenging. As we’d arranged she arrived at two o’clock. She was expecting Richard to join her, and so was Danny, for Richard had told Danny the day before at contact that he’d see him on Sunday at my house. As Reva came in she explained to him that Daddy had had to go and see his parents as his father had been taken ill in the night, but he hoped to join us later. Danny clearly didn’t understand why his father hadn’t arrived with his mother (as he’d promised to) and preferred instead to visit a man Danny had no knowledge of, having not seen his grandparents since the age of two. He grew increasingly agitated.

‘Daddy coming? Daddy coming?’ he demanded of his mother.

‘I hope so,’ she kept telling him. ‘We’ll have to wait and see.’

Eventually I settled him with a brightly coloured puzzle in the living room. We were indoors, as the weather wasn’t good. As Danny played I took the opportunity to quietly explain to Reva why Danny had reacted as he had and why it was so important to give him clear, concise information in short chunks that he could manage. Danny wouldn’t be able to conceptualize terms like ‘I hope so’ and ‘We’ll have to wait and see’. I also explained the closed-choice technique and some other parenting strategies I’d found useful: using the child’s name at the beginning of a sentence to get their attention; referring to oneself in the first person – ‘I’ – rather than the third – for example, ‘Mummy’. ‘I have to go now’ is so much stronger and more immediate than ‘Mummy has to go now’, and therefore more likely to produce the desired result. It would also help Danny to use it. Reva said she wanted to learn all she could and had applied to go on the parenting course Terri had recommended. She asked me how I dealt with Danny’s tantrums and meltdowns, and I told her, explaining the main difference between the two: a tantrum is an angry episode designed to get what a child wants, or to avoid doing something they have been asked to do but don’t want to. While a meltdown, often triggered by sensory overload, results in the child losing all control. There are, however – as Reva had seen in Danny – some similarities in the way a tantrum and a meltdown manifest themselves, and also in the way one deals with them.

Ten minutes later Danny provided me with the opportunity to put my words into practice. The landline rang and when I answered it I wasn’t completely surprised to hear Richard, for he was well overdue now. ‘Sorry, Cathy,’ he said. ‘I’m going to have to postpone my visit today. I’ve only just left my parents’ house and I’m at least an hour’s drive from where you are.’

‘You’re still welcome to come,’ I said. ‘I’m not going out and we don’t have to stick exactly to the two hours. It can be a bit longer. How is your father?’

‘A lot better, thanks. He was very bilious in the night and I think it scared mother. He’s stopped being sick now, but I think I’d rather leave my visit to you until next week.’

‘All right, if that’s what you prefer,’ I said.

‘Thanks. Could I have a word with Reva?’

‘Yes, of course.’ I passed the phone to her.

She listened to what Richard had to tell her, and then he must have asked to speak to Danny, for taking the handset from her ear she said to me, ‘Do you think Danny would cope with saying hello to his dad?’ Reva had always said Danny was afraid of the telephone, and I’d assumed it was the noise it made when it rang.

‘It’s worth a try. Ask him,’ I suggested. Danny was playing on the floor not far from us and without doubt had heard what his mother had said.

‘Danny, would you like to talk to Daddy on the phone?’ she now asked him.

‘Yes,’ he said without hesitation. He immediately stood and went over to the phone. Which made me think we should have tried telephone contact sooner.

Reva passed the handset to Danny and he put it to his ear but didn’t speak.

‘Say hello to Daddy,’ Reva prompted.

‘Hello, Daddy,’ Danny said in a small voice, concentrating hard.

He listened to what his father said – which I guessed was an explanation as to why he wouldn’t be coming this afternoon and, hopefully, an apology too – but didn’t say anything. Then Richard must have said goodbye, for Danny said a very quiet ‘Goodbye’ and returned the handset to his mother.

‘Well done, Danny,’ I said to him. ‘You used the telephone.’

‘Yes, well done,’ Reva said.

But Danny didn’t look pleased. He was standing beside his mother as she said goodbye to Richard, agitatedly snapping his fingers and humming.

‘Daddy?’ Danny asked her as she replaced the handset.

‘Daddy can’t come here today,’ she said. ‘But you’ll see him tomorrow.’

The average child of six, while disappointed, would have understood and coped with the change in arrangements, but for a child like Danny it was just another confusing broken promise in a world of confusing people who said things they didn’t mean.

‘Daddy! Daddy!’ he demanded, clenching his jaw and stamping his foot.

‘Daddy can’t come,’ Reva said, immediately growing anxious.

Danny gritted his teeth, stamped his foot hard and then kicked his toy box before throwing himself on the floor and screaming. Reva looked petrified. ‘It scares me when he does that,’ she admitted.

‘That’s the purpose of it,’ I said. ‘A tantrum is designed to get what the child wants. Some tantrums are best ignored – if a child is demanding sweets, for example – but I think Danny needs some more explanation.’

I went over to him and knelt beside him.

‘Go away! I want Daddy,’ he shouted, trying to kick me.

Reva gasped.

I put my hand lightly on Danny’s leg to stop him and kept out of reach of his flailing arms. ‘Danny, don’t kick,’ I said firmly. ‘It hurts. I can understand why you’re angry, but you mustn’t kick.’ He turned his head away from me, closed his eyes and screamed. I waited until he stopped. ‘Daddy wanted to see you today but he couldn’t,’ I said calmly. ‘I know you’re sad he couldn’t come; Daddy is sad too, but it wasn’t his fault, so don’t be angry with him. You’ll see Daddy tomorrow at home.’ I paused. He was listening. ‘Soon it will be time for Mummy to go, so I want you to get up now and choose a game to play with her.’ He grew still, although his fists were still clenched and his eyes shut.

‘I know Mummy would like to play a game with you,’ I said. ‘But there won’t be time if you stay here on the floor.’

‘I would like to play a game with Danny,’ Reva said. But Danny didn’t move.

‘Perhaps Mummy would like to choose a game,’ I suggested.

‘Yes, I would,’ she said, relaxing a little now Danny was over the worst. ‘I like the game Four in a Row. We used to play that.’

‘It’s in Danny’s toy box,’ I said.

Reva stood and went towards the toy box. Danny heard her move and immediately his eyes shot open and he was on his feet. Rummaging in the toy box he took out the game and gave it to his mother.

‘Thank you. Well done,’ she said.

‘Thank you. Well done,’ Danny repeated, and Reva smiled.

‘Tantrums usually start and end quite quickly,’ I said to Reva as Danny sat beside her on the sofa ready to play the game. ‘But it can take some time for a child to recover from a meltdown. The main thing is to stay calm.’

‘Stay calm,’ Danny repeated, and planted a big kiss on his mother’s cheek.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Saving Danny

On Monday, while Reva and I were upstairs going through Danny’s bath and bedtime routine, Danny pointed to the toilet and said to his mother, ‘George scared.’

‘Yes, he is,’ Reva said, shooting me a pointed look.

I now remembered that Danny had said the same to us when he’d shown George around upstairs. He hadn’t wanted to show him that room but wouldn’t tell us the reason.

‘Why is George scared?’ I now asked Reva.

‘Shall I tell Cathy?’ she asked Danny.

Danny nodded.

‘We’d just got George, he was only small, and at the time I was trying to toilet train Danny. One afternoon when my back was turned Danny decided he’d toilet train George. He must have tried to sit George on the toilet, and either George slipped from Danny’s grasp or jumped. I found poor George under the water, just in time. Thankfully Danny hadn’t flushed it,’ she added with a brief smile. ‘Neither of them has forgotten that episode. George won’t go near our downstairs toilet, even now.’

‘Danny sorry,’ he suddenly said, showing empathy and concern.

‘I know you were, love,’ Reva said, kissing his head. ‘I didn’t blame you.’ Then turning to me she added, ‘You need eyes in the back of your head with Danny.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘You have to be so vigilant. I ask one of my children to watch Danny if I’m not in the same room as him, but it must’ve been difficult for you without Richard at home much.’

‘It was,’ Reva said. ‘Richard didn’t appreciate just how difficult it was. But he does now.’

Reva’s visit on Monday went well, then on Tuesday Danny had contact at home as usual and from what Reva said that had gone well too. When Reva arrived on Wednesday she was clearly in very good spirits and came in with a lightness in her step that I hadn’t seen before. She said she felt far more confident now parenting Danny, but also it was her wedding anniversary, and that morning Richard had given her a beautiful necklace – the one she’d previously found the receipt for and which had led her to assume (together with Richard working late) that he’d been having an affair. She said he’d also given her a card in which he’d written some lovely words. I said I was pleased for her and congratulated her on their wedding anniversary. Yet while all this was very positive, the fact remained that Richard hadn’t come to my house as he was supposed to and we were running out of time.

I said as much to Reva. ‘There’s only Friday and Sunday left if Danny is to return home as planned on Monday.’

‘Richard
will
come on Friday,’ Reva said. ‘He’s promised. He’ll be here at six o’clock. He won’t let you down.’

I didn’t point out that it wouldn’t be me he would be letting down, but her and Danny. ‘Richard does understand how important it is as part of the process for Danny going home that he comes, doesn’t he?’ I said, labouring the point.

‘Yes,’ Reva said. ‘He’s completely committed to having Danny home, and he has been seeing Danny at every contact. But Richard works long hours. I also think he might be a bit nervous of meeting you again.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘He’s not used to being told off,’ she said with a smile.

‘Oh, I see,’ I said. ‘Well, tell him I don’t bite.’

‘It didn’t do him any harm. In fact, you did us a big favour,’ Reva said. ‘If it wasn’t for you speaking to him, he wouldn’t have had that conversation with his parents, and we wouldn’t be in the position we are now, working towards Danny coming home. I can’t believe how close we came to losing our little boy.’ Reva’s eyes filled. ‘So a small dent in Richard’s ego won’t do him any harm.’ She kissed my cheek.

Yet despite Reva’s assurance and faith in Richard, I remained concerned that something could still come up at work to prevent him from coming on Friday, which would jeopardize Danny returning home on Monday.

I needn’t have worried, for at exactly six o’clock on Friday the doorbell rang and when I answered there was Richard, looking very smart in an open-neck shirt, casual jacket and trousers.

‘Promise you won’t tell me off again?’ he said, grinning boyishly.

‘Not unless you deserve it,’ I said. ‘Good to see you again, Richard. Come in and make yourself at home.’

He kissed my cheek as he came in and appeared far more relaxed and at ease than the last time we’d met.