This is a work of non-fiction based on the author’s experiences. In order to protect privacy, names, identifying characteristics, dialogue and details have been changed or reconstructed.
HarperElement
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First published by HarperElement 2018
FIRST EDITION
© Casey Watson 2018
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
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Casey Watson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780008298555
Ebook Edition © November 2018 ISBN: 9780008298579
Version 2018-09-19
Contents
This book is dedicated to the army of passionate foster carers out there, each doing their bit to ensure that our children are kept as safe as possible in such a changing and often scary world. As technology is reinvented and becomes ever more complicated for those of us who were not brought up amid such advances, we can only try to keep up, in the hope that we continue to learn alongside our young people.
I remain endlessly grateful to my team at HarperCollins for their continuing support, and I’m especially excited to see the return of my editor, the very lovely Vicky Eribo, and look forward to sharing my new stories with her. As always, nothing would be possible without my wonderful agent, Andrew Lownie, the very best agent in the world in my opinion, and my grateful thanks also to the lovely Lynne, my friend and mentor forever.
So. Casey nil. Miller – what must it be now? Around twelve? Because over the next dozen or so days, I had failed to make progress – either on getting him to sleep through the night, on any night, or in getting him out of the house.
Most frustratingly however, the rot was setting in, because, despite throwing everything at the problem, and pretty forcefully, I’d made little inroad in addressing the number-one issue: Miller’s obsession with staying in his room, playing computer games all the time. It would have been easy to regret having got him the PlayStation in the first place, but, in truth, without it, I don’t know how things would have panned out. Without it – and we rationed it regularly and frequently – he would simply get into bed and roll himself up in his duvet, and no form of inducement or threat of sanctions would winkle him out. We tried offering incentives, such as the purchase of a new game a few days hence, to reward good behaviour, but he seemed incapable of understanding the ‘jam tomorrow’ concept. Miller was only interested in the here and now. And if we tried sanctions – no getting the controller back until he spent an hour downstairs with us, say, watching TV together, getting to know each other – he would simply assert that he didn’t care if he never got it back; he was not ‘hanging out’ with us, and that was that.
In fact, the only time he seemed able to amuse himself differently was in the small hours of the night, when he’d while away his time playing with the assortment of distractions in his suitcase.
It was obvious that Miller had an addiction to playing computer games – and in that, he was far from alone. But I also had to factor in the control aspect of his make-up; with no one to control, because the household was asleep (well, in my case, more often than not, tactically feigning sleep), there was no incentive to exert his considerable will, because it would achieve nothing, manipulate no one.
It was also impossible, without him having a daily spell in formal education, to get him started on our strict behaviour modification programme, as so much of its effectiveness relied on the daily routines around education: getting up at a set time, getting washed, dressed and fed, then, in the evenings, doing any homework he’d been given without making a fuss, and going to bed at a time that had been agreed.
Without these simple daily rhythms – part and parcel of any childhood – we were in limbo, and had been for way too long a time now. It was only half-jokingly that I’d quipped to Mike one night that I half-wished he would bloody abscond.
Not that I’d been stuck in every day, all day. The day after Kieron’s visit, he’d been on a late shift,