Parenting is one of the only jobs in the world where the feedback you get does not represent how well you are actually doing the job.

We look after tiny things who have been through horrendous trauma and pain. Foster care is a role I’ve fit into beautifully, emitting the kind of healing empathy that only comes with lived experience and a real sense of ‘I understand’.

For the last two weeks, the latest tiny thing in our care has been deciding whether or not to trust me. He has attachment trauma. In behavioural psychology, this is a pretty big deal, and there’s a tight deadline that all of us in the trauma-aware field keep a nervous eye on. According to research, if babies miss this specific window to form a secure attachment, then it can quite literally ruin the rest of their lives.

So the phase that baby is going through right now is mega. Life-changing mega. Make or break mega. If he decides to trust me, then it seals the deal for the rest of his life – he will always have a foundation of security to come back to if he needs to, no matter his future. If he doesn’t? Well, then it’s bad news, and more often than not ends in incarceration – truly.

So I should be celebrating. I should be throwing a party. This is a big win. I’m changing lives simply by being attuned. He might have a better life because of me. I’ve done it before and I can do it again.

But I don’t feel like that.

I’m getting to the end of each day, with bite marks, clumps of hair pulled out and a jumper covered in snot and tears from the ‘push-pull’ attachment behaviour he is displaying (which as it says on the tin, involves him physically pushing me away and pulling me close within the same minute, over and over again, day after day after day), and I’m exhausted.

Despite knowing logically that ‘he is working through some really heavy stuff’ and ‘this won’t last forever’ and ‘it’s not personal’, it’s almost impossible not to flop into a messy heap with half a saucepan of leftover something and feel like a massive failure.

Parenting is one of the only jobs in the world where the feedback you get does not represent how well you are actually doing the job.

And do you know what the hardest thing is? That it is the expectations I set on myself that I feel like I am failing. I’ve literally just deleted a post I wrote a while back on how much I enjoy parenting, because I’m finally giving in to the fact that for the last two weeks, no, I haven’t enjoyed it. I desperately want to cry, actually.

And it hasn’t been like this before. Normally, I can manage. I can be an observer to the situation rather than feel entwined within it. But nothing is working and I’m scared that I’m losing myself. The ‘entire life purpose’ that came as an unexpected bonus CD with parenting has gotten lost somewhere in the rack. And so what does that leave me with? Who does that leave me as?

I know the real answer here is that I simply have to ride this one out. This is just a phase that he will pass. And I will claw back myself again on the other end, when he inevitably starts to care when I leave the room, and come to me when he cries. And stop biting… At that point I know I will get a double dose of purpose and meaning.

But right now I’m in the thickets and it’s making me bleed, and I just have to suck it up.