Archive for March, 2004
This week i have been mostly…
…a bit depressed.
I BL**DY well hate moving. I’ve got so much to do and this house is so small we can’t even really pack cos there is nowhere to put the boxes - so we are having a 5 day overlap between houses so we can move over easter.
At the moment i am just looking at a mountain of effort that i don’t have the energy for :~(
We’ve kind of “broken up for Easter” - everything is a tip, things are half packed and half away, there are piles of crud and half sorted stuff everywhere - oh i HAVE HATED this house - i can’t wait to move.
Mum whisked the girls away at the weekend a week early as we were just starting to break. They had a great time, we relaxed and packed a bit and finally got to see return of the kIng. I virtually needed counselling by 45 minutes in!!! Thoroughly enjoyed it though, even if we did have to drive all the way to Nottingham as it finished the night before in Peterborough! I do hope that the incredible majesty of the beacon lighting and battles with men being raised from fear to courage by men just like themselves might somehow inspire something in our growing generations. Preferably a fascination in history and a notion of the courage to fight evil, rather than an inclination to become world terrorists, if possible….
Been playing with our new sound blocks (retail therapy hit i am afraid :~/) and Frans doing great with them. She has been picking end soundfs and makng word lists which she has written out herself - yesterday was cat, sat, mat, hat, rat, bat, pat, fat and sam, ham, jam,ram and cram. Nothing amazing except she found them, sounded them and wrote them herself.
And i’ve been to tunisia!
create your personalized map of europe
or write about it on the open travel guide
Oh dear… is this like being right brained do you think?
2nd attempt - i think this is a bit more like it!
There is NO justice
HOW can the Vicar of Dibley beat The Good Life????
I ask you.. .blooming Daily Mail readers….. this country needs more people with UK Gold….
Suffice to say…
… that i was NOT impressed by the EP report that dropped through my door this morning - thank goodness all those other people actually LISTENED to me!!!
Here, for your approval, is my reply to him, copied to every person that he sent his report to!
Dear…..
With regard to your report, which I received today, I wish to point out some inaccuracies.
Firstly, I corrected my daughters name spelling at the time – her name is spelt M**** and her sisters are F*** and A*****, not Francis and Emily. Given that this report appears to be reflecting on our family choices somewhat, I think it would be courteous if at least the details were right.
F**** DOES NOT have “severe difficulties with speech articulation” – she has a few distorted sounds go with her condition of cleft palate and is perfectly intelligible to anyone who talks to her. They are NOT issues that Maddy has mimicked in any way. I was not aware you spoke to F**** and find your judgement rather offensive. I very much doubt if H. R., who sees F**** regularly, would agree with your remark.
Maddy DOES NOT like to go to bed with no clothes on the bed, in fact the opposite is true, she likes to be warmly and tightly wrapped up. I am concerned by this inaccuracy, partly because it suggests to me what I communicated to you was not really listened to, and partly because it makes it sound as if I leave her to sleep uncovered in some neglected fashion, which I certainly DO NOT. She DOES NOT have a positive pattern of sleeping; she wakes several times a night, wets the bed several times a night and often lies awake at night for hours, requiring a parent to be with her to keep an eye on her and comfort her.
With regard to toileting, I think I made it quite clear that Maddy wets herself FREQUENTLY at home, needs even the slightest dampness to be changed at once (backed up by nursery staff experience) and has to poo in a nappy. Toileting is a BIG issue for Maddy, not a minor “sometimes wets herself at home.” I imagine just about ANY 4 year old would be covered by that remark!
I do not think a 30-minute observation of Maddy in nursery constitutes long enough to understand her fairly complex personality. Its notable that all the people who spend any length of time with her think the opposite of you and in fact diagnosed her with Asperger Syndrome last week.
With regard to you comments regarding our educational choices for Maddy, I wish to make the following points.
Home education is a legal and accepted form of education and in itself is generally accepted to be highly successful by anyone who spends time actually informing him or herself about it. Perhaps you might be interested in the research of Paula Rothermel, of the University of Durham, who has done considerable research into Home Education.
Your remark “children being educated at home can dictate the pace at which they work through the curriculum. This sometimes results in an uneven profile in which the child develops abilities and skills in certain subject areas” illustrated EXACTLY why we enjoy home education. What a TRULY terrible thing that a child might be allowed to work at its own pace, spending time cultivating a love of certain subjects and skills in certain areas! Sometimes it strikes me that the people who have lost touch with what education is about, are the people running it. There is very, very much more to a broad education in our home than what is on offer in small, easily digestible packages via the National Curriculum. More than anything, my children love to learn and that seems to me to be an excellent premise for allowing them to continue to do so.
Our reasons for home educating are partly that we would CHOOSE to allow our children to develop passionate interests of their own rather than being turned out as clones how have all had identical information put into them. It may interest you to know that we have just had our educational provision assessed by Elaine Coward of the Education Welfare Office, who is “very satisfied that [we] have and continue to give careful consideration to [Frances’s] program.”
As I made VERY clear at the time, Maddy has a full and busy social life with a wide range of children, older, younger, of both sexes and in different settings. We are by no means a reclusive family needing school to give us a social life. She attends music classes, ice skating, several groups, has both schooled and home educated friends and goes on group holidays several times a year.
You seem to me to have been somewhat prejudiced against considering my worries and I feel this is related to my choosing to reject the ‘precious school system’ for my children. Since you suggest I need to keep an open mind to Maddy’s educational provision, may I suggest you do the same? Since I am the one currently using LEA nursery provision, but who has gone to great lengths to research and decide what I might offer my child beyond that, I think WE are far from being narrow-minded about it. Whatever your opinion of my choice, it is a legal one and one I am entitled to make without the pressure and disparaging attitude you seem to have taken.
I asked for information to help me assist Maddy – thank you for your book recommendation. I shall see if any of the other professionals are able to supply me with it. I was, however, hoping for a positive set of suggestions tailored to the findings of your testing but it looks as if I am on my own there.
Given the inaccuracies of this report and your attitude towards us, I prefer that we do not meet again. If Maddy requires the further assistance of a psychologist, I would prefer to deal with another person,
Yours,
M. R.
Cough cough….
Everyones sick - well except me who will presumably get it when everyone else is recovering. They are all asleep, hacking like a bunch of heavy smokers :~(
Fran was white as a sheet all afternoon and not up to much, but we have managed all but the tree of the collage now, which will hopefully get done tomorrow. She also managed to get on to level three of Zoombinis for one part of it, which was bloody good going i thought! Considering its a logic game aimed at 7 and up, i’m impressed - but the best bt was when she came rushing up to tell me she had managed to get the fleens off the tree all on her own, her most worrying bit of it - and she did IT!!!!! She was SO proud of herself and i was dead chuffed that the method i had shown her had eventually sunk in. I mean, to realize that solving a problem is made easier by breaking the problem down into what you “know” or “can make a good guess at” is a fairly major concept of maths i think. (lol - for me it was always pick a likely correllation and hope for the best, but thats another story!)
They did all skate today and we went to aunty kates house too. Skating was their best lesson in a long time - Fran is only one move off grade 4 now and moo only really needs to “get” slowing down and thinking a bit and she’ll really leap on.
Apparently Moo spent the nursery session being pinged about in an enormous scrunchy. I smiled politely!
Scruff and i played with a shape board today - she can say “star” and was great at fitting it all back together… really must pay her more attention! lol!
Just keep sticking….
Had another good day at the collage today. All the sky is now done - because we decided to swap to a night time scene after we had drawn it, we had already done the white clouds and today Fran said “We need to change them, night time clouds are greyish” which i thought was a good point, so we are going to add grey to them tomorrow. She went through the Winnie the Pooh mags and picked all the ones out with woodland animals in them so we can look tomorrow and decide who to put in our picture. I am charged with finding clipart to doctor tonight! lol… (how come its ME who gets homework????) We also had a good conversation about hibernation and different animal groups - mammals , birds, reptiles etc. Then came the question… “Do ladybirds hibernate?” *blank mummy look!*
Luckily just at that moment i remembered it was time for lunch (!) and while we ate sarnies we got Webland out - i really love that, and having archives of past issues is great. We can always find something that relates to what we are donig. This time proved no exception and rather fabulously we had an issue on ladybirds which told us that they DO INDEED hibernate (as do butterflies… WHERE, you might ask????) We also did one on ants, birds and baby animals and have a couple more of relevance to do tomorrow. So all that was good.
While we were sticking Fran sneezed and i forgot to say “bless you” and got told off. So i told her all about the plague and why “bless you” came about. We also talked about “Ring a ring a roses” and went all through the lines looking at meanings, discussed Eyam and promised to go and visit, talked about fleas, rats, germs, illness, trade and placed the “Great Plague” into history - when we move we must set up a timeline on one of the walls. She has a really good sense of history,its a bit “before Henry or after Henry!”, but at least she has a good idea that its possible to place historical happening into a context.
Scruff had an ALMIGHTY tantrum this morning but it turned out to be mainly related to being extremely constipated again (she gives a new meaning to being “full of sh*t!!!”) - i’ve never seen such rage from her, it was a full on “maddypaddy.” I ended up having to put her into her cot and walk away because she was so angry she didn’t know what to do with herself. But when i went back a couple of minutes later she was ready for hugs and snuggled up for a long restorative cuddle. Shes getting very communicative - new words “hello”, “okay” “nemo” and “hair” and “nose” - mostly i can always tell what she wants when she expresses herself too - which after Fran and Moo is a bit of a novelty. Max is slightly concerned because she has a few obsessions and walks on her toes a bit, but i am not. He sees shades of Moo, i see a world of difference. One of the huge differences is their play. Moo can still only play “object related games” if she is actinig out a video (although her role playing is improving) - so a game with a plastic Nemo and a plastic Dory will only be parts of the script regurgitated over and over again. Scruff on the other hand adores the dolls house and plays long, involved games with that and if she has Dory and Nemo, she is clearly making up her own games and not acting out anything. Its actually quite weird for me, i suppose i don’t realize what i have got conditioned to.
Moo is happier this week because her keyworker is back from holiday. We finally worked out that was what was all the twiddling was about - nursery had made a big deal about her going away for a holiday but hadn’t mentioned her coming back - and i think Moo hadn’t really made the connection. I learned a lot in that meeting and in a way it was quite funny too - they were discussing how if she has a “thing” she wants to tell about she will go to every staff member, every day, and tell something exactly the same to them all. I said “Ah.. you’ll have heard that she wants to go back to holiday…” and her two keyworkers joined in “… with the little house and the swimming!” Moo rather liked Centerparcs!!! ;~))
I’m thinking a lot about what we are going to change when we move. I am DESPERATE to get my Monte shelves set up again - i have REALLY missed that this year - i am keen to make the big girls room very “evening user friendly” for them, i want the kitchen to be easily useable for them so that when babe arrives they are really able to do stuff for themselves - its just been impossible here :~( I also want to take on board something that was said in the meeting which was roughly that “If Moo has to have rituals and routines, make them work for you” which seems like a very sensible plan to me - so i am gonig to sort out things like kid level coat hooks, a linen basket in the loo so if she must dump slightly damp knickers she can do it there with no mess for me to pick up, clean knickers down there for her, a place for shoes, linen baskets in the utility room that she can help me sort and process washing, our toy shelves will definitely help, snacks and drinks that are healthy she can get at - nothing that an organised house wouldn’t have anyway but the last year has been so awful that i want to plan ahead and not take bad habits with me. And i figure a new house is a good time to get them pulling their weight!
