Major wobbles

*Big brain-drain alert!* This stuff is just going round and round in my head and getting nowhere, so I thought getting it out here might help me sort through it a bit. Also it's kind of my duty to blog it as it is all about flexi-schooling issues and the troubles associated with it!!

So, we had our usual termly review meeting at Jade's school on Wednesday afternoon to have a chat about how she's getting on and if anything needs changing or dealing with. For the benefit of newer readers (if any), Jade goes to school 3 afternoons per week. This was originally envisaged as necessary childcare to cover some of my working hours - I thought she might be able to go one full day and a couple of half days. I also thought it would be nice for her to make some friends that she could see regularly. We wrote to the school setting out what we were thinking about and they asked us in for a meeting to discuss it. They seemed keen, enthusiastic even, and very open to understanding what HE was all about and the benefits of Jade having a little time in a different environment to do PE and group work and stuff. In the end, it seemed to work out best that she go 3 afternoons to avoid getting embroiled in their literacy and numeracy hours and the other more formal stuff that goes on in the mornings. It avoided me having to liaise with them about what work they were doing the rest of the week so that I could replicate it at home, which would have been a bit pointless!

I went to the meeting on Wednesday expecting that all was fine and just to ask them to put a bit more simple intervention in place to help her overcome her anxiety about speaking to adults. She does not speak to the adults, although she did do so once or twice at the beginning. What we got (DH came too) was a full-length exposition of why this is not going to work for very much longer, and how I need to decide whether we are working towards her going in full-time or not.

In brief, part-time school in Year 1 has been fine. They are very informal in the afternoons and she has been able to dip in and out without any trouble. In Year 2, they will all be working towards getting ready for SATs at the end of the year (rolls eyes) and the other children will gradually be spending more time doing papers and getting used to what's required which obviously will be harder to dip into part-time. In Years 3-6 (Key Stage 2), the whole timetable changes, things are no longer so easily split into formal and informal work and there will be no chance of her being there part-time. Now excuse me for being a bit pissed off that this was not clearly explained when we went for our first meeting! Or at least, I don't have a memory of this being said or hinted at, but with the general state of my memory that doesn't mean that nothing was mentioned. Maybe it was, and I just ignored it as being too far in the future.

As it has turned out, only one of her times at school has coincided with my work (now that I have changed my hours on a Thursday), so there's only one half-day that she 'needs' to be at school for my sake. However I have racked my brains to try and find another way of getting some sort of childcare for while I work that time but nothing seems to be available without spending money, which simply isn't possible. I can't afford not to work, I can't afford to pay for any extra childcare. Once Isabelle starts getting nursery vouchers next January, that will ease the budget noticeably and something else may be possible, but not for now.

Anyway, in the hope of leaving her there for at least the coming term and getting some help for her with the selective mutism, I asked whether it wouldn't be possible to get some extra strategies/intervention put into place to give her gradual exposure to speaking situations which she finds difficult so that she can gradually build up her capacity to speak to adults. Then I got this explanation of why that is difficult while she is not at the school full-time because there aren't the staff available to leave the classroom and work with her outside. If she was there full-time, she would be assessed as having special educational needs and the school would get some extra funding to get her some extra help. And the SENCO also asked what would be the point of helping her in the current circumstances if she is not going to stay at the school, i.e. why help her to get used to speaking in a school situation if she is not going to stay there. I was hoping that any progress in speaking in school would be built upon so that we could generalise it to other situations, but I can sort of see his point.

I said I didn't think Jade would thrive full-time in school at the moment, and they asked why not. Well as mentioned in my previous post she has been particularly clingy at the moment and hates leaving me under any circumstances. But I could see them almost thinking that it would be 'good for her' to be made to be apart from me more often, then, to help her get over that feeling. And I'm not absolutely confident of my ground arguing about that one. As DH said, I guess it's similar to people arguing on the "cry-it-out method" of getting little ones to sleep. And I could never do that either. But I suppose it could reasonably be asked, who has the separation anxiety here - the child or the mother?

Anyway the situation has been left that we will think about whether we want to work towards transitioning her to full-time school over the next 12 - 18 months or not. If we do, then they will of course be delighted to work with her to make her more comfortable in speaking to adults. If not, well we might as well take her out straightaway.

The problem is, the idea of sending her to school is not completely unattractive! Especially on a day like today, when I had another appalling night's sleep thanks to Shannon's waking and feeding habits, and I'm absolutely exhausted. I have been grumpy, irritable, lethargic, not wanting to do anything with the girls and really just wishing they weren't there so that I could rest or get on with things quietly. And I have days like that more often than I like to admit. The archaeology thing is the only overtly educational stuff that we have done this week. I seriously wonder whether the work would be more interesting at school, because although I have bursts of enthusiasm and energy for stuff, more often than not I feel uninspired and too tired to do anything very interesting. I wonder whether our relationship wouldn't be better in some ways because if I had space at home to do my thing during the day, when she came home I could really focus on her and be happy to give that time to her completely, rather than wishing I was doing something else. I really, really crave time on my own at home, and am simply not getting any at all. And I've always thought that late primary age is probably a fairly reasonable time for kids to go to school if they're going to. I don't like early primary because I feel they simply start too young and secondary school is too horrendous to contemplate mostly, but late primary seems fairly innocuous. And I also have to take into account that we're not just talking about sending her to 'school' as a general principle, but to this particular school, which has about 4o pupils max., about 6 or 7 children in Jade's current year, a mixed class of Reception, Y1 and Y2 which I like because then they're not all simply the same age; and a staff of 2-3 people in that classroom of about 15-18 children.

Over the past couple of days my thoughts and feelings have veered wildly between, "let's just take her out right now and I can take her to work with me on Thursdays and we'll just manage without any school hassle at all," to "oh it would be really nice not to have to have all this education burden on myself and it would be fantastic to have some quiet me-time at home sometimes (assuming Shannon went to nursery or playschool as well) and let's just send her to school full-time".

And then I wonder what happens if the best interests of the child (to stay at home with her family where she feels safe, loved and confident) conflict with the best interests of the mother (to be able to have some space to get things done, sleep, just be alone as necessary). And then I think I shouldn't be thinking about such things on a day when i'm so tired. And then I think, but that is the reality of many of my days.

So there, let's see if getting that out of my head and onto the blog gives me any more clarity!

Archaeology

We've done some work today that has satisfied a bit of my personality that I didn't know I had! Having read the first bit of 'Story of the World' a couple of weeks ago, I've been planning on doing a bit of 'archaeology' with Jade - all I needed was the chance to surreptitiously bury some stuff in the as-yet-unplanted vegetable patch and then set her up for an archaeological dig. I managed to bury the stuff last week, but then it got freezing cold, so we didn't do anything about it until yesterday. When she got home after her afternoon at school, and with me feeling frustrated because we'd just frittered away the morning without doing anything 'proper', I tempted her out into the garden with the promise of lots of mud and mess. She went at it with great enthusiasm, which I had to temper slightly for fear of damaging the 'artefacts'! But she was thrilled whenever she came across anything. I am slightly disconcerted that there are 2 things I buried that we never discovered, so who knows how long they will remain there now! We took great care, once we found something, to brush the mud carefully away so as not to damage it, and to mark on a plan of the area where we had found something. Before long, L from next door came round and joined in too.
















Shannon was happy to help by washing the 'ancient objects' that we found:

















And, yesterday, that was that.

This morning we had planned to go to HE group, where science experiments were planned. But despite looking through a few books last night, I couldn't find anything I was interested enough in to take with us to demonstrate, and I wanted to finish off our 'dig' project as I feel I can't go on with SOTW until we've finished this bit (I know me .... if I move on, I will never go back and finish off what I've left undone). And Jade was begging to go swimming and as HE group lasts most of the day (10.30 - 3pm) there wouldn't have been time to go. So we decided to abandon the group, finish off stuff at home this morning and go swimming this afternoon.

So, once we were up and dressed (mostly - Shannon wanted to remain naked for a good portion of the morning) I set Jade to taking photos of all the objects she had dug up, which included a few bits and pieces of broken stuff that I hadn't put there! I then started to show her how to get the pictures from the camera onto the computer, but hit a strange technical hitch which slowed everything up a great deal and she got bored and wandered off to play. I eventually sorted that out, uploaded the pics, chose a few and printed them off. I then retrieved her from her playing, sat her down at the table and persuaded her to make the pics into a booklet with a front and back cover, which she illustrated with a lovely drawing of a skeleton and a garden fork, and then wrote 'ARCHAEOLOGY' for the title. What has surprised me is how satisfied I feel at having got her to produce a 'proper' written piece of work (rolling eyes emoticon!!). Help, somebody stop me, I'm coming over all teacher-y!

We've also put stickers on the world map that those lovely people at the Guardian newspaper have given away free (courtesy of my Dad). We have placed stickers showing the 7 wonders of the ancient world (noting how they are all in the same area) and the 7 wonders of the natural world. She's had lunch while listening to a couple of the Rainbow Fairies stories which we've borrowed from the library on CD (well, it saves me having to read them to her) and then she sat on the sofa reading several books to Shannon (toddler books) while I listed a couple of items on Ebay.

After that we went swimming. By accident I slightly under-inflated Jade's arm-bands and tried to persuade her to keep them like that. Despite the fact that she could swim in them, she insisted I blew them up more. Meanwhile Shannon only wanted to hop onto my back and be towed around hanging onto my shoulder straps!

Tonight I am particularly concerned about Jade's apparently growing distress at ever being separated from me. She was saying this evening how she hates Wednesdays when DH is at home and I go to work, and she asked if it could be the other way round tomorrow. She hates me leaving her in bed to fall asleep, and always begs and pleads with me to stay. She has also been more reluctant to go to school recently, despite apparently having a lovely time when she is there. She's been clinging to me and not wanting me to leave. She really does settle down and play happily with the other children, and appears to do just fine while she's there. She won't talk to the adults, though. And that is another aspect of what is bothering me. Selective mutism, which she does have although on the milder end of the spectrum as she will at least talk to other children, is an anxiety-related condition, and obviously so is separation anxiety. She's such a fabulous girl in so many ways, and yet she is so anxious in these various situations. Everything I've done with her since she was a baby was supposed to develop self-confidence in a child - co-sleeping, carrying, long-term breastfeeding. And I wonder whether in fact it's done the exact opposite. Or maybe she's just genetically like that and would have been no matter what we'd done with her. She does after all remind me of me :-) I get so cross with myself for being anxious in other people's presence, fearing I'm not interesting or fun enough for anybody to want to be with me, and no matter what pep-talks I give myself I don't seem to be able to rid myself of this particular trait. But knowing what agonies that having an anxious personality has put me through, I'm longing to find a way to help her become confident within herself and deal with her worries.

To completely change tack, and just so that this is recorded for our own purposes and not to brag at all (I don't even know what's supposed to be 'normal' at this age), Shannon is completely confident at counting from 1-12, recognises the shapes square, circle, triangle, rectangle, heart and star, and is 'getting there' with colours.

Bits and pieces

Well, another couple of weeks have flown by. There have been various interesting things going on, but I can't remember when or in what order so I'll just do bullet points.

• Shannon astonished me by taking over Reader Rabbit 1 that Jade had left, and not only did I see her competently using the mouse and clicking on stuff for the first time ever, I realised that she was actually properly playing the pairs game and matching up sets of 2 pictures! Astonishing!!!
• Jade and I have been playing lots of Farmyard Bingo which Shannon's enjoyed joining in with and doing quite well too.
• Jade went to school all day on Monday. They were having a 'medieval day', making food, dressing up in costumes, dancing etc. She enjoyed it, but said it was too long to be away from me. I agree! It felt very strange not having her here for that long, and I just can't imagine what it would do to family relationships if she was there full-time.
• She's going all day tomorrow, too - for a trip out to Warwick Castle. I'm rather surprised she's so enthusiastic about going, actually, for one who's fairly anxious being without me, but she seems keen so I am happily going along with it.
• DH took the girls out to see Kenilworth Castle last Wednesday when I was at work all day. They loved it.
• This morning, we've done the story of Isaac from the Bible. On the way I explained about primogeniture, inheritance, cultural differences and lots more.
• Then we did some Miquon maths. She's still at the simple adding up stage, and using her fingers for 1+2 and other such sums!
• Then we pulled out the Usborne Children's Encyclopedia, and she wanted to look at the page about having babies, so we read about fertilisation, where babies grow, how long for and how they are born. Then we went onto the web to follow up the Usborne Internet Links and searched for some others too. So we saw short videos of fertilisation, implantation, and foetal development. Then we found a nice video of some women giving birth, gently and naturally, which may well have robbed me of the opportunity of ever having grandchildren, as she really does not like the look of that AT ALL! She says she's quite scared ....
  
• Also on the subject of birth, we visited a friend's farm last Friday for a tour round the lambing sheds. We saw the orphans that were being fed from bottles, the ones that had been put with another ewe to try and get her to adopt them, and then were fortunate to find one ewe who had just delivered one lamb, and my friend got the big shoulder-length glove on and stuck her arm in to find that there was another one on the way. This one was breech, though, and she couldn't manage to get it into a good position for delivery, so her husband came along and he managed to get the lamb born. It was touch and go for a minute or so but fortunately the lamb managed to get going and eventually we saw it struggle to its feet and have its first feed.
• The same day, I went to a funeral for a local woman whom I knew reasonably well, so that was sad. Birth and death in one day. The girls went to play with another HE family in town.
• This afternoon we've been swimming. Neither of them are swimming independently yet but Jade is showing a little progress each time we go and as she does so much better without any pressure I'll just let her take it at her own speed.
• There are of course tons of other books and stuff we've looked at over the past couple of weeks, but nothing else is springing to my memory at the moment.
  

The black hole of time

.... slips away with another few days! Wednesday was my work-all-day day, plus Thursday morning. Got a bit despondent on Thursday afternoon after collecting Jade from school, as I asked her teacher whether she thought it would be manageable for Jade to go in all day on a Thursday, and she was quite negative about it. My Dad has been looking after Jade on a Thursday morning while I work for a long time now, and as he approaches 75 in May he wants to 'retire'! So I desperately need Thursday morning childcare but have no money to pay for any. So I thought maybe we could work out for her to be at school all day on a Thursday, but as I say her teacher is really not keen on the idea, and as she is the one who would have to implement it then if she's not on-side then it's not going to work well anyway. I don't want to be liaising every week with someone who thinks we're just wasting her time. So ... don't know what I'm going to do about that yet. She's not negative about Jade's abilities, but simply about us working together so that I can, for example, finish up any work on a Friday that they've started on Thursday etc. "What about if we're using equipment in the classroom that we need to continue with on the Friday?", she says.

Can't remember at all what happened on Friday.

Saturday was lovely - Bill got up with the girls (voluntarily!) and I had a lie-in! And then after a general morning's playing, I took Jade to dancing and went off to do a bit of supermarket shopping while she was there. After collecting her, we all went swimming. Yes, all of us! For 5.5 years I've been taking Jade swimming, and this is the first time ever (except maybe once on holiday) that Bill has come along too. Whatever it is that's come over him, I like it! And as we were driving home, he said how it was too nice to go straight home and let's go for a walk, so we did drop in and pick up the dog and then went up to one of the Cotswolds high spots and had a lovely half-hour walk. So that was a lovely family day. There was much lunar eclipse viewing in the evening but although Jade asked to be woken up to have a look, she was in too deep a sleep and wouldn't even stir.

Today I took the girls to church this morning, got home by 1pm just in time to receive our monthly Tesco delivery, and then Bill and I took it in turns to have an hour's nap. Shannon is being really terrible at night lately and seems to want to be permanently latched on. Needless to say I'm not letting her but it's disturbing us all.

Tomorrow morning I'm not going to answer the phone if it rings, in the hope of actually getting some work done here!