'The Triplets'

The Beans (Petits Haricots) have posted a lovely series of pics of the girls we call 'The Triplets', which includes Shannon, here.

Stuff!

Here are some random meandering thoughts about other stuff that's been going on lately.

I have for a long time contemplated that I may have food intolerance issues, what with IBS, eczema and lack of energy. I've not wanted to face the trouble of an elimination diet with no idea whether it was a complete waste of time. I've wondered about doing a YorkTest blood test but they're expensive. It's only because Shannon has daily tummy aches, and has done for a long time, that I've finally got round to doing it for both her and me. My results have come through. I have a major reaction to cow's milk, significant reaction but less so to wheat and egg white, and borderline reactions to about six other things including pork, shellfish and sesame seeds. I am not looking forward to giving up milk, wheat and eggs. But it's worth a try, and if I end up bloat- and pain-free and with more energy, it will be well worth it. Shannon's results are not here yet. The test includes two phone consultations with a nutritional therapist (which I'm going to be studying for next year, so this is good practice being on the receiving end) to make sure you don't miss out on nutritional needs while eliminating foods.

Talking of diets, I was horrified at the weight I found displayed on the scales at the beginning of September, and immediately signed up with Tesco Diets. I've been taking it steadily, with a few treats and variations here and there, but have lost 10lbs and am only 1.5lbs from my target weight now. I really had been overdoing it on the biscuits and crisps, and really had to get myself under control again.

This is our next bit of exciting news:



We are solar-powered! 12 solar PV panels and some solar thermal tubes. Even better, we now have a new, working boiler (condensing, of course) so after 3 or 4 weeks without heating or hot water (the old one broke down and we have been making do with the wood-burning stove and boiling kettles for hot washes) it was absolutely bliss to have a hot shower, feel heat from the radiators and hot running water from the taps. I hope I will never take them for granted again! There was lots of preparatory work to do before. We have been partly funded by the Severn Wye Energy Agency as part of their Target 2050 project, having been chosen as one of their exemplar homes to show how ordinary properties can reduce their carbon footprint. So we've had to get 100% low-energy bulbs (we already had lots, but we've had to do all the rest e.g. lamps on dimmer switches), replace all the draught-excluder strips round the windows and doors, and increase the roof insulation by getting spray foam. This last one was tricky due to the odd shape of our roof meaning we had a separate bit of loft over our kitchen and a dormer window in our bathroom which was a pig to insulate and in the end Bill had to hack off the inside plasterboard on the roof and sides of the dormer window for it to be insulated from the inside. The bathroom is trashed but it is warm! Even before the heating was fixed, the house was noticeably warmer with the improved insulation.

Shannon is 6!



She chose to have a bowling party, although I have no idea why she decided it was a kitty bowling party and she needed to dress up!

She is such a sweet girl. She is so loving and caring. She regularly throws her arms round adults, gives them a big hug and says "I love you". Whoever we've visited most recently, she 'really loves [them] and wants to live with [them] all the time'. She will stroke my face and say "are you alright Mummy?", loves nothing better than great big long cuddles, and says "I missed you" if I've been out for half-an-hour! She loves to share anything she has with others, even her big sister who, shall we say, finds sharing a bit more of a challenge. Shannon has the greatest laugh, a big smile and a big warm heart. She not only cheers up her teacher's day, she cheers up my days every day, and I consider myself truly blessed to be her Mum! I don't know what I did to deserve her, but it must have been something very good! She loves to dance and is always jumping up, doing moves that I have no idea how she knows how to do! She also loves all sorts of different types of music and will often say in the car that she likes something, of all different genres. I'm thinking it is time to really think whether she would like to learn an instrument properly, though I'm not sure what would be best to start with.



Finally, I'm very glad to report that although this time last week Poppy was seriously ill with a chest infection, after a week on antibiotics she is much better. She doesn't have much energy for walks, but on the whole she is back to her normal self. At 12.5 and with heart valve problems she's almost on borrowed time, but thankfully she's pulled through this time.

Saving the best till last

Having been chided by my friend Michelle, I am blogging! It would be easier if Shannon didn't insist on sitting on my knee and therefore having to do this one-handed, but I will manage somehow!

So, what's been going on then? Well, the one blogpost that has been in my mind for a while is "Jade is thriving at school." Yes, thriving! It's a bit galling for an ex-home educator to admit, but it really is doing her good. Because she is now familiar with the environment, the people and the routines, she is gaining enough confidence to try new things that she would never attempt in a group of people she didn't know so well. For instance, she has volunteered to help out in the infants (4-7yr olds) playground once a week, along with a couple of friends. I think she is enjoying being one of the 'big ones' who help out the 'littlies', despite how horrible she is to her own sister at home! She tried out African drumming when a group visited the school for everyone to try. To be honest, I was astonished when I found out she'd actually done it in front of the rest of the class. She never would do that if we'd gone to a HE workshop or similar. She's taking part in different sports like netball, tennis and hockey. Again, just totally unthinkable for her to attempt to try these in a group of strangers. If we were in the fortunate position of living in Cambridgeshire and could go to Latinetc and Historyetc with all our lovely HE friends, in a regular group, it may be a different story, but even then I'm not sure whether she would have gained enough confidence in that group to take part.

She is going in happily every day, without any parental accompaniment at all. Yes, she has a bit of a moan about it from time to time. She put 'no school' on her Christmas wish list yesterday! And that is about the compulsory forced factory-production nature of schooling, and I am not saying that school couldn't be improved - it certainly could. But it is certainly doing her a great deal more good than harm. And I can tell she really enjoys her sense of achievement when she's learned something and tells me about it, especially stuff I don't know. She enjoys history particularly and at the moment is reading "Oliver Twist" by Charles Dickens, having been introduced to him during the work they're doing on Victorians this term. I certainly didn't read Dickens when I was 9! And even when I did read it, compulsorily for O Level at about 15, I didn't enjoy it like she is.

Every Friday morning, the school has an 'awards' assembly where each teacher picks one child for a 'merit' award for good academic work and a child for a 'star of the week' award for character/behaviour/personal qualities. A month or so ago, unbeknown to me, Jade was picked for a merit award for her excellent use of vocabulary, one example of which was the use of the word 'oblivious'. When her name was announced, she got up from her place and went to the front to collect her award with everybody's eyes on her and applause. A term ago, she would probably have bolted from the hall, or stayed glued to the spot and cried, or something. But she didn't; she actually got up and went to the front for her award. I so wish parents got warned and that I could have been there to watch (but then the relevant parent being present would be rather a give-away!) but never mind the award, I was just thrilled to bits to hear that she got up and went to the front, no matter what for.

Speaking of the awards assembly, Shannon got one last week as well. Hers was a 'star of the week' award for having a lovely smile, being happy and smiley all the time and cheering up the teacher whenever she looks at her! Shannon is the one who is most likely to say "I don't want to go to school". But whenever she is there she seems happy, relaxed and as though she's having a good time. However she is the one that I think would thrive more on home education, apart from her major need to play with other kids every day. She would take part in demonstrations and workshops with gusto, and ask questions, and follow her interests and not worry about getting things wrong.

But personally, I am *loving* my 3 quiet days at home. I love it. I love being on my own, reading, tidying, sorting, thinking, sometimes sleeping, unassaulted by the multitude of demands and interruptions. It feels like it is my 'sanity' time.

So, while Shannon is relatively happy, we'll leave things as they are.

Oh, and finally, saving the best to last, Jade has spoken her first words to her teacher! She has been having 'sliding-in' sessions with her TA (to whom she speaks) and her class teacher and 2-3 other kids at lunchtimes, just 15-20 minutes playing games, and during a game of Happy Families she asked her teacher for a card! The journey of 1000 miles begins with the first step.....

And now I need to put Shannon to bed, but when I get back, I will blog about 'other news'.

Thoughts on future HE

When Jade first went to school in April 2009, we were very uncertain whether she would settle into it or not, but she had asked to go, and we really wanted to see if we could make some progress with her severe social anxiety and selective mutism, in a safe supportive place with trained, committed staff and people whom she could get to know day in day out and learn to trust that nothing bad would happen to her there. She needed to grow her own confidence that she could manage without being with me all the time, and expand the range of people she could be with and hopefully talk to.

We've had major ups and downs in that process, but at the moment things look reasonable. She can talk to her TA usually, though still with some anxiety and not with the complete freedom she talks with at home; she has learned to cope without me being there all the time; she talks to other children on the whole; she can read to her teacher in a small group, and she has answered maths questions in a low voice but enough that the children on her table could hear.

There are still areas of difficulty, obviously. She won't go to Brownies without me, and in fact she's said she doesn't want to go back because it's boring. It's boring because she won't join in any games, and as they play lots of games at Brownies a lot of the time she is sitting at the side with me, just watching. She won't do 'wake and shake' in the playground in the mornings, even at the back where nobody would be watching her because they'll all be facing the front and even though I'm with her and doing it too. She won't go for riding lessons, even though riding is her favourite thing to do. She really wants to be able to canter, despite her fear of doing so, but won't do it in a lesson because she doesn't want to be watched. She can't canter on her loan pony, Lily, because Lily is too strong and would likely gallop off! She won't talk to my Mum any more, or other relatives or any other adults apart from those mentioned and us at home.

Anyway, at the beginning, I urged Jade to try school for a week, and then for a month, and then for a term, and then for the rest of the year. As I've said she's made good progress but still needs to make more, so in our latest discussions of how long to stay at school, we've said she needs to stay till the end of primary, but can be home educated again instead of going to secondary school. She seems happy with this, both about staying at school for 2 more years but also about not having to go after that!

However it's giving me pause for thought on various fronts, and this morning after being woken at about 5.30am by Shannon, I lay awake till 7am worrying and fretting about Jade.

If Jade was normally socially competent, I would not doubt that HE would be best for her. Home education of itself has always seemed vastly superior to me, for the freedom and depth and range of education, and freedom from the excessive peer pressures and attitudes of schoolkids, especially during the tumultuous adolescent stage. Even just thinking about Jade herself, I'm very glad to think about her not being in that pressured, difficult and stressful situation.

But in the small hours of this morning, I saw very clearly the other side of the coin. Adolescence is the time when friendships become extra important, and it is going to be vital that she has at least one or two good, supportive and reliable friends who will be kind about her struggles and difficulties. My worry is partly fuelled by occasionally reading a blog by a teen who struggles with anxiety and selective mutism and who is heading scarily towards anorexia as she struggles massively with her self-image and who she is. I also think back to my own teenage years which were dominated by my own anxiety problems (phobia) and how scarily astray some of my own thinking and views were.

Jade currently has 2 good friends who want to see her out of school time, though there are others at school who seem to like being with her but don't make any attempt to be in touch after school or in the holidays. One girl lives next door, and though she is a kind and good-hearted girl, she is very much a slow learner, and Jade is rude and horrible to her quite often (yes, we do pull her up on it and talk about it and punish her for the worst behaviour but it's taking an awfully long time to change this behaviour/attitude), and I just think that once they outgrow childish games and get into the teenage years, I can't see the friendship continuing strongly. Jade's other friend is herself a bit prone to fiery outbursts, and on Friday lunchtime they fell out in a big way (though Jade has to sit next to her in class all day, since she was deliberately put with a friend to help her in her new class), and she is also one who is in the lowest academic groups in the class and I am worried about the morals and attitudes of the family she comes from and all in all I am not sure that friendship is going to be one that lasts or if it does, I don't really want to encourage it all that much.

Living in such a rural area, there are not many HEors so there is not a strong prospect of good friends in the HE group either. There used to be 3 girls of roughly Jade's age who were HE'd, but she didn't particularly gel with any of them and of course I don't even know if they still are or will continue to be HE'd. Jade has never made any particular friends at church and again in a rural area people come from all over the place so could easily be 15 miles away from us. Once she reaches secondary age, it is really not going to be so straightforward for me to attend groups with her and stay, and unless she is already established in a group by then I can't see her attending on her own.

So I had this scary vision of Jade aged 11+ with no good, trustworthy friends, unable to go to social groups and make new ones, isolated at home, getting less socially confident as the pangs of adolescence strike and ....... urgh!

Add to this, the fact that DH is due to retire in 4 years, his income will probably reduce by half or more, I need/want to study for an MSc over the next 3-4 years so I can become a nutritional therapist and work after he retires and supplement our income, he doesn't want nor would he be very good at being the main educator, if Jade isn't going to school then I bet Shannon wouldn't want to stay either, and I won't be able to study properly if they're both at home all the time, and I just don't see how it's all going to work.

Back to school

It has all gone fairly smoothly! Which is better than I anticipated, after Jade said half-way through the summer holidays that she wanted me to go into class with her to start with when she went back. I thought that if she was worrying about it so much in advance, things would only get worse the closer it got. But no!

I told her that I knew she would be fine and that it would only take her half an hour or so to remember what to do and where to go and what this was all like and that she could cope with it, and then she'd be fine. I agreed to sit outside in the courtyard until 10am, so that I was nearby if she needed me but not actually in the building. When she woke up in the morning, she had a few tears with anxiety about doing swimming and PE. I was able to tell her that there wasn't any swimming this term, so she needn't worry about that, and that I would talk to her TA about her PE anxieties. And pointed out that she definitely wouldn't be doing any PE the first day anyway, so not to worry about it today. She got up and dressed happily after that. Shannon was excited to go back and had been looking forward to it for ages, so she was ready and waiting nice and early.

We walked round to the school, and I dropped Shannon off in the infant playground first of all and saw her go in with her new teacher. Then Jade and I went back round to the junior playground and everybody had already gone in. (Normally they do 'wake and shake' movement to music to wake up their brains first thing, but not this first morning). Anyway I didn't mind the chance to just hold her hand and see her right into the classroom on this first morning. Now she's a Year 5 she goes upstairs to her classroom. So up we went, into her classroom and the teacher welcomed her warmly and pointed out where she was going to sit, next to her friend B. Jade needed to put her backpack on her peg, though, so we were directed back outside the classroom to the cloakroom area, where we left the bag. Then as we headed back towards the classroom, Jade stopped and went all weepy. I gave her a cuddle, lots of reminders of positive self-talk to try and fill her mind with, but she wouldn't go in. After a few minutes I could hear the teacher had finished taking the register and all the children started lining up by the door to go down to assembly. We were very near the door, so I told the teacher that Jade was 'having a bit of a wobble' and the teacher was very kind and calming and said "that's OK, lots of us have a bit of a wobble on the first day back, including the teachers!" She asked Jade if she would be happy to go into assembly, and she nodded, so I went with her at the end of the line back downstairs, and she agreed to go into the hall without me. I indicated I would wait outside as we'd previously agreed. I went and sat in the courtyard for an hour, reading the book I'd brought, and at 10am her teaching assistant came out to me and said Jade was absolutely fine and was happy for me to leave! And she's gone back happily every day since then with no fuss or trouble, I leave her in the playground like every other parent does, and don't go into school at all! She's even done PE, and enjoyed it!

Shannon, on the other hand, loved her first 2 days back, and then last week started to say every morning that she didn't want to go. She only says it before she's actually got out of bed. Once she's up and dressed, she seems quite happy to go. I've tried talking to her on several occasions about what exactly does she not like, but she can't articulate it. If anything, it seems to be playground related possibly - getting used to people not wanting to play games her way, or not being her friend. If it's not that, then it's just that she doesn't want to be out of the house that long, because she frequently says she just wants to be with me all the time. I have spoken to her teacher, who has agreed to keep an eye on things especially in the playground, and who said she was surprised because Shannon is very happy and productive in the classroom. Certainly every day when I pick her up I ask her if she's had a nice day and she says yes. I ask her to tell me what was fun or good and she can usually think of plenty of things. I'm keeping a close eye on what's going on and trying to read between the lines but at the moment I think she is generally happy enough except she doesn't want to get up and dressed and go out in the mornings, and who does?!

Good and bad

I am in a foul mood. I have to find a way to get more energy, because I am wasting too much of my life feeling too tired to do anything. I need to start running again. In the meantime it's been half-term and pretty much nothing of any substance has gone on. I am so grumpy with the children when I am tired because I just feel like I haven't got the energy to interact with them.

Bad - Jade hasn't even wanted to go and see Lily, the pony, despite having a free week to do so. Lily is a bit too much for her, really, so she only wants to do walking and that gets fairly boring for all of us.

Good - Shannon is learning to trot on Lily and really enjoying it!

Bad - I really really want Jade to get on well with her riding - maybe I am identifying with her too much but I had that pony-madness when I was young, and I was soooo happy to be able to get Lily for her but she is so nervous and anxious that she can't make any progress.

Bad - L from next door got riding lessons for Christmas, has had about 4 lessons, and is already doing stuff that Jade has never dared do. I hate that. I need to get over it, it's Jade's life not mine, but there we go.

Good - Shannon can almost ride her bike without stabilisers. On Tuesday we were outside for about 45 minutes, me holding her up, and she was telling me not to let go, and for a while it looked like she wasn't going to make any progress. I was trying to let go but she seemed to be wobbling too much and I was having to really hold her up. Then we had one time when she seemed to be doing well and I did let go, and she continued for about 20 yards on her own, and I was yelling at her "you're doing it, you're doing it on your own!!!" and she was so thrilled! She had several more goes after that, with varying success, but she definitely managed 50 yards a couple of times.

Good - Bill came to church with us on Sunday for the first time in about 3 years (apart from Christmas). He hasn't said much about it, but I'm just so glad he's willing to give it a try again.

Bad - we tried to put the rabbits together again after completely scrubbing out the playhouse/run to get Butterfly's scent off it so she wouldn't realise it was her own territory (as she thinks of it) and thought we had been successful when they were quite happy together for the first hour or so, but a while later I realised there were great clumps of fur in the run and they were fighting again. Blackie is currently living in the chicken coop, and we want to get her out of there so we can get chickens again.

Good - we have enjoyed quite a few games of Junior Monopoly and Junior Scrabble this week.

Bad - we went to get the girls' feet measured yesterday, found that Jade had grown half a size so needed new school shoes, and bought some. Since getting home we've both decided we don't like them, so will have to take them back. Luckily they have a policy of refunding within 10 days if unworn.

Good - Gary from Junior Church came today and Jade played a game of Battleships with him, while Shannon and I went into the other room and played on the computer. A little more progress with the SM!

Bad - Jade has said she doesn't want to go back to school on Monday. I've told her that avoiding the thing she fears will only make it worse, and that she has to face her fears.

Bad - we were about to book our summer holiday, in a yurt on the Isle of Wight. When I e-mailed, despite their website showing a week in August being available, it turns out it wasn't so now we can't go to that particular place, and it did look really nice. :-(

That's all I can think of right now.

Time flies!

Whoa! I'm not too good at keeping up with this blog, and it's a shame because a lot has continued to go on.

Around the middle of November, Jade's TA had to unexpectedly go to hospital for a check-up after an unfortunate encounter with a bicycle while outside. She had been leaving Jade for brief periods prior to this, but only 5-10 minutes at a time. She asked Jade if she felt she would be OK in the classroom while she went off to hospital, and Jade nodded. And she was absolutely fine (and so was the TA after some minor treatment). So that prompted a further progression of the TA leaving her more frequently and for longer, and only 2 weeks later (approx. end November) Jade was in the classroom all morning without her TA or any special support at all! She has been reading in front of her class teacher, but doesn't have any 'free' speech yet with her. Since then she has tried one or two afternoons in school as well, also without support, and has been fine, though she is quite sure she doesn't want to do two in a row. She feels it's too tiring.

We are still stunned at the rapidity of her progress over this term. She still insists on being accompanied to Brownies and her Junior Church group, and of course won't speak to anyone else yet, but she does play with and speak to her friends in the playground. Today she is staying for the Christmas Party in the afternoon. At first she said she didn't want to go because she didn't want to have to join in any games or dancing, but when I promised her I would speak to her teacher and that she didn't have to do anything like that if she didn't want to, she agreed to go.

Shannon has been a shepherd in the nativity play, and performed with great confidence and energy in her class assembly in late November. I can imagine her going on the stage!

We have sadly given Snoopy the bunny back to the rescue centre as we were tired of being bitten and scratched, and have got another Netherland Dwarf doe for Jade instead. Both bunnies have now been spayed and have had a lovely new playhouse home and run just this past week. They are in bunny heaven!

Half-term

This was our first 'proper' half-term, with children having been in school. It was rather lovely to have a rest from the early mornings and getting ready! And to spend some time doing things together.

So, very much in brief, on Monday afternoon we went to Stratford-on-Avon to see 'Fantastic Mr Fox' at the cinema, which was OK but not great. We had hoped to get on a tourist bus afterwards but while looking for change for the car-park before the film Jade had spotted a museum of wizardology and witchcraft so insisted we went in there, seeing as she is still Harry Potter mad, currently being in the middle of the Half-Blood Prince. It was quite an entertaining little place, including the chance to be 'sorted' by the Sorting Hat. Jade was most surprised to be put in Hufflepuff along with me, whereas Shannon was in Gryffindor. Some of it I thought a bit too grisly and scary but fortunately it wasn't really light enough to read the information boards and I steered them past some of the scarier bits. After that, we didn't have time for Shakespeare-ish stuff or tour buses but I have promised to go back and do that sometime.

On Tuesday we had a dental check-up appointment for all 3 of us in Oxford, so we went there for the afternoon. The park-and-ride was full so had trouble parking, but in the end went to the Natural History Museum and Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. It was heaving with half-term kids, but that also meant there were lots of activities and actors pretending to be historic explorers which was quite fun. I def. like the Pitt Rivers best though. And the dentist was fine - nothing needed doing for any of us - except that Shannon got upset by being told not to play on the little stool and had a bit of a melt-down and then refused to open her mouth for the dentist to see. Got a bit stressful there but in the end he just quickly counted her teeth and that was it.

On Wednesday I was at work (packing the office up as we are moving elsewhere within town) but Jade and Shannon were taken by Bill to an HE-friend's Halloween Birthday Party. They enjoyed it but DH said they just both remained attached to him the whole time. Apparently Shannon did tell a story, though not a spooky one as it was supposed to be!

On Thursday both girls came to work with me for a couple of hours, followed by a relaxing afternoon at home.

On Friday things got rather stressful trying to do all the shopping and preparation for Shannon's birthday party the following day. Shopping for all the bits and pieces took way longer than I'd thought it would, so I then didn't have enough time to do as much 'stash-and-dash' clearing up as I wanted to. Things got a bit shouty and stressed. I always intend to start preparing much earlier for parties, like at least a week in advance, but in the end I just seem to have way too much to do to be able to do that and it all gets left to the last minute.

Anyway, Shannon had a lovely birthday party on Saturday. She had invited 7 friends, plus Jade and L from next door were here as helpers. We had a few games, food, quite a bit of time spent out in the garden and on the trampoline, and then ice-cream & jelly/singing Happy Birthday towards the end.

Then I went for a nap!

In the early evening Jade and I set off to go and see Monty Roberts. I totally love that man and everything he says, does and stands for. His non-violent, calm yet firm approach to horse-training and remedial work for damaged horses (aka horses with bad behaviour) has so much of a wider application and I always find it teaches me a lot about how to approach things with Jade. Horses are 'flight' animals (as opposed to 'fight') and so, overall, are children, particularly sensitive/anxious ones. The thing I got from it this time is that he believes that a sustained, rapid progression through a training programme in an hour is better than doing short bursts over several days. Keep going while the horse or child is in a heightened state of learning and move on to the next stage as quickly as possible.

We didn't get home till after midnight, and then around 2am Jade woke up suddenly thinking she was going to be sick. She spent a while in the bathroom. Fortunately it turned out not to be the case and I wondered if in fact she was just really hungry as she had said in the fog of sleep as she first woke up.

So she had a long sleep-in while I had to get up with Shannon early, and then off to church early to help with setting up. Our church has moved out of its church building and now meets in the local secondary school as the membership has just grown too large for the old buildings. Fab! But it does mean a lot of work (on a rota) for setting-up/taking-down. Home and lunch was followed by a much-needed nap for me, then some HE friends came over for help with some chemistry. This was somewhat daunting as it was about half-equations for chemical reactions, and it is 12+ years since I did any of that, but between us Bill and I managed to work out what it was all about and help, so that felt good!

Back to school tomorrow for the girls, and a major week of office-moving for me, is what lies ahead.

Shannon

I've said very little about Shannon lately, and I want to remedy that. Unfortunately it's late and I want to go to sleep.

Anyway, there have been a few bumps in the road of her beginning school. And I haven't yet figured out what it's all about.

She started off very happily indeed. She enjoyed it, had no problem going, really looked forward to it. For the first two weeks she only stayed there till lunchtime, and then from the 3rd week onwards she was full-time. And it wasn't long before the complaints started. She started to say in the morning that she didn't want to go to school. She missed me too much, she wanted me to be with her, or her to be with me at home. Unfailingly, however, when picked up from school she would say she'd had a good time, she'd done fun things and all seemed to be well. Anyway, after a few days of this, I spoke to her class teacher and we agreed that Shannon could come home at lunchtime and just do half-days till half-term. That seemed to go down well with Shannon. Problem hopefully solved.

But no, she is still often saying she doesn't want to go. Her teacher says, however, and I believe her, that Shannon is perfectly fine while there. She joins in, enjoys herself, takes part wholeheartedly. I believe it because I have seen it myself. Having been in school with Jade quite a bit, and still going in at unusual times for collecting Jade and other things, I have taken the opportunity to peek in at Shannon. She is invariably smiling, laughing, joining in and looking fine. Yet she says she doesn't want to go. And she isn't out of the house for any longer than she was when she was at nursery, which she was very happy with. So I don't quite know what it is all about. I am torn, because although I don't want her to be unhappy, I don't want to withdraw her to HE just yet either. I am just yearning for enough time at home to achieve various specific things, and she isn't obviously unhappy while she's there anyway. If she was standing forlornly in corners looking sad and withdrawn it would be a very different matter, but she isn't. I will continue to listen to her, try and understand exactly what's bothering her and be open to whatever action needs to be taken, but I am hoping that she doesn't need to be deregistered quite yet!

She is however reading fairly fabulously. She can read some words that surprise me at her ability, and yet still asks about other words that have fairly simple phonic blends in them, but nevertheless she's not 5 yet and can read "Green Eggs and Ham" easily and is on about Level 4 of the Oxford Reading Tree series.

And she did hugely impress her teacher about 10 days ago, by writing numbers 1 - 36 on a whiteboard, and only stopping at that point because she ran out of space. Her teacher took her off to the headmaster's office for a special "hoorah for Shannon" moment! I don't know what level the other kids are at - it seems fairly normal for me with my two - I just wish I'd had the presence of mind to comment that that was what home education did for you! She's very into maths, numbers, very much likes adding and taking away numbers less than 10, and often asks to do a workbook at bedtime instead of a story!

Notes

So much to blog about, so little time. I will do rough notes and try to fill in later.

1. Had an absolutely fabulous time at Greenbelt - I left the kids at home with DH and had tons of time to go and do lots of the things I wanted to. Loved it!

2. Jade back at school, reasonably happily. Now 5 mornings per week, 8.50am - 11.10am. Some time in classroom with SEN teaching assistant by her side and me sitting back twiddling my thumbs. Then a 20-min session at the end in TA's office doing selective mutism stuff.

3. After only a week back, Jade spoke to TA! It was on a Wednesday, so DH was with her, not me. She did some reading, and answered some simple questions about the literacy work they were doing. She repeated it on Thursday. She really struggled to do it again on Friday, and I had an agonising 10 minutes sitting outside the door waiting for her to be able to say something, and eventually she did, phew!

4. Shannon has started school. After an uncharacteristically wobbly first morning (she had been quite unwell in the 5 days previously and was still a bit post-viral, which made her cling to me and not want me to leave) she has been absolutely fine. She has skipped off very happily and is very proud of herself. Yesterday (Saturday) she asked me when she was going to school again, in a tone of voice which meant she was disappointed not to be going that day!

Life

I barely know where to start. My head is a muddle and so is my life. So many things are worrying or unsatisfactory at the moment and I can't begin to make sense of it all.

I am very worried about Jade. When going through (and chucking out) some old papers earlier on I came across a list of characteristics of self-rejection, and all the ones that aren't adult-centred are relevant to her, namely inferiority, insecurity, self-consciousness, shyness, critical, envious, jealous, unable to respond to others, over-sensitivity and touchiness. That describes her so well. She hates her younger sister and never has anything positive to say about her. They do play together but never have any close, caring, sharing moments. She is jealous, envious and critical particularly of Shannon but also of other friends. She will not share ANY of her toys with Shannon, snatches them, and yet thinks she ought to be able to play with anything of Shannon's without restriction. She can't/won't talk about feelings, she pushes everything down, won't let herself cry if she can possibly avoid it, is extremely moody, very often has a really sulky, grumpy scowl on her face. I am so worried about what her life will become if we cannot shift her out of this place within herself somehow. And how the hell did this happen anyway? I absolutely bent over backwards to meet all her baby needs, I was a calm, patient, loving and adoring mother in those days and followed continuum concept/attachment parenting principles because I loved to do so and because she was such a thrill and a joy to have. It was supposed to give her a completely secure base from which to move out and explore the world. And something, whether it's biology or maternal anxiety while she was in the womb or just something we have failed to do when she was much littler, or a combination of them all, has left us with this anxious and frankly often rather unpleasant child.

Both girls just want me all the time. They want me to bring them downstairs in the morning, me to do bedtime stories, and just about everything else inbetween. Daddy won't do - they complain if it's his turn (despite him being much nicer than me a lot of the time). Shannon demands carries or piggy-backs several times a day (not often agreed to, but the demands are wearing nonetheless) and Jade leaps on me at any opportunity trying to ride me like a horse. And this is despite my absolute rage at her continuing to do it and making it extremely clear that it drives me mad.

I was away at a conference at the weekend with work, and had an absolutely lovely time. I had forgotten how energised I am by ideas, and interesting conversation, and feeling like what I do has a purpose and is successful and respected. I was so fed up when I got home. I didn't want to be here at all, didn't want to go back to screaming, whining children and mess and ungratefulness and repeating the same phrases over and over and over again until I yell and shout and say things I regret.

Yet there is no way I can work any more at the moment. Jade is completely unable to function in the outside world without either me or DH with her at all times. She is so, so far away from being able to be in school in a normal way that at the moment I can't imagine it ever happening. I don't know what she's feeling about school at the moment. She missed most of last week because she had a tummy bug, and has missed most of this week because they are doing tests and we've been advised not to bring her in in the mornings (and I can't do afternoons because of Shannon, except on Wednesdays). I kind of don't want to ask her whether she wants to continue going, because in one way (see above) I want her to, so that I can eventually get some of my own space. On the other hand trying to gradually integrate her into school is so stressful and shows up in stark contrast just how different she is from every other child and I frequently want to just chuck it all in and stick to HE. But then I'd have no respite on the horizon at all, and we'd still have to go through some sort of similar process with other groups or social activities anyway.

There is so much of my own that I want to do. I want to study nutrition more, and maybe become a nutritional therapist or something similar. I want to sort out all the bloody mess and clutter in this house and live like decent normal people with a nice house. I want to get on with scrapbooking, reading, thinking, exercising, organising and other things that require concentration and attention. I just can't bring myself to start anything because I know I'm going to be interrupted every 30 seconds and it utterly does my head in and renders me incapable of coherent thought. I'm crap in the evenings because bedtime routine takes from 7pm to 9pm and after that I'm too tired and resentful to start anything. And neither do I plan or organise any interesting HE stuff, nor do my children come up with anything that looks nearly as educational as other children seem to do, nor can I take Jade to groups or anything interactive, so I'm doing a completely crap job of HE too.

And there is no uplifting ending to this post. I just hope someone somewhere will tell me where I can get a personality transplant for Jade.

All change

It's a time of significant change here. Jade will be starting school on Monday 27th. Shannon's playgroup is closing next Thursday, April 30th. And the small charity I work for is having difficulty raising funds for this financial year, and I may lose my job. I am looking round for another one. (And in the middle of all that, we will have Benjamin's 10th birthday to get through).

I don't know whether to laugh or cry about the school thing. I am glad that Jade wants to go, because that in itself shows significant progress emotionally and socially. The school are bending over backwards to make it alright for her, by starting her part-time, me going in with her, the teacher will go on a selective mutism training course with me next Tuesday (assuming there are still places available), and if all goes well she could make significant steps forward with social and emotional things, like being able to be away from me, learning to be with others and talk to them and so on. The teacher is good, the class is warm, supportive and friendly - it could make a world of difference to Jade to have this experience. And I am so looking forward to having some headspace for me, time to regroup and take stock of everything (though that might now have to wait till September with Shannon not being at playschool).

On the other hand, all of us HEors know enough about what school can do to some kids and sending her to school to gain in confidence seems rather the wrong way round. And I will miss her :-( We went for a lovely walk in the sunshine on Monday morning and it was that fantastic feeling of freedom while all the other children in the world (it seems) are locked away in school! I love the individuality that HE gives us, the freedom and time to live life as we want to.

Ah well, all we can do now is suck it and see. We have to do this now - Jade wants to and it would be wrong in her particular case to deny that, and there is a good chance she will make big strides forward.

So at the weekend I shall come off the blogring, if the Blogring Controller could arrange that ;-) Make sure you set your bookmarks or RSS feeders now!

In preparation for school, I have been having a little look at where Jade is at educationally. I did a couple of reading tests on her, resulting in a reading age of 12y 7mo (she is 7y 10mo). Overall with maths she seems to be around the end of a Year 2 level, so about a year behind, but she does struggle with maths, doesn't like doing it and I haven't pushed it much, having hoped she will reach an age where it will 'click' more easily. No such luxury in school! And as far as everything else, I haven't a clue! The rest doesn't bother me really. I have printed off those verbal and non-verbal reasoning papers that everyone else has been doing lately but haven't had the chance to give them to her yet. She continues of course to learn everything in the universe about horses and ponies, and could now quite competently devise a stable management routine and feeding routine for any equine friend that came her way. She knows more than I do (and I was an utterly pony-mad child too) about breeds, markings, tack and points of the horse, although not as much about riding yet ;-) That's where her anxiety and lack of self-confidence show through - she's taking the learning to ride process quite slowly.

She spends most of her time pretending to be a pony, pretending to have a pony and setting up various 'stables' round the house, garden and garage, or playing with toy ponies. Occasionally I drag her away to do a spot of maths or grammar, but most overt educational stuff stopped a while ago. She also got a new bike recently (I'd been wondering about getting her a new one for her birthday in June, and then I saw a lovely one 2nd hand for £25 so got that one) and she's loving that - and has started becoming more adventurous about going a little further away from home unaccompanied.

Shannon has been a bit challenging lately! She is wetting her pants most days, despite having been potty trained for a year or more. She just doesn't want to stop whatever she's doing to go to the toilet. And wants carries/piggy-backs/shoulder-carries several times per day. And is just generally whiney and demanding a lot of the time. But I think I have assumed too much that she can cope with whatever comes her way - by comparison with Jade she is confident and robust and I think I have just been so relieved by that, that I have perhaps not been as sensitive to her needs as I otherwise would have. So perhaps she will benefit from Jade being at school and Shannon having some more one-to-one, concentrated attention that doesn't just leave her hanging on running after Jade and L from next door trying to do whatever they do. It was a surprise to me to get her leaver's report from playschool which described her as a "quiet little girl" - quiet is not an adjective I ever would have thought would be used to describe her - and it worries me a bit. Is she significantly squashing her personality at playschool, or not as confident there as I thought she was, although it is very small and they've only had 6-8 kids there since last September? Maybe she won't be as totally unscathed by school as I have been assuming.

Well, that's all for now as I'm all blogged out after being out of practice for so long.

I have just had the craziest, busiest 2-3 weeks I can remember for a long time. And the silly thing is I can't really put my finger on why. I just feel like I've had a list of 100 things each day that I absolutely had to remember, and do, and follow up, and it's been extremely hard keeping up with it all. I hardly seem to have had time to sit down for days!

So therefore I can't remember much of what we've been up to. I know that Jade and I have covered how to put things in alphabetical order, we've done some number place work (is that what you call it? when you're doing units, tens, hundreds etc?), she's done double column addition with carrying, and some more stuff about common nouns and proper nouns from First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind. She's made a 'bus' from a huge box that our new car towbar came in; Jade and Shannon have both made fairy gardens in seed trays, and Jade's gained her Disability Awareness badge at Brownies. I know we've had several significant conversations too, including micro-climates, centrifugal force, right angles, 90-degree and 180-degree turns (which she's had great fun practising while marching), and about the current state of the economy.

Shannon has been alternately utterly charming and completely impossible. She is so affectionate I can't be angry with her for long, when she gazes deeply into my eyes, strokes my cheek and says "I love you, Mum". She'll go far, that girl! She is still annoyingly rigid in her 4-year old thinking, though, and trying to dissuade her from her established pattern of doing certain things is a recipe for grey hair and high blood pressure! I continue to be astonished at the polar opposite characters that my 2 daughters have. Jade will not speak to anybody outside the family whereas Shannon winds down the car windows to wave and shout hi at random pedestrians; Jade still cannot be left anywhere without a parent present but Shannon this week was saying how much she loves to go places on her own without anyone else in the family being there (e.g. to a friend's house, and to playschool); Shannon is mostly very amenable to discipline, whereas Jade, well let's just say she's still very much a work-in-progress! We love them both dearly, of course, but just shake our heads at how we got these chalk-and-cheese girls!

We got a new(ish) car last weekend - a Citroen Xsara Picasso to replace the clapped-out old Subaru Estate. I'm pleased to have a manual car again, whereas DH prefers automatics. It's bright red, and has been christened "Ruby". The girls love her, especially the little tables they get in front of them in the back seats.

And we're off on a week's holiday tomorrow - to stay in a converted railway carriage in a village near Scarborough. DH's Dad has recently gone into a care home and we are going to visit him there for the first time, and Bill needs to help his sister sort out the stuff in his old house. We've also wanted a holiday in Yorkshire for a long time to enable us to get to see stuff in York and elsewhere.

Jade is making nice progress in her SM therapy now. We have started 'sliding-in' the teenage assistant at Brownies, and in only 4 short sessions Jade has been able to talk out loud with this other person sitting right next to her. I just really want to fast forward over the next six months or year, because I am so excited about the progress she is making and I want it to hurry up and be done!

Tired Tuesday

So I stayed up way too late last night (blogging, amongst other things!) and have been very tired and grumpy today as a result. Not helped by getting a phone call at 8am to say that playschool was cancelled because the playleader is ill. So if Shannon has to be at home all morning, there was no point sending Jade to the childminder either, and bang goes my one free morning to get anything useful done. I was childishly grumpy and resentful about this for a long time today. In fact, I think I still am ....

Anyway when I managed to get myself together enough to do so, we went off to my lovely group at church, put the kids in the creche and felt a lot better for being with a warm, caring and funny group of women. We're starting a whole-church study for Lent called "Better Together" which will encourage us all to really care and be there for one another both in the church and in the wider community too, so I'm looking forward to getting into that.

We came home via the supermarket so that we had the necessary stuff to make pancakes with. Then I put a film on for the girls, and I went off to bed! It was bliss.

Much restored, I got up and helped Jade to finish off the last two things for her Friend to Animals badge so that's all ready to hand in at Brownies tomorrow. She wrote something about how you know when an animal needs to go to the vet, where and when the vets are open, and what to do if you find a sick or stray animal. Finally she has decorated a hard plastic mask in a zebra print. She did it in felt tip pen, though it might benefit from going over in paint tomorrow. I think the felt-tip pen might just wipe off - I haven't tried it now it's had a good long time to dry. Meanwhile Shannon did a bit of computery stuff - CBeebies and Webkinz I think. L from next door came round and they all played together for a bit while I prepared dinner and did computer stuff myself. They've also both played with Polly Pockets.

From time to time during the day, when I remembered, I threw the odd '5 times table' question to Jade, and though she usually looked resentful when I did so, she answered them correctly anyway.

Monday (not original, but the best I can do right now!)

It makes a change to feel like I've actually got anything to blog, but today I have so I will try and make it the beginning of a new era! Get Back To Blogging!

Shannon was at playschool this morning, so Jade and I sat down in peace and quiet to get on with just a little of the more formal stuff, i.e. maths. She's dipping her toe into the waters of multiplication, and as with all things maths-related it has to be taken very slowly and gently otherwise she will take fright and refuse to do it at all. I think we made some progress - we spent about 20 minutes on it and she remained happy all the way through so that was a good result! Then I read a chapter from "Penrose the Mathematical Cat" about Pancake Land (thought that was topical, even though a day early) on the difference between two and three dimensions.

Then we got on with another piece of work towards her Brownies 'Friend to Animals' badge. She's already done a piece about her favourite animal (the horse, of course!) and how it should be kept and looked after. She's done a study of 4 different extinct animals, what they were, where from, why they became extinct and how we could avoid something similar happening in future. The piece she worked on today was about animal patterns and colours and why animals need camouflage. She needs to do a piece of art using some of the animal patterns she wrote about. With all of these pieces either Bill or I have helped her by suggesting how she needs to go about it and roughly how to structure it and then she's used her own words to dictate to us. We have typed it up verbatim and shown her how to insert pictures into Word. We've obviously covered lots about Googling, saving pictures to the computer, layout and the like as well. The final piece she needs to do is about the local vet's surgery, where it is, when it is open, why your pet might need to visit the vet and what you would do if you found a sick or stray animal. I don't suppose we'll get both that and the art done tomorrow, so one of them might be left for Bill to help her with on Wednesday, which is when it all has to be taken to hand in at Brownies.

After that it was time to go and pick up Shannon from playschool, and then we came home for a quick lunch before setting off for the Redwings horse sanctuary/rescue centre at Oxhill. We tend to go there about every 3 months, so it's a familiar place to us and very welcome to me because it's free! Except for the usual agonising and traumas in the gift shop at the end when Jade desperately tries to find something she can buy with her £1 pocket money. She still hasn't fully absorbed the reality that if you keep spending your £1, you don't get to save up so that you can buy the nicer things for £5+! She begs and begs me to give her some extra money towards what she wants, but I refuse because a) otherwise she would always expect it everywhere we go and we would be bankrupt and b) she would never learn to live within her means. She thinks I am just mean, of course!

We only spent about an hour at Redwings because it was cold and I wanted to travel to near Banbury to look at a car. Our old Subaru is in some ways on its last legs (the engine's fine but everything else is wearing out) and besides I've always disliked it. And now Bill's pinched the Prius off me and I have to drive the Subaru, I'm determined to change it. And the Subaru is too thirsty for our budget so we need something cheaper to run. Anyway, I really would rather like a Renault Scenic 4x4 diesel which seems to cover all our needs, and I had seen one advertised at this garage so went to take a look. It was very nice, but overpriced in my opinion and he wasn't prepared to come down as far as we want him to, so I don't think that is 'the one' which is a shame because it is a nice car.

There are masses of things I could blog about to catch up over the past couple of months, but I can't decide which to include and which to leave out except the very most recent which was that I was supposed to run in my first 10k race yesterday but didn't. I've had a slight niggle in my left hip when I've run the longer distances which I'm being very wary about because I don't want it to turn into a full-blown injury, and then the two weeks of snow and ice stopped me going out for the duration, so effectively I have not done anywhere near as much training as I should have. So there. I will do a 10k at some point, but only when I'm fit enough!

Shannon is reading!

Well, it's only a very simple phonics beginners book with three letter words, but she has read a whole book all on her own! She's loving it. She's completely obsessed by letters and words and writing at the moment - she rarely does anything else. It's lovely to see.

Not really an update

I will blog properly again one day, I promise. I just keep thinking I've got so much to catch up on that I need a good long time for blogging, and I just don't get it.

Things I could mention when I get round to it are:

1. Center Parcs holiday - excellent
2. Jade's Friend to Animals badge for Brownies
3. More maths meltdowns
4. My Organizing 101 online class
5. Snow and sledging fun
6. School decision
7. Selective mutism therapy.

There's probably more, but that's all I've got the brainpower for right now.

I do want to give a big thanks to Lotusbirther for pointing out that the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has included selective mutism as one of the possible signs of child maltreatment in their proposed Guidance on which they are currently consulting, on the basis of one very flimsy and poorly-conducted piece of evidence. The Selective Mutism Information & Research Association had no idea about this until I was able to point it out to them last Thursday night, and an awful lot of work has been going on behind the scenes all of a sudden to get some proper scientific evidence in there to refute their false belief.

Heavens above, I am a home-educator with a selectively mute child - clearly we are definitely child abusers!

The school thing

Back in July you may remember I blogged about Jade saying she wanted to go to school. And then I blogged here about how there wasn't a place, and I was relieved.

Well, she has continued to say she wants to go. I have tried asking her why, but she never had a clear answer. And, to be honest, I do feel that though HE is best for Jade, it's not best for me. I really am struggling with the lack of time and space for myself and my own needs and interests. And I do think it would be good for her in one very important way. She has very specific needs for help to reduce her anxiety in social situations and improve her ability to talk to people. This simply is not going to happen of its own accord. It's basically a phobia, and as with any fear, avoidance of the feared situation only strengthens the problem. She really needs a structured intervention programme with people she sees really frequently so she can become very familiar with them and learn that it is not scary to be sociable and talk. And although we have tried to set up situations within the parameters we have at the moment, it has proved to be very difficult when you are talking about asking people who are volunteers and who have made a weekly commitment to some activity to significantly increase their involvement and come to our house 2 or 3 times per week for a while to help Jade get comfortable, and then to take over that process helping her to get comfortable with other people. It's a lot to ask, and there are only a few people with the right qualities who would be good at doing it anyway. So, at least in that specific way, school (with support, help and special measures put into place) would be good for Jade at least for the short term. I've had sleepless nights worrying about her social anxiety and her inability to join in with activities or even talk to anyone outside our house. It is a fact that people who have carried selective mutism into their adult lives have suffered a lot of social isolation, anxiety and depression as a result, and as I was a child with a lot of anxiety which led to depression and sometimes feeling suicidal I am desperately scared that she might end up going down that road. So, for those reasons, we are considering sending her to school even if it's only a relatively temporary thing to really help her move forward socially. I don't envision her going to secondary school - I hope she doesn't want to. I do hope that she can enjoy maybe a year (or more if she wants) at primary school to really get over this fear.

If Jade does go to school in September, we would probably send Shannon as well who would be of the age to enter Reception then. Shannon is a very sociable happy child who really loves playschool and seeing her friends and has said quite clearly that she would miss not seeing them most days. She is also fairly robust and will be able to cope well, I think, with the classroom environment. I do have some anxieties about sending one so young into 'the system' but we would keep a close eye on her as to how she was faring, of course. Then I could spend some time achieving some of the things that have been on hold for the past 7+ years, e.g. further nutrition study and, I would hope, having an utter and complete blitz on the house and sorting out organisation and storage solutions and decluttering so that if/when we did HE again the systems would be in place for it all to run more smoothly. I know many people can manage go organise their houses and get systems in place while their children are at home, but it has become clear that I just can't! I need quiet time and space to get it done.

The question then arises, which school? Jade originally only wanted to go back to Longborough School where she went 3 afternoons per week in Year 1. But they still don't officially have a place. However I wanted to talk to them in more detail because I wasn't sure which year they were talking about putting her into, and I wanted to explore all the options. So we went to visit and talk to the (new) Headteacher last week. They would put her into her correct year (Yr 4 in Sept) but they don't have a space officially (8 pupils in each year!). However there is physically room in the classroom because Years 3-6 share a classroom and some of the older classes have less than their allocated number of pupils. So it seems that we could make a special application to the Local Authority and ask whether Jade could have special permission to attend. This would have to be based on special needs and any other criteria we could think of, and it's not certain that they would agree. But they might! And I do know they are lovely there - it's just a gorgeous little school and I think they would help Jade as much as they possibly could, whether that meant starting part-time or a parent staying with her a bit and getting the correct SEN funding for a support assistant etc. However it is a 2-mile journey which would mean always driving there and back (no, there really isn't any way we could be up early enough in the morning to walk there!), and the friends that she makes there do not live in Moreton and therefore she would always have to be driven to playdates etc.

Jade was as usual quite uncomfortable in that situation and didn't want to go into the classrooms to look, as she didn't want everybody looking at her. She hid behind Bill most of the time and was fairly stiff and awkward-looking. However in the older classroom, where her ex-classmates now are, one of them came over to see her and held her hand, which was really sweet, and a few others in both classrooms called her name and were pleased to see her.

Later in the evening I asked her how she felt about it now, and she said she wasn't so sure as before we had visited. So I asked what things does she picture in her mind when she thinks about going to school that make her want to go. And she said it was "seeing her friends". So I asked whether, if we arranged for her friends to come and play say once a month or so, she would still want to go to school, and she said no. Hmm.

That left us feeling in a bit of a dilemma, because although we do have fears and reservations about the school system, for the reasons connected with her anxiety and selective mutism we do think it might be a good idea for her to go, at least for a while. And, if we did put both girls into Longborough School and then Jade pulls out again, we might well be left with Shannon still wanting to go because she would think it's fun and having to trek her over to Longborough every day. Whereas Shannon's existing friends will be going to school in Moreton, and it's bigger and she would have a bigger group of kids to pick friends from. It would be much easier because it's a 5 minute walk, and friends could pick up/drop off for us if we needed to etc. In a nutshell, it seemed that Longborough might be best for Jade but Moreton best for Shannon.

Anyway, none of us knew whether Jade would know any of the children in the class at Moreton school, so I decided that at least on information-gathering grounds we would go and have a look and see who was there. And we've been this afternoon, and sure enough there are at least 2 or 3 children in each class who Jade knows and likes either because they are neighbours or she knows them from Brownies. And on the way home, Jade said she wanted to go there.

At Moreton, they take 45 children into each year. In the Reception class, they are all in two adjoining rooms, 1 teacher and 3 classroom assistants, so broken down it's not a bad ratio. In the older years, they combine years 1&2, years 3&4 and years 5&6 so that they have 90 children over the 2 years, and split them into 3 classes with 30 in each class. There are normally 2 staff (1 teacher, 1 assistant) in each class. And of course Jade would probably have a special support assistant allocated to her at least part of the time.

Other parents of SM children I have been in touch with have said it is not the size of the class or the school that is important in helping the SM child, but purely the commitment and understanding of the individual staff and how well they put into place the provisions for helping the child to get better.

I think we need to give this a try, because it is so so important for Jade's future that she learns that social interaction is not as scary as she thinks and so that she takes big steps to overcome the selective mutism which is by far more easily done in a school environment than outside it. The question is, which school to go for? On the assumption that Shannon will love it and want to stay even if we take Jade out, and on the grounds that we wouldn't have to fight for a place there, and because Jade says she would like to go, we would opt for Moreton. But I am happier about envisaging Jade at Longborough because I think they will have more flexibility about accommodating her special needs and because she is always happier the smaller the group of people she is with.

I truly do hope this is only a temporary situation, because I still love and value HE and believe that in many ways it is the better option, and certainly I cannot envisage for the life of me my babies going into the savage world that is secondary school, but I also admit that I would be feeling at least partly blissful at having time and space for ME!

Productive day

It's been a good day. With Shannon at playschool this morning, Jade and I knuckled down to some maths (beginning of times tables), the first lesson from "First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind", and then loads more of me reading from "Under Fire" as linked to yesterday. After about an hour of reading, I needed a break so we walked the dog, had a quick lunch and then went to collect Shannon. We stopped off at the supermarket on the way back and picked up some essentials, and then came home again.

They both spent some time with their new magazines from the supermarket. - Shannon in particular spent ages on the "Fun to Learn Friends" magazine. Firstly we all played the Snakes & Ladders game on the front, then Shannon spent ages doing lots of letter copying and writing, colouring and counting. Jade got bored with her magazine quicker, so I suggested we play Hangman. I got out the blackboard and we played that for quite a while, taking it in turns to hang and be hanged! Then while I was folding laundry I suggested to Jade that she teach Shannon how to read simple three-letter words. She didn't actually do any 'teaching' as such - she just wrote up some simple words and asked Shannon to read them. Well, Shannon took us all by surprise and did it! Hence the video below! So that was a thrill. Of course, she had been doing it perfectly until I got the camera out, and then started getting it wrong, but eventually I captured a correct section again! And then I even managed to cook a healthy dinner, and all but one of us ate it! (Jade resorted to a bowl of cereal - I still don't know whether to just make her eat stuff which is honestly perfectly nice or give her a not so good alternative - I'm damned if I'm going to cook 2 meals though!).

I really am overdue for an HE-type post on here. I'll try and summarise roughly what we've been up to.

Firstly, I'm feeling that our week is just too full to get 'enough' educational stuff done. On Monday mornings, Shannon is at playschool and Jade and I have a morning together to do a bit more organised stuff than we do with S around. I usually launch enthusiastically into getting some maths done with her, and maybe some reading to her while she plays and that seems to be about as far as we get given household tasks to accomplish, the dog to walk and Shannon to go and collect. Monday afternoons nothing much seems to happen, so I could try and plan for some more activities then.

On Tuesday mornings I have a free morning while Jade is at the childminder and Shannon is at playschool. I usually try to fit in a run (yes, still running!), going to a group at church and then about 45 minutes of mad rushing about tidying/computering/sorting/dog-walking before going to collect the girls. On Tuesday afternoons we go swimming.

On Wednesdays I'm at work all day and DH is home with the girls. Some practical stuff usually gets done on those days, e.g. lately they have made a tree for a toy lemur to sit in, they have made a wooden stable, and a set of monster feet. Sometimes if I have left directions/books out, some of the maths or other things will get done, but not always.

On Thursday mornings I go to work, taking Jade with me while Shannon is at playschool. I used to insist that Jade did Education City at some point during the morning, but she only liked to do the same easy literacy exercises over and over again and balked at doing anything else (too scary) and I've kind of given up. She usually takes books to read and plays on the Barbie or CBeebies websites. Of course she is with me, taking note of my work and getting an insight into having a responsibility to do the work that you're paid for, and she hears me talking on the phone etc, so I guess there is a good deal more background stuff going on there as well. Straight after work, at lunchtime, she goes riding with the RDA. She's doing well there and has mastered the rising trot, but of course speaks not a single word and will only give the tiniest nod or shake of the head when asked a question. She got upset a few weeks ago when a couple of the ladies started to say things like "Go on, give us a smile" and "Tell the pony to 'Walk on'". After 2 or 3 weeks of this happening she got very upset one night and said she would stop going riding if they kept saying things like that. I had to print off and summarise as much info about Selective Mutism as I could and pass it to the RDA people, and now they are worried about saying anything to her in case they upset her!!! She loves it though, and as I was a horse-mad kid and still have a lot of interest it's nice for me to be there too.

On Fridays we have a completely free day. I often like to arrange visits to/from friends in the afternoon, but try to fit in a little more formal stuff into the morning. The days just easily disappear, though, with not much seeming to be achieved.

I don't even think about doing anything formally educational at the weekends, although I could. I just tend to think of them as days when I can legitimately leave the kids to their own devices (including usually L. from next door) while DH and I frantically battle to catch up with some of the backlog of things we are trying to get done.

So I'm finding myself a bit worried, particularly about maths. She has always found it hard, and is scared of anything she finds hard, so we have had to take it very very slowly indeed. She is still on very basic addition and subtraction, with merely the slightest venture into the 2, 5 and 10 times tables (skip-counting, rather than full tables). It wouldn't matter so much, except that she is insisting that she still wants to go to school next September. And I am having fearful imaginings of the teacher tut-tutting over the appalling gaps in her knowledge.

Anyway, on a more positive note, we have bought the LeapFrog Globe which is really good and all of us have been enjoying using it fairly often. I have certainly learned a few things, as have Jade and Shannon.

Jade has also had a strong interest in WW2, and picked up a couple of books at the library a couple of weeks ago. "Under Fire - Children of the Second World War tell their stories" is fascinating and Jade begged me to read and keep on reading for most of the day when we got this. (Memo - must pick it up again and carry on!). She also chose The Holocaust which I haven't read yet but DH said he learned a few things when he looked at it.

However have various lovely resources that I really want to use but are just not getting picked up. I bought "First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind" at the same time I bought the globe, and that hasn't even been opened yet. We haven't touched "Story of the World" for months, and some living maths books (like Penrose the Mathematical Cat), games for learning, games for maths that I don't seem to find the time for. And we haven't done any proper science in yonks either. Nor any languages.

I had a brief chat with her today about her cello. She has been completely resistant to being shown or taught anything. We have a "teach yourself cello"-type DVD which she says she doesn't like. She hasn't got past bowing on open strings for a minute or two and then leaving it. I've had enough, and I've told her that I will hire it for one more term (i.e. till Easter) and if she isn't showing proper progress or learning of some sort by then, it's going back to the hire people. She immediately went and got it out and had a go, and within 5 minutes was in tears and a foul mood when I tried to show her how to place her fingers on a string to change the notes. I suspect we do not have the new Jacqueline du Pre in our house.

I suspect I just need a little bit more planning and organisation in our week and things would feel a lot better. I wonder how on earth I'm going to manage that then?