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.

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!

Meet George

Say Hi to the quietest member of the family, although I suspect he may not stay long.

Obviously much snowy play has taken place here yesterday and today, although Shannon definitely is not too impressed. She won't walk in the snow at all, insisting on being carried, nor does she want to pick any up.

As well as that, we've had quite a good day. At last (been meaning to get round to it all week) we picked up the Usborne Children's Encyclopedia, had a look at the Solar System pages and then went to the Internet-linked sites. Had a fab time with those, on a virtual tour through the solar system here and also the 'create your own planet' bit of the same website. We then got sidetracked onto all sorts of other websites. We went here but Jade hates timed games so we explored the rest of the site. She (with supervision/help) did a 'which state goes where' puzzle of the USA, virtually polished some gemstones and made them into jewellery, and created a safe path for a bug to get from a mushroom to a flower (!), when all the time I think we were really supposed to be here! Ah well, it won't be the first or last time that a little unplanned wandering pays more dividends than the original plan. All this time Shannon was sitting on my knee and watching transfixed. She mostly does that when Jade is on the computer.

When I needed to go off and get lunch or dinner or something, Jade went on to a Learning Land CD-Rom which again Shannon just watched her doing. Shannon has also played with Fun-Blox, playdough, floam-substitute and done lots of jumping (her current skill-to-be-worked-on-at-all-times), spinning round and round and of course having strops and wailing.

The other thing of utmost significance that I did today was to at last find a home for one of Shannon's big Christmas presents, which I realised I could slot onto a shelf if I turned the existing box on it short-end in instead of longways. It does mean both boxes stick out in front of the shelf somewhat, but they are under a little fold-out table bit which is always out and never down, so it doesn't show that much. Dunno why I never thought of it before! That meant I could at least clear a few more bits of toys and general clutter and clear a space that hadn't been empty since before Christmas. Just to prove it, I vacuumed up several pine needles which I hope will be the last!

I have also (strangely) swept the entire kitchen floor, bleached the sink, cleared and wiped off two work-tops and wiped down the door-seal of my fridge like FlyLady told me to! Phew! No wonder I need an early night.

BTW, just out of general curiosity - anyone else not yet completely unpacked from Melrose?