I've left that depressing blogpost up at the top for far too long. Not that anything's changed particularly, but I was feeling everything very strongly just then because of the post-conference blues, and whether that brings everything into sharper focus, or just makes everything look worse than it really is, I don't know.

I have kept thinking over the past couple of months that it would be interesting to be blogging my impressions of spending a couple of hours in school four days per week. Sometimes I have found myself impressed by what they've been doing, and contemplating how we wouldn't be able to do those things at home, and sometimes I've been hating aspects of it and uncomfortable with the sausage-machine aspects of school.

But first, the personal aspects of how it's going. Jade has been in her classroom for 1-1.5 hours four times a week, mostly with me but one session per week with Bill. She's a long way from being comfortable or relaxed there, but small steps forward have been made. When she goes into assembly, she no longer sits on the floor by my chair at the side of the hall, but goes in the line with her class and just sits in the hall wherever she ends up, while I still sit at the side. The next step there would be for me not to be in the hall at all during assembly, and I think we will do that quite soon next term. The other small step forward is that when her class go to sit on the floor at the front of the classroom, I no longer go and sit with her but I sit on a chair a bit further back, only stepping in if some kind of interactivity is required. She doesn't talk to any of her friends in the classroom or in the playground. She doesn't listen to what the teacher is saying and start any actions herself - she always needs a lot of prompting from me. If we have broken into small groups for discussions, I always go with her and she doesn't take any part in it. If we've been looking in books, she has participated in that, helping to choose sections for someone else in the group to read out. She says she likes it 'a bit' and isn't objecting when it's time to go to school, but she is definitely ready to leave when the hour or so is over and often whispers to me to ask how much longer we'll be there.

After the classroom session, we've been going to the SEN teaching assistant's office for 'sliding-in' sessions. This involves Jade and I playing any game that involves an element of speaking, e.g. snap, I-spy, while the TA stands some distance away as agreed with Jade. She then gradually (with Jade's agreement and direction) moves closer every few minutes. We have got to the stage where she is about a metre away and Jade will continue to speak, in a very limited way, to me, but hasn't yet managed to respond to any simple direct questions put by the TA. Going through the same process at riding, however, and she has allowed Mary the riding instructor to join in a game of I-spy with us.

The plan is that once Jade is comfortably speaking with the TA, she will then take over from me and Bill in taking Jade into the classroom, at first just for short periods and then for longer. That's as far as the planning-ahead has got, so far. Jade doesn't know that last bit yet!

In the meantime I have bought books on CBT for children, managing anxiety in children and so on, and am attempting to read them, make sense of them and put them into action. It doesn't help that I am useless in sticking to a plan or programme and am constantly distracted and side-tracked.

In the meantime, Shannon is all geared up for starting to attend Reception in September. She is very excited about it and longing to go. She has happily attended some taster sessions. I think she will be fine, although need to not just assume that she will be but remain alert for any signs otherwise. I spend so much time thinking and worrying about Jade's situation that I've almost classified Shannon as "will be perfectly alright no matter what" because she is so different, but that's not necessarily the case.

Despite that earlier post, there are still times when I wish I could just chuck this all in and continue purely to HE, and there are times when I am really looking forward to them both being in school. For the time being, it is doing Jade some good and she really needs this help to find her own self, her own courage and space away from me. I will make sure we do not rush through that process too quickly to her detriment, but at a pace which is as comfortable as it can be for her. Facing her fears and anxieties is never going to be easy but it has to be done. I will just have to see how it goes for Shannon. She would be absolutely lovely to HE apart from the fact that she would be begging me to see friends every day. Maybe if she spends a year in school and gains a good collection of local friends we could then fulfil her social needs after school time even if we do HE her.

In the meantime, we are in the summer holidays and I have plans, although as I've already said, not much skill at putting them into practice. This week we might be designating 'Sculpture Week', starting with a trip to the Forest of Dean Sculpture Trail (and a couple of other attractions while in the FoD), and then planning and building some sort of sculpture in our garden. This is weather-dependent, and therefore highly susceptible to change!

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.

School Part 2

Jade's enjoyed herself at school this afternoon, though with DH taking her rather than me. She arrived at lunchtime and joined in a bit of running around with other kids as long as Bill was in close proximity. He says kids gathered round and were asking lots of questions about her which he answered. Once afternoon school started they had a French lesson, and she was relaxed enough to laugh and enjoy it although not joining in. After that it was a tennis lesson, which she didn't want to join in so she and Bill sat and watched. Then the teacher offered them a pair of racquets and a ball so they played around between them and she had fun a bit separately from the rest of the group. When I got home from work she was still buzzing about it and saying she had a really fun time at school.

It's still impossible to see how she will cope without a parent there, but it's at least good that she's enjoying it so far.

When we got to Brownies I had forgotten a vital item, so asked her to stay there while I rushed home to get it. She was quite happy to do so, and when I got back they were already in their sixes and doing the register, so I stayed away and didn't join her until everybody got into a circle for the next bit. It's definitely time for me to take a step or two back at Brownies and start weaning her off me there.

School Part 1

It's been a stressful few days. I took Jade to visit her class on Thursday morning, prior to proper enrolment and it was hard going. She of course was withdrawn, very overwhelmed by all the people and the new routine. She got worse over the 2 hours we were there and by the end wouldn't even write her name on a piece of paper. We left the classroom for a bit of respite at one point and she couldn't/wouldn't tell me how she was feeling, but she was on the verge of tears. However she was very interested in all the displays on the walls and we spent some time browsing them and she whispered to me about the things she saw. The final straw was when the teacher asked to speak to me outside the room for a few minutes, and when I went back in Jade was in tears.

I was absolutely kicking myself for not having arranged a visit earlier so she could see what she was letting herself in for. I was overwhelmed by my own anxieties about this not working, and what that might do to her confidence. It seemed just ridiculous to me to expect her in any way to be able to settle in a classroom with 25 other kids and 2 adults when I haven't yet ever left her at Brownies with 9 other girls or at the junior church group with about 4-5 other kids. I was wishing we had made diligent, structured efforts to achieve those hurdles before we set ourselves at this massive goal. At this stage we're not even dealing with selective mutism, but rather with social anxiety and separation anxiety. And I don't have a manual on how to deal with those.

However, we bore in mind that on previous occasions she has had a big reaction to something at the time, and then over the course of the next 12-24 hours has reconsidered her feelings and been able to do the thing she had been refusing to do. So Bill talked to her and she agreed to give it one more try, and later on I talked to her and said how I always hated at least the first month of any new job, because everything was so strange, and you don't know the people, and it's all unfamiliar and you feel uncomfortable, but gradually you get used to it and start to settle in. So she agreed to try it for a month. And the following day she was quite happy to go to the school to buy her official school top with the logo on it, wore it away from the school and didn't want to take it off for ages. She still talked occasionally proudly about 'her' school and was quite happy to give it another go. It gave me an extremely stressful few days, though, and I was feeling completely wretched about the whole thing.

This morning she has quite happily gone into school with me for her first 'proper' morning. She was happily laying out her uniform last night and very keen to look just right, and she agreed that she would try and do the actual work the teacher was asking her to do, and not to sit on my knee during carpet time (or whatever they call it!) but to sit next to me instead. We are going to have to take these tiny steps towards separating from me. She was extremely slow to write anything that she was asked to, and hasn't actually produced any written work, but has written down the question she was going to answer, and her name and date on a couple of exercise books. We've spent a lot of time in a big group with the teacher talking and involving the class in discussion, which of course she won't take part in, and also in a small group of 5 talking about non-fiction books, during which she whispered her answers to me and I told them to the rest of the group.

Whenever it's been appropriate and without boring her rigid with it, I've been talking with her about self-calming tactics like taking 3 deep breaths, telling yourself calming thoughts, and imagining that she is a big strong animal rather than a nervous little girl. I've been looking online for child anxiety management resources and found a couple of interesting looking things that I will probably get once we're into a new month with new salary in the bank. And tomorrow (Tuesday) her class teacher and myself will be in London on a one-day training course on SM. Hopefully this will prevent any future occurrences of the teacher asking Jade in front of the group to answer a question with a nod or a shake of the head. She of course did neither as it was far too much in the spotlight for her.

During my reading up on anxiety management I have been reminded that avoidance of a feared situation just strengthens and strengthens the fear, so helping her to face up to what she fears and to find ways of reducing the anxiety it provokes is the way to go, rather than pulling out and avoiding the situation again. I do still wonder whether we have bitten off rather more than she can chew and maybe there are some children who are never going to cope happily with a school environment and as long as she can be helped to join in smaller groups with less pressure/expectation but still without a parent present that ought to be good enough. So we shall see.

Having spent some time in the classroom now I would love to read John Taylor Gatto about the hidden curriculum of the classroom, to see whether that is really what I see happening there. Certainly I can see some children being subjected to a certain amount of embarrassment and anxiety, although in the midst of lots of positive and interesting stuff too.

Anyway I should be in bed now as I have to be up at 6am so that'll have to do for now.

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!

Important Things

Yesterday, all of us went to Leicester to attend the SMIRA (Selective Mutism Information and Research Association) Parents' meeting, which is held annually. It was the first time we had attended, although we had booked to go last year and couldn't go because I was unwell.

I'm not good at estimating numbers, but there were probably around 50-60 adults and 30 kids, some with SM and some were siblings. The first thing that struck me, to the extent of bringing me to the verge of tears when I first saw all the kids together, was seeing so many of them with "the look", which once you've seen it in your own child is burned on your heart forever. It's a kind of timidity/shyness/anxiety look and it was just astonishing to me to see all these others with it when I have seen it so often on Jade. And really sad, considering that some of these kids were in their mid to late-teens, absolutely beautiful, gorgeous people who should have been so proud of who they were but instead were crippled with the anxiety of being with other people. (And as I type that, I'm reminding me of me, as I also know that objectively I have nothing to be afraid of but am often way too anxious around other people). What was also really interesting, though was finding out later that some of the kids were SM kids but they didn't look like that.

The other thing that struck me before long was I assumed that many of the selectively mute children would not be able to stay in the kids' activities room without their parents, like Jade couldn't, but in fact I think Bill and I were the only parents who had to stay with our child. We took it in turns to be in the sessions or staying with Jade (and Shannon, except she didn't need us there). Most of them, of course, will be used to being at school without their parents.

I think the reason for this became clear later in the day. There was some discussion in the afternoon session about how some children with selective mutism also have social anxiety, and some don't. Many SM kids can perform dancing or music on stage, or be perfectly relaxed in the classroom or elsewhere, as long as there is no pressure on them to speak. Jade, however, seems to have a hefty dose of social anxiety as well as SM, and will not join in games or activities in groups because of the fear of failure and embarrassment, will not join in games at Brownies except 'tag' for fear she might be 'out', will not do anything when other people are watching her. And that was the mistake we made when we first flexi-schooled her in Year 1, when she went 3 afternoons per week for dance, games, PE, music etc. We thought she'd have fun with these activities, but they were precisely the activities that she had trouble with, and of course by the end of the year she was hating it and refused to go any more. It's odd how sometimes things suddenly become clear - we are dealing with two separate but closely-related diagnoses. I knew she had social anxiety, but somehow I was thinking of it as part of the SM, whereas it is not exactly.

The formal morning sessions were dealing with SM in bilingual children, who have a higher incidence of the problem. I missed a lot of this bit because I was in the childrens' area with the girls. The first thing Jade noticed were two horses head masks being played with by some of the children, and then she couldn't concentrate on anything else at all until she'd got hold of one of them. Meanwhile we noticed another girl who had a sweatshirt with a pony on it, and I told her that Jade was made about ponies too. She told me she had a pony of her own, whose name was Moose, and from then on Jade was her devoted shadow! What was amazing was that I got chatting with a woman at lunchtime who recognised my nametag because we had e-mailed each other a bit a year or so ago, because she home-educates her SM daughter, who is pony mad, and this was the girl! I told her that her daughter had spoken to me, and she said yes, she did speak in pony-related activities only, and obviously I had just got her on the right subject! And it turns out that she doesn't have much social anxiety either - she can dance on stage, and go to pony camps on her own, and is happy to go to HE activities and groups.

The afternoon sessions contained more general discussions, which raised some useful points for us to take note of, though mainly reinforcing the principles of 'no pressure' to speak or do a particular thing in most circumstances, and 'baby-step exposure' during planned therapy sessions to try and improve the situation.

The other important thing to report is that we have decided on school. If you go here to read about the preamble it will save me a lot of time repeating myself.

Because Jade became very keen on going to the school here in Moreton, due to knowing several girls from Brownies, in January I went for a second visit on my own and discussed with them what measures they might be able to put in place for Jade if she went there. They were incredibly positive and helpful, being willing to do almost anything that would help her to settle in and be happy there. The Headteacher suggested that, because Jade's best friend who lives next door is on one of the joint Year 3&4 classes, it might be a good idea for Jade to go into that class after Easter (in Year 3) so she has a term while L is still there (in Year 4), to help her settle in. He also suggested that she could start part-time, and that a parent could go and stay with her if needed. After mulling it over for quite a while, the whole scenario sat much easier with me than I would have expected, and so that is what we are going to do. We have not yet defined what 'part-time' means, and we still have to work out the finer details, but Jade will be starting there after Easter and Shannon will start in September. I am much encouraged that she has made really good progress with the speech therapist in the past few weeks and last Tuesday did absolutely brilliantly and actually answered the ST's questions directly, albeit only one-word answers in a somewhat mumbled fashion. I was thrilled! And we have talked an awful lot with her about how all sorts of things are difficult and scary when you first do them, but you take baby steps and keep practising and get better and better at doing them. We've also talked a lot about how some things might seem scary, but when you achieve them you feel absolutely on top of the world afterwards, and so proud of yourself. So we are more hopeful than we have been for a long time that we might actually be able to make a big improvement in her situation, even if she is always a bit prone to anxiety just as I have been all my life.

I will reiterate that I do only see this as a medium-term temporary measure. I see it as specifically to help her get over her social anxiety and selective mutism, and to hell with what happens academically. I will be pleased if she stays for a year, maybe two, feels successful and happy socially, and then decides to be home-educated again. I am certain that I do not want either of them to go to secondary school.

Organising miracle!

I've just finished a 6-week online course on how to be organised - called Organising 101. I am quite certain it is changing my life!!!! How about that for a recommendation! For the first time ever I can see how it is possible to live differently and in a house that I like. No online course can look after my kids for long periods of time to enable me to get a lot done quickly, but at least I now know what to do when I do get some time, and I have a plan and a vision for doing it.

So now I'm just about to start "Quick and Simple Clutter Control" also run by Aby on the same website - Simplify101.com. So if you're in need of some organisational or decluttering help, I would highly recommend that you go and sign up. Yes it does cost a bit of money ($30, so around £22-25 I think) but it's well worth it. The course starts today, so be quick! (And no, I'm not on commission - just a very happy customer!) Click on the button below to take you straight there.

It's about time

Jade can tell the time, yay! After trickle-feeding her little bits of information over the months and years as she has asked about it, the last bit has finally clicked into place and she is proudly telling the time about every 10 minutes!

Regular Light Alcohol Drinking Raises Cancer Risk For Women

See this link.

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!

Christmas and more

A pleasant Christmas was had in the GATF household. Jade was delighted by her pink DS and Shannon is very envious. We've said she can have one when she's 5, and now she frequently insists that she is 5 and should have her own DS right now! Nevertheless, Shannon was delighted with her Barbie Mariposa doll and a pair of roller skates.

Jade gave Shannon her old Dora pull-along suitcase, and Jade got a new horsey one, so both girls will proudly take their own luggage to Center Parcs in a couple of weeks.

I was delighted with my Garmin ForeRunner 301 from DH (bought more cheaply than at Amazon, I must add!). I am now getting very technical with my running, charting paces and heart rates and it's great fun and distracts me from the effort of the actual running! I've signed up for a 10k run (6.2 miles) on 22nd Feb, so really need to step up the running. 5k is the most I've ever done so far.

My Mum came on Boxing Day to stay for a couple of nights. That can always be a slightly sticky situation but it went OK this time. After she left, I managed to persuade DH to start sorting out the appalling state of the hall, stairs and landing. We've had flakey, peeling paint since a water leak a year or two ago, and despite asking for it to be done as my Christmas present last year, it never was. At last we have started! I can do ordinary decorating myself, and indeed I enjoy doing so, but replacing rotting skirting boards and replastering where holes and channels have been dug is beyond me. He's done a fab job so far and it's almost ready for me to get my hands on it for painting and papering.

I'm sure there were all sorts of other things I wanted to put in this blogpost, but needless to say they have all exited my mind since I sat at the computer. I will just record here that we have just finished reading "The Hobbit" to Jade as her bedtime story over the past 2-3 weeks, and she loved it. I can't say there's much else to report on the HE front, and although I do want to get on with a bit of 'orgo-planning' it just doesn't seem to be happening so far. Constant requests from children for one thing or another means I never get to sit and look through the resources we have to decide what to do next.

Fun!

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!

Time flies

I'm another of those people who thought they were getting ready for Christmas well in advance and now suddenly feel that they are behind with little hope of getting it all done! So what's new?! I guess going away on holiday for the first week of December, then coming home with a still-ailing velcro-child Shannon, which said ailment she then kindly passed on to her parents (cough, splutter, blow) has taken a great chunk out of the preparation time. I am still struggling with coughing and sinus pain - running has obviously stopped for the time being, though I have just signed up for a 10k run in February!

Some education has happened! I distinctly remember (though not when) Jade asking to do some handwriting practice and working very hard to get each letter the correct size, and also some Timez Attack which she found daunting (though it is excellent - she just needs to take maths very slowly otherwise she gets scared of it). I read her the story of King Rufus from this book at her request and she also browsed through it looking at some other stories. Shannon, in the meantime, is extremely keen on writing letters wherever she can find them to trace over - usually magazines thank goodness. She has spent a lot of time colouring-in this week too. There is also lots of counting up as high as she can go, though she still gets confused when she gets to 29 and then goes back to 20. She has learned off-by-heart "1+1=2, 2+1=3, 3+1=4 ...." and so on up to 10, though I don't know if she knows what it really means (Jade taught it to her).

There has been a visit by all of us to Longborough School where Jade went when flexi-schooling in Year 1. A separate blogpost is required for that, I think.

And so, ready or not, Christmas approaches. The (new to us, thanks to Freecycle) artificial (first time ever!) tree is up and decorated, most other decorations are up, the cake is made and is still being fed with brandy, the turkey is purchased and in the freezer, nearly all presents are purchased though not wrapped. However cards are not written and I'm having trouble with mail-merging to produce labels; we have a Jesse Tree branch but nothing hung on it and no readings/stories done (I have lost the book!); almost no Christmas crafts have been done and the girls need to make presents for some of their friends and, ideally, their parents and grandparents. And I really wanted to get everything else ready by early December so that we could enjoy the crafts and traditions side of Christmas. So far I just keep being grumpy because the 'not really a dining-room but a computer room instead' looks like a junk-yard and there seems to be too much else to do for me to get it cleared. Ah well, I still have 10 days to catch up on things, I guess.

Too little time....!

I wanted to blog about NicCamps at Helmsley, but I don't have time! Suffice to say it was a really great week - my favourite HE camp so far - and I think in their own ways the girls loved it too. It was a shame Shannon was ill (though not, thank goodness, with a tummy bug as I feared when she threw up within 5 minutes of arriving at the Hostel) but with a nasty cough and cold that had her intermittently feverish all week. But highlights were snow, Christmas lunch, Mamma Mia sing-along, Helen and Em's beautiful music playing, and my one run through the crisp snowy Yorkshire countryside. I also did a quick visit to my father-in-law who was very pleased to see the girls especially when Shannon sang to him (Twinkle Twinkle and Baa Baa Black Sheep) and while there made a quick visit to Guisborough, where I lived from age 1-8, and showed the girls my old house and school. It was a real shame my oldest friend from those times couldn't come to visit us at the Hostel as planned due to the snowy and icy weather, though. I also finally managed to relive childhood memories and make a visit to the Castle Museum in York on the Friday, having ended up at completely the wrong museum when I attempted to get there on the way up on Monday! I was horrified to find that pink sugar mice no longer have a string tail, but instead have some poor modern stick substitute - it's just not right! And also somewhat shaken to find that items from my childhood are displayed in the museum. Ah well, tempus fugit!

Christmas gifts for HE kids?

Here. Or for LEA inspectors? Hmmm. Or your 'favourite' auntie?

In other news, I had my free morning today (Jade at childminder, Shannon at playschool). I went for a run and did my first proper 5k run without any walking at all - and finished in 32 minutes!! Woohoo! I was a bit miffed that I didn't manage to run my whole 5k race back in October because of a huge great hill in the middle of the course, so had to walk 5+ minutes up the mountain. So it had been my ambition to actually RUN a 5k, and it's taken me this long to manage it!

This afternoon we went swimming (which I've really gone off lately and have reduced it to once a fortnight instead of once a week). Then home where Jade read a Magic Unicorn book and Shannon 'helped' me with preparing the meal.