Go-Go Crazy Bones Go!!

Well, if you have a child aged between about 6-11 you will already know all you need to about these small plastic creatures that come in packets of 3 for 99p. They are the latest craze among school-children, and a great craze they too.

I took my son into school late a couple of weeks ago. It was break time and it was lovely to see groups of children, heads down, concentrating on a game of go-gos. Everywhere I looked there were groups and huddles of kids and small, brightly-coloured creatures on the ground, bench or table in front of them. Harking back to the days before marbles were banned, it was a wonderful sight.

I know many people might not agree with me, not least the teachers who have to sort out disputes involving who owns which go-go and whether the games was actually for keeps or not. But I think it is a great game. It encourages co-operation, turn-taking, sharing and competition. All of these are good things, things we want to instill in our children. Who-ever came up with the idea had a stroke of genius that I am sure the company that produces them recognises. Marbles were banned in schools on the grounds that children could slip over on them, being little glass balls. No such problem with go-gos, which are all different shapes, but stand up on their little feet. Every one of them is designed to balance across one finger for ease of throwing, and the games are all basically the same games that were played with marbles before they were a threat to health and safety.

My nephew’s school has already taken the step of banning them, and I am sure others up and down the country have done so or are on the verge of following suit. My son’s school has taken a more enlightened approach, merely limiting the numbers by telling the children they may only bring 5 each in to school each day. This is still a staggering 2000 go-gos in a school with 400 pupils, but more manageable than the 12,000 that were previously in the place with the average pupil having about 30 of them. If they all managed to collect the full set of 80 different go-gos there could be a staggering 32,000 small plastic creatures in the school (over £10,000 worth in just one school!). Resolving the resultant disputes, misunderstandings and thefts would be a full-time job, reducing the time available for lessons to none whatsoever. So it is quite understandable that schools see the need to limit these toys. But banning them? Schoolchildren have far too few of these diversions left to them (no marbles or conkers or yo-yos – all banned). I say let them keep go-gos. The craze will die down and it will be a smaller proportion of the playground who retains an interest after a while. And that will be manageable.

For Pity’s Sake!!

I just started writing a new post (again) and my little one sabotaged it (again!!!). The last 2 or 3 times she has simply turned off the pc by the big round button on the front mid-post. This time she grabbed the keyboard while I was answering the phone and deleted my p+6o3.0st.

………

Oh yes, she likes to kneel on the keyboard too, hence the odd spelling and punctuation above. Little toad.

 

Anyway, what was I writing about? Oh, yes, how boring I am, having not had anything I felt worth saying for the past 2 weeks. Also, I have been damned busy. My son has been causing all sorts of interesting problems, mostly involving serious tantrums at school. I am now driving him to and from school every day, despite the fact he has a free bus pass and that it costs me a fortune in diesel. 20 miles a day I drive for him and is he grateful? Of course not, he hates school! Well, he’s grateful when I pick him up, actually. Pathetically grateful, in fact. He hates school so much! Actually, it showed the depth of his hatred of the bus the other week when he refused to get on it to come home. The fact he threw a complete wobbler and had to be manhandled onto the bus by his teacher and then refused to sit down, screaming at the top of his voice (in front of a bus-load of his peers) really proved to me how very much he dislikes the bus, because he normally can’t wait to get away from school.

We did try to find out what the problem was and address the issues. Too hot? A handheld fan to keep him cool. Too noisy? Earplugs. But the earplugs kept popping out and the fan batteries ran out really quickly – yes, we replaced them a couple of time. In the end it was just easier (and cheaper) to accept the inevitable and drive him in. This autism business comes out in a variety of ways, mostly to do with noisy, chaotic and unpredictable things. Okay, the car could break down, but at least his trusted mother would be there to deal with it all and keep him calm.

Then there have been a couple of times when he has been late. These cause a repeat of the tantrum, usually held in front of a  classroom full of children, and last time in front of the entire playground. It culminated in me walking off while a teaching assistant restrained him. It was horrible. Most kids his age (9) would not behave like that with everyone watching. My son does not have those boundaries. He is more like a 4 or 5 year old child in certain respects, and this business of tantrumming at school is one of them. Yet the teachers say he is fine once he gets in and settles down. This is not what he feels. He describes school as torture. He would rather break both of his legs than go to school. Yet ask him what is wrong with it and he can’t really answer. “Everything” is not a proper answer. He can’t really verbalise exactly what it is about school that he hates so much. Maybe it is everything, but not individually. Perhaps it’s everything all rolled up together, coming at him relentlessly through the day in a way he has no control over. Maybe if it was all seperated out and ordered and stuck to a rigid timetable and was quiet and controlled at all the right times and someone was able to explain properly just exactly why it is that he has to go to school (“Because you just do,” is also not a proper answer but it’s all I’ve got!), maybe then it would be bearable.

But that isn’t going to happen.

If he is having this much trouble at junior school (especially on Tuesdays when he has 3 different teachers through the course of the day), I shudder to think what effect secondary school is going to have on him. I guess we will just have to cross that bridge when we come to it, no point looking for trouble, etc….but I think it is probably as well to be prepared for the future, because this is what will happen if we don’t start putting things in place in the near future. I don’t want my son to go through an emotional meltdown.

Autistic Spectrum Disorder, Asperger’s Syndrome, call it what you will. It is a nightmare to live with. He wishes he was just normal, and so do I, for his sake, at times. I would miss my dear little boy if it were to happen, though. He is a love. But his path through life will not be an easy one and I cry for him sometimes, because all I can do is try to help him learn how life works, I can’t live it for him, and I can’t take away the pain when it jumps up and bites him. I know all parents go through this. I have this with my other children too, but not to nearly the same extent. ASD children do not “get” the world, and probably will live their entire lives not getting it. They can learn to do the things we all automatically do to make the world go around, but they will never, ever understand why they have to.

Another month already

It’s June already, and I can hardly believe it. Everything has been quite upside-down since last September but the end is in sight. #1 has only 3 more weeks of college and I will be released from the tedious and exhausting business of driving her there. It’s only twice a week but the place is over 10 miles away and I have to do it twice each day which is 80 miles a week. Bloody expensive now too.

It will make life a bit, well, not easier but simpler. My son hates the bus but I can’t get him to school the days I take #1 to college. I will be able to take him in from the end of this month which will make him a bit happier. Not much, since he hates school anyway, but a bit.

Thankfully #3 is still joyously happy in her school and will stay there for at least another year.

At least one of them is settled. Of course I will have all of this shenanigans again in a few years’ time when #4 comes due for schooling, but I happy to leave that bridge well alone until I need to cross it.

Of course, the advent of June brings us that little bit closer to the other event of the year, the birth of my first grandchild. It is only 10 weeks now until the baby is due and frantic activity is taking place at my mother’s house to prepare the place for the arrival of her granddaughter and great grandson. #1 still hasn’t quite decided when she is going to move in, but I think when we have organised the place a bit better she will have a clearer idea. At the minute I think a part of her does not want to pile the pressure on to her grandparents by setting them a deadline. Of course, this is ignoring the fact that there is ultimately a deadline anyway, lol, but that’s youngsters for you!

The other part of her doesn’t really want to leave home, of course. Well that is for 2 reasons, one being she just doesn’t want to leave home yet and the other being that she feels guilty about disrupting her grandparents lives and putting them out etc. We have told her until we’re blue in the face that this is not an issue, but what can you do? Anyway, she is planning to help them with the housework and take turns to cook meals, so I am quite sure that they will not be put out at all. They think a lot of her and genuinely enjoy her company, which she reciprocates. The only concern is whether my father can truly cope with having a baby in the house.

He is disabled and also running (well, hobbling) around a lot after his own father (85) who was quite ill last November and has never really fully got over it. So my father is pretty exhausted, really. He doesn’t really cope that well with having the grandchildren over, at least most of the time, needing really to have plenty of warning in order to mentally prepare. Of course, the fact that he has had several months to get used to the idea this time around, plus it was his own idea in the first place, will probably help. And also when you have someone living with you it can be quite a different thing from having them visit. It can be more pressured, of course, but there is a good possibility that it will be easier to deal with for him because it is something that is there all the time, so a sort of background noise, if you like, rather than a sudden thing.

It’s a bit like the trains. Their house is next to a railway track, and of course they are well used to the trains, to the extent that they simply don’t notice them any more. Even the night freight trains, which are really loud. In fact they are more likely to notice (even to the extent of waking up at night) if for some reason there are no trains at all. I know when I moved away from home I was waking up at the times the trains weren’t going past for several months.

It’s wrong to compare a baby to a train, I suppose, but I think it gets the point across. Anyway, the bottom line is that hopefully all will be well, and if it doesn’t work out then we will have to all squeeze up at our end and have her and the baby back here. Which would be interesting! So let’s hope it all works out, eh? Anyway, it should be only a temporary thing, a year to 18 months at most with any luck, whatever happens and where ever she ends up in the short term.

For now, it is business as usual (which is busy and draining in every way). I still have my moments of worrying about the future, but I am doing better at noticing today, too.

Problems at School

Perhaps this would be better titled as “Problems withSchool”, but now that I’ve said that it’s covered either way, lol. Seriously, though, I am not happy about the state of State education. You can probably tell this by the fact I have an entire page dedicated to the subject. Also the whole thing about sex education as posted a couple of weeks ago. My son has now got over that trauma, but a lesson of sitting with his ears plugged and his eyes closed is not the way a 9-yr-old should be spending any part of his school day.

#2 hates school with a passion. He will look for any excuse not to go (this morning he banged his hand on the push chair, which hurt a great deal, and said, “That’s great. Now I can’t write with this hand. There’s no point in going to school if I can’t write.” Good one. I took him in anyway). He says it’s boring. He says he would rather break both his legs than go to school. He would love to be ill – but just ill enough not to go to school, not ill enough to actually suffer in any way. His dream would be to go in for 5 minutes, collect his work and come home with it, dropping it off the next day for marking. This is not how it should be.

Sadly, for a great many of our children, this is the way it is. Okay, #2 has slightly more difficulties than the average child, what with his Asperger’s Syndrome. But he is an intelligent lad with a joy of learning. Just not a joy of being educated within the established system. But I have had problems with #3 as well, and she started out loving school. Well, nursery school anyway. She used to cry every weekend, every holiday, every time I went to pick her up, because she loved it so much. Shortly after she started proper school she realised that it was quite different. “It’s not the same as nursery, Mummy,” she said to me.

However, moving her, as I recently did, to the local independent school, has worked wonders. She is happy again, enjoying every minute thoroughly. She tells me about what she has done. She seems to be learning things. She is keen to go in. Her behaviour at home has improved. There has been no mention of “tummy ache” since she started. She was getting daily aches and pains, which was one of the reasons I was looking around in the first place. Also, a conversation with her teacher hinted to me that there were problems. For a start, the teacher seemed to think a conversation we had had 2 weeks before had actually been 4 months ago. That concerned me. Also, I was a little concerned that #3 was showing possible signs of ADD or ADHD, but my concerns were not taken seriously. “Well, she’s just…her really. You know her. She should be blonde!” Which is all very well, but not an altogether helpful attitude.

I have had no hint of problems at the new school, but then they don’t seem to expect 6 year-olds to concentrate for excessive periods of time on very boring things. This is  refreshing, but could equally be addressed within the state system. Literacy and numeracy hours are not good. It is too long to spend on one subject. Even at secondary level, it has been found that the ideal length of a lesson is 45 minutes. Longer than that and you lose concentration and interest. If 15-year-olds can’t cope with an hour on one subject, how the hell do we expect 5-year-olds to do so?

Of course, I have been here before, with my eldest. #1 is nearly 17 now, and she started school full time at the tender age of 4 1/2. She loved it and did well despite moving through 4 different school while still in Infant school. We moved around a lot when she was younger. This was before literacy and numeracy – back in the day when they did English and Maths. It was before cursive writing too, and her writing was always legible. It started to change gradually while she was going through the system, never affecting her as they were working from the bottom up. So I know that they can do it.

It was secondary school that caused the real problems for #1. She had done well in her KS2 SATs (11+), getting 5s despite the fact she was only 10 when she sat it. (Her birthday being in July). Her first year at secondary school wasn’t too bad, although I was a bit concerned that she wanted to be popular rather than a “swot”. But in year 7 it all went horribly wrong because that was when she started being bullied.

It took a long time to find out what was going on, although I did notice a change. For a start, she started getting out of her uniform within seconds of being home. This was new, but I put it down to her age. But we started getting moodiness, abdominal migraine (“tummy ache”!!), although never any overt wish to stay off school. It was months before I found out she was being bullied. I spoke to the school time and time again. I learned that the school had been put in special measures. I spoke to the new deputy head. He could find no record of any of the contacts I had made with the school. They had been covering up the fact that they had a serious bullying problem.

In the end I changed her to a different school, but it was too little, too late. She was in a serious emotional mess by then, so very angry at every one and everything. Her behaviour at school reflected her distrust of adults to help her in any way. She was in fact on the verge of being excluded when I decided to withdraw her formally from state education. 

My reasoning was based largely on her SATs results. At 14, she had only got the same grades (5s) as she had at 11. She was an emotional wreck and things were not going to improve. She was going to be excluded, labelled a bully and a problem child and treated as such. It would have been the beginning of a terrible down-ward spiral. I knew that if I taught her nothing for the next 2 years I was still not doing worse than the State education had done in the last 3. That was exactly what happened, as it turned out. She was in no state to be learning anything, having been turned right off the idea of education. So I let her regain her equilibrium, which took about 18 months. Then we looked at other possibilities, like college.

She got straight in, and is gaining distinctions in all of her essays. She should pass her year-long animal care course with flying colours. It is a shame that she will not continue on next year to convert it into a diploma, but as she will be a mother in the summer it would be hard for her to juggle things in September to get back to college. She has time, and a family willing to help and support in whatever she wants to do. The important thing is that she has shown a willingness and an ability to learn, to study and do well, despite her difficulties at school.

I hope I can get #2 sorted and settled before things get into such a state. That is my task for the next 2 years, organising my son’s educational needs. Wish me luck.

One Extreme to Another

So if you’ve read any of this blog you already know my son is “on the Autistic Spectrum”, as they say. A useful label, which will get him more help at school. Not that he needs it academically, as such. Well, he could do a lot better than he is, but he’s in the top set for everything anyway. I realise that it could sound rather boastful, and I do try not to be, but I am rightly proud of my children, who are all very intelligent little beings. Of course, that isn’t really anything to do with me, I suppose. Lucky genetics probably play a larger part in intelligence. A few points one way or the other can be gained or lost through the nurture side of things but it’s not something I have ever really bothered myself about.

Anyway, there he is, a little bit odd, quiet, shy, obsessive, etc. Washes his hands a lot at times. Doesn’t like the bus because it’s too noisy. Has to have the labels cut out of his clothes. And then there’s his sister….

#3 is a bull in a china shop. She is busy. She is loud, gregarious, accident-prone, demanding, absolutely full to the brim of beans. Bounces off the ceiling a lot. The word “brash” suits her very well. She acts before she thinks, has no consideration of consequences and her curiosity frequently gets the better of her. She is always scruffy, often filthy, flits from one thing to the next constantly. Her work at her old school reflected this very much. I was talking to a school nurse (about my son actually, but #3 came into the chat somehow) and she suggested that #3 sounded hyperactive.

This was one of the things that prompted the move to a new school, because where she was didn’t really take my concerns seriously. I did tell the teacher at her new school that this had been suggested, but teachers rarely trust the judgement of parents – years of experience teaches them to ignore us as many parents really don’t know their own children that well! So I let it be. I decided to give her a few weeks and then see what the teacher thought.

So I asked on Friday. “You’re right,” said Mrs T. “She is a bit hyper isn’t she?” Very busy, very scruffy, and as for art lessons, she wears most of the paint. None of which I was surprised to hear. However, I was fairly surprised to learn that she is working with an 8-yr-old for spellings and is doing year 2 maths. This is the level she has been assessed at. In her old school she was in a special group for “the children who aren’t quite keeping up.” This tells me her basic problem was under stimulation. No wonder she loves her new school. No wonder her behaviour at home has improved. She was being treated as if she had learning difficulties at the old place, where in fact she has none!

I have made some dietary changes too, on the advice of this school nurse. I am learning which food additives are no good. The change in her behaviour is fairly subtle – until she has any of the banned additives; then it is easy to see why she shouldn’t have them. The list is surprising. I knew that artificial colours and flavours were bad news. But some natural colours are bad too. Paprika being the main culprit. It is extract of paprika, mind you, so a processed thing even if it isn’t artificial. And the biggie – artificial sweeteners. Saccharin and aspartame. I have been feeding her a steady diet of “crazy making” foods to try and protect her teeth. Of course we all worry that there is something sinister about aspartame, but I had never heard of them being linked with hyperactivity before. It hasn’t worked for her teeth either, she is having 9 out next month (we have very bad teeth in our family, not helped by the fact that the children are grazers. Any carbohydrate turns to sugar in the mouth, even the good ones).

The trouble is, aspartame and saccharin are universal. Pick up a bottle of lemonade. Ordinary lemonade, not the diet kind. It has sugar andartificial sweeteners. Why? It’s crazy. Look at any bottle of fizzy drink, they are all the same. The only fizzy drink she can have is 7up. Many squashes are the same. She can’t have “no added sugar” drinks any more, because they have the artificial ones in too. Other things have suspect colours in. There is one drink she can have that seems to be okay. And it’s not Ribena! I don’t know what it is, but Ribena makes her loco too.

Another thing, although this has had mention in the papers lately, is the preservatives. In particular Sodium Benzoate. This is in calpol, amoxil, in fact pretty nearly all children’s medicines. No wonder she perks up! What with the colouring, flavouring and sweeteners…do you know how hard it is to get calpol with sugar in it these days? No other brand even makes a sugared version. But the calpol still has all the other baddies in. Nightmare.

It’s no wonder that #2 and #3 can’t cope with each other. They really are polar opposites. It’s a shame but what can you do? They are siblings but I can’t force them to be friends. I can only hope that as they grow older they can come to understand and accept each others’ differences.

 

Walking Disaster Area

 Ever known one of these? There are some people to whom accidents happen. It is a constant, daily feature of their lives that something untoward should occur. There they are walking along, minding their own business, when all of a sudden life jumps up and slaps them in the face. Or drops on their head. Or opens a hole in front of their feet. These are the people that you and I know as walking disaster areas.

My dear little girl (#3), who is 6, is one of these people. She can barely get through a single day without something happening. Very often she will trip, slip or fall over and simply get up and carry on as if nothing has happened. Many times these minor accidents will involve sending drinks or plates of food flying. Toys are easily damaged. Her brother and sisters are frequent victims of her accidents-prone nature. It is not safe to put a cup down any lower than her shoulder height and certainly not on the floor. She is drawn to hot coffee the way moths are to a flame and we have just had laminate put down.

Often her little accidents are quite funny really but we try not to laugh or say things like, “Typical #3,” while rolling our eyes heavenwards. It upsets her, makes her very self-conscious and makes her worse. (Of course we never actually callher #3 either, as she does have a name and besides the # is very hard to pronounce). The other day she raced through the living room at full tilt, skidded at the end and slid into the door, but bounced immediately to her feet with a cry of “I’m OK” and carried on her mad dash to the kitchen. I am sure that most parents of 6-year-olds are familiar with this kind of scene but I do have to stress that  this is continuous. I have two older children so I know that they are not all like this!

Sometimes things take a far more serious turn. When she was 2-and-a-half she fell off the arm of the sofa in the living room, breaking her arm in the process. The doctor at the hospital didn’t believe there was anything wrong with her and only x-rayed it because I insisted. She implied I was wasting her time but sadly had gone off-shift by the time the x-rays came back, clearly showing a lovely green-stick fracture. I  knew she’d broken it, despite never having broken a bone of my own, because my husband had often described what it’s like. He broke lots of bones as a child.

If you want to know how to recognise a broken arm, well, sometimes it is very easy. #2 broke his and it was bent. His hand was bluish-white and he couldn’t move his fingers. He was also screaming in agony, but small children will do that for a tiny cut so it isn’t necessarily a clue. #3 didn’t really have pale fingers, but she screamed for 20 minutes, at which point the endorphins (natural painkillers) kicked in and she fell immediately asleep. Straight from full-blown shrieks to sleep. Dear Hubby had told me that after about 20 minutes a broken bone will stop hurting, so at that point I knew for sure that her arm was indeed broken.

Similarly when #2 broke his other arm, which was above the elbow, at first I wasn’t quite sure as he was making more fuss about the nettle-stings he had encountered on his fall down a 12-foot bank onto the road. I decided to get him checked out, thinking he was probably just bruised, but as he had started shaking violently and was very pale and sweaty (a bit of shock methinks), well, best to check him over. He might have banged his head. On the way to the hospital he fell asleep in the car, something he hadn’t done for years, and when we got out he had a lump like a grapefruit just above his elbow, so I knew then that it was indeed a fracture.

This takes us a little away from the point, which is #3’s general clumsiness. Or carelessness. Lack of body-awareness in general, I think. The other day she saw her friend coming up the path and ran to meet her at the gate. Right past the mini cricket match that was going on in the garden. Right, in fact, into the path of the cricket bat which was being swung by my son’s 11-year-old, tall, strong, sporty friend.

It hit her in the face.

Quite hard.

There was a lot of screaming. We were all nearly deafened, in fact. She was rather quiet for the rest of the day, but I didn’t take her to the hospital. I have had the little card that tells you what to look out for in the event of a head-injury quite often enough, and there was no serious swelling or anything. In fact, thanks to my friend’s Arnica cream, she didn’t even get a bruise in the end. She is still a little pink looking on that cheek, four days later, but does not apparently have a broken cheek.

Her front tooth, which she banged on the radiator valve last week after tripping over a washing bag in the kitchen, is hanging on by a thread and will soon fall out, several months earlier than it would have naturally done. She had a splinter in her thumb on Friday which she managed to get out by herself in the end. She’s getting to be quite an expert at that and it’s a good job too. The bump on her head from falling off the swing has just about gone down. She managed not to actually scald herself (somehow) on a cup of fresh tea she knocked onto herself. Her broken toenail recovered quite quickly. SHe’s always got ragged, horrible toenails because she catches them on things so often.

Her legs are permanently scabbed and bruised. So much so, in fact, that I sometimes worry what the teacher makes of them. Mind you, spending any time in #3’s company would soon make anyone realise than she is not an abused child, she is merely the most accident-prone person anyone has ever met. Like wotsername off Desperate Housewives. Susan, is it? The one played by that Terri thingy who used to be Lois Lane. Yep, her, that’s it.

Well, I’ve just realised I have rambled on for almost 1100 words, so it’s about time I stopped.

See you again soon

Fundraising

Thankfully now my keyboard is working properly. Yesterday it deleted every time I pressed the space bar, and then this morning it packed up altogether. Working for now, I think it may be time to get yet another. Too many things get spilt on it I suppose, lol.

 I just realised that, with the dangers of the Internet etc, it was a bit silly to say the name of the school. I am sure there are many fairs out there this weekend, so as long as I am vague about it (something I’m fairly good at being), there won’t be a problem. So I have edited the hell out of this and I’m just glad it was practically unreadable yesterday. In fact, maybe it’s a sign that now I have realised this and removed all specific references the keyboard is once again working! I do believe in signs.

Anyway, back to the subject in hand. I’ve never been much of a one to take part in school fund-raising. Schools do get a lot of money from central funds for all the necessary stuff. Having to be a member of the PTA (“you are automatically a member as soon as your child joins the school” – what fun!!), having to bring in loads of stuff and make loads of cakes for the fairs and bazaars and other wonderful things they have, and then buy it all back again when you actually go to the event is just tiresome, it really is. If my child is attending a free school for which I and my husband have already paid dearly in taxes, why the hell should I have to go through all this business of paying for things twice over in order to fund, for example, a new interactive whiteboard? An item, incidentally, which I don’t believe is necessary even at secondary level, let alone in a reception class at primary school.

No, the whole business just pisses me off to be honest. Then they have sponsored this, that and the other – more often than not on a Sunday these days, so I don’t feel nearly as bad about forgetting to sponsor my child. I work with three other people who I don’t actually see, and my husband is an AA patrol so he rarely sees work colleagues and hopefully doesn’t see his customers more than once, lol (it would be a pretty poor show to have repeat customers in his line of work), so the possibilities for huge amounts of sponsorship are infinitesimally small. I remember the shameful feeling of only getting about £2.50 in sponsor money when I was at school and the girl behind me getting £250 because “Daddy took me into the office the other day and I asked all the people there…” By forgetting to go, I can save my children that shame at least.

But #3’s new school is a different matter entirely. It is an independent school, run by a trust, and they really do need the money. This is a school with a blackboard, chalk and a duster. There are trees in the playground that can be climbed. In fact, tree-climbing regularly features in PE lessons! There is one dusty little PC which is used, but not excessively. And it is not in any way funded by the government. Usually, independent schools such as this require fees, but this one is free. A great rarity in this day and age.

So it is therefore my duty to take part in this fund-raising. I only joined the school 2 weeks ago, so I have not had time to do a great deal. I am making some cakes and will help out on the day, as well as spending some money there. But I do feel strongly that I ought to take part as I am not paying in any other way for this school and it has an educational ethos that I love. #3 could be there until she’s 11 and #4 will got here too. I am going to have 10 years as a part of this school, so I had better make sure that it is going to be there for 10 years!

What a change in outlook! I am amazed at myself. I even asked work if they could contribute anything to help, which they very kindly did (go to http://warrenphotographic.co.uk  to see what they do). This is something I have never, ever done before. It is a sign of how strongly I feel, how seriously I take this. It is, after all, my daughters’ education at stake.

MMR and other injections

#4 had her MMR yesterday, being 13 months old. She also had her third PCV booster, having had the 3rd hib/menC booster last months. She was not impressed by the experience of being held by mum while the nurse stuck a needle in her arm. Even less so by being turned around and having it done in the other arm too! Talk about adding insult to injury.

All seems to be fine so far, no swellings or redness at the site of the jabs, no raised temperature or general irritability. Of course, that doesn’t mean a lot. The side effects of MMR usually occur a week or so later….

It’s now three weeks since the injection (this is another one of those posts that I started but didn’t finish), and poor #4 was most unhappy from about 10 days after until this weekend. That about covers the first two effects of this vaccination, which are a mild form of measles and a mild form of mumps. She got the runny nose, hacking cough and red eyes of measles, but no temperature to speak of and a faint rash that I wasn’t really even sure was a rash. Then a few days later she had slightly puffy looking neck/cheeks on both sides, and was really miserable for a few more days. No fun at all, really.

I will keep an eye out for the mild rubella like symptoms in another week or two. It can take longer, but they can get a rash that looks similar to what might be a meningitis rash and if she happened to have a virus with a high temperature at the same time it could get a bit worrying. I have seen the rash before, as my son got all these things when he had his first MMR too.

At least #4 didn’t get a hard lump on her arm from the DTP vaccination as #3 did. When I took #3 for her pre-school booster I had forgotten about that happening, and was very taken aback when her whole arm from her shoulder to her elbow went rock hard, bright red and hot to the touch. This lasted for a couple of weeks before it finally went away, and is evidently a reaction to the pertussis (whooping cough) part of the DTP jab. But it doesn’t say in the leaflet that this can happen, just “a small lump may appear at the site of the injection). When in fact the “local” reaction can be quite large.

Anyway, that is all I can say about jabs for now, and I hope this might be useful to someone, although it’s not laid out very scientifically! It took me hours of scouring the net to find out that these things were normal and ok and nothing to worry about. I do think that the leaflets might mention these things as they are not that rare.

 

Sleeping

Here is one of those aforementioned unfinished posts that I thought I ought to tidy up, finish and get out there…..

My dear friend from Sweden phoned the other day. She has a 10-month-old baby who was sleeping for 10 hours a night from the age of a few weeks but has now started waking up regularly at about 1am. For 2 hours. Cheerful, but awake. She was wondering if I, as a mother of 4 children, had any tips on how to stop this.

Oh how I laughed.

I don’t actually know what the secret to a good night’s sleep is. My first 2 woke regularly in the night until the age of 3 1/2. It never really bothered me that much but then I am a stay-at-home mum so I suppose I didn’t really have to be that well rested, as I could always have a lazy day if things got too tough. Then came #3 who slept through the night from 6 weeks. In fact, before that she barely woke up even during the day. She was the sleepiest child I’ve ever known. I say was, because of course when she started teething it all flew out the window anyway. And now I have #4 who has slept through the night for about a week, but not all in a row. So she’s a bit inbetweeny I suppose, but as I am still mostly a stay-at-home mum I can, once in a while, have a bit of a sit down if I am totally exhausted. Lazy days are now thin on the ground because with 4 children there is nearly always something to do.

So I really don’t know any great secrets other than “rest whenever you can”. However, I know a great many people and experts advocate “controlled crying”. This is where you put baby in the cot, and simply leave it there. When baby starts crying, you give it a few minutes, then go back and offer faint comfort – tuck him back in, etc – but make no eye contact and don’t talk. Then you go off again, for slightly longer. And so on, until baby finally drops off to sleep. Which is all very well, but some babies won’t. I did try this with my first 2, and just ended up with completely hysterical baies who screamed and screamed for hours. They would drop off for a couple of minutes out of exhaustion, then wake up for another round of screaming. And I do mean only a couple of minutes; they were in that much of a state.

So I wasn’t able to keep it up. I didn’t think it was really very good for my children to be left to get into that state. But all the literature about this makes you feel like a failure if you don’t succeed this way. Many books imply that this technique will work for any child, and the only reason it can ever possibly fail is because the parent (mother) is not applying the technique correctly, and is molly-coddling their child. Some things I have read even actually say  this. How good does that make you feel, eh? You are a failure because you couldn’t bear to leave your baby screaming its head off all night? You what?

So I am not a big advocate of this method myself, not because it doesn’t work. I know people for whom this has worked. Not because it’s cruel, either. It works for some babies, and they don’t grow up with terrible emotional problems. No, I don’t like it because of the way it makes you feel bad for not looking after your child properly when in fact the technique goes right against the in-built, natural desire to comfort your baby when it’s crying.

My own method is to sleep with the baby. When it’s a small baby you can bring it into bed with you. When the baby starts kicking your husband out of the bed, it’s time to move into the baby’s bed, as I have now done with my 14-month-old. I put her down, and go to my own bed. But when she wakes up I just get into bed with her. Hopefully this will get later as she gets older and sleeps for longer. If not then when she is a bit older I will spend a week or so settling her down and then trundling back to my own bed again. I will do this in the school holidays so I don’t have to get up in the morning with the other children.

Of course, sleeping with the baby is now very much frowned upon by the experts. Stuff them. Many of them don’t even have children. How the hell do they know what’s a good idea until they have their own. Preferably several of their own so that they can see first hand how very different children can be from each other, and that sometimes there is just not a lot you can do about a problem except grin and bear it until it is either grown out of or you have a brilliant inspiration that solves it once and for all.

There is no right or wrong with sleeping, as with so much else. There is just what suits you best. And lets face it, if you have to work 9 hours a day, plus commute and things, then you are going to want as much sleep as you can get. Perhaps you will have a firmer hand for this controlled crying, perhaps not. But do it when you’re on holiday, as you will be a zombie for a week or so while trying it out.

ps, I do think sleeping with your baby is a great thing to do, but have never done it when drunk or if I have taken sleeping tablets or any drowsy-making medication. Illegal drugs would make you less aware of things too, so best avoid them as well. Same goes for you husband/partner.

 

Today’s Big Debate

My poor son came out of school a bit troubled today. This is nothing unusual really, as he really, really hates school, but there was a bit more to it than that. He was troubled because today he had to sit through a sex education video. He’s 9.

This video, from the little he told me, went into quite a bit of detail about the actual act. This, as far as I’m concerned, is not something he needs to know yet. He’s 9.

Sex education has been discussed quite a bit today, it was on “the Jeremy Vine Show” on radio 2. I actually missed most of it, but had I heard it I might have phoned in and told them what my son said the other day. Because on Wednesday he was late into school and missed the video. Of course there was a strike yesterday and the school was closed, so I hadn’t had a chance to speak to his teacher about this issue. But my son had spoken to me. He said he though it was terrible and really shocking that he was to be given sex education. “If I’d thought about I would think maybe in about year 9, nearer to when you might be doing that kind of thing, but not in year 4, Mummy,” he said to me. Which is a pretty cogent argument from a 9-year-old.

To be honest, he sounded a bit traumatised when he told me about it. He tried not to look or listen, and he doesn’t want to think about it. Well, he wouldn’t, would he? He’s 9.

I realise I keep mentioning his age. This is because it is important. I am really unhappy that he has had this rather shocking video shown to him. He’s not too pleased about it either. Add to that the fact that he is Autistic, and probably in many ways has a younger mental and emotional age than that (usually he seems about 2 years younger than he is), I have to ask what the hell is going on.

And I thought that schools had to tell you when they were doing sex education and give you the opportunity to see the material and a chance to withdraw your child from Sex Education lessons. So it was all the more surprising, as I hadn’t heard a dickie bird from them. I am hopping mad, actually. The more I think about it the angrier I feel. I think I am going to write to them to express my displeasure.

And if he has nightmares I might even consider suing.