Time For a New Strategy
Every now and again strategies for coping with behaviour that have worked for a while cease to have any effect and we are reaching that point in time. Our PASW has been on annual leave for a while (how do social workers get so much leave?) and has been unavailable to talk to and honestly? It’s been a difficult few weeks, hence the lack of posts, in fact I have started to write a few but struggled to put my thougts into words. We have had a number of meltdowns with many different reasons. I can only say that this is a difficult time of year, excitement over impending holidys, anxiety over saying goodbye to loved teachers, facing new challenges, new teachers, new environments, everything that really we should be avoiding. Girl’s head must be in turmoil.
Tonight we announced to Girl that she would not be attending her last day of school tomorrow and immediately it was like a weight was lifted from her shoulders. We witnessed Girl play nicely with toys, she was calm and considered, she listened and took on board suggestions about the game she was playing with her teddies and cars. This is unusual behaviour to say the least. It may have helped that Boy went to bed early because he is under the weather but she played so pleasantly that we gave her an extra hour before sending her to bed. It was lovely, a rare moment to be relished but definitely something so set the cogs whirring after such a difficult few weeks.
All aboard!
Weird but people are starting to pay attention, it’s like I shouted ‘All aboard’ and people are starting to finally shuffle aboard the train. Two interesting things happened today, firstly the health visitor finally appeared for Boy and agreed with me that yes he is delayed with his speech but that yes he is also very smart and we have a refereral to SALT impending, also that yes it is strange that he keeps falling over all the time and we are keeping an eye on that.
Secondly, Girl’s teacher requested a little chat with us this afternoon. The little chat went along the lines of please don’t worry too much right now about Girl’s eduction, concentrate on her emotional needs (little guffaw here, as if we don’t). The head teacher has said we can go and chat to her in Septmeber to see how they can help. Well. I like that. I like that a lot.
Body Language
It’s interesting the body language displayed by my daughter. For instance last week we had the class photo back from school and immediately I noticed that my daughter looked very different to the other children. All her class friends were sat up straight and smiling, Girl was given pride of place in the middle of the front row of seats and there she was slouched down in her chair, chin touching her chest and a pretend smile plastered on her face, a grimace if you like, her eyes hooded. It was almost like she was trying to hide and was very uncomfortable with the situation. I remember when I was young I would have been besides myself with the excitement of a break from the daily routine and most of the children in the photo look exactly how I would have felt, happy, excited to be having a photo taken outside, proud to sit upright with their friends.
Before we adopted Boy we went through a blissful summer of sparkly wide-eyed photos. It took us a couple of years into the adoption to get there but it was short lived. Nowadays most of the photos we take her eyes are hooded, I can’t describe it very well, it’s like she is trying to hide her soul with her eyelids. She is very happy to pose for photos and a lot I take without her noticing, I like the candid shots better but I can’t see her eyes and I would give anything to get back the wide eyed sparkle.
School Report Time
It was parent-teacher meeting day yesterday and time for school reports, I was a little apprehensive about it as we felt that the school were not seeing the ‘real’ Girl. We got to the school and outside the classroom was a table with all the children’s work books and a sealed envelope with the school report. We took a chair whilst waiting for our appointment; I chose to open the report and the Hubster picked one of the workbooks.
Now this is going to sound really strange. As I sat reading the report my heart was sinking. The report was very, very good, gushingly good. Immediately I felt mistrustful, it was like reading about a different child, all the things we struggle with at home Girl was getting right in school. They were seeing a Girl who could dress independently, a confident and sociable little girl, a girl who had no problems following instructions, who could think independently for herself. At the same time I was reading this, Hubster was pointing out that in her writing book on every page were the words ‘with support’, with support’. Now I am not saying I am unhappy about reading a good report, it’s surely what every parent dreams of but when you know your daughter has so many difficulties you expect to see some of that reflected. So what is going on here? What is missing? Why the conflict in what we are reading and what we are seeing? I felt myself welling up, desperate that nobody was seeing what we see.
However, this is where it all changed. The teacher called us in to our meeting and immediately thanked us for the document I had sent in on Attachment in the Classroom by the national Children’s Bureau (it is very, very good, bookmark it, you never know when you might need it). She had read it and then passed it round to the teaching assistants and also on to Girl’s new teacher. She then went on to say that upon reading it she had started to notice of a few behaviours that Girl was displaying, her emotions and the way she shrugs into herself when not feeling comfortable with a situation, the document fully backed up everything we had been telling her. She told us there had been a few incidents of aggressive behaviour that she had to talk to Girl about (why are we only just learning about this?). She pointed out that Girl seemed to like playing roughly with the boys at playtime (full marks teacher) and could easily get carried away with the aggression of the fighting games. I pointed out that they would need to keep an eye on that because if not pulled up in time she could easily hurt somebody through lack of self-control.
Lastly she acknowledged that Girl was having difficulties with her reading, writing and phonics and that they would be keeping an extra eye on her. Hoo-bloody-rah! We had a discussion about how her writing seems to be going backwards, that she seems to be ‘unlearning’ things. The teacher said they don’t like to bandy about the word Dyslexia and they don’t normally diagnose until 7 years of age but with her background, the adoption, the development delays it was a distinct possibility, that her difficulties were enough to worry them.
I also mentioned to the teacher about not doing much of the hoemwork with Girl. This is something I worry about but we both find it too stressful. The teacher did not seem concerned at all so that is a weight off my mind.
So that’s it, I am so pleased to know that I was not getting it totall wrong but a little sad that I was actually getting it right too, do you know what I mean?
(Oh and by the way she is bloody brilliant at maths and art!)
Blog attack!
My blog was recently attacked and I lost everything. The whole website could not be retrieved by normal methods as the back-up was also affected. It felt like such a loss, all my thoughts and feelings obliterated by some unscrupulous hacker. I guess that it was random, I certainly don’t think I could offend anyone with the content of my blog, I am after all just a mummy trying to do the best by her family and sharing what I have learned, good or bad.
Anyway, I set straight into restoring the blog, I managed to retrieve my text by way of Google cache (thank goodness for these corporate giants that want to store every bit of your online life) and had a bit of a re-design but as I have been super-busy (as always with the super-weekends) it’s taken a little time and I have had no time to update my posts. A lot has happened these last few weeks so expect some posts soon!
Recent Comments