First days at primary school

Like children up and down the country, our daughter started primary school last week. So far she has loved the experience and is bubbling with excitement each morning to get dressed and get going. She knew all of the other children in her class from pre-school and play-dates, and had been regularly visiting the school as part of pre-school activities, so the transition was as smooth as it could be.

Letting go of Mummy

We are now well in to the second week and I'm taking some time to reflect on where we are and what we still need to work on. Although she appears to love school, my daughter is reluctant to go in to the classroom without me, and sometimes clings on to my clothes to try and take me in with her. I've tried rationalising with her, bribing her, threatening her, comforting her and walking away from her. Although some of these strategies have enabled her to get in to school for that day's education, none offers a happy or lasting solution. 

At the moment my plan is to take her inside the classroom every morning to help her unpack her bag and hang it on the peg. After doing that the children are expected to go back into the playground until the bell rings. At this point they need to leave their mummies and go in for their lessons. My deal with her is that I'll go inside with her for the unpacking and then when the bell rings she needs to go in without me. This morning she made it near the door and then waited for the teacher to gently push her in.

I've been lucky enough that my husband is around during the day so I've asked him to take some time from work to look after our 2 younger ones this week to enable me to focus some attention on our daughter. Hopefully after some focus this week then from next week I can be a bit tougher about letting her go in with her friends but without me.

Dealing with homework

The other issue is that she now brings home daily homework. There are books to read and discuss as well as words to practice. For the first couple of days she was very keen to do this as soon as she arrived home, but now we have settled into a pattern of reading the stories before bed. Our daughter is very happy about this as she is getting much better one-to-one time with Mummy. Once her two younger brothers are in bed, she snuggles up with me to read her story of the day and practice reading the words she has been given. I have been making an effort to set aside this time rather than try and rush her to bed and get on with all of my own tasks. 

Hopefully the initial enthusiasm from parents and child won't diminish too much! Let me know your trials and victories with the new school term. Thanks for reading :-)

Scrap-booking

We're moving house. In three weeks time. One of my many distraction techniques from the reality of packing and cleaning has been to start a scrapbook project with the children. I bought 3 notebooks and have dug out all of the cards, wedding invitations and personal notes which I don't want to throw away. My eldest two children and I have been merrily cutting, gluing and sticking. This is a great rainy day activity!

Mummy & daughter day

My eldest child is starting primary school next week, and so we are finally here at the last week of our summer holidays. I have three children and they are fairly close in age with my middle one aged 2 years and the youngest 10 months. Since the baby was born my daughter hasn't spent much time just with mummy, even though we have all had so many happy family times together. I've written elsewhere in the blog about how her behaviour has been getting more challenging throughout the summer holidays. So, I decided to give her some one to one attention and take her out for the afternoon whilst my husband looked after the other two.

She was so excited when I first mentioned the idea, that she looked ready to burst! Our plan was a fairly simple one: take the 10 minute train ride to the nearest city of Exeter and have a wander round the shops followed by coffee for me and cake for her.

  

We spent a lovely few hours together doing not very much, but with me trying hard to listen to her and chat with her rather than constantly be distracted by other children / work / housework. Her comment on the way home was "we didn't have time for much fun today did we because we had to do all that shopping!" So I guess there really is no pleasing some people :-)

Summer holiday behaviour troubles

My lovely 4 year old is proving quite a challenge this summer holiday. We're taking her on loads of outings and providing art and craft activities as well as challenging activities.Yet we're having a higher than average number of incidents of cheeky behaviour. We've had a fair few tantrums, shouty 'NOOO's' and general rudeness.

Like many parents we spend endless hours discussing theories to explain behaviour. Our current hypothesis is that she is missing the structure and activities provided by her pre-school. She gets up fairly early - usually between 6 and 7 am - and for the first few hours of the day we tend to be getting on with tasks for our business as well as doing housework. By the time we make it out for an activity it is usually around 10 or 11am so maybe she feels neglected during those first few hours.

We have been reasonably strict with giving her time-outs, warning chances and taking toys away. Usually this has worked and we've all been able to get on with our day. We are trying to ensure she gets focused attention such as conversations and story time. But, we also have to ask her to wait whilst her brothers get some attention. She has been getting plenty of exciting treats as we buy school shoes, clothes and accessories. Maybe we need to keep working on how to show gratitude.

Luckily we've also had plenty of nice behaviour and happy times these holidays. Two weeks left...

Camping with a family of 5

So we didn't get on too badly! We spent 4 nights at Baha'i Summer School in Berkshire in our 4 man tent. OK so we wimped out and came home a day early rather than 'enjoy' a fifth night, but all-in-all I'm quite proud of us.

Somewhere amongst those blankets and sleeping bags are 2 little children. The baby slept most of the night in his pushchair and then joined us on a blow-up mattress. Mark and I attempted to share a double sleeping bag, but found that it was really a device for binding you to another person so that if they roll over in the night you are dragged around with them. Not so useful when you have to reach over in the dark to pass bottles of milk to various grizzling children.

The children absolutely loved the experience and even we were reasonably chipper. We're planning to go away again over the bank holiday weekend and enjoy some more of the delights of Devon.

Summer holiday activity - handwriting practice

My 4 year old is starting school in September and is very excited to learn. She keeps wanting to practice reading and writing. I've been giving her lists of names to copy, and she also has a couple of handwriting books which help her trace letters. I found this great website which allows you to create your own handwriting practice sheets and print them out. It's easy to type a few sentences or your child's name. The site is www.worksheetworks.com

Saying goodbye to breastfeeding

Feeding your baby is such a basic thing, but the breast vs bottle debate still rages on with each side feeling that theirs is frowned upon. I respect every mother's right to make their own decisions knowing their own circumstances. I'm going to share my experience, not any political viewpoint :-)

Harrison is my third baby. He is 9 1/2 months old and he has only had breast milk (rather than formula). He's a good eater now and he has also started drinking water in the daytime so his demand for milk is less. I weaned my first child completely at 10 months and my second at 5 months (so I could return to work). I tried to introduce the bottle to Harrison a couple of times around the 6-7 month stage but he wasn't having any of it. I've left it for a while and continued to feed. He particularly likes to feed overnight and would end up sleeping in our bed for the second half of the night and wake every 1-2 hours for more milk.

I've been planning to sort out this situation for a while and felt that moving on to the bottle would hopefully be the best solution to his sleep, but I thought I'd wait a bit as we're off on a camping trip at the weekend. But, when Harrison bit me really hard when he was feeding, I decided enough was enough and went off to make a bottle for him. He refused it, but I persevered throughout the day and to my great surprise by the afternoon he was happily drinking it, he went down at night with a bottle, and after a feed late evening and one more at 1am (which my husband did!!!) he then slept in his own cot until 6.30am! That is one of the longest sleeps of his life, and of mine since he was born.

So we're nearing the end of day two. Harrison seems fine, but I'm a mess. I didn't fully think through the consequences to my body of going 'cold turkey'. As my other children were weaned more gradually there wasn't really any pain, but with this situation my breasts have turned into giant rocks and are seriously sore. I tried expressing a bit of milk but I think it was too late and not much would come out. I'm hoping the pain will ease soon and that it'll all sort itself out. I've been reading about all the remedies (think cabbages) but just having a bit of paracetemol.

In some ways I'm glad of the physical discomfort because it is distracting me from the emotional pain. I didn't know that the early morning feed yesterday would be my last time nursing a lovely baby. I wasn't prepared to let go of that bonding experience and allow my baby to grow up. In many ways I'll be glad to see the back of breastfeeding, but it still feels like the end of an era.