Divine Intervention.

I had an email in first term from a friend who's child started kindergarten this year too. It was short and sweet, it said "Kindy SUCKS".

Then after school drop off that same morning, one of the other mums told me that the teacher suggested occupational therapy for her child because of untidy hand writing. Um, this is still Kindergarten right? And only beginning second term?  Sorry I just needed to check.

I told her "next time you go to the doctor, check out doc's handwriting; If you can - there's a reason they started typing prescriptions onto computerized forms and printing them out." 

Kindy-SUCKS mum's kid doesn't use scissors as well as her peers apparently. (OH MY GOD, call an ambulance!) This kid is a lefty and the scissors are made for right-handed kids. Could that be a factor? Does it necessitate a bunch of sessions with an occupational therapist? Who knows, but I don't know how efficiently or neatly Doctors worked with scissors in Kindy, however, most of them got pretty nifty with scalpels later in life.

Now until very recently, She-Who-Worships-Pink often said AeropRane and sometimes even Lellow, instead of yellow. A visiting speech therapist in pre-school flagged this as 'abnormal' and "needing attention", potentially with said, same speech therapist. (hmmm..).

So in comparing stories, I say this to the mum who's kid apparently has a mild dose of Doctors' Handwriting and she laughs. She tells me; "I said the same thing when I was a kid - my family still teases me, but I can actually say yellow now and no-one sent me to see anyone. I just worked it out eventually."

See there you go. Are we over being a tad interventionist?

I think it's great that pre-school and big school, teachers flag up things that may hold back our kids learning, emotional and social development. It was our little blossom's pre-school teachers that suggested speech therapy for her at three-years-old. She was frustrated and tantrumming, sometimes lashing out at other kids over her difficulty in finding her words. It turned out to be a good thing.

We did take her to have her lellow fever checked out too before the start of Big-School, and the speech pathologist got her to break down the word and sound out each syllable separately. (uh huh, genius!) After one session we didn't take her back - we practice difficult words at home now and we're doing fine. She says yellow just fine but occasionally still 'revy' instead of 'very' and still notices the odd aeroPrane. I admit, that I don't always correct her though, it's just so damned cute.

I know several kids her age with very pronounced (and very cute) lisps and they don't seem to have the professionals crawling all over them crying 'intervention!"  But Ita Butrose and Drew Barrymore both lisped their way to the top of their respective careers didn't they?

Well I've trawled the internet and library looking for answers and found none. I don't have any answers, I'm just trying to listen to the experts' advice when it's given and then use my own common sense.

So maybe this is just a topic for discussion?  

I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences too. 

Any Professionals out there willing to chip in?

Big School Unicorns

There I was just inside the school gate with my little girl turned tree hugger.. That is to say she had wrapped her arms & legs around the trunk of a jacaranda, refusing to go a step further. Screaming ; "NOOOO we have to go home NOOOOOW!

Frantic attempted bribes where quietly uttered causing a momentary lapse in concentration and a loosened grip, but a nano-second later, having lost her hold on the tree she had me in a death- grip instead.

How did it come to this? From leaping out of bed singing "Big school today YAY!" weeks of whining, "why cant I go to the big school NOW?!"

From all that excited anticipation to life & death dread? What the f^ck?

Lucie had been looking forward to 'big' school orientation day like it was Christmas coming early. I can't count the times she'd nearly drowned us both in her tears going to pre-school, insisting she was big enough for big school and that's where we had to go.
She would bounce up and down in her booster seat every night as we drove past her new school playground. And she was super-excited about the kids going to 'big school all getting Unicorns.

Ahh, yeah. "Honey, there's something mummy needs to explain..."

Surprisingly she wasn't especially disappointed when it turned out that instead of getting a unicorn she got a blue gingham dress and a hat with a brim like a dinner plate.

And on the day, where am I?

Stuck in the playground sitting on a log, with Lucie attached to me like a paralysed koala, blocking one annoyed kid behind me wanting to walk the length of it. The kid behind me, like most of the other kids looked happy had excited exploring the new environment.

Well 'most' of them... 

I walked Lucie to the class rooms on the pretense of looking to see "what fun games they have" and gradually seeing familiar looking art projects taped to windows, reassuring drawings of dinosaurs, she relaxed enough for us to get her into her classroom and into a seat.

It was still was touch and go for a bit and when I saw the teacher approach with another little girl I thought Lucie might bolt.
Little Elizabeth as her name tag said, was catatonic poor poppet.  Obviously too distressed to cry, she was staring ahead with like a bunny caught in the headlights and her chest was heaving in short sharp gasps. The kinder teacher was rubbing her back and talking to her in that reassuring tone police negotiators in movies use on people about to jump off buildings.

Jeeez.

But everyone survived the morning. There were tears: a few kids , one or two parent's. A big noisy tea party in the school hall for the parents where intermittently a few snuck away to peep in classroom windows; you know just to check..

But our little drama queen came out happy, with a fist full of artworks. She wore her uniform proudly all day, to the shops to buy lunch and at home until bed-time.

And I managed to find her a Unicorn anyway.