So who is the adult?

H: (on the phone this morning) So, mummy, are you missing me?
M: Yes, Dad and I are both missing you a lot, but we are really pleased that you are having such a good holiday with Granny.
H: Right mum. Actually, it's really important to stay optimistic, and look on the bright side, and not get sad. It will only be three sleeps till I'm home, and it will pass in a flash. Now, have you got plenty to do? It's important to stay busy, and not mope.
M: WTF???

Bob said to me tonight that Hannah had been away too long (a week tomorrow), and he couldn't wait to have her back. Me neither. She staying at Mum's till I finish work on Thursday, and then we are swapping her over at a service station. She sounds as if she is having a great time though. Mum and Dad have taken her away in their caravan for a few days, and she is enjoying all the mod cons we don't have in ours.

It was lovely to have Bob at home on a holiday Monday. Never happened before, I don't think. He spent most of the day putting the climbing frame up. Two hours turned into 6, but not helped by the fact that twice he had to take pieces back to the shop, as the holes were drilled in the wrong place. As we live in a tourist area, that was a bit of a faff, as the town was really busy today. And then it turned out that we had bought the last packaged one, so they had to dismantle the display model to give us the bits. Sigh. However, it looks great.

Then this evening we went for a 6 mile fast walk. I used to be able to power walk a marathon in 5 hours 15 mins, but haven't been training for about 4 years, but keen to start it up again. When Hannah was littler, I would train with her in the baby jogger - 7 miles to the soft play, then the same back, but once she got to big for that, she was too slow to train with. But now she could ride her bike alongside me, it would be feasible again, I think.I did a fast time at Dublin about five years ago, and power walked the Great North Run in two and a half hours the year after, but that's the last time. I THINK I could actually still walk a marathon, but without the stamina for the funny wiggly walk, it would take me a looooonngg time. Anyway, Bob's shattered. He runs about 6 miles every day, and a 15 miler on his day off, so he is very fit but he says the walking wiggle is exhausting for his legs. :-)

Slight panic......

Took the opportunity of being by myself today to browse all the bookstores, and look at P4 stuff (like year 3, I believe). And while there is nothing complex about the maths stuff, there seems so much of it, and so serious at this stage. And while Hannah has a real sense of mathematical enquiry, I can't see her being interested in the vast amount of almost-the-same stuff. Plus the fact that her dyslexia makes it hard for her to commit so much to memory. And as for the literacy resources - while I would lay money on her being better read than a lot of 8 year olds, the amount of writing that seems to be required in school by this stage is phenomenal. However, I must be evolving, as I did manage to restrain myself from buying up the entire shops worth of resources, in the hope that something would appeal, and decided just to carry on as before. Eeek. However, I have spent the evening swotting up on Eduss, so that at least I will have a systematic ability to teach the damn stuff if required. And Bob has pulled together a rough science outline of what he wants to do with her over the next few months, basing it on things she has expressed an interest in. And I am in the process of pulling together a FIAR type of project based on LHOTP. At this rate, I'll be getting an honorary membership to the orgo-planners ;-) I don't know why I do this to myself every August, but I must be improving, as the panic lasted till Xmas the first year.......

I am such a soft touch....

DH and I were going to go away for a weekend, since it's his 2-monthly weekend off, and Hannah is at my mums. However, we were late in leaving, as I hadn't been well during the night, so the shops were open by the time we drove past. And the toyshop that had the Challenger climbing frame reduced had another £25 off it. So we talked about it for all of 30 seconds, and jointly decided to spend our weekend money on that. If it stays dry tomorrow, Bob will put it up, so that she gets a lovely surprise when she comes home. We've decided not to keep it for Xmas, to let her have as much use as she can of it before the winter. So we are now going to snuggle up with a bottle of wine and a carry out, and watch the Olympics instead. We'd forgotton its Bank Holiday in England anyway, so maybe struggling with the crowds in the Lakes wouldn't have been so great.

Posted by Joyce
Missing my girl...
But she is having a great time with Granny.

Meant to post this link before - loads of fun science-y things.

And otherwise - made my first post on feminist parents. Fell out with someone at the breast clinic who wanted to know why I didn't have more children, and that "she supposed", it was because I left it too late to start. Actually, no, sister. My uterus works about as well as your ******* brain about covers it. I was treated to a 15 minute lecture on the emotional and social shortcomings of only children, and the selfishness of their parents. "If you are only going to have one, I always say you shouldn't have any". Lovely. A huge relief when my name was called. Never has getting my tits out for a good pummelling seemed so appealing. With apologies to anyone this offends.

Posted by Joyce
This woman is back ;-)

Well, I wasn't away, except in spirit, but I had absolutely promised myself no blog browsing till I'd earned some money, and while I was indulging in a quick blog email every evening, tonight I found them neatly stacked un-posted on the web site. So deleted the lot.

Hannah has gone to her gran's for a few days, so the blog is now all MINE. So I can say what I want ;-) And I just couldn't let the feminist thing pass. But before I say anything, it's important to say that in writing this I am trying to resurrect in my own mind the feelings, thoughts and debate around the issues. It's not an attack, or even a comment, on anything written thus far by anyone else. Its about where I am, right now, and reflects more general thoughts I have been having about feminism amongst my IRL contacts. So read it with that in mind :-)

It has never occurred to me not to be a feminist. To be honest, I went through a stage in my life when I assumed all women were. It still surprises me when women say they aren't, or they don't believe in it, or they don't need it, or don't like it. Distressingly, I find it is often younger women who don't identify with feminism. Maybe I was introduced to it at a very particular moment in time. I went to my first consciousness raising meeting in 1975 and thereafter got involved with women's refuges. It was a really exciting time, and it felt alive with possibilities. While I am certainly less politically active in feminist issues than I was in the 70s and 80s, its still all there. I do believe that there have been attempts to highjack feminism, by making women think that to be "worthy" they had to work outside the home, they had to leave their babies to get back in the workplace, and that fulfilment couldn't be tied up with nurturing children. But I would blame Thatcherism for that, rather than feminism. Nor could I ever buy into the man-hating type of feminism that appeared in the late 80s, with writers like Dorkin, (IIRC), who was highly critical of hetero-sexual relationships. She came to Glasgow once on a lecture tour, and I was taken aback rather by her thesis that a women could not be feminist if she allowed her body to be invaded by the enemy. I was never sure what she meant we should do with our sons, apart from anything else. But these points notwithstanding, I sometimes feel really sad that the ground that was gained is slipping through our fingers, and that more and more women are told, or tell each other that "has gone to far". I rather like men, to be honest. I also detest lifting the bonnet of my car. I will get out of it if I can. But neither of these facts make me not a feminist. I'm also the person in our house with the biggest earning capacity, and have been for about 15 years. And that fact isn't the one that makes me a feminist.

I've been rummaging about in the loft for a book I bought about 15 years ago. It's called Backlash, by Susan Faludi. I don't know if it's still in print, but I'm going to re-read it, and then if anyone wants to borrow it, just shout. And now I'm going to give in to Alison's siren song, and go and join feminist parents. :-)

Posted by Joyce
Thumb sucking debate

It's a truism that if you think your child may not make it to her 7th birthday, then you don't worry about what her persistent thumb sucking is doing to her teeth. Especially as these teeth (milk and second teeth) are already coming in stripped bare of enamel because of the amounts of toxic drugs she had. Hannah has thumb sucked since the moment she found it attached to her hand. Given that it was the first time in three months that she stopped screaming, her dad and I thought she had died, when the noise stopped. When we realised what it was, we thought a miracle had happened. When she had her surgery, a consultant anaesthetist was called in during the night to give her some "rescue" morphine, as she was so distressed we were all convinced she was in agony. He took the splint off her arm to put it in, and in a split second, the thumb was in the mouth, and she was sleeping peacefully, with no morphine. To be fair to them, they had tried to preserve access to that thumb for as long as possible, but had run out of other veins earlier that day, and been forced to use the one in the crook of her left arm.

She thumb sucked persistently till she was four, and just at the point where we were probably going to try and encourage her to drop it, she got seriously ill again, and once again it was in constant use. Over the last few years, she has cut it down a lot, and its now reserved for bed times and early mornings, and especially good books and TV programmes. i.e. - when she is relaxing. However, a week ago she noticed herself that a lot of her second teeth are mobile, and this coincided with another visit to the dentist, when he reminded her again about the need to stop. He advised me to put Tabasco on her thumb, and was a little put out that I said I would need to discuss with Hannah what strategies she wanted to use to stop. And as an aside - what if she rubs the Tabasco into her eyes, dickhead? (goodness, these menopausal hormones are so annoying) I had been particularly enraged when a junior doctor suggested that thumb sucking past the age of 4 was a sign of poor emotional attachment, lack of security, and represented a need for more parental attention. Hope HE never gets called as an expert witness, then. He also suggested that her teddy was removed, as he saw it as a linked habit. Sure, if the kid is in a strait jacket, she won't thumb suck.

Hannah decided she wanted to go cold turkey, and so we have had the most hellish three days. She has cried every night, hardly slept, despite being in with me for cuddles, cries during the day ever time she thinks of it. Today she is grey faced with exhaustion, literally staggering about with tiredness. We've had stories, videos, cuddles etc. So in the end I have told her that *I* am making the decision, that she must suck her thumb for 10 mins, till she calms down, and that we will think of another way. Within 5 mins she was sleeping - that was two hours ago. The thumb is so firmly in, I can't even break the suction to get it out without wakening her.

So - she says she wants to stop, but I think that is mainly to please the dentist. I'd like her to stop simply because I want to minimise the amount of corrective work she needs in her mouth, but otherwise, I couldn't give a toss. Thumb sucking has never bothered me, and at least she doesn't nose pick or hair twirl, so its only one habit :-) But am I copping out of my responsibilities?

I doubt anyone could supply a stopping technique that I haven't heard of, but what is bothering me is that more fundamental question of her rights to thumb suck, versus the combined medical and dental view that I'm not being responsible to not enforce cessation in some way. And believe me, enforcement is the word you would supply to most of the suggested techniques. Furthermore if we are talking carrot rather than stick, Hannah loves this - a few stickers and a visit to Woolies is not going to provide the motivation to stop. Views and comments in the usual way, please.

Posted by Joyce
Well, apart from my brainstorm yesterday, its been a funny weekend. DH was called out on 12 hour nightshifts, so I found myself spending all night by myself from 6pm, and all day by myself while we sleeps. With no consolation of overtime even, as he is just expected to do it for nothing.:-(

On Friday we had HE group, the first for ages. It was good to see everyone again, though we both came home covered in flea bites, and after stripping off in the storm porch, also had to do a bit of flea stomping. I'm particularly sensitive to them, but Hannah seems quite badly affected this time as well, so we are both covered in huge weals and bites. I've got about 7 really bad ones, plus sundry others, but my most impressive is currently 5 ins across. Bet you needed to know that. I can hardly bend my leg, as it's just behind my knee. Lovely.

We also had a bit of a blow at the group, which is beginning to be reminiscent of Henry VIII's court. Since we started 18 months ago, we've had one family thrown out, one left in the huff, one woman died, and now another is going to school "to get a better education". Here, don't all rush at once to join our group, will you :-/

On the school subject, it starts back here on Tuesday, and if ONE more person says to me "only two days to go, thank goodness", I shall punch them in the middle of their moaning face, push them to the ground and FART on them. Phew, that's better, feeling a little hormonal tonight. >:(

Other than that ;-) - we've read all of LHITBW, and about half of LHOTP. And we seem to have come across a degree of academic or commercial disagreement about which one is next. Harper Collins, who published the first one I have, claims its Farmer Boy, whereas Egmont, who publishes the other, claims it's Plum Creek. Any views? Pinched Alison's idea of mapping Laura's journey (big advantage of being a lazy bugger - pinching other people's ides), and discovered to my amazement how long the Mississippi is. I've even seen it, but it is so narrow (even in Mississippi state), that I had always imagined it started fairly nearby. But it actually starts up in the Great Lakes.

Bought some more geomags. I was going to get the imitation ones, but they aren't a good fit with the originals (OK if you were starting from scratch though), but in fact, the price has just collapsed since we bought the first box. They were 60% cheaper than they were. So I think she has enough now to be able to do something satisfying with, as she plays with them at least once a week, but is always saying there isn't enough. Bought a huge box of Knex at a boot sale for £5, so spent some time scrubbing that, as it was very sticky and gunky.

Watched the swimming. Read Jane Eyre (just to myself, not to Hannah, but pleased that I found a nice biggish print version, so nice and easy) Started a Jane Smiley novel. And that's about it........

Posted by Joyce
Lost the plot completely :-(

I feel so upset. I lost Hannah at the farm park for an hour and a half this afternoon. Well, I suppose strictly speaking I only thought I'd lost her for about 45 minutes, as the deal was that she checked in with me every 30 mins, or in between if she was moving to another area. I was sitting in the central bit. And while arguably I should have been watching her all the time, I just feel she's entitled to a bit of space to play without me watching her. She has nothing like the freedom I had at her age. Anyway, what appears to have happened is that she took off to another area after about 35 mins, waved to me from the distance, and assumed I had seen her as she thought I was looking in her direction. The consequence was I gave her about 10 mins grace, then went scouring the completely wrong area for 45 mins. When I eventually found her, feeding the horses, and not feeling lost at all, I screamed at her, slapped her twice on her bare legs, and then yanked her all the way back to the car. Where we both burst into tears. I've never hit her before, and I know that lots of people don't feel as I do about smacking, but I feel horrified at myself. I've obviously apologised and explained, and she has forgiven me much more easily than I can forgive myself. But I heard her crying in her room a while ago, and when I went in, she said she had just got such a fright this afternoon, because I'd been so angry, that she burst into tears again thinking about it. :-(

Posted by Joyce
General musing

Hannah wants most in life: a sibling, a puppy or a new climbing frame (in that order). I can't supply the first (not for want of trying), dh is horribly allergic to the second, and for the third, we don't have a huge garden, and Hannah is almost 5 foot, so we are talking about needing a big one. But we are going to have to take her elc one down before she has an accident on it, as it is far too small and really not stable for her size. I don't think they do their own brand climbing frames any more, and we've had this one since she was 2, and the guide age is up to 8. And yet she plays on it nearly every day. A wooden one is way beyond the budget and the size of the garden, so we have been looking at the TP challenger, which is 50% off in the local toy shop. But that still means nearly £100, which I wouldn't mind if she was 3, but I wonder how much more use she would get out of it - either before she loses interest, or she simply gets too tall. The guide age for the TP one is up to 12, but Hannah is probably as tall as a small 12 year old already. OTOH, if I thought she WOULD get 4 years of use out of it, then it would be a worthwhile buy. Ho hum........

Posted by Joyce

Bob was on early shift today, and I woke up at 10am with the phone ringing, to find Hannah tucked up beside me reading. I couldn't believe I had slept so long, and was slightly panicked that I hadn't even realised she was there. I felt a little better when I got down stairs to find a note from DH to say Hannah had been up at 5am when he went out, so he had put her in beside me, told her that I hadn't been well and needed to sleep, and that he would give her £2 if she lay quietly till I woke up, and didn't poke, kiss, or talk to me in that time unless there was an emergency. Amazing what a bit of bribery will do. Not sure if I approved, but the sleep was lovely ;-)

Anyway, weather still rotten, so we have spent the day learning how to use some new software. We got Kids Pix Studio Deluxe a while back which we have never used, some new dyslexia stuff, and a couple of things from Amazon. Hannah is really just starting out with the PC, and I've never really encouraged it till now. If she wanted to use it she could, but if she didn't ask, I never offered it. (selfish cow) But just in the last couple of weeks she has really started to play about with it, and also use the word processing. Which just makes the need for a laptop even more pressing ;-) Plus I would rather she used it in the living room, rather than upstairs by herself, so a laptop would be better. See - I've nearly talked myself into it :-) Give me another week or so, and it will be up there as a legitimate HE expense. I've also been teaching her to use my old digital camera, and download it onto the PC, so that she can have a bit of independence with that.

Think that's about it. We went to the garden centre a while ago for afternoon tea, just to get us out of the house for a bit, and Hannah is now playing with her geomags and listening to Jacqueline Wilson.

Posted by Joyce
I am NEVER going to buy anymore Jump Ahead software.

We have about 6 jump ahead CD roms. None of them were originally developed for XP, but all of them say on the packaging that they run on XP. And NONE of them have done it without major messing about. The compatibilitiy wizard just doesn't seem to fix it. And I wouldn't mind, but the problem is different every time. And whereas other publishers seem to have fairly accessible fixes, I have tried googling this one with every key word I can think of, and still can't find a fix. So the one we got from Amazon yesterday, seems to install OK, but when I hit play, I get a message saying "the wrong disk is inserted". No it ******* isn't! So I've right clicked on the icon, and adjusted the compatibility manually, but still the same problem. I've cleaned the disk, I've shut down everything else, etc etc etc, and no joy. Life is too short for all this faffing around. GRRRRR!

Posted by Joyce
Bit of retail therapy

Tore up to Glasgow today to get Mum's birthday present (don't really do them much, but she is 70 tomorrow, and it clearly feels like a big milestone, so made an effort). Unfortunately, they were out of stock of what she wanted, (some fancy accessory for her sewing machine) so I had to get her John Lewis vouchers, so she can get it herself from their Aberdeen store. It then seemed a bit un-celebratory, so sent some flowers as well.

We managed to get Hannah proper running shoes in the sale. She needed a woman's size 4 (eeek), but in some ways it's easier now she is out of the children's ranges completely, as she is back to having some choice. These are her first "proper" running shoes, so she is really chuffed, as she is desperate to start the running club after the holidays. The guy in the shop was excellent, and gave her lots of advice.

Got home to find that my orders from Amazon and Tanglewood had arrived, which on top of the Book People the day before, did seem like rather a lot of "stuff". I was really impressed by Tanglewood, if anyone is thinking about using them. The order came in 7 days, really well packaged, and the postage came to just over £4 after I'd converted it. I've paid more for postage within the UK. So given the choice between Little House in the Big Woods, and Island Story, Hannah decided we would start with LHITBW. I had just forgotten though who much of the beginning of the book was given over to pig butchering, which for a pair of liberal vegetarians, was all a bit much while we were eating our dinner. However, we did have an interesting discussion about food preserving, self sufficiency, the food chain, and food miles nowadays.

We don't have anything planned for today, and its still hot and wet, so not sure what we will do. Hopefully nothing to strenuous, as for some reason I've felt really sick and tired the last few days. Not sick as in not able to eat - that actually helps, just this sort of background queasiness. Yuck. Probably just the weather.

Posted by Joyce
Bit of a wet day in and out....
Not here for long. Temp still at 23C, but chucked it down all day, so really unpleasant. Took Hannah swimming, and while she's been diving off the side for a while, today she looked at the diving board, and announced "OK, its time to learn how to dive from there" Eek. Given I'm someone who doesn't even like jumping in, this was challenging, but fortunately Bob was there, so he dealt with it. She did about 8 dives from the springboard, and about 6 of them looked pretty developed. She is so funny that she will point blank try to do anything before she is ready, and then out of the blue will say "OK, its time", and can do it alomst straight off. Let her play in the soft play for about an hour after, then went to Pizza Hut for dinner. Got a big order from the Book People - nothing very exciting, but a load of information type books that will be within her own reading capabilities - the read and wonder set, and the "I wonder Why" set, plus a package of poetry books, and a set of three Usborne books of recorder music. Their stuff is just so cheap. Oh, and a book of jigsaw maps, which I thought was a bit young for her, but she has wanted from the bookshop for ages. So now I'm off to bed.......yawn.

Posted by Joyce

eeek!
Big storm here. I'm going to switch the pooter off (shock announcement!)

Posted by Joyce

So this is what we did to stop a murder;-)

Three posts in one day, and still counting probably means I am seriously in need of a life.

Taking advantage of Sarah's creativity here, I suggested to Hannah that it might be fun to try our hand at some abstract art. We talked about copying one out of our book, but she was reluctant to do this as she felt she would always be disappointed with it, as it would never look the same as the orignal - although I did point out that wasn't essential. Anyway, she decided to do one of her own, which she named Shape Explosion in Blue, and tbh, I felt quite tearful when I saw it. She is so pleased with it, and that is probably a first for Hannah, in relation to any piece of work, whether written, crafty or artisitc. We didn't have canvas, so this is done on canvas board, which is much cheaper, though unfortunately not so big. Ours is A3 size, and we've used acrylic paint. I didn't help at all, and followed the advice in Mona Brooks book of encouraging silence while the art is actually underway. Mine is called Compartments of the Mind which maybe is indicative of the inside of my head right now. Finally, at the bottom, is a collage Hannah did a couple of weeks ago of Elizabeth I, when she was still into the Tudors. It's made mainly of tissue paper.

Posted by Joyce
And its not even LUNCH time yet!

So I'm sitting on the pooter at 5.30 am, cursing my insomnia, but enjoying a bit of peace, and Hannah mossies through:
H: "I've been thinking - what was the name of that Greek man who thought about triangles?"
M: EH? (Racks brains - eventually come up with Pythagoras)
H: "Well, tell me about him again".
M: "Hell's teeth Hannah, its the middle of the night - can we do this later?"
H: "No, I NEED to know now. I'm thinking about triangles, and I MUST have the answer"

So we go out into the back garden with some squared paper, a protractor etc, and I try to set out to prove Pythagoras's theory. Nice start to the day. Hannah and I then have breakfast outside, and watch the house martins for a bit, and then inspired by Sarah we look at an old coffee table book of abstract art I picked up somewhere ages ago. I don't know how (if) you are meant to interpret abstract art, so we just talked about warm/cold/vibrant/fresh etc, and what the artist may have been thinking/feeling at the time. By this time its about 10.30, and I'm making the pancakes, when I glance out of the back window, and see smoke twizzling up from the grass. Rush outside to discover that Hannah has left my binoculars on the grass without the lens caps, and the lawn (in a flexible interpretation of that word) is on fire. Chuck my glass of orange juice on the grass, and start major rant about unauthorised borrowing of my binoculars for bird watching, and mis-use of same. Bob then appears, and says "oh, that's a good experiment. lets do it again under controlled conditions and I'll explain what is happening." 5 minutes later, Hannah rushes in for a pot of water, and the patio table has a hole melted in it. I'm sulking upstairs now. HOW long till bedtime?

Posted by Joyce
Sleepless night :-(

Been prowling around since 4am unable to sleep, between childcare worries and the heat. Why is sleep always the first thing to go with me? Bob has taken a day's holiday to get us through this coming week, and then next week his day off happens to fall on the day I'm meant to be in the office, and then the following week Hannah has a weeks holiday planned at my mum's. Mum suggested that rather than making the week from Sat-Sat as we had planned, we do it mid week to mid week, so that it actually covers two working days, so it gives me about 4 weeks lee way. But it feels a really precarious, cobbled together sort of arrangement, with a big potential for not working out. Especially as I am devoid of any good ideas for dealing with it. Oh well. I have also helpfully discovered that the nearest nanny agency is 100 miles away, and they have never had any nannies on their books for this area. In any case, I suspect nannies are out of my budget (especially given the massive finders fee the agency had). This is a really countrified, parochial area here, and I don't know anyone who uses a nanny for a nanny share - nearly everyone uses grannies for childcare. ****!

Otherwise, Hannah did really well in her show yesterday, although it all ended in tears at bedtime, as she was so tired. Eventually she came down stairs and fell asleep on the sofa with her dad. FIL came down for the day, and I think he had a good time. I can't believe really that it is a year next week since MIL died.

Think we may have to pop up to Glasgow later on today to get a birthday present for my mum, who is 70 next week. I've been putting it off because of the heat, but have reached the point of it MUST be done today. Right, Bob is at home today, a rare Sunday treat, so I think I'll go and make some pancakes for breakfast. Have a nice day, folks

Posted by Joyce

Moan alert

I'm shattered with this heat. It's so humid. Anyway, not much to blog as Hannah as been at drama school all week, and so I've really just taken the chance to clock up some extra hours at work in case I can't go in next week.

I'm a bit worried as my (new) childminder, has suddenly decided she will only do it if I get a letter from the LEA saying that Hannah is "approved" for home education, and they also that they agree that it is appropriate for her to be cared for one day a week by the childminder, when she should be at home, "being educated". Scream. I've got a friend who used to HE who is very active in her church, so she is going to ask around if there are any students etc who might be interested, and I am going to put a notice up in the two local colleges. Although the students aren't back for about another 6 weeks, so it doesn't seem like a particularly likely option. To be honest, I think Hannah would enjoy a much younger person looking after her, in her own home, rather than a childminder. It's a real worry though, as I thought it was sorted, and we were due to start there next week. It's been organised for 10 weeks, so I am really pissed off that she drops this on me now, by creeping up the path and putting a note through the letterbox while I was in. OTOH, I certainly don't want to leave Hannah with anyone who feels half hearted about it. It makes me think that she really only agreed in the first place because she got tempted by the money. When she told me initially what her charges were, they were a lot less than I'd been paying to date, so I said I was happy to continue to pay what I had paid my old childminder, who was a friend, as I felt it was a fairer amount. I think with hindsight that was probably what swayed her initial decision, although it certainly wasn't offered as a bribe. I just hate that whole scenario of screwing your child minder for as little as you can. I've tried all the other childminders on the list, but have met with such positive comments as "look after an 8 year old? I'm counting the days till my own goes back to school" Ah, that's why you'll be such a good childminder then :-( Anyone else got any bright ideas for finding someone?

We just don't have any backup, as my family is so far away, and Bob's dad isn't really able (plus even he is 60 miles away), so I feel a bit stuck. I only work 2 days, and Bob is always at home for one of them, its just this one day we need some help with. There are a few HEors around, though not many, but none of them are interested in doing it. Oh well. I was looking for something to worry about.

Hannah is already in bed, listening to Best Friends on tape, as she's still pretty miserable with this cold she has, but she has been determined not to miss any drama all week. I'm just away to make some salad, and Bob is currently trying to stitch an acre of pink tulle round the waist of a pink t shirt dress, as she needs a princess outfit for the show tomorrow. Multi-talented, that man :-)

Posted by Joyce

It's too hot

There's no sunshine, but its so muggy I feel distinctly headachey. Not helped by the fact I worked till after 4.30 this morning, thinking I would sleep on while DH took Hannah to drama school. But she had woken up with a rash and a sore throat, and apparently wouldn't be pacified till I had a look. Anyway, she had some paracetamol, and decided she wanted to go after all. Her tonsils do look a bit yucky tonight but she had polished off her packed lunch, so I don't think there is too much wrong with her. But I couldn't get back to sleep.

DH is working now, and so we just had a scratch dinner, involving nothing more stressful than boiling the kettle for some couscous. So I've talked her into how nice it would be to lie down together in our bed, with the big fan on, and read quietly till we go to sleep. We'll see.

Anyway, I'm at work tomorrow, so see you all sometime :-)

Posted by Joyce

Learning v teaching?

I've been thinking about this a lot since we came back from holiday. We met up with another HE family, who we met last year, and the children really enjoyed playing together, and the mother and I enjoyed several lively discussions about HE. If you are reading this, L, please join in, and I hope that I am not mis-representing your views in any way. Also just to say although we did HE very differently, I thoroughly enjoyed being forced into examining how we do things, so it was a good experience for me :-)

When we started HE, we saw it as a one year wonder. Hannah's health hadn't been great in the year before she was due to go to school. She'd had meningitis, and although we were very lucky (paranoid parenting won the day that time, Merry - she was actually sitting in A&E with the paediatric registrar checking her over and me insisting that I "knew" she had meningitis when the first signs of the rash appeared in her ear of all places) it took her ages to bounce back, and she was still needing to sleep most afternoons. Nursery was a disaster, she hated being away from me, and we thought another year at home would be a good thing for her. So the first year, I did the whole school at home thing, with work books, jotters and reading schemes. I sort of fancied the idea of playing schools all day, and was a bit put out that my 5 year old didn't have the same aspirations. She wanted to play in the garden, be read to, finger paint, and play dolls (she still likes all those things).

Gradually, I had to let go of my little school room idea. Hannah was hating it, I was hating it, and it was affecting our relationship. Gradually it dawned on me (dur), that I had not sent her to school as I felt it wasn't the right place for her, and then was creating exactly the same thing in her own home, where she couldn't even escape. By Christmas, we were doing projects instead, and I still looked out (oh the shame) for every opportunity to slip in a bit of "teaching". One of the most embarrassing episodes I can recall was looking at a book about African mammals with her, and we were talking about elephants, and Hannah was speculating on how they recognised their own babies in the herd, and I said something along the lines of "oh look - elephant begins with "e" - can you think of other things that begin with that sound?" OK, I was a slow learner. By Easter, I was slackening off a bit more, and as we felt that we were all actually starting to enjoy HE, we'd give it another year. We decided to spend as much time as we could in the caravan over the summer, and of necessity, resources were stripped back to a minimum. Four months later, Hannah seemed to have learnt at least as much if not more as she had in the preceding eight, and we were all still speaking to one another. The second year we decided that rather than buying any school type resources, we would concentrate on ensuring that she had access to stuff that would help in exploring the world. So in came much more fun things like the science club, a microscope from the charity shop, binoculars, and things like geomags, "real" books on tape and minimal interference. During that second year Hannah was diagnosed with dyslexia, so we did use a specialised dyslexia resource, but otherwise we let her get on with it. To quote Layla, I decided to stop being an entertainment centre, and encouraged Hannah to just get on with whatever she wanted round about me. This third year has been the best yet. I have no real idea of how she measures against a "norm", but she can read well, she's numerate certainly to the extent she needs to be in normal life - and has pursued interests as eclectic as Egyptian hieroglyphics to undersea worlds. She has written letters of protest to her MEP, visited the Scottish Parliament, been on protest marches (well, we are a couple of ageing hippies, despite appearances :-)), listened to literature from Shakespeare to Harry Potter, and generally had a good life. She lives outdoors when the weather is fine, and if it isn't often won't bother getting dressed. She can cook a simple pasta type meal with the only help required being draining the hot water (my issue, not hers), or make baked potatoes and pudding with no problems. But (in no particular order) here are the key questions that kept coming up last week, and I struggled to answer:

How do I know she is learning anything if I don't test her? - Well, I talk to her, I spend hours every day with her, she is always busy - how could she NOT be? But how do I prove it? Should I even try? Because if she hasn't learned something, and I "test" her, all that really happens is she has had what she might perceive as a weakness exposed to scrutiny. She's been embarrassed and humiliated. Whereas if its left, and she needs it later, surely she will be capable of learning it then?

How do I know she is learning the right things? Well, what are the right things? How were they decided on? Maybe the "right" things are the things SHE needs to learn right now. Not things someone else decides for her. Does it matter if she is more interested in magnets than the properties of matter? Does it matter if she was more interested in Hiawatha than Grace Darling? Or that she is fascinated by geometry, but hates arithmetic unless its applied to everyday life? What I hope at the end of all this is that Hannah will have some core skills to help her learn - that she will be able to read and use a computer. Able to express herself clearly. Know how to research information. Have some critical faculties. And that she will know how to be ..... I don't know.... a whole person. Not someone who can only do what will make other people happy. (Oh dear - a misfit, perhaps. EEK)

What do I do if it gets to Thursday, and she has done NO WORK? Well, I see the business of being a child as her work right now. And, within any boundaries I put on that for safety reasons, she has the right to do that work without interference from me. And because *being* is her work for the moment, how could she possibly get to Thursday and not have done any? Or is that too simplistic? Am I copping out?

Life is about doing thing we don't want. So what good is it to let her think that she can do what she wants all the time? Well, actually she doesn't do what she wants all the time. She lives in a family, and sometimes her needs/wants are not the immediate priority. And is that REALLY what we want kids to think life is like? I want her to believe that she CAN do what she wants, not in a selfish way, but also not about day after day dragging herself through life doing things that don't make her happy.

How will I prove to the LEA that she is learning? Well, I can't pretend this one doesn't worry me. Of course I know I don't have to prove that she is learning, but I've seen lots of people loose that particular argument with the LEA. But I can't live my life to please them. And on the plus side, Hannah certainly doesn't see learning as a 9-3 activity. Or that some things are about learning, and therefore boring. If she is interested, so does it, and keeps on doing it until she exhausts her interest.

So help me, folks. Sometimes I feel that this is a leap of faith. I spend days muttering manically to myself "trust the process". It feels right, but its so nebulous, so off the wall, and so different from what other people do. What do you all think? Help me hone my thinking. I need to add a bit of intellectual rigour to these ramblings.

Posted by Joyce

Quick question

We only got digital TV at Xmas, and its got freeview. Till then, all we ever had was the 5 analogue channels, and to be honest, it still felt like a lot, as we aren't huge TV users. Why watch TV when you can be on the PC has been my motto of late :-)

However, I've been looking at the listings, and I think it would be nice maybe to have something like Discovery. But I don't even know how to go about finding out about getting other channels (no cable here yet, so that isn't an option). Anybody got a package they would recomend?

Posted by Joyce

Just a quick catch up.....

Got home early on Saturday morning, after a 16 hour drive, in the only sunshine we had seen for three weeks :-( We got stuck for nearly 5 hours on the M5, as the motorway was turned into a car park after an accident closed it to northbound traffic. As we finally edged past the accident hours later though, after the hard shoulder was opened, I felt bad about all the moaning I had done over the previous 5 hours, as at least we were still alive. What a mess. I think if I really thought about it, I wouldn't drive at all. Anyway, the thermometer in the car was showing 35C at one point, and so we spent most of yesterday trying to get re-hydrated. We were fortunate as we did have a picnic in the car for the journey, and some water, but other people were really suffering. At one point, we even had to put down the back steadies of the caravan, and go in it to use the toilet. It wasn't nice though, to be 6 hours into the journey, and only 25 miles from our departure point, with about 400 miles still to go. Bob was a star with the driving, and Hannah was so good, she got double pocket money yesterday as a surprise.

We had a good holiday, though the weather was truly **** the entire time we were away. At one point, the fog was so bad that for three days we couldn't even see the next row of caravans. We cut our losses and left a few days early, planning to come as far as the Lakes, but we stopped off to see some friends near Glos., and the weather was so much better away from the coast that we pitched up there. Nevertheless, we still surfed, and Hannah is getting seriously proficient at that. We visited Eden for the day, and even though it was the school holidays, they still let us have the HE rate. Cycled the Tarka Trail, and spent a bit of time with an HE family that we met last year on holiday, and who were there again this year. They do formal home schooling, so a very different approach to us. They even do half terms and holidays etc. I'll post more about this later, as we had long discussions about education (when I really wished I had Alison with me to help me articulate my half formed ramblings), and they are on one hand not very happy, but at the same time, scared of change. But it made me realise how unformed my own thoughts about this are, operating mainly on gut instinct, so I'm going to be picking everyone's brains.

The mother was really astounded though, as we went shopping one day, and Hannah picked up a book of Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb, and asked if she could have them for me to read to her, and she said that her children would see that as "school work" and therefore not something to be considered during the holidays. Anyway, we've read the following:

Hamlet
Romeo and Juliet
Taming of the Shrew
Merchant of Venice
Anthony and Cleopatra
Midsummer's Nights Dream
Twelfth Night
Macbeth
Henry V
The Tempest

Hannah has also listened to Dark Materials trilogy of tape, and I've read the Atticus the Storyteller Greek Myths to her. I do avoid reading aloud if I can, but I did actually enjoy having these contained pieces to read, so I am thinking now that I may buy Island Story from Tanglewood. I'm just not sure though about buying an American text for British History. Ramble, ramble. The thing is, I do like the format of it. Hmmmm. Any other recommendations?

Anyway, won't go on just now, as I really want to get myself sorted this morning. Bob is back at work today, I'm going in to the office tomorrow, and then Hannah has hospital on Tuesday, and she is at drama school next week, and we've got a birthday party this afternoon. But just wanted to start the blogging habit again :-) However, while it was nice to be away from the PC, it has convinced me overall that I need a decent laptop, so I'm back on that quest ;-)