Ineffectual parenting?

Yesterday when I picked Emily up from Helen's, she was tired and listless and not feeling well.

When we got home, I received an early Christmas present - 45 minutes of non-stop crying, fidgeting, runny nose and other actions you would associate with someone who is ill.

All my protestations of "C'mon Em, I know you're ill, it's going to be okay" couldn't resolve the fact that she was tired, achy, felt like crap and had a nose tap switched on that would not turn off.

There's not much you can do in these situations - administer Calpol, wipe the nose and make them comfortable. It just makes you feel useless that there's this little creature obviously in large amounts of distress and you have to sit (almost) idly by and just let it happen.

Short of taking her to the doctors every time this happens, I guess letting it happen is just what I need to do.

Hearing test

Today we went to Teddington for Emily's rescheduled hearing test.

Horrific 4 hour journey aside, Emily passed with flying colours. While I'm glad she won't have to have a fashionable hearing aid adorn her ears, I was also in two minds about what could also be affecting her language delay. You kinda hope that if it is a hearing issue, getting a hearing aid will be the miracle cure and she'll be fine.

Now we've ruled out hearing issues, I really don't know what the miracle cure is, or if one even exists.

We continue on with our speech therapists and appointments with other NHS folk in the vain hope of getting Emily up the Zero before she gets to an age where all this will actually matter ... like school.

Parent "teacher" evening at Fennies

Well, our first parent teacher meeting at Fennies was pretty much what we assumed.

Emily likes books and singing, has no problem with her appetite and doesn't really interact with other children.

She's getting better at a number of things but is still behind in a few.

We also discussed the dreaded potty training and discovered they don't do the intermediate "pull up" stage - it's nappies to knickers for them.

So not too bad all things considered.

First parent "teacher" night

At 6 o'clock tonight, Sue and I have a parent "teacher" (or key worker) interview with Emily's Day Nursery school, Fennies.

Things like this make me think that Em's quite grown up now. It's not going to be long before it's the real thing mind you, so I'm quite fine that we're having a dry run tonight.

I imagine we'll get a lot of "she likes to read", "she likes to sing", "she likes to eat", "she keeps to herself". The usual things we're used to over the past year or so. "Plays well with others" we won't be expecting.

Unlike a normal grown up parent teacher evening, we're taking Emily as we don't have a babysitter. I'm sure she'll sit in a corner and read so that shouldn't be much of a problem.

Language therapist

We had another session with Karen, the language therapist today.

Emily showed more promise than the last time we saw her, but she is still WOEFULLY behind other children of her age.

Hopefully the more sessions we do, the better she'll get.

One amazing thing came out of today's session - seeing Emily interact PROPERLY with a jigsaw puzzle. With all the puzzles at home she really doesn't take much notice, trying to press the pieces into any old hole before becoming bored and wandering off. Today she not only focused on the puzzle, she also over came various frustrations in trying to get the piece to sit in the hole correctly.

Watching her doing this really gave me hope... until we had our Hairy Maclary meltdown. Karen brought out a board book just before we left and upon taking it away from Emily, the nuclear meltdown occurred. I had to recite Hairy Maclary's Bone to her to calm her down.

There's still something rather oddly strange about hearing a child crying their eyes out, only to stop to say a word like "horse" or "bone" and then go back into the crying.

Emily says her name... sort of

We've been getting Emily to say words by dropping out words in stories and songs and getting her to fill them in. Over the last few months, we've been able to drop out more and more words and she's been filling in more and more words.

Recently we've been watching a video on YouTube about Emily, the emerald green train on Thomas The Tank Engine.



The lyrics go something like "there's noone quite like Emily. Shiny emerald Emily." This weekend I managed to get Emily to fill in the missing word "Emily" with what actually sounds like "Emily". I'm FULLY aware she has NO concept that the Emily she's filling the word in for is actually her name.

I guess our next step is get her to understand things in concept.