NotSheep

We’re off to see the wizard – oops, no, I don’t mean the wizard, I mean the helpful and friendly exams officer at the school where Barney sat his French GCSE last year. He’s entering for the first bits of his science GCSEs (three separate sciences) in November, with plans for the second bits in January, along with maths, and the third and final bits in June. The school is about two hours away from where we live, but is local to friends of ours who are also very helpful and friendly, as well as being very hospitable and letting us stay over and hang out there when necessary. All the November exams are on one day, but they might be sick of the sight of us by the end of January, when everything is spread out over a couple of weeks.

The plan was that we would all head out to see our friends today and that I’d run off to the school with Barney, then we’d stay over tonight – but plans change when some children are ill and others are stroppy, so instead, I’m taking the older half-and-a-bit of the boys while Scratchy stays here with the younger slightly-less-than-half. The logistics here are getting a bit complex… (and indeed since I wrote that about an hour ago, the plan has changed again!)

It’s been a relatively quiet week up to now. There’s been Beavers and Cubs and Scouts and Sea Cadets and fencing (which I realise doesn’t sound quiet to most of you, but I did say “relatively”). There hasn’t been any swimming, because there have always been a couple of children who were sneezing and coughing, but we might get to the pool tomorrow morning. Barney has skipped several activities in order to get on with the skool he needs to do before exams, and George has skipped several activities on the basis that if he isn’t able to cope with life at home with the family, he certainly isn’t on form to cope with life elsewhere with the world at large. And everyone has done lots of skool. Cyril is impressed that he has finished the second chapter of his maths book, and everyone who can cope with a keyboard has been introduced to Tutpup – which was so popular that they all cleaned their bedrooms quickly and willingly

Barney and I went to a meeting with the OU on Tuesday morning, to discuss what courses he wanted to do next year. They are reluctant to allow him to do one of the maths courses he wanted to do, not because they don’t think he can do the maths, but because…well, to be honest I’m not really sure why, but we’ve come up with a plan for the next couple of years that we’re all happy with. It’s quite a lot more complicated than it would have been if he’d been doing both the intended maths courses in 2010 rather than just one of them, and it does feel that they’re putting more obstacles in the way for young students now – it is now a national policy that the Regional Director must approve the proposed study for every course, and I can’t really see any justification for that when the Young Students Advisor and the retiring Staff Tutor for Maths and the new Staff Tutor for Maths have all met the young student and agreed on the plan, and when the young student has been getting good marks in the maths course he’s just finished. But ours not to reason why – or at least, ours not to argue and put their backs up so they won’t let him take any courses at all

I had another appointment to take another child to on Wednesday morning, when Toby had (yet) another speech therapy assessment. I’ve moaned about the SLT system before, but I’m going to moan again anyway. It’s almost three years since we first requested SLT for him. He’s had ten appointments for therapy, and this week’s assessment was his fourth – and his third SLT. He was miffed that someone else was in his beloved L’s office, miffed that someone else was asking him to do the same things he liked to do for his beloved L, miffed that she was asking him to do things he knows how to do – I could see the “well duh” in his eyes The new SLT seems like a perfectly nice woman, but Toby’s objection is that she’s not L. And my objection is that there has been so much time and energy and funding wasted on doing one assessment after another, on building relationships with one SLT after another. Bah.

Anyway, E, the new SLT, feels that although some of the sounds are a little delayed, nothing is outside the normal range – this is good news, of course. In fact since he first started to talk, I’ve never been very worried about his speech, because I’ve always been able to see (well, hear) progress. And as long as there’s progress, I’m not very bothered about it taking a bit longer than it usually does – we never had any intention of sending him to school or nursery, so there was no great hurry to get his speech to the point where people outside the family could understand him. He’s mostly there now anyway, but I was happy as long as the progress was there. My concern has always been to ensure that if he needed SLT, he’d get it. E suggested that given the minor nature of the delays, she could put together a package of activities for us to do with him at home, rather than set up another block of SLT appointments – if that was okay with us. And it’s just fine with us. Yes, it’s yet another thing for me to do, as E mentioned, but it’s no more difficult or time-consuming than taking him to a SLT appointment every week – in fact it’s easier, because I can do it when he’s willing and cheerful, and without having to make arrangements for all the other children. So she’ll send us some stuff in the post and put him on recall to be assessed again in six months, and I’m quite happy with that plan.