From the SEN(CO) review to trick and treating

All ready for trick and treating

This week was one of the highlights of the small school children and Beavers: this was the week of the Halloween. As a Finnish adult, I see Halloween as an artificial American import, but the children, they see it as an opportunity to put scary skeleton, monster, Scream, vampire or pirate costumes on and go trick and treating in the dark, seeing some fireworks along the way. One just does have heart to spoil there fun. We went trick and treating with a group of parents from our previous NCT coffee group in the village and about 15 children ran excitedly from a lit pumpkin to another decorated door. Number One Son has now a huge amount of sweets and lollipops, since like he tends to, he got very excited and was about the first at every door, almost forcing his way in. However, we realised that we were asking repeatedly the children to 'form a an orderly queue' and avoid houses without pumpkins even if we could see people watching rugby final or some light entertainment programme in their living room. Could you make an American import any more British than that!?

Parents and monsters congregating

The week had some very serious content, since we had the first SENCO (Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator) review meeting at Number One Son's school. We spend almost two hours revising the text so that, while recognising the improvements in speech, he is still immature for his age and, even if delightful, has many disruptive mannerisms that have to be managed by the teaching assistants. It also came to light in the Beavers that one of the assistants there have to keep an eye constantly on him, since it is easier for him to relate to adults and younger children than those of his exact peer group. He is one year or more behind emotionally and behaviourally and luckily the school recognises that we cannot support his school attendance without official status and council support. We have been lucky that the last speech therapist and the school SENCO have such a long experience in their fields and we are truly supported. This also means that Number One Son's short attention span does not get other children in the class distracted.

We want your sweets!

It was a quick move from the meeting to home to collect Number One Son's fancy dress party costume for the Monster Disco, organised by Beavers. He went as a ghost knight, all his face painted white. We had to change in the cloakroom at the school, since he went to the disco directly from the after-school club. The disco continued pass his normal bath time, but there was no way I was going to succeed in finding him in the disco room earlier and drag home. He really enjoys his Beavers! Now I only have to sow about 10 badges on to the right spots on his Beaver jumper. They may not be 10, but they feel like it!