Nursery - the first few weeks

So yes, Taters has now officially started nursery. And what with speech delay issues and his general clinginess I was really rather worried. The nursery has been utterly amazing though at helping him settle in and because of them he’s really enjoying going. I’m thrilled to bits.


They’ve let him build up the time he spends there gradually. The first week my husband took him in and stayed with him for half an hour (we decided it would be less traumatic to use daddy for this as he’s far less clingy with my husband). By the end of the week they were getting my husband to leave the room for short periods of time to get Taters used to daddy not being there. Then the second week my husband took him in and left him there for an hour, then for longer and longer periods of time until he was doing the full morning session. It was as simple as that. No dramas. Not too many tears. It worked. I think daddy found it more traumatic than Taters.

I can’t tell you how happy and relieved I am. This is what he needs now; other children, new challenges, a little independence. It’s doing him the world of good already. His communication skills have stepped up a notch and he’s now answering simple questions and developing better conversational skills, when before he could talk in sentences but this was largely based around repetition – either of something we said, or of a tried and tested phrase he liked to use.

It’s all going so much better than I could have ever imagined.

His time there hasn’t been without some stress on my part though. One morning when my husband dropped him off he was informed that the Early Years Inclusion team would be visiting the nursery to do an assessment of Taters the next day. I almost flipped my lid, someone was assessing my boy and I hadn’t been informed! What was he being assessed for? What on earth was this about?

Thankfully the head came out for a chat when I picked Taters up and she explained; the assessment had been set up by the speech therapist, apparently she’d mentioned it a few weeks earlier when we’d met with the speech therapist and the nursery to discuss how to help Taters settle in. Once she said that I did remember it being mentioned, but the speech therapist had said she’d drop me a letter about it after our meeting and therefore I didn’t worry about writing the date down. The letter never arrived and amidst the chaos of Taters starting nursery and the “drama” surrounding my 20 week scan, I’d almost forgotten about it.

To recap, I’d found that meeting really stressful, our usual babysitter couldn’t look after Taters so we’d had to take him with us, and I’d missed most of what was discussed as I struggled to keep him quiet and happy.

I’d come away feeling confused though. The speech therapist had referred Taters for this “extra help” from Early Years Inclusion before deciding it was needed, she’d told me the waiting list was so long  it better would be better to get him on it sooner rather than later. Then as she got to know him, when she’d had the chance to do her own assessment of his needs, she’d either remove him from the waiting list or if it was decided the help was needed, well he’d be already be getting closer to the top for the help to kick in. She never really went into detail about what it was, and at the time - newly pregnant and feeling sick and utterly miserable - I had enough on my plate. I’d filed it away under: “Don’t need to know right now. Will ask later if we end up going down this route.”

After he was signed up we didn’t see the speech therapist again until the meeting with the nursery, when suddenly she was discussing this extra help in terms of when it would kick in. As if it was a certainty.  As if he needed it. This wasn’t my understanding of the situation and since he could now talk up a storm, I wasn’t sure whether it was even needed. But I never got the chance to get this point across.

Again I naively expected to see the speech therapist after that nursery meeting to set the record straight, at least before the early years ‘whatever it was’ commenced! But we haven’t seen her since, and as that letter never got sent informing me of when they’d be going into the nursery I presumed it was a while off yet…

Obviously we came to the top of the waiting list quicker than anticipated and suddenly Taters was being assessed, but for what, by who, what they think is wrong with him… I didn’t know. I was lost! And I can’t help but feel that I’ve let Taters down an awful lot recently, because I should know these things. I shouldn’t  have left things for the speech therapist to contact me. He’s my responsibility.

I was in a bit of a fluster to say the least.

We got a letter from the Early Years Inclusion team two days after the assessment, explaining that Taters had been referred to them and they’d be carrying out an assessment of how they can best help him in the next few weeks. Yes, after they’d already assessed him. It didn’t say what they thought was wrong with him (Did they still think he couldn’t speak? Did they think he was potentially autistic as the speech therapists’ language seemed to suggest at that bloody nursery meeting), or what sort of help they offered, but at least I now knew the name of the support and had a contact number for the team behind it.

I did a little long overdue research and I’ve since spoken to them. It appears they help kids who are starting nursery and may be lagging behind other children, they help them settle in and provide extra support to the nursery to bring them up to speed. The idea being so that they don’t get left behind and struggle once school begins then suffer throughout their time in education. I can really see the benefit in that.

Because Taters is new to talking he is behind the other kids starting nursery, he’s catching up with tremendous speed, but if they can help him with that, then that’s fantastic in my opinion. I really welcome the help.

So I’m not happy about the way things have been managed, but at the same time I think I’m in danger of getting so hung up over how this has all come about that I’m a page or two behind everyone trying to help him now. It’s time to forget how this came about and deal with where we’re at now. I don’t want to come across as defensive or unhelpful. I only want to know what is going on! Fancy having a speech therapist who doesn’t communicate with you properly!

But it doesn’t matter now that the speech therapist never got round to doing her own assessment or that her ideas about him are so out of date. An assessment of where he’s at now has been carried out and that’s what we’ll be working from. (Yes, I’m extremely anxious to see what it says) And I do think this extra help will benefit him greatly.

We’ve now arranged another meeting next month between us, the nursery, the Early Years Inclusion team and the speech therapist, this time sans Taters to discuss his assessment and next steps.

I’m really happy with that. It will give me the chance to have my voice heard on the subject (long overdue!), the nursery will know him a bit better by then and if they say he needs extra support, then I trust them. I can also hear what the Early Years team are offering and basically what everyone thinks is going on with my little boy. Hopefully we can clear everything up and after that Taters can get the right kind of help, at the right level, that he needs. Which of course, is what really matters at the end of the day.

Phew, it’s taken a while to untangle my head over that one!